Midnight on the Potomac : the last year of the Civil War, the Lincoln assassination, and the rebirth of America / Scott Ellsworth.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Told with a page-turning pace and eye-opening cast of characters, Ellsworth sets out to correct a pivotal moment of American history that we have gotten completely wrong-until now. Jam-packed with fresh, revelatory evidence, Ellsworth's research strongly infers that by the time that the house lights dimmed inside of Ford's Theatre on the evening of April 14th, 1865, Booth had been working alongside, if not in direct concert with, the Confederate Secret Service for nearly a year. Historians have long ignored that during the last ten months of the Civil War, the Confederacy launched a desperate, audacious war of terror against the north. In the North, Rebels attempted to derail trains, set buildings on fire, spread smallpox, and undermined public support for the Union army. Instead, history books and schools teach that John Wilkes Booth acted alone, was admired by neither side, and was a second-rate actor. This couldn't have been further from the truth: Booth was charming, a world-famous performer, and-most importantly-an ardent supporter of the Confederacy. In the sweltering summer heat of 1864, President Abraham Lincoln had a front-row view of the Civil War, as he dodged firing bullets from the approaching Confederate army at Fort Stevens. It was the first time in American history that a sitting president would come under enemy fire, but the history books would put a far greater focus on his assassination just eight months later. In Midnight on the Potomac, Scott Ellsworth rewrites history, arguing that the two events were in fact connected and that Lincolns' assassination was likely ordered by leaders of the Confederate Army.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Horrific battles, murderous intrigues, and dramatic reversals of fortune animate this rousing panorama of the Civil War's climax. Historian Ellsworth (The Ground Breaking) recaps the concluding year of the conflict, from the spring of 1864, when war-weariness gripped the North and President Lincoln was expected to lose the November election, to the April 1865 surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's army and the inauguration of Lincoln for a second term--followed by his murder. Ellsworth's episodic narrative includes gripping combat scenes from Union general Ulysses S. Grant's victorious campaign, but the focus is more on Confederate intrigues in Washington, D.C., especially on John Wilkes Booth's conspiracy to first kidnap, and then assassinate, Lincoln. Ellsworth's fascinating portrait of Booth paints him as a charismatic figure--he was a star actor whose good looks, intensity, and stage swashbuckling captivated audiences--but also a rabid racist seething with a prickly sense of entitlement. The Booth-Lincoln showdown embodies a rich view of the Civil War as a contest between irreconcilable societies: a South shackled to a dying slave system, and a dynamic North moving, slowly but surely, toward racial equality--prodded along by the freedmen, Black soldiers, and activists demanding justice whom Ellsworth spotlights. It's a passionate and elegant chronicle of one of the most dramatic years in American history, torn agonizingly between triumph and tragedy. (July)

Kirkus Book Review

The long march to victory. Journalist Ellsworth, author ofThe Secret Game andThe Ground Breaking, summarizes the previous three years before setting the scene in early 1864. In the afterglow of triumphs at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga, the northern public expected a quick victory. Ulysses S. Grant, the new supreme commander, knew that wars are won by superior resources and persistence, not battlefield victories, so he was not discouraged after a year of bloody stalemate, although Union morale plummeted. Departing from tradition, Ellsworth gives John Wilkes Booth more attention than Abraham Lincoln and Grant. America's most admired matinee idol, Booth hated Black people and fervently supported the Confederacy. Ellsworth turns up evidence that he secretly met with Confederate agents. No one knows what they discussed, but the idea that Wilkes was carrying out a devilish Confederate plot has never lacked supporters. Despite remaining skeptical, Ellsworth devotes much of his book to the South's energetic secret service, whose members engaged in espionage, propaganda, and terrorism throughout the Union and Canada. His breathless account takes the service more seriously than most scholars but can't conceal its mostly ineffectual schemes, among which were plans to kidnap the president. Booth approved and volunteered his services, but by 1865 efforts had fizzled; the Confederacy was on its last legs, but the plot to kill Lincoln, the vice president, and the secretary of state proceeded under Booth's leadership. Ellsworth tells the familiar story, followed by the victory that the Union greeted ecstatically despite the shadow cast by Lincoln's assassination. He extols Black freedom yet admits that persistent racism left a shameful pall over American exceptionalism, which lifted somewhat over the following century but is, of course, still with us. A passionate account of justice triumphing, amid tragedy, in 1865. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.