The Escape and Capture of John Wilkes Booth

Five days after the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, and two weeks before the surrender of the last major Confederate army the nation suffered its greatest loss when Abraham Lincoln was tragically murdered by John Wilkes Booth. Booth’s murder of Lincoln was the result of a previously failed plot to capture Lincoln and turn him over to Confederate leaders in Richmond. Booth, along with his cohort ,David Herold, made his escape into Southern Maryland . For twelve days the two fugitives, with the help of members of the Confederate underground, made their way through Maryland and Virginia before being cornered in a tobacco farm near Bowling Green where Herold was captured and Booth killed. “The Escape and Capture of John Wilkes Booth” tells the day by day story of Booth’s attempt to escape capture, and the people who risked everything to help him. It is the story of America’s greatest manhunt told by the leading authority on Lincoln’s assassination.