Chasing Lincoln's Killer

Later, in 1869, Andrew Johnson allowed Booth’s brother, Edwin, to take the body of John Wilkes Booth and bury it in an unmarked grave in Green Mount cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland. It remains unmarked. Stanton continued as Secretary of War, despite Johnson’s efforts to unseat him. When Ulysses S. Grant became President, he appointed Stanton to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, John Surratt was captured in Egypt in 1867, but released in 1868 when charges were dismissed. Samuel Mudd had much of his sentence commuted in 1869, partly because he helped combat an outbreak of disease in the prison.

This last section of the book brings the action to a close with no less sense of the randomness of fate. Poor unwitting Mary Surratt dies next to the likes of Powell by the hand of the government. Booth’s last minutes on this earth are marked with grandiosity, in stark contrast to the President’s. Booth “dies for his country” while Lincoln was laughing in a play. Lincoln was effectively dragged through the streets, his body poked, prodded, and raided for mementoes while Booth’s body was carefully transported and protected from desecration by looters. Still, while the way their bodies were treated in the immediacy of death seems inverse, the treatment of their bodies after death seems appropriate: Lincoln is given a fitting funeral and a day of mourning while Booth lays in an unmarked grave.