The Madman and the Assassin

The Madman and the Assassin PDF Author: Scott Martelle
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1613730187
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
As thoroughly examined as the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth have been, virtually no attention has been paid to the life of the Union cavalryman who killed Booth, an odd character named Boston Corbett. The killing of Booth made Corbett an instant celebrity who became the object of fascination and of derision. Corbett was an English immigrant, a hatter by trade, who was likely poisoned by mercury. A devout Christian, he castrated himself so that his sexual urges would not distract him from serving God, which he did as a street evangelist and preacher. He was one of the first volunteers to join the US Army in the first days of the Civil War, a path that would in time land him in the notorious Andersonville prison camp. Eventually released in a prisoner exchange, he would end up in the squadron that cornered Booth in Virginia. The Madman and the Assassin is the first full-length biography of Boston Corbett, a man who was something of a prototypical modern American, thrust into the spotlight during a national news event. His story also encompasses tragedy—his wife died when he was young, and he struggled with poverty and his own mental health—as it weaves through some of the biggest events in nineteenth century America. Scott Martelle is a professional journalist and the author of The Admiral and the Ambassador, and Detroit: A Biography, and is an editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times.

The Madman and the Assassin

The Madman and the Assassin PDF Author: Scott Martelle
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1613730187
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
As thoroughly examined as the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth have been, virtually no attention has been paid to the life of the Union cavalryman who killed Booth, an odd character named Boston Corbett. The killing of Booth made Corbett an instant celebrity who became the object of fascination and of derision. Corbett was an English immigrant, a hatter by trade, who was likely poisoned by mercury. A devout Christian, he castrated himself so that his sexual urges would not distract him from serving God, which he did as a street evangelist and preacher. He was one of the first volunteers to join the US Army in the first days of the Civil War, a path that would in time land him in the notorious Andersonville prison camp. Eventually released in a prisoner exchange, he would end up in the squadron that cornered Booth in Virginia. The Madman and the Assassin is the first full-length biography of Boston Corbett, a man who was something of a prototypical modern American, thrust into the spotlight during a national news event. His story also encompasses tragedy—his wife died when he was young, and he struggled with poverty and his own mental health—as it weaves through some of the biggest events in nineteenth century America. Scott Martelle is a professional journalist and the author of The Admiral and the Ambassador, and Detroit: A Biography, and is an editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times.

We Saw Lincoln Shot

We Saw Lincoln Shot PDF Author: Timothy Sean Good
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604736968
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
On the evening of 14 April 1865 when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Ford's Theatre, an entire audience was witness to the tragedy. From diaries, letters, depositions, affidavits, and periodicals, here is a collection of accounts from a variety of theatergoers - who by chance saw one of the truly pivotal events in U. S. history. Providing minute first-hand details recorded over a span of ninety years, We Saw Lincoln Shot explores a subject that will forever be debated. With a sharp focus upon the circumstances reported by one hundred actual witnesses, We Saw Lincoln Shot provides vivid documentation of a momentous evening and exposes errors that have been perpetuated as the assassination has been rendered into written histories.

Our American Cousin

Our American Cousin PDF Author: Tom Taylor
Publisher: BoD - Books on Demand
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
Our American Cousin is a three-act play written by English playwright Tom Taylor. The play opened in London in 1858 but quickly made its way to the U.S. and premiered at Laura Keene’s Theatre in New York City later that year. It remained popular in the U.S. and England for the next several decades. Its most notable claim to fame, however, is that it was the play U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was watching on April 14, 1865 when he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, who used his knowledge of the script to shoot Lincoln during a more raucous scene. The play is a classic Victorian farce with a whole range of stereotyped characters, business, and many entrances and exits. The plot features a boorish but honest American cousin who travels to the aristocratic English countryside to claim his inheritance, and then quickly becomes swept up in the family’s affairs. An inevitable rescue of the family’s fortunes and of the various damsels in distress ensues. Our American Cousin was originally written as a farce for an English audience, with the laughs coming mostly at the expense of the naive American character. But after it moved to the U.S. it was eventually recast as a comedy where English caricatures like the pompous Lord Dundreary soon became the primary source of hilarity. This early version, published in 1869, contains fewer of that character’s nonsensical adages, which soon came to be known as “Dundrearyisms,” and for which the play eventually gained much of its popular appeal.

He Has Shot the President!

He Has Shot the President! PDF Author: Don Brown
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1596432241
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 69

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Book Description
Covers the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the manhunt that followed.

