Killing Lincoln

I recently read the Bill O'Reilly book and found it both engaging and informative.  The book is told from the point of view of the central figures of the conspiracy and the end of the Civil War.  At times, the book follows John Wilkes Booth as he plots a kidnapping and then, after Lee surrenders, decides an assassination is the way to go.  Though the bad guy, the book is not unfair to him.  It explains his reasons and what he thought would happen.  Of course, as with most assassinations, it did not turn out as he had hoped; the South did not rise again.  At least not yet.

When following Lincoln, there is this annoying habit of opening with how many days he has to live.  "The man who has only 12 days to live" met with this General or talked to that Secretary.  It was an interesting device the first couple of times but got old quickly.  Lincoln, as one might expect, comes off extremely well.  I did find the numerous premonitions of his death to be hard to swallow.  Sure, he might have had a nightmare of being assassinated (I suspect many Presidents do) but the book has an amazing number of reports that hint at assassination.  Though it is surely in the historical record, I suspect some of this after-the-fact reports were a bit of rewriting by the reporters.

When the book was first published, there was much ado about inaccuracies and its being banned from Ford's Theater.  That's pretty harsh.  That made me curious to read it.  Anyway, I have read several accounts of the conspiracy and the book meshes perfectly with accounts from other 'reputable' historians I have read.  The errors, such as they were, are hardly of note.  For instance, O'Reilly mentions General Grant and Lincoln meeting in the Oval Office.  Well, there was no Oval Office until 1909.  The book is a fraud!  Bad history!  Or then there is the complaint that O'Reilly says the distance from the Presidential box in Ford's Theater to the stage is 9 feet when it is actually 11.5 feet.  Oh, what a travesty!  How dare such tripe be published!  The play that Lincoln was watching had only appeared in Ford's 7 times, not 8 as O'Reilly claims.  Oh, the horror!  Having read a great many history books, I can assure you that such errors are not uncommon.  I read a biography of James Knox Polk that claimed his son was at his death bed; he and his wife were childless.  I read a book on the Mexican War that mistakenly reported Archibald Gillespie's name as Arthur Gillespie.  These were the errors I knew because this is an area where I am well versed.  I suspect I missed the true minutia.

The tiny errors change the narrative not a bit.  The history that O'Reilly and his cowriter reveal is absolutely true.  That he follows the characters makes it read more like a thriller than a history book, a thriller where we know the end.  Or do we?  I suspect that most readers, lacking my enthusiasm for history, will be amazed.  A good read and I recommend it.