The hunt for President Lincoln’s assassin

‘You sockdologizing old man trap.” John Wilkes Booth knew exactly which statement in the play Our American Cousin would bring the biggest laughs from the audience at Ford’s Theater in Washington DC. Booth was himself a well-known theater actor and a few weeks earlier he had performed in the same theater. So on April 14, 1865, during the last act of the performance, he waited behind the curtain of the presidential box until the phrase sounded from the stage. The burst of laughter that erupted from the amused audience immediately after this punchline masked the shot with which Booth shot Abraham Lincoln, the president of America and enthusiastic theater lover, in the head.

The assassination attempt on America’s 16th president by John Wilkes Booth is central to the first episode of Manhunt, a miniseries about Lincoln’s death and the subsequent days-long manhunt for Booth. “It is one of the best-known crimes in the United States, but also one of the least understood,” says the description of this seven-part drama from Apple TV+. Writer and showrunner (series leader) Monica Beletsky understands why: “There are so many aspects of this crime that we are not taught in school in America. Things that we as a society are not aware of at all,” she says from Los Angeles during a conversation via video link. “We know that an actor named John Wilkes Booth shot the president in a theater. But I don’t think many people know that other attacks were also planned that night on several high-ranking politicians.”

More targets

Manhuntwhich is based on the book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson, should correct this. In addition to Lincoln, Henry Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, and Vice President Andrew Johnson were also targeted that April evening by men who disagreed with Lincoln’s reconstruction plans for America divided by the Civil War. Men who did not want to accept the victory of the North and the liberation of black people forced into slavery.

More happened before Booth pulled the trigger, jumped from the presidential balcony and – despite a broken leg – fled through the artist’s entrance. Another man entered Seward’s house and a third was on guard at Johnson’s hotel.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs was brutally beaten but survived the attempt on his life. The vice president escaped death because the man who had to take him out did not dare to press on at the last moment.

“We have always been taught that coup attempts occur in other countries,” says Beletsky. “But there was an attempted coup in America that evening, one that was even more or less successful. Why are we not taught about this in our schools and is it always just about Lincoln and Booth?” This question kept Beletsky, who previously co-wrote acclaimed series such as Friday Night Lights and The Leftovers, working on developing the series. She was also genuinely surprised, shocked even, to discover that questions still surround Lincoln’s assassination. “The assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the many theories about it, have been extensively explored. But there are also many conspiracy theories about the attack on Lincoln, which unfortunately were not investigated.

By horse

In Manhunt it is Secretary of State for War Edwin Stanton (played by Tobias Menzies, Prince Philip in The Crown), who tries to answer these questions while simultaneously leading the manhunt for Booth (a very convincing Anthony Boyle). While the real Stanton was a man with a large, gray beard who suffered from severe asthma attacks that would kill him just a few years after the assassination attempt on Lincoln, Beletsky gave him a more active role in her series. Like a kind of TV detective, Stanton interrogates several suspects and goes on horseback to the places where Booth is said to have been spotted.

“The real Stanton had a very tough job as head of the War Department. You could say he was the head of the FBI and the Pentagon at the same time. But this is a TV series, so he had to get out of his office and hit the road.” She emphasizes that everything Stanton does in the series is based on facts. And that the things Menzies as Stanton investigates and the leads and possible accomplices he pursues are also delegated by the real Stanton. Only from behind his desk, she admits. “But yes, you still want to put Tobias on a horse.”

https://youtu.be/VFT-b8eKdSo?si=SGunxO8aIEcoGurx

Beletsky also took some liberties with the story about Mary Simms, a black woman who was a key witness at the trial of one of Booth’s suspected accomplices. In the series, Simms is given a piece of land by Stanton’s War Department – part of Lincoln’s reconstruction. Booth was caught after twelve days and within the period that Booth was being searched for, her land was taken away again. This after a hastily sworn-in President Johnson reverses Lincoln’s measure under pressure from influential southerners. The latter actually happened, but not with Mary Simms.

Yet this addition is a good illustration of the ‘partially successful coup attempt’ that Beletsky speaks of: “Due to the assassination attempt on Lincoln, the reconstruction was never carried out in its entirety.” She points to Lincoln’s plans that would give the formerly enslaved equal rights as white Americans. “I was shocked to discover that Lincoln and Stanton had planned to end school segregation as early as 1865,” says Belensky. “Especially because this would ultimately only happen a hundred years later. Who knows what our society and culture would have been like if Lincoln had not been assassinated.”

Manhunt can be seen on Apple TV+ from Friday, March 15.