Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

“Yes! We’re coming Abraham Lincoln. With curses loud and deep. That will haunt you in your walking, and disturb you in your sleep.” This is a battle hymn sung by the Sons of Liberty which is the first Confederate run terrorist group Higham talks about. This hymn is a good example of the tone author Charles Higham sets for the book. Murdering Mr. Lincoln by Charles Higham, presents the reader with a factual, in-depth look at the story behind the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Higham leaves no stone unturned as he thoroughly explains the events that lead up to the death of Lincoln. Overall, the book is written in the eyes of the Confederacy and examples like this hymn give the reader reason to believe so.

The first section that Higham explains is titled “The Mission.” This section gives a general overview of the mission of Confederate groups to try to remove President Lincoln from office. As the author explains, the Sons of Liberty were dedicated people, not just of the South, but also from Canada, who were willing to create a plan to take out the North. They did this is several ways, such as provoking war between England and the United States. Higham backs up his belief by providing vital information. “In the fall of 1861...Union adventurer Captain Charles F. Wilkes was sent to stage a boarding and seizure of the British ship Trent. This was, in legal terms, and act of war since no ship could be boarded in that manner according to the peculiar maritime rules” (Pg 9). Higham also lays down a background of future players that will be involved in the Lincoln assassination. Officials such as Confederate President Jefferson Davis, his Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin, and the Secretary of the Treasury Chris Memminger were planning to send a Confederate mission to British North America. The objective of the mission was to disrupt the loyal American states and enlist support for possible invasion, arson and murder to endanger the North. Higham’s viewpoints of the beginning stages of the coup d’etat against Lincoln are backed up with precision accuracy. It is very easy to understand his style of writing, especially when he writes about some of the people involved in the situation.

Higham calls this next player to be the “most furious and dangerous anti-Lincolnian.” George Nicholas Sanders is now considered the man behind the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln as a part of the terrorist group The Knights of the Golden Circle. This group, along with the Sons of Liberty and the Young America movement founded by Sanders himself, single-mindedly wanted Lincoln destroyed. Sanders is directly linked to the Lincoln assassination because of his general hatred for Lincoln, calling for a destruction of crowned heads, and glorious bloodshed in the name of freedom. “A gigantic Brutus, armed...to bring death to tyrants...it beats the drumbeat of insurrection” (Pg 28). Higham gives distinct accounts of Sanders’ life that were the making of a Lincoln assassination. Higham talks about Sanders meeting with high ranking officials in the British and Confederates governments who were willing to lend support, but most importantly fund the destruction of the Union. Higham also lists the names of Sanders’ right hand men who were specifically involved in some of the missions trying to kill Lincoln, like Giuseppe Mazzini, who earlier in his life had tried to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte. Higham includes details of who Sanders met with, such as Jacob Thompson, who was the Secretary of the Interior for the Confederacy. In this section Higham also writes about the first attempts to assassinate Lincoln, the main attempt being when a bomb placed on board Lincoln’s private railroad car. Higham uses chronological order and continually naming important figures throughout the story so as to help the reader remember the main events and characters.

Probably the most interesting section in the book is called “The Name is Murder.” Here the reader finds out about the background of John Wilkes Booth, the eventual assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. While meeting other officials committed to the assassination of Lincoln, George Snders met Booth, a fellow Son of Liberty, who to higham was the man that the Confederacy needed to kill Lincoln. Like most enemies of Lincoln, Booth was dismayed by the idea of potential emancipation and by dictatorial unionism in Washington. Higham also backs up this information by providing the reader with a line in a journal Booth had written himself after Lincoln’s re-election for a second term. “We shall kill the damned old son-of-a-bitch Lincoln, he ought to have been dead and in hell long ago” (Pg 103). Higham also gives the reader a detailed account of exactly how Lincoln was assassinated, explaining the real story about how Booth was in position to kill the President in the first place. We learn