The Lincoln Assassination: Crime and Punishment, Myth and MemoryA Lincoln Forum Book (North's Civil War) [Hardcover]

Craig L. Symonds (Author), Frank J. Williams (Author), Harold Holzer (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 7, 2010 | Series: North's Civil War (Book 34)

The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln remains one of the most prominent events in U.S. history. It continues to attract enormous and intense interest from scholars, writers, and armchair historians alike, ranging from painstaking new research to wild-eyed speculation. At the end of the Lincoln bicentennial year, and the onset of the Civil War sesquicentennial, the leading scholars of Lincoln and his murder offer in one volume their latest studies and arguments about the assassination, its aftermath, the extraordinary public reaction (which was more complex than has been previously believed), and the iconography that Lincoln's murder and deification inspired. Contributors also offer the most up-to-date accounts of the parallel legal event of the summer of 1865-the relentless pursuit, prosecution, and punishment of the conspirators. Everything from graphic tributes to religious sermons, to spontaneous outbursts on the streets of the nation's cities, to emotional mass-mourning at carefully organized funerals, as well as the imposition of military jurisprudence to try theconspirators, is examined in the light of fresh evidence and insightful analysis.The contributors are among the finest scholars who are studying Lincoln's assassination. All have earned well-deserved reputations for the quality of their research, their thoroughness, their originality, and their writing. In addition to the editors, contributors include Thomas R. Turner, Edward Steers Jr., Michael W. Kauffman, Thomas P. Lowry, Richard E. Sloan, Elizabeth D. Leonard, and Richard Nelson Current.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the fourth volume from scholarly collective the Lincoln Forum (following Lincoln Revisited), 10 contributors turn their attention to the 16th president's assassination. Editors Holzer and Williams collaborate on an interesting (and well-illustrated) look at popular engravings and prints portraying Lincoln's final hours, some of which put a crowd of 50 at Lincoln's deathbed, in a room large enough for no more than a half-dozen. Richard Sloan looks at Lincoln's funeral procession and his time lying in state in New York City, with interesting insight for amateur urban historians. Thomas Lowry's "Not Everybody Mourned Lincoln's Death" is vivid but narrow, focusing on the easily-grasped point that many Americans, on the heels of the Civil War, were glad to see Lincoln dead. Multiple articles look at the trial of John Wilkes Booth's conspirators, often disagreeing about which of the accused, convicted and hanged were actually guilty. Thomas R. Turner notes that as early as the 1860s, "historians were agonizing that... there was little left to be said" about Lincoln; while this collection does reinforce that idea, it also turns up enough unanswered or undecided questions to hold readers' interest and promise more scholarship to come. B&w illus.
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Review

The nine essays in The Lincoln Assassination--all of them excellent--explore, in the words of the introduction, 'the legal, cultural, political, and even emotional consequences of the assassination.'-Henry Cohen

Unlike other scholars who couch assassin John Wilkes Booth's motivations in the politics of the time (his romanticization of the South and anguish at its perceived oppression), Holzer locates Booth's disenchantment within the bosom of the idiosyncratic, theatrical Booth clan.-Georgette Gouveia

Can there possibly be anything new to add to the millions of words already written about Abraham Lincoln's assassination and its aftermath? The answer is a resounding yes, and much of it is contained in this slim but enormously informative and thought-provoking volume. Exploring topics such as the identity of those who kept vigil at the President's deathbed, the joy that some Americans felt when they learned what Booth had done, and the character of the judge who presided over the conspirators' trial, this collection of essays offers welcome - and yes, new - insight into a tragedy whose history-shaping impact remains undiminished after 145 years.-Richard Moe, President

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Fordham University Press; 2 edition (June 7, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823232263
• ISBN-13: 978-0823232260
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #386,315 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dead On, May 30, 2010

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This review is from: The Lincoln Assassination: Crime and Punishment, Myth and MemoryA Lincoln Forum Book (North's Civil War) (Hardcover)

The public memorialization of the death of Abraham Lincoln along with the trial of those who were accused of helping Booth carry out his infamous deed are at the core of this anthology.

As with almost any collection of this sort, some authors are better than others in terms of writing style. But all here are noted experts, and from each of these one can learn bits, at least, of interesting new information or different ways of evaluating the well-trod historical record.

For those who would like to learn more about John Surratt (the one who got away), I recommend "The Last Lincoln Conspirator" by Andrew C.A. Jampoler (2008).