And Starring John Wilkes Booth as Himself

By Daniel F. Linsalata | Friday, January 12, 2007

BOOK REVIEW

Manhunt: The Twelve-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer
James Swanson
William Morrow, 2006

Perhaps more than any single event in post-Revolution American history, writers, artists, and wide-eyed elementary school students have immortalized, and nearly mythologized, the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The event and its characters have been studied and analyzed from almost every conceivable angle: the political atmosphere in Washington, the final days of the War Between the States, the personal lives of President and Mrs. Lincoln, and, just last year, the most recent biography of John Wilkes Booth, Michael Kauffman’s American Brutus. Historians have detailed even individual events, such as the precise moment of the gunshot during a production of Our American Cousin in Ford’s theatre and Booth’s dramatic escape, or the clumsy negotiations with the cornered assassin 12 days later, ad nauseum. Thus, in his frantic novel, Manhunt: The Twelve-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, James Swanson says almost nothing new on a subject about which there is little new to be said.

In lieu of attacking the exhausted, but ever-captivating, subject matter from some previously-unseen angle based on a mountain of pre-existing evidence, Swanson instead repackages letters, news stories, daguerreotypes, and a wealth of secondary sources into a fast-paced narrative, an action-adventure that begs to be made into low-quality screen play, perhaps starring Andy Garcia as Booth, Colin Farrell as the young New York Calvary officer who kills Booth with a gunshot through the wall of a Virginia barn, and Robert Duvall as Secretary of War Edwin Stanton who almost single-handedly ran the country in the weeks following Lincoln’s murder while simultaneously overseeing every element of the hunt for Booth and his accomplices.

By and large, Swanson’s approach works very well. During its finest moments, the novel reads like a John Grisham thriller with a new twist around every corner and ample foreshadowing and allusions to turns of fate when the action slows because reliable historical accounts are scarce. In preserving the pace of narrative, Swanson necessarily glosses over some of the events following the assassination and simplifies others. The various scenes next to President Lincoln’s deathbed lack the emotion that one would expect from both bystanders and the thousands standing an all-night vigil on the street outside the boarding house across the street from Ford’s Theatre. Absent a heart-wrenching tale of loss, Swanson details a nerve-racking race against the clock as bystanders and readers alike cling to a shred of hope that Lincoln might somehow survive the bullet lodged deep in his brain (Lincoln did not die until 7:22 on the morning of April 15, 1865, nearly nine hours after the shooting). At the same time, Secretary Stanton seizes control and orchestrates the titular manhunt, despite lacking any indication of the killer’s identity or where he may be headed.

In keeping with the fugitive-chase genre, Swanson cuts quickly between scenes, crossing back and forth across Washington and the surrounding states, giving rise to a multifaceted storyline with perpetually increasing intrigue. Scenes in Ford’s theatre; Stanton’s makeshift office; and Booth crossing from D.C. into Maryland are woven between Booth’s co-conspirators assault of Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson (both slated for assassination as well); Union troops scouring the countryside far removed from Booth; and the print media releasing regular, misleading, and sensationalized updates of the pursuit of the fugitive. One of the most striking aspects of the narrative, at least to a modern reader, is the frequency with which major newspapers printed unsubstantiated claims regarding the status of the chase. Claims that Booth had been sighted or would be caught within hours only fueled the public’s hope, as well as their thirst for vengeance.

Edwin Stanton parlayed this fervor into an excuse to seize autocratic power, rendering him, in the eyes of the reader, as one of the most corrupt characters in the drama. While Stanton was indeed hailed as a hero at the time, his abuses of power are appalling to modern audiences. He ordered troops to raid and ransack private property on the basis of unconfirmed rumors, convinced the new President Johnson to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and sentenced eight people to death or long prison terms through military tribunals. Though the northern public validated these abuses when they saw Booth’s conspirators hanging from the gallows, history quickly turned on Stanton. After several years of further investigation, Johnson pardoned three of them, one – posthumously.

