Assassination of Lincoln History and Myth

"One of the standard works on the drama and events around Lincoln's death and the realities and the myths that came after. . . . There are moments when Friend Lewis achieves laughter or a flash of poetry in a single sentence of a sober fact narrative."-Carl Sandburg. "Indispensable . . . to any historian of Lincoln's times, and it is fascinating reading. Lloyd Lewis presents in substance a brilliant study of the creation of myth out of natural event, and of the deification of a national hero."-Outlook. The Civil War officially ended at Appomattox soon after President Lincoln's second inauguration. During his first term he had been widely viewed by special-interest groups as a good-natured, indecisive bungler, and worse. In the South he was still despised, and many in the North, especially the radicals in the Republican party, distrusted and derided his leniency toward the vanquished. On the evening of April 14, 1865, an assassin's bullet irrevocably altered the way Abraham Lincoln would be viewed by Americans. In life a cunning politician, Lincoln became in death a selfless martyr. Lloyd Lewis explicates the mythology that evolved out of Lincoln's death, the outpouring of national grief, the pursuit of John Wilkes booth and the conspirators, booth's fate, and the frequent moving and reburial of Lincoln's coffin. Lloyd Lewis wrote Sherman, Fighting Prophet (1993), also a Bison Book. Mark E. Neely, Jr., who introduces this book, previously titled Myths after Lincoln, is professor of history at St. Louis University. He is the author of The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia, The Insanity File: The Case of Mary Todd Lincoln, and The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties.Lewis, Lloyd is the author of 'Assassination of Lincoln History and Myth' with ISBN 9780803279490 and ISBN 0803279493.