Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Steers write one of the most accurate and detailed books on the Lincoln assassination. He provides a history of the times when the "black flag" of warfare was raised after the Union's infamous Dahlgren raid that was part of a two prong attack on Richmond. The mission was to free prisoners and disrupt Richmond and allegedly included plans to kill Davis and his cabinet. This controversial raid, As Steers points out, may have raised the ante of warfare without rules as the Confederates start their own controversial plans such as biological warfare that included an attempt to spread yellow fever. Steers starts breaking myths early with the Baltimore controversy where Lincoln switched trains to avoid a real plot to assassinate him as his train passes through Baltimore earlier than scheduled with no sop on his way to his inauguration. Steers documents how surprisingly accessible Lincoln was to the public and how he was relatively poorly protected or at times not at all at his request due to his intuition that anyone could commit the crime regardless of a guard detail. The author provides fascinating detail on Booth and his companions as they initially plot the kidnapping of Lincoln and in failing to do so, turn to assassination as the war is closing and Lincoln's sentiments toward "black human suffrage" raises Booth's ire to an intolerable level. The high points of the book are the well documented associations between Booth with not only his immediate quadrant of conspirators but also with Mary Surratt and a number of Confederate agents in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia. Steers' analysis breaks any myth that Dr. Mud was innocent of aiding and abetting Booth. A recent book offers that Mud may have not recognized Booth when Booth appeared at Mud's home during his escape but that seems circumspect since Mud met Booth several times before and Booth was a relatively famous actor. The manhunt for Booth is covered in great detail and it is extraordinary fascinating as Booth escapes to Virginia with the help of established agents. Steers describes the temporary haven that Booth and Herold finally reach outside of Bowling Green at the Garrett farm but Stanton's dragnet discovers Booth's trail in Virginia. Although quite by accident, that accident puts them amazingly right on the trail of Booth at Port Royal, Virginia just west of Fredericksburg and a handful of miles from Booth's quiet and seemingly safe haven. As Steers notes, there is some interesting speculation as to why the three Confederates, who provide Booth assistance to his temporary haven, suddenly turn up to offer assistance at Port Royal. The author also presents excellent bios on the men involved in the conspiracies; the incompetent George Atzerodt who not only abstains from killing Andrew Johnson at the last minute but leaves evidence and a relatively easy trail to follow; Lewis Powell, the mysterious young veteran soldier who wounds virtually the entire Seward family in his attempt to kill the Secretary of State and goes stoically to the hangman; and young David Herold who deserts Powell but is Booth's guide in his escape through Maryland and into Virginia. Along with these prime conspirators, Steers brings in Booth's early associates that also get captured in the dragnet even though they withdrew from Booth's later plans. And finally Steer's aptly dismembers the theories that Booth escaped and that an imposter was buried in his name. Steer's even tells of an odd character that drags a corpse around for years eerily claiming it is Booth in an attempt for notoriety and money. The final chapter covers Lincoln's long funeral train trip that stopped at several large cities on his long trek back to Springfield, allowing a large population to view Lincoln's open casket. As the author notes, Lincoln returned to his hometown as he inferred when he left, that he might not return with the ability to enjoy his homecoming.

Blood on the Moon is widely considered a definitive account of Lincoln's assassination, and rightly so. I did not originally intend to review this book, but Steers' name kept popping up because so few historians--three to be exact--had written about Lincoln's assassination that the field was and is filled with conjecture, hypothesis, and misinformation that continues to feed upon itself, Bill O'Reilly's Killing Lincoln being just another chapter in that phenomenon. Blood on the Moon is carefully crafted, thoroughly documented, and stands on the shoulders of those careful researchers who preceded him (to whom Steers gratefully acknowledges his debt of gratitude). Steers meticulously establishes that Booth was neither a madman nor a failed actor, but that he held an opinion shared by millions of southerners, worked with the assistance of a group of capable men who more loved and admired Booth than hated Lincoln--including Dr. Samuel A. Mudd whom Steers finds as anything but innocent--and women (especially Mary Surratt) whose connections went through the Confederate Secret Service all the way to the top of the Confederate government, almost certainly including Jefferson Davis himself. Steers convincingly disproves the harebrained conspiracy theories involving Vice President Johnson or Secretary of War Stanton that remain popular and which Stephen Oates also dismissed. While Steers suggests that the top levels of the Confederate government must have been aware of Booth's schemes to kidnap Lincoln--they had supported other aborted efforts like Thomas Conrad's in the past--no claim is made that Davis knew of or approved of the assassination. In his excellent chapter on Booth's flight, Steers demolishes the notion that Booth escaped and that an imposter was buried in his place. The final chapter on the Lincoln funeral procession back to Illinois is particularly well done and moving, so well done in fact that I think the Lincoln's funeral procession would be a worthwhile book for Harold Holzer to undertake. Some good photos can be found in the hard cover and paperback editions of this book and they add to it, though they were less than impressive for me since I purchased the Kindle version which also has them, but in a format that makes them more difficult to appreciate. If you can only read one book on Lincoln's Assassination, this is that book. TP

It's probably fair to say that the independent scholar Edward Steers is the world's leading authority on the Lincoln assassination. "Blood on the Moon," his magnum opus, is the fruit of decades of research and writing on a topic that clearly holds him in its thrall. I don't think anyone can consider himself well-versed on the subject without first reading and fully digesting this book.When "Blood on the Moon" was published, in 2001, it was (if I'm not mistaken) the first in-depth, scholarly treatment of the assassination in many a year. Since then, at least two other big, serious books on the subject have come out:  American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies  (published in 2004) and  Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer (P.S.)  (published in 2006). All three books are well worth reading, since each one covers some important topics that the other two do not. In my opinion, "Manhunt" is the best choice for readers who are new to the subject; Swanson is an engaging writer and never strays far from the chronological chain of events, making it easy keep track of the many figures involved and various more-or-less-simultaneous developments. By contrast, "Blood on the Moon" is more of a book for specialists: in it, Dr. Steers devotes considerable space to tracing out the minutiae of assorted controveries that have exercised the Lincoln-assassination community over the years. Those detours will be hard to follow (and, I suspect, rather uninteresting) for those who have not yet become immersed in the subject.The Kindle edition is very well done, with a linked table of contents, linked footnotes, and a linked index (which is a terrific feature for a book like this, which I expect to refer back to frequently).

If you look at the reviews on Amazon for this book you will find high praise indeed for the author and this book. (I highly recommend you to read any Amazon reviews for any book you'd like to buy, as they tend to offer real insight and opposing opinions)I found it compelling. It was well written, well researched, contained new information on the asassination (new to me anyway). It was very thorough and written in a way that wasn't dry history.As the saying goes if you only read one book on the Lincoln assassination, it should be" Blood on the Moon "