Murdering Mr. Lincoln: A New Detection of the 19th Century's Most Famous Crime

Rating:
Summary: Reinvestigating the Assassination
Review: Abraham Lincoln was one of the most revered Presidents, and the one most threatened with death. Higham reminds the reader why Lincoln was both loved and hated (p.xv-xvi). There was a lucrative trade in contraband that benefited Lincoln's circle of friends until 1865 when a Congressional investigation changed policy (p.xvii). The failure of Ulric Dahlgren's raid "compelled" the Confederates to start raids and sabotage in northern states. Higham questions the policy of burning cotton to prevent its capture by Union forces (p.8)! England and France hated Lincoln because the Morrill tariff restricted imports. Higham claims Confederate diplomats paid to be captured (p.9)! The Confederate attack from Canada was to provoke a war with England and gain support for the Confederacy (p.10). Page 27 tells how two millionaires bought a magazine to publish their propaganda in 1852. [This still happens and is hidden by corporate fronts.] Higham describes the Young America movement and the Pierce presidency as a group out to foment revolution in other countries (pp.30-31)! The "radical" Nathaniel Hawthorne was appointed consul in Liverpool to spread subversion! Page 38 notes how the wealth of New York bankers and merchants depended on slavery. Higham claims an attempt was made to plant a bomb on Lincoln's railroad car (p.41), based on one uncorroborated report! Why did General Sherman regard reporters as spies? Because they reported Union troop movements (pp.68-69). Lincoln regularly read intercepted telegraphs from subversives.

Those who have a good background in the history of the Civil War can best judge this book. It does remind us of the many conspiracies and secret societies long forgotten. In other areas, an investigator who find secret clues overlooked by others often has created them. Lincoln remains the first President killed by a "lone gunman", but with a complete investigation into the conspiracy. Forty years after JFK's assassination we still have the cover-up and hidden secrets. Was this due to our Imperial Presidency and a weakened Congress and people?

Page 83 tells how Lincoln suppressed attempts to expose assassination conspiracies, since it would also discourage Unionists. It is so typical to portray a population as a "silent majority". McClellan's popularity is explained by putting his men's safety ahead of any victory (p.87). Or maybe he didn't want to risk defeat of the Union after a lost battle? The Union Army was more experienced and equipped afterwards. The harsh prison Camp Douglas is described (pp.88-89). Was there an attempt to kill Lincoln in February 1864 (pp.118-9)? The raid on St. Albans Vermont is described ([pp.128-132), the aftermath on pages 133-5 (money talks). Next we read that Copperheads were planning an assassination, with J. Wilkes Booth present. But this was an anonymous report filed after the fact (p.137)! Can you believe it? Chapter 6 tells of the attempts to burn New York city in 1864; it failed. Page 163 tells how the B&O railroad was used by both sides. Another curious and previously unreported incident of Booth is on pages 186-7. From improved memory? Chapter 7 shows a surprising amount of travel in those horse & buggy days. Higham acts shocked over the trading between the lines, with Lincoln's friends profiting from cotton etc. Doesn't he know that war is about loot, not ideals? Higham ends his book by claiming wealthy Copperheads were behind the murder of President Lincoln (p.244). Given the bulk of evidence showing Booth as a Confederate agent, and killing Lincoln on his own initiative, the historians in academia should treat this book in their journals. Blaming Lincoln for his own death (p.247) seems to deliberately insulting.

Rating:
Summary: Manure from Hack!
Review: Charles Higham has long seen conspiracy theories under his bed. For most of us, going to bed means counting sheep and drifting off into a restful sleep, but for Higham it must be an entirely different experience. Perhaps his sheep all wear swastika armbands on their legs, baaing in syncopation with goose-stepping spies on their way to conspire with their Hollywood friends. Now, after a long and fruitless career hacking out spy laden fiction about Hollywood's brightest stars, he turns his attention to Abraham Lincoln. The switch from Hollywood figures to political icons is consistent with Higham's long rumored belief that every celebrity was not only a Nazi spy, but a closet homosexual intent on destroying the pillars of democracy. No matter - Higham's book is without merit. This book is no more than a long supposition bracketed by historical gobbledygook and pounds of manure shoveled up from Higham's seemingly endless supply of self-created excrement. Surely, he needs some fiber in his diet, and a backbone to go with it. A soul would help, too. But we need to keep in mind a fundamental truth when considering Charles Higham's long and lucrative career - he has the right to publish what he wants. Freedom is everything, and we need to accept that, even if it means that any deranged fool raised in a leper colony by a homosexual Franciscan monk from Mars can bellow about the conspiracy that occupies his dreams. Yes, they shoot horses and diseased cattle, but not people, and so the diseased are allowed their bellowing. Such people have the strength of their beliefs, and no dialogue from the rest of us will convince them that they are wrong. We should pity them. In any event, it appears obvious that Higham has reached the end of his career. He will still publish, of course, but he is much reviled. His "lack of journalistic integrity" (as historian Tony Thomas so aptly stated) is well known. At best, we should all pray that one day such illnesses are defeated and that one day Charles Higham will finally rest in peace.

