Book description
" With commentary by Terry Alford, Burrus Carnahan, Joan L.
Chaconis, Percy Martin, Betty Ownsbey, Edward Steers Jr., Thomas R.
Turner, and Laurie Verge On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth
assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. By April 26, eight of the ten
people eventually charged as accomplices in Lincoln's murder were in
custody. Booth was killed resisting capture and John Surratt was in
Canada, his whereabouts unknown to Federal authorities. In the days
that followed, President Johnson issued an Executive Order directing
that the persons charged with Lincoln's murder stand trial before a
military tribunal. During the fifty-day trial, over three hundred and
sixty witnesses gave testimony. Benn Pitman, a recognized expert in
the art of phonography (an early form of shorthand), was awarded a
government contract to produce a true and accurate transcription of
the testimony. Working with four assistants, Pitman produced
transcripts that served the general public through daily releases to
select members of the press as well as to the prosecution and the
defense. Pitman was given the right to publish the transcriptions for
public sale, and he skillfully winnowed t Edward Steers, Jr. Edward
Steers, Jr. he 4,300 pages of transcription into a single 421-page
volume. Copies of the original 1865 edition, as well as subsequent
reprints, are exceedingly rare. Here for the first time, leading
experts in the field lend their insight in a series of commentaries
that complement Pitman's published transcript -- included here in its
entirety -- exposing various perjuries, explaining testimony that has
escaped scholarly attention, and clarifying the events surrounding the
assassination as never before.
"A valuable work.... Even casual perusers will find passages
that tell them something interesting about some of the Confederacy's
more sinister schemes, as well as the political atmosphere of
immediate postbellum America." -- Books and Culture
Edward Steers Jr. is the author of several books about President
Lincoln and his assassination, including Lincoln: A Pictorial History,
His Name is Still Mudd: The Case Against Doctor Samuel Alexander Mudd,
and Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
