Book: Killing Lincoln

Overview
Killing Lincoln, written by Bill O'Reilly with Martin Dugard, offers a fast-paced narrative of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the immediate events that followed in April 1865. The book frames the killing as a pivotal, wrenching moment at the close of the Civil War, telling the story with cinematic urgency and heavy reliance on eyewitness testimony, military dispatches, and contemporary newspaper accounts. The account moves quickly from the battlefield to the theater box, emphasizing the shock and national unraveling that accompanied the president's mortal wounding.

The Assassination Night
On the evening of April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., John Wilkes Booth, a popular actor and Confederate sympathizer, slipped into President Lincoln's private box and fired a single pistol shot into the back of the president's head. The book reconstructs the moment in vivid detail, placing readers in the theater amid the gaslight and applause that gave way to horror. Lincoln was carried to a boarding house across the street, where he lingered through the night and died the next morning, while Booth eluded immediate capture and fled through the streets of a city suddenly paralyzed by grief and fury.

The Manhunt
Killing Lincoln tracks the intense, sprawling manhunt that consumed the nation as military and civilian authorities scrambled to find Booth and any accomplices. The chase led across Maryland and into Virginia, following false leads and small-town clues, and highlights the imperfect communication and chaotic security of the era. Booth, aided by a few conspirators, hid in rural terrain until Union troops cornered him at the Garrett farm; he was shot and later died of his wounds, while several alleged co-conspirators were arrested, tried by military commission, and some executed.

Key Figures
The book sketches a cast of central characters beyond Lincoln and Booth: Mary Todd Lincoln, stunned and grieving; Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who presided over the legal and security response with steely resolve; Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold, and Mary Surratt, who were implicated in plots to kill other government leaders; and the Union soldiers and detectives who pieced together the conspiracy. O'Reilly and Dugard foreground human drama, showing how personal loyalties, traumas of war, and political fervor intersected to produce the assassination and its aftermath.

The Aftermath and Impact
Killing Lincoln explores how the president's death altered the course of Reconstruction and national healing. The abrupt loss of Lincoln's conciliatory leadership handed the presidency to Andrew Johnson and intensified political divisions, complicating efforts to reunify the country and secure rights for newly freed slaves. The executions of conspirators and the military trial that prosecuted them raised questions about due process and the balance between justice and retribution in a fragile postwar moment.

Style and Interpretive Angle
The narrative is written for broad readership, favoring drama and immediacy over exhaustive scholarly apparatus. The authors stitch together diaries, letters, and press reports to create a sensory, almost novelistic account. That approach made the book a commercial success and brought the story to many readers, though some historians have criticized certain dramatizations and questioned selective sourcing. The result is a gripping, accessible portrait of a national catastrophe that underscores how a single violent act reshaped American politics, memory, and the course of Reconstruction.