It is difficult to contextualize the federal government’s actions in modern times, largely because of the way in which the media facilitated it. Beyond simple sensationalism, the remarkably slow dissemination of news aided the government’s swift actions. Stanton and the troops under his command could act even before news reached the citizens of the Washington area. Booth himself, riding full out on horseback, was able to stay “ahead of the news” of the assassination for three full days before he had to stop at a friendly farmhouse in Maryland for medical assistance.

At times, Swanson approaches his subject much like an over-eager thesis student, readily disgorging any sort of evidence or support he has found not because it is exceptionally relevant, but because he has found it and is giddy to share this finding with the world. Paramount in this category are the bits of President Lincoln’s brain matter which Swanson describes as having pooled onto a lady’s dress, swatches of which have since been preserved in some museum or another. Like the locks of hair collected from both President Lincoln and his killer, the bloodstains are an interesting footnote, but completely devoid of any real insight or propulsion for the story.

The sections in which Swanson is struggling to maintain the momentum of the story are painfully evident. At one point, Booth and one of his co-conspirators, David Herold, lay in a pine thicket near the Virginia border for four days. Swanson plugs the holes in the action with dialogue and events based on something between questionable testimony and pure conjecture. It is tough to fault him for doing so, as the only eyewitnesses to these long days, Booth and Herold, were executed shortly after the end of the chase. Swanson bides his time by describing the despair and frenzy coursing through Washington, and across the country, while the trail for the killer seems to have gone cold. While this is an intriguing feel of the country’s pulse, the going is nonetheless tedious since the book’s stated purpose is precisely the sort of action drama that Swanson cannot deliver in this middle section. Once Booth and Herold begin to move again, the action quickly climbs to a crescendo in a barn near the Rappahannock River, in Virginia.

Readers are inclined to resist every urge to sympathize with Booth, but because he is the protagonist, and often portrayed in a pitiful state, it is difficult not to. From the outset, Swanson describes the murder in the strongest, goriest superlatives he can muster, signaling to the reader on which side his or her emotions ought to lie. However, Booth remains the only well-developed character in the story and imagining his thoughts and suffering become all too easy after following him for several days on horseback and laying with him in a pine thicket for four more as the actor suffers through a painful broken leg—sustained while leaping from President Lincoln’s box onto the stage at Ford’s Theatre. It is difficult to not start pulling for the underdog, perhaps in hopes that he and Herold can indeed make their way through the deep South and into Mexico. Indeed, once Booth moves on from the pine thicket, now a week after the assassination and approaching the shores of Virginia, the reader will want to pound his head in frustration upon observing Booth’s and his companions’ numerous errors, wrought by a combination of ignorance and carelessness.

Swanson, for his part, does not demonize Booth. Rather, he presents him as the type of star Booth always thought himself to be: “Twenty-six years old, impossibly vain, preening, emotionally flamboyant, possessed of raw talent and splendid élan, and a star member of this celebrated theatrical family — the Barrymores of their day — John Wilkes Booth was willing to throw away fame, wealth and promise for his cause.” Booth envisioned the whole affair unfolding as a grand Shakespearean drama, the final and greatest performance in an illustrious career. Swanson makes great strides to liken Booth’s tale to MacBeth, though the analogy falls short for want of a Lady MacBeth. Booth makes no secret of the fact that his primary motivation was immortal fame, even above avenging the South or prolonging the lost war. Exactly the opposite occurred, to Booth’s great dismay. Upon his death Lincoln instantly became a martyr, far greater in death than he ever was in life. The consensus at the time pegged Lincoln as a mediocre president, in over his head, but smart enough to surround himself with crack advisors (see TDR 1/9/06). The analysis turned instantly upon its head while Booth, rather than becoming known for his heroic, theatrical murder, became vilified by all save the most diehard Confederates.

Ironically, Booth’s star rose again following his death. The murder, the manhunt, and the man himself captivated a nation, and a fictionalized account was published less than a month after Booth’s death. Judged by the hands of time, Booth was slowly transformed from a villain into a key player in an historical drama. While not celebrated for his heinous crime, Booth is the necessary player in this suspense thriller, as much as Lincoln himself.

And Starring John Wilkes Booth as Himself

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