President Lincoln Assassinated!!: The Firsthand Story of the Murder, Manhunt, Trial, and Mourning

by Harold Holzer (Compiler)

Experience the drama of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination through this curated selection of eyewitness reports, medical records, and more—for fans of Killing Lincoln

On April 14, 1865, Good Friday, the Civil War claimed its ultimate sacrifice. President Lincoln Assassinated!! recaptures the dramatic immediacy of Lincoln’s assassination, the hunt for the conspirators and their military trial, and the nation’s mourning for the martyred president. The fateful story is told in more than eighty original documents—eyewitness reports, medical records, trial transcripts, newspaper articles, speeches, letters, diary entries, and poems—by more than seventy-five participants and observers, including the assassin John Wilkes Booth and Boston Corbett, the soldier who shot him.

Courtroom testimony exposes the intricacies of the plot to kill the president; eulogies by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wendell Phillips, and Benjamin Disraeli and poetry by Walt Whitman, Herman Melville and Julia Ward Howe give eloquent voice to grief; two emotional speeches by Frederick Douglass—one of them never before published—reveal his evolving perspective on Lincoln’s legacy. Together these voices combine to reveal the full panorama of one the most shocking and tragic events in our history.

Genres: History, Civil War, Nonfiction, American History, True Crime, Presidents

480 pages, Hardcover

First published February 24, 2015

Reviews

[Counsel182 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book better than most: I think most reviewers do not cut Mr. Holzer enough slack from piecing together a marevellous-if not definitive-- first hand account of the aftermath of tHe. Lincoln assassination. He presents these accounts with "warts and all" from somewhat graphic details of the events immediately following the assassination yo the capture of Booth and execution of his "co-conspirators." Holler does provide some first hand introductory material to each account and his introductory remarks are simply amazing. Some many times with history we are presented with "revisionist " interpretations. Of how the world and history is to be perceived, holEr doesn't give you that anyone's clients and/or students are best to lose out if the don't following in holzer's path.

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of documents of things people wrote about the time of Lincoln's assassination about Lincoln, the assassination or the nation at that time. Some of the documents are really fascinating. The defense attorneys for the conspirators made interesting defenses for their clients - in the book are excerpts of some of their concluding arguments. Lincoln emerges as a pretty remarkable man - especially from the description of those who personally knew him. Even those who criticized him while he was president paint a remarkable portrait of him as a human.

[Tony Laplume · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a story that will remain fascinating as long as there are Americans, and probably longer. Its only rival, really, is another assassination, but that one rests on a more uncertain record, and so Abraham Lincoln remains the greatest beneficiary of this singularly horrid act. (And never mind about the other two.)

Harold Holzer does a remarkable job culling the notices that helped make Lincoln, in death, an icon. Left muted in the book is just how bad his reputation was before the assassination. Like Washington before him, he desperately needed victory in the war he helped prosecute in order for this process to begin. Unlike Washington, Lincoln had a scant few days to bask in glory.

What Holzer also captures is the shamelessness of the response to his death, how many observers fell all over themselves to lionize a man they previously despised. Many of them continued to fling thinly veiled insults even in the midst of typically overly florid eulogies. Ah, yeah. You get the sense of the artifice, the overwrought nature of the age, and how in a lot of ways, the whole Civil War was pitched as an end to all that. But of course it just became more insidious, so that today even the common man in vaunted social media can boast false eloquence (if we’re being generous) on all topics.

What always set Lincoln apart was his enigma, how he seemed to contradict every expectation. I imagine him in constant awe of the world. Too many observers seem impressed with his saintly nature, which might otherwise be interpreted as a man constantly overwhelmed by his experiences, and just trying to do what he thinks is right. They are only half right. A humble man in an age of ego.

Missing in all the reflections on the man and the assassination is any real grasp of the days after the event. Holzer seems to forget to record what happened, the more he chases a comprehensive study of reflection. He suggests that the hunt for Booth and his accomplices kept the nation riveted, and yet there isn’t a single item about it. There are glimpses of Booth on the run, but no character studies of him, an actor from a family of actors. Whitman may not have cared for the stage, but Holzer’s readers surely do. There becomes a point where you can begin to believe that everyone forgot the point. And yes, even Holzer.

Any book on Lincoln is valuable. His is a truly essential story. There’s a lot of valuable material here. But it could have done so much more. Too often a premise lies forgotten. Lincoln never forgot his. Shame anyone could for him.

[David Abrams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though there is a value in reading contemporary accounts of historic events--such as the Lincoln assassination--there is also drudgery getting through said contemporary writing. But overall, I'm glad I read these various accounts which "put me there" in Ford's Theater and elsewhere.

[Brian S · Rating 5 out of 5]

First hand accounts of the assassination, letters written just after, testimony from the trial of some conspirators, speeches about Abe by such luminaries as Walt Whitman and Frederick Douglass. Fascinating and organized in a very readable way.

[jazzyreads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don’t get me wrong with this 3 star rating. This book was really interesting and I would recommend. This book is a collection of letters, documents, court transcriptions, etc regarding the assassination of President Lincoln and the aftermath. The reason for my 3 stars is simply because it’s so repetitive. There are only so many times that you can read basically the same letter or newspaper article with just a different writer. I understand the historical value, but it could have been half as long and still made an impact.

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was good but it would have been better if it was like Stephen Oates the whirlwind of war because it is easier to understand this way. It also should have had more pages because when your doing research in which many people do when they read for high school and college it needs to be more detail but in research it was a o.k. book. I also do not like primary sources and this book is a collection of primary sources about the murder, manhunt, trial, and mourning of Abraham Lincoln.

[Elie Harriett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the kind of history I enjoy reading. Told from a first person perspective by multiple people and tied together by an interesting narrative. The editor did an excellent job of compiling these to tell a good well rounded story. Only thing I would have liked would have been more on the assassination and hunt for Booth and the aftermath and less on reflections on Lincoln.

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb piece of work - bringing together contemporary accounts, journals, private thoughts and poems. There's an authentic sense of a thriller in the hunt for the assassins, and a wonderful sense of mid-19th century America struggling to reunite and reconstruct after the ravages of war.
History, drama and humanity - it's all here.

[Kate McMurray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Primarily a compendium of primary sources, this was a pretty fascinating read.

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled with the format. I liked it at first, putting the era into perspective quite nicely. But ultimately it was too many redundant accounts that often went on for far too long.