The Lincoln Assassination

Diverse perspectives on Lincoln’s assassination, its aftermath, and its place in national memory from some of today’s leading Lincoln scholars.

The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln remains one of the most significant events in US history. It continues to attract the interest of scholars, writers, and armchair historians, ranging from painstaking new research to wild-eyed speculation. Now leading scholars of Lincoln and his murder offer in one volume their most salient studies and arguments about the assassination, its aftermath, the extraordinary—and complicated—public reaction, and the iconography that Lincoln’s murder and deification inspired.

Contributors also offer the latest accounts of the pursuit, prosecution, and punishment of the conspirators. Everything from graphic tributes to religious sermons, to spontaneous outbursts on the nation’s city streets, to emotional mass-mourning at carefully organized funerals, as well as the imposition of military jurisprudence to try the conspirators, is examined in the light of fresh evidence and insightful analysis.

Contributing to this volume are some of the finest scholars specializing in Lincoln’s assassination. All have earned well-deserved reputations for the quality of their research, their originality, and their writing. In addition to the editors, contributors include Thomas R. Turner, Edward Steers Jr., Michael W. Kauffman, Thomas P. Lowry, Richard E. Sloan, Elizabeth D. Leonard, and Richard Nelson Current.