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Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer | 
| Author: James L. Swanson
Publisher: William Morrow
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Rating:  253 reviews
Sales Rank: 28624
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 464
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.4
ISBN: 0060518499
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1524097309034
EAN: 9780060518493
ASIN: 0060518499
Publication Date: February 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
The Greatest Manhunt in American History For 12 days after his brazen assassination of Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth was at large, and in Manhunt, historian James L. Swanson tells the vivid, fully documented tale of his escape and the wild, massive pursuit. Get a taste of the daily drama from this timeline of the desperate search. | April 14, 1865 | Around noon, Booth learns that Lincoln is coming to Ford's Theatre that night. He has eight hours to prepare his plan.
10:15 pm: Booth shoots the president, leaps to the stage, and escapes on a waiting horse.
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton orders the manhunt to begin. | | April 15 | About 4:00 am: Booth seeks treatment for a broken leg at Dr. Samuel Mudd's farm near Beantown, Maryland. Cavalry patrol heads south toward Mudd farm.
Confederate operative Thomas Jones hides Booth in a remote pine thicket for five days, frustrating the manhunters. | | April 19 | Tens of thousands watch the procession to the U.S. Capitol, where President Lincoln lies in state. Wild rumors and stories of false sightings of Booth spread. | | | | April 20 | Stanton offers a $100,000 reward for the assassins, and threatens death to any citizen who helps them.
After hiding Booth in Maryland, Jones puts him in a rowboat on the Potomac River, bound for Virginia. More than a thousand manhunters are still searching in Maryland. In the dark, Booth rows the wrong way and first ends up back in Maryland. | | April 20-24 | Booth lands in the northern neck of Virginia, and Confederate agents and sympathizers guide him to Port Conway, Virginia. | | April 24 | Booth befriends three Confederate soldiers who help him cross the Rappahannock River to Port Royal and then guide him further southwest to the Garrett farm.
Union troops in Washington receive a report of a Booth sighting. They board a U.S. Navy tug and steam south, right past Booth's hideout at the Garrett farm. | | April 25 | The 16th New York Calvary, realizing their error, turns around and surrounds the Garrett farm after midnight that night. | | | | April 26 | When Booth refuses to surrender, troops set the barn on fire, and Boston Corbett shoots the assassin. Booth dies a few hours later, at sunrise. | | April 26-27 | Booth's body is brought back to Washington, where it is autopsied, photographed, and buried in a secret grave. | | |
Product Description
The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history -- the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry and detectives on a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in horror and sadness. At the very center of this story is John Wilkes Booth, America's notorious villain. A Confederate sympathizer and a member of a celebrated acting family, Booth threw away his fame and wealth for a chance to avenge the South's defeat. For almost two weeks, he confounded the manhunters, slipping away from their every move and denying them the justice they sought. Based on rare archival materials, obscure trial transcripts, and Lincoln's own blood relics, Manhunt is a fully documented work, but it is also a fascinating tale of murder, intrigue, and betrayal. A gripping hour-by-hour account told through the eyes of the hunted and the hunters, this is history as you've never read it before.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 248 more reviews...
 Reads Like A Thriller June 29, 2009
Redbone (New Orleans, LA USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln occurred nearly 144 years ago, but in riveting detail, author James L. Swanson brings back to life the days and weeks leading up to and following the event in his thrilling book, "Manhunt: The 12-day Chase for Lincoln's Killer." Swanson masterfully blends arcane details, anecdotes, letters, journals and eye-witness accounts into a true page-turner. It truly reads like a thriller.
Through his well-documented tale we learn that an earlier aborted attempt by John Wilkes Booth to kidnap the president metamorphosed into an assassination attempt on not only the life of Lincoln, but also the lives of key members of his cabinet and Vice President Andrew Johnson. The assassinations were all to take place at the exact same time.
Many of the conspirators who were originally willing to assist Booth in his plot to kidnap Lincoln in return for the release of Confederate prisoners wanted nothing to do with murder. That is, except for three men: Lewis Powell, whose good looks belied his violent temperament, was assigned to kill Secretary of State William Seward; David Herold, Booth's ever faithful companion (and whose attorney would later argue had the mental capacity of an 11-year-old); and George Atzerodt, a ne'er-do-well German immigrant in charge of killing the vice president.
Booth was the only one to succeed that night, though Powell came mightily close to accomplishing his assignment. Atzerodt lost his nerve and spent the night drinking.
But what happened following the assassination and the subsequent manhunt for Lincoln's killer is the primary focus of Swason's book. The death of Lincoln turned Washington upside down. The Civil War was still raging. Although Robert E. Lee had recently surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, General Joe Johnston still controlled a sizeable army. There were legitimate concerns by the surviving leaders that the assassination was concocted by the Confederacy and that more attacks were sure to follow.
Reliving the nation's sense of near panic and uncertainty of what was going to happen next, led me to see the eerie the parallel of the days following Lincoln's assassination to the days following the terrorists attacks on September 11, 2001.
