The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia

by Edward Steers Jr.

Overview

“In this encyclopedia of Lincoln’s assassination, Edward Steers, Jr., the foremost scholar of the assassination, has assembled knowledge of the subject scattered in documents and writings over a period of nearly a century and a half, organized it authoritatively and comprehensively, and written about it clearly.”
—William Hanchett, author of Out of the Wilderness: The Life of Abraham Lincoln

The definitive A-to-Z reference to the Abraham Lincoln assassination by Edward Steers, author of Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. With a foreword by Manhunt author James L. Swanson.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061787751
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/11/2010
Pages:	594
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

Editorial Reviews

You do not have to search far to find out the uniqueness of this scholarly volume on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Files, not known or organized until the mid-1930s, demonstrate the importance of waiting until the evidence is in, or when it can be attributed. The files themselves are listed on pages 299–300. Prior, only hearsay evidence and eyewitnesses to the assassination of Lincoln were available. In 1965, the National Archives photocopied the entire evidence file, along with trial proceedings, onto 16 reels of microfilm named "Micro copy No. 599" (M-599). Among the eyewitnesses and judges whose files were copied were Thomas Harris (a trial commissioner), Thomas Jones (coconspirator who hid Booth), and William E. Doster (defense attorney). All told their stories without benefit of the information contained in the evidence file in the War Department archives. The evidence file compiled by Special Advocate Henry L. Burnett along with the trial proceedings are located in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as part of Record Group 153, Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army). "It can safely be said that out of the hundred-plus books written on Lincoln's assassination only a handful have utilized the evidence file of M-599, and then sparingly," writes Steers. Of the 16 reels, number seven contains the evidence; eight through 15 hold the proceedings, including the closing arguments and exhibits. Reel 16 contains issues of the Washington, DC, newspaper Daily National Intelligencer, which published each day's verbatim trial transcript. Many of the 98 exhibits were turned over to the National Park Service and are now on display at Ford's Theatre. BOTTOM LINE This scholarly study of the assassination would have been even more beneficial with an index of subjects and of personages and events of this momentous episode in American history. Nonetheless, this discriminating study is for all students of the event and especially academics on the subject.—Al Vara, Temple Univ. Lib., Philadelphia

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