Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2006

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 1

Chapters 2-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapters 6-7

Chapters 8-9

Chapter 10-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapter 10-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 10 Summary: “So Runs the World Away”

After Booth’s death, Lucinda Holloway, a relative of the Garretts who had tended to the dying man, took a lock of his hair and his field glasses. Conger, Baker, and Doherty confirm the dead man was John Wilkes Booth by comparing him to his photograph. They then put the body in a wagon to Port Royal where they put it on the ferry to Port Conway. Baker and Ned Freeman take the body from Port Conway to a ship, the John S. Ide. Detective Conger rides ahead and informs Colonel Baker of the news of Booth’s death. The detectives inform Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and present Booth’s effects as proof of the news. Stanton “decided to convene an inquest aboard the Montauk as soon as Booth’s body arrived in Washington” (350). Stanton confirms the dead man is Booth and informs the nation. When Booth’s sister, Asia, hears the news, she collapses. An autopsy is performed and the bullet preserved. The body is photographed along with the coconspirators imprisoned on the Montauk and Saugus.

Lafayette Baker tells the reporter George Alfred Townsend that Booth’s body had been buried at sea, but in fact the sea burial was faked and the body was buried at the Old Arsenal down the Potomac. The burial location was kept secret to avoid it becoming a pilgrimage site. Most of the coconspirators were eventually released except for Mary Surratt, Powell, Herold, Atzerodt, Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlin, Edman Spangler, and Dr. Sam Mudd. Those who contributed to the capture of Booth were given portions of the $100,000 reward after nearly a year of argument over the amounts each deserved. Powell’s captors also got some monetary reward. Richard Garrett tried to sue the government for destruction of property, but the government refused to pay him because “he had, after all, been disloyal to the Union” (359). Boston Corbett became a minor celebrity.

On July 6, 1865, the commandant of the military prison informs Powell, Surratt, Herold, and Atzerodt that they will be hanged to death the next day. They had been found guilty by a military tribunal. On July 7, they were hanged at the Old Arsenal. Mudd, Arnold, and O’Laughlin were sentenced to life in prison. Spangler got a six-year prison sentence.

In 1866, John Surratt was captured in Europe, brought back to the US in 1867, then tried and acquitted in civil court. In February 1869, the last month of his term, President Andrew Johnson pardoned Dr. Sam Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Edman Spangler. O’Laughlin died in prison. After a petition, the president allowed Edwin Booth to bury his brother in the family plot in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore on June 26, 1869.

Epilogue Summary

The Epilogue describes what happened to the figures in the story after Booth’s death. Asia Booth wrote a memoir “to honor her dead brother” (371), which was published posthumously. She moved to England with her husband, where she died in 1888. Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone married, had three children, and moved to Hannover, Germany. On December 23, 1883, Henry killed Clara in an attempted murder-suicide. Boston Corbett moved to Kansas and worked as doorkeeper in the Kansas House of Representatives. In 1887, he “held the legislature hostage at gunpoint” and in 1888 (373), escaped from prison. Thomas Jones wrote a memoir about his role in Booth’s escape, which was published in 1893. He became a dealer in Lincoln assassination memorabilia. Colonel Lafayette Baker wrote a “now forgotten and shabby book” that exaggerated his role in the Civil War and the search for Booth (374). Luther Bryon Baker went on the lecture circuit to talk about his role.

After Mary Surratt was hanged, her son, John Surratt, fled to Europe and joined “the colorfully uniformed army of the Papal States” (375). In 1866, he was recognized as a coconspirator and arrested. He escaped arrest, fled into Italy, and got a steamer to Alexandria, Egypt. He was arrested when he disembarked and was sent to Washington, where he was tried. The trial resulted in a hung jury. He tried to give speeches about his role in the affair in Washington, but the event was cancelled when people complained. He died in 1916.

Secretary Seward and his sons survived. His wife and their daughter, Fanny, died in 1865 and 1866, respectively. After being pardoned, Dr. Mudd returned to his farm along with Ned Spangler. In 1865, he confessed to Samuel Cox Jr. that he knew the whole time that the injured man was Booth, contrary his portrayal in the film The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936).

Edwin Stanton died in 1869 at the age of 55 after a difficult relationship with President Johnson, who tried to fire him.

In 1993, Powell’s skull was found in the Smithsonian archives and buried on Veterans Day, 1994, in Florida. The Garrett farmhouse is gone. Ford’s Theatre, after being closed by Stanton and turned into an office for the War Department shortly after the assassination, was rebuilt in the 1960s as a replica and museum commemorating the event. Art exhibitions, poems, and songs in the 19th century celebrated the mythology of John Wilkes Booth. Some even believe he survived the last stand at Garrett’s farm. Swanson says that, in a sense, he did; the KKK and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination are testament to how “from that burning barn the assassin’s malevolent spirit arose to linger over the land for more than a century” (387).

Chapter 10-Epilogue Analysis

Chapter 10 and the Epilogue focus on the aftermath of the death of John Wilkes Booth and the arrests, trials, and executions of the coconspirators. They demonstrate the extent to which Booth was part of a larger network that supported the Confederacy and the Challenges and Setbacks for the Official Response to the Crisis as these officials worked to dismantle this network.

The end of the manhunt did not put an end to The Evolving Popular Reception of the Assassination. The newspapers and magazines covered extensively the death of Booth, the trials, and the executions. Swanson notes that Harper’s Weekly, a magazine still in circulation, even published a woodcut of Booth’s autopsy. As Swanson describes, the newspaper coverage was largely laudatory of Lincoln and critical of Booth for his actions. Swanson notes that “a pass to the execution […] was the hottest ticket in town” (364).

However, as Swanson acknowledges, there were signs that the public response was itself more mixed than was shown in the popular press, with lasting repercussions to this day. For instance, Lucinda Holloway took a lock of Booth’s hair—a common form of memento in the 19th century—out of admiration for him. In the immediate aftermath of Booth’s death, there were persistent rumors that Booth survived (385). When Thomas Jones, the Confederate spy who helped Booth and Herold, died in 1895, the Southern newspapers celebrated him. In more recent history, the coconspirators still had enough supporters and fans that Lewis Powell’s skull was buried with honors in 1994. Swanson connects this persistent affection for the men who conspired to assassinate Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, with the constant resurgence of white supremacists in American history, from the White League during Reconstruction to the KKK to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In the Epilogue, Swanson details the reconstruction of Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, as a memorial of Lincoln’s assassination. He uses language that paints it as somewhat unsettling. He notes that “John Wilkes Booth would have loved it” (382). This analysis of the Ford’s Theatre raises questions about the appropriate way to memorialize sites of historic tragedy. To drive this point home, Swanson analogizes the publicity of Ford’s Theatre with what it would look like if assassinations in more recent history, that of President John Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were similarly publicized, noting “the display of Lee Harvey Oswald banners in Dallas, or James Earl Ray banners in Memphis, would be obscene” (383).