Tonight, April 18, and probably again a few times in the next few days, I will appear on Smithsonian TV in a show about Lincoln’s death. Show time tonight is 9pm east coast and west coast.
The producers did a good job of weaving together several interviews, including with people who know MUCH more about Booth and the assassins than I do, with actors portraying Lincoln, Seward, Booth, Powell, and others involved. They filmed a crowd in a theater to give a great sense of how the crowd reacted to Lincoln’s death and Booth’s escape. They showed some of the objects involved, including Booth’s pistol and the hoods placed on the defendants. That “bordered on torture,” one of the experts says, and it is hard to disagree.
I talk both about Seward, the attempt on his life, and Stanton, his effort to find the killers, to connect the killers with the Confederate leaders.