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton seized control of the city and immediately suspended rights to habeas corpus. The country was at war and he couldn't afford to take chances. Suspected Southern sympathizers and suspicious-looking riff-raff were rounded up and detained without charge. Homes and businesses were ransacked and searched without warrants, and property, such as the Ford Theater, was seized and confiscated by the government. Desperate to ascertain if the assassination involved Confederate leadership and if it signaled the launch of a new offense against the Capital, Stanton made it Priority One to catch Booth -alive, hopefully - and issued a $100,000 reward for his capture. Troops and detectives dispatched to capture Booth resorted to a number of tactics to extract information from suspected co-conspirators or potential witnesses including detention, threats of imprisonment, destruction of property and outright death threats either by rope and tree or at gunpoint. I had the feeling that they would have at this point resorted to waterboarding if that interrogation technique had been available.
The twelve-day adventure to catch Booth is filled with intrigue, confusion and missteps. Some people along the way willingly agreed to help Booth escape and others were tricked or forced into aiding him, but almost all had wished Booth had never come their way. And in the end, Lincoln's assassination was avenged. Surrounded and trapped inside a burning barn, there was still hope that Booth would be taken alive, but that was dashed by a lone bullet from a Union cavalry sergeant - a very disturbed man.
His spinal cord severed by the gunshot wound, Booth died ignobly two hours later. His last words, "Useless, useless," still echo across the ages. The history of the U.S. was forever altered - for the worse - by a useless act by a misguided, egocentric actor.
Usurping other cabinet members arguing for a civil trial, Secretary of War Stanton, like his modern day counterparts, assembled a military tribunal to convict the four co-conspirators: Powell, Herold, Atzerodt and Mary Surratt. All four were simultaneously executed by hanging.
"Manhunt: The 12-day Chase for Lincoln's Killer," is an excellent read and sheds new light on a subject that is almost too painful to recall. My only slight knock against the work is that at least the edition I read contained few photos. I think including photos or sketches of the accused would have been an added benefit to the reader. Still, I can't praise the book highly enough.
 Well written, effusive detail June 19, 2009
Jason Buberel (Sunnyvale, CA USA)
A bit too much tangential detail at times, and perhaps over-dramatized at others, this is still a wonderfully informative read.
Not a history buff but loved it anyway June 10, 2009
Gina Milano (Short Hills, NJ USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Manhunt, which I've just finished, has possessed me for the last two weeks. I've completely disappeared from friends and family every moment that I could to sneak away and savor this thriller. Having finished the book, I am no longer ignorant of many important events of the period suspensefully detailed here such as the attempted assassination of Seward and Johnson the post-civil war climate of mistrust and much more.
Juicy details of the lives of these very unpalatable,colorful characters...Booth, Dr. Mudd, Powell and of the more nuanced ones,Rathbone, Jones,Asia Booth,kept those pages turning. There are few heroes and many surprises. Manhunt is one satisfying read!
A page turner May 28, 2009
Sahra Badou (Tokyo, Japan)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a very entertaining, gripping, and informative book. I really loved reading this book. This book reads like a thriller. It is very well written, and a true page turner. What makes this book fascinating is that the story is exactly as it happened. All the characters are real and were alive during the great manhunt of April 1865. Their words are authentic. All text appearing within quotation marks comes from original sources: letters, manuscripts, affidavits, trial transcripts, newspapers, government reports, pamphlets, books, memoirs, and other documents.
Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated. It was a big shock to the American people then, similar to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but according to the author, magnified fivefold. Catching Lincoln's killer was therefore a priority. After a 12 day chase, the killer, an actor by the name of John Wilkes Booth, was finally caught. Sustaining a gun wound to his neck, Booth soon died. Abraham Lincoln died at 22 minutes after 7 o'clock on April 15, 1865.
The author tells the story of why Booth wanted Lincoln dead (he hated colored people and wanted them kept as slaves); how he killed him (a close range shot to the back of the head while Lincoln watched a play); how he escaped the theatre; and his attempt to cross the Hudson River, go south, and eventually into Mexico. Booth could have easily escaped if it wasn't for all the mistakes he did (he remained too long in one place; rowed towards the wrong direction; placed his trust in the wrong persons).
The plan was to kill the Secretary of State (he was severely wounded) and the Vice President as well. It was really an attempt to paralyze the government, similar to the 2001 attacks that aimed to destroy the White house (the aircraft that fell in the fields of Pennsylvania was heading for the White House), and managed to destroy part of the Pentagon.
The book is very well illustrated with authentic black and white pictures (they had cameras then). A map of Booth's escape route is also included.
I learnt many things that I did not know:
1. Lincoln did not die immediately. Though shot in the back of his head, he was resuscitated, though he never regained consciousness. Lincoln died at his home. Today visitors can visit the room where Lincoln died.
2. I didn't know they had cameras at the time, and really enjoyed looking at the photographs included in the book.
3. Booth was a famous actor, the Barrymores of the time. He was not a common criminal. His hatred of the colored people is what pushed him to kill Lincoln.
4. The official story was that Booth was buried under the Hudson River, with enough weights attached to him to guarantee he would never surface. In reality, Booth was buried in a cemetery, and today visitors can visit his grave.
I highly recommend reading this book!
Great Read April 12, 2009
Robert S. (Washington, DC)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Hard to put down. Informative and well constructed. Reads like a non-fiction thriller. Incredible depth of research but presented concisely. Great read.
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