Freedom Rising

Freedom Rising PDF Author: Ernest B. Furgurson
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307425959
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
In this luminous portrait of wartime Washington, Ernest B. Furgurson–author of the widely acclaimed Chancellorsville 1863, Ashes of Glory, and Not War but Murder--brings to vivid life the personalities and events that animated the Capital during its most tumultuous time. Here among the sharpsters and prostitutes, slaves and statesmen are detective Allan Pinkerton, tracking down Southern sympathizers; poet Walt Whitman, nursing the wounded; and accused Confederate spy Antonia Ford, romancing her captor, Union Major Joseph Willard. Here are generals George McClellan and Ulysses S. Grant, railroad crew boss Andrew Carnegie, and architect Thomas Walter, striving to finish the Capitol dome. And here is Abraham Lincoln, wrangling with officers, pardoning deserters, and inspiring the nation. Freedom Rising is a gripping account of the era that transformed Washington into the world’s most influential city.

American Brutus

American Brutus PDF Author: Michael W. Kauffman
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307430618
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
It is a tale as familiar as our history primers: A deranged actor, John Wilkes Booth, killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, escaped on foot, and eluded capture for twelve days until he met his fiery end in a Virginia tobacco barn. In the national hysteria that followed, eight others were arrested and tried; four of those were executed, four imprisoned. Therein lie all the classic elements of a great thriller. But the untold tale is even more fascinating. Now, in American Brutus, Michael W. Kauffman, one of the foremost Lincoln assassination authorities, takes familiar history to a deeper level, offering an unprecedented, authoritative account of the Lincoln murder conspiracy. Working from a staggering array of archival sources and new research, Kauffman sheds new light on the background and motives of John Wilkes Booth, the mechanics of his plot to topple the Union government, and the trials and fates of the conspirators. Piece by piece, Kauffman explains and corrects common misperceptions and analyzes the political motivation behind Booth’s plan to unseat Lincoln, in whom the assassin saw a treacherous autocrat, “an American Caesar.” In preparing his study, Kauffman spared no effort getting at the truth: He even lived in Booth’s house, and re-created key parts of Booth’s escape. Thanks to Kauffman’s discoveries, readers will have a new understanding of this defining event in our nation’s history, and they will come to see how public sentiment about Booth at the time of the assassination and ever since has made an accurate account of his actions and motives next to impossible–until now. In nearly 140 years there has been an overwhelming body of literature on the Lincoln assassination, much of it incomplete and oftentimes contradictory. In American Brutus, Kauffman finally makes sense of an incident whose causes and effects reverberate to this day. Provocative, absorbing, utterly cogent, at times controversial, this will become the definitive text on a watershed event in American history.

Fortune's Fool

Fortune's Fool PDF Author: Terry Alford
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195054121
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
When John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, his friends were stunned--not only by the murder but by the thought that someone they knew as fantastically gifted, successful and kind-hearted could commit such a crime. Fortune's Fool, the first biography of Booth ever written, is the life story of this talented and troubling individual.

John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth PDF Author: Asia Booth Clarke
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781617033612
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Features a biographical sketch of the American actor John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865). Notes that Booth shot and killed the U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865.

Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination

Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination PDF Author: Thomas Bogar
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
ISBN: 1621570835
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
April 14, 1865. A famous actor pulls a trigger in the presidential balcony, leaps to the stage and escapes, as the president lies fatally wounded. In the panic that follows, forty-six terrified people scatter in and around Ford’s Theater as soldiers take up stations by the doors and the audience surges into the streets chanting, “Burn the place down!” This is the untold story of Lincoln’s assassination: the forty-six stage hands, actors, and theater workers on hand for the bewildering events in the theater that night, and what each of them witnessed in the chaos-streaked hours before John Wilkes Booth was discovered to be the culprit. In Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination, historian Thomas A. Bogar delves into previously unpublished sources to tell the story of Lincoln’s assassination from behind the curtain, and the tale is shocking. Police rounded up and arrested dozens of innocent people, wasting time that allowed the real culprit to get further away. Some closely connected to John Wilkes Booth were not even questioned, while innocent witnesses were relentlessly pursued. Booth was more connected with the production than you might have known—learn how he knew each member of the cast and crew, which was a hotbed of secessionist resentment. Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination also tells the story of what happened to each of these witnesses to history, after the investigation was over—how each one lived their lives after seeing one of America’s greatest presidents shot dead without warning. Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination is an exquisitely detailed look at this famous event from an entirely new angle. It is must reading for anyone fascinated with the saga of Lincoln’s life and the Civil War era.

The Day Lincoln Was Shot

The Day Lincoln Was Shot PDF Author: Jim Bishop
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061374873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
The Day Lincoln Was Shot is a gripping, minute-by-minute account of April 14, 1865: the day President Abraham Lincoln was tragically assassinated. It chronicles the movements of Lincoln and his assassin John Wilkes Booth during every movement of that fateful day. Author and journalist Jim Bishop has fashioned an unforgettable tale of tragedy, more gripping than fiction, more alive than any newspaper account. First published in 1955, The Day Lincoln Was Shot was a huge bestseller, and in 1998 it was made into a TNT movie, with Rob Morrow as Booth.