Rating:
Summary: charles higham and trading with the enemy
Review: Charles Higham's research connects various Copperhead merchants to the Confederate Secret Service, but fails to convincingly tie any of them to John Wilkes Booth. The book is worth reading primarily for its exploration of a new angle to Lincoln's assassination: Copperhead commerce with the South, reluctantly approved by Lincoln as necessary to the Union to finance the war, provided a cloak for an assassination conspiracy.

Mr. Higham almost certainly has several things wrong. He assumes the plot to kidnap Lincoln was always phony and a cover for murder. But why would Booth write in his diary, "...we sought to capture (and changed to murder at the end)"? Why would Arnold and Surratt, years after they were safe from the law, provide details of Booth's planned abduction? It's also a huge stretch to say Surratt traveled 24 hours from Elmira, N.Y. to Washington on April 13-14 and spent only 5 hours in the city, most of which was devoted to getting his hair cut and watching a transvestite show.

Finally, as with every single historian to have written on the case since 1865, Mr. Higham is willing to assume that Booth entered Lincoln's box without having determined in advance that Parker, the guard, would be absent. This, despite his precise timing of the gunshot to coincide with a laugh line in "Our American Cousin" and with Paine's assault on Seward. Booth acted according to a presumption to which he was not entitled, i.e. Parker would not be guarding Lincoln. He had to have known this.

Rating:
Summary: Awful, Awful, Awful
Review: This book is impossible to follow without a flow-chart, often silly, and just plain sloppy. Higham seems to think drinking a Mint Julep is the one way to identify a 19th Southerner Southerner! He's also sloppy, mixing up the year of Lincoln's assassination several times, (sometimes it's 1864, sometimes he has it right as 1865). Worstly, this book reads more like a list of coincidental meetings of 19th century cranks. Who cares who met who at some hotel in 1864? Higham has no real new information and he really should be ashamed to have written this thing. This is definitely the worst book I have ever purchased online!

Rating:
Summary: Tantalizing but too much
Review: Those interested in the politics behind the war will find Higham's work at times fascinating and horrific. The book really brings home what happened apart from the battlefront. As revered as President Lincoln is today, he made some decisions that would make 21st century citizens of a democracy cringe. Alternatively, Lincoln's detractors and political opponents did the same. It seems unfathomable to me now that Lincoln could have been hated by so many, and this book really pierces the veil of the myth surrounding his presidency and the unity of all those in the Union.

When one really ponders what Lincoln did - suspending the writ of habeas corpus, prosecuting publishers printing unfavorable information, trading with South, etc. - one realizes that Lincoln - just like everyone - is neither complete hero nor complete villain - but a convoluted mix of gray areas.

But a reflection on Lincoln is not an intended objective of this book. Nor does it foster an argument that Lincoln deserved death. The focus here is the plot to de-throne Lincoln and make peace with the South, hatched by shadowy Confederate sympathizers, fringe Confederate spies, the European aristocracy, and some out-and-out crazies, like the chief villain George Sanders and assassian John Wilkes Booth. This objective is fulfilled in excruciating detail.

Also deeply disturbing was the revelation of the "Young Americans" Hitler-youth-type organization, the assertion that Stephen Douglas planned for a military coup d'etat over Lincoln, and the whole affair between Confederate exiles conspiring with British/Canadians to incite war with England.

A fascinating story is marred by the author's continuous barrage of trivial details. He throws so many names, places, and things at the reader that even the most astute Civil War scholar would be overwhelmed.

The book reads like a novel and while that is good for easy reading, one has to wonder how the author dug up so much granular information 150 years later. The source notes - a paltry half-dozen pages at the end - do nothing to convince me that the author did in fact thoroughly validate the accuracy of his assertions. Personally, while I think the book does contain many facts, I have to consider it more a historical novel, like Gore Vidal's "Lincoln", than a history. "Dark Union", another recent and similar book on Lincoln during the war, is much better annotated.

Rating:
Summary: Many detours
Review: Too many detours og not enough murder case. The story is very disorganized with many unnecessary facts that only blurs the theory.