The Darkest Dawn: Lincoln, Booth, and the Great American Tragedy

by Thomas Goodrich

Book Overview

"While waves of laughter echoed through the theater, James Ferguson kept his eyes focused on Abraham Lincoln. Although the president joined the crowd with a 'hearty laugh, ' his interest seemingly lay more with someone below. With his right elbow resting on the arm of his chair and his chin lying carelessly on his hand, Lincoln parted one of the flags nearby that he might see better.

"As the laughter subsided, Harry Hawk stood on the stage...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0253218896
• ISBN13: 9780253218896
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Length: 376 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Booth assured Lincoln's place in history

He is one of the most recognisable figures in history: The tall, angular frame, the sad half smile, eyes dark, tired and sunken. The last picture of Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States, and reproduced here, is that of a man whose race is almost run. Taken four days before the prominent actor and Southern sympathiser John Wilkes Booth ended his life with a shot to the head, Lincoln seemed ill at ease, the slight blurring around the hands indicating he was unable to keep them still for the time required for the exposure to take effect. Could he be wondering about the next four years of his presidency, the monumental task of healing the wounds of a civil war he had insisted should be fought? The conflict, in which he had thrown the overwhelming might of the United States at the rebel Confederacy to bring about a difficult and costly victory, was all but over, but as shrewd a man as he would have guessed that the peace was going to be an even more formidable adversary. Did he have the answers? We shall never know as Booth's dramatic act at Ford's Theatre in Washington relieved Lincoln of that responsibility, leaving him simply as the leader who saved the union. Dying with Southern armies still in the field and the final acts of the war yet to take place, his administration was linked wholly with the conflict. The emotions his assassination unleashed ensured not just his place as a great American president, but his conversion into a secular saint. As Goodrich points out in his epilogue: "In the stampede to elevate the slain president, his virtues were magnified and his vices diminished until the one became a caricature and the other all but forgotten." The cynic might add: "good career move, Abe." The author, an historian and storyteller, who has specialised in this brief, dark period in American history, has taken the events of a few weeks of the spring and summer of 1865 and made them live again. An act of outstanding scholarship, he has amassed hundreds of contemporary sources - biographies, eye-witness accounts, newspaper articles - to the point where he blends his own narrative with the quotations from which he draws, producing compelling descriptions that immerse the reader in the zeitgeist. His passage on the chaos that resulted from a `lying in state' in Philadelphia during Lincoln's cross-country funeral procession is typical. "Mingled with the normal dull roar of so many thousands were the shrieks of crushed women, the shrill cries of trampled children, and the cursing and shouting of men. Silk hats, bonnets and parasols were smashed flat, dresses were ripped, hoop skirts were broken and mangled, the neatly pinned hair of ladies now fell to their waists in a disheveled mass. Ragged and tattered debris, including destroyed mourning badges and black crepe, littered the ground below." The book is full of such rich description, including the wild and random acts of vengeance wreaked on anyone who did not show pr

One of the most informative reads on Lincoln and Booth

I enjoyed this book a great deal. The author is obviously not as much an admirer of Lincoln as I am. Other books I've read are more biased in Lincoln's favor. This author went much deeper into the history of the conspirators and others surrounding the assassination than other have done. A refreshingly unbiased account of the months before and after America's greatest tragedy.

Darkest Dawn Review

I thought I knew a lot about the assassination of Lincoln. I was wrong. This easy to read book holds your attention as well as a novel, but is completely documented to please an academic. It provided intriguing information on the era, the people, and most notably to me, Mrs. Lincoln. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in American history.

Excellent Read

The Darkest Dawn is an excellent read. Typical of Tom Goodrich's style, the book puts you "in the moment" with the characters and the characters truly come to life. I just finished reading Team of Rivals by Doris Goodwin, Manhunt by James Swanson and Darkest Dawn by Goodrich. They are all unique and excellent contributions to Lincoln scholarship. Darkest Dawn captures the response to Lincoln's death like no other work I've read. You see how incredibly polarizing the event was and how its timing contributed to incredible anger, anxiety and outrage by both north and south. Top Notch!