O'Reilly and Dugard have written a book on the assassination that is part thriller and part history book. Their stated intent was to write "a thriller" but one that remains "unsanitized and uncompromising" in its veracity. Though the title indicates that the book will focus on the assassination itself, it actually covers a span of several months, including the weeks leading up to the day of the shooting and the months following when the conspirators were rounded up and tried. While the facts and sequences discussed in Killing Lincoln are mostly accurate, the narrative moves along quickly and breezily, which makes for a quick read. The problem for me is that the subject of the book is weighty and meaningful, but the narrative skims along the surface. While O'Reilly and Dugard touch on many themes and issues that America faced as it struggled to end the bloodiest war in our history and reinstate the rebel states, they treat none of them in depth. They touch on a few of the many conspiracies that Americans love to debate when it comes to the Lincoln (and Kennedy, for that matter) assassinations. They raise many questions or potential themes, but delve into none in great detail or with any satisfaction.
The authors return several times to the potential conspiracy between Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, and Lafayette Baker, a spy for the Union. There are no footnotes in the book, simply a list of resources in the back, so it's hard to know when they are providing facts or suppositions. After a brief surface discussion of a potential connection between Baker and a benefactor to the Confederate Secret Service, and the often rocky relationship between Stanton and Baker, the authors claim: "Clues such as this point to Stanton's involvement, but no concrete connection has been proven. Circumstantially, he was involved." This is a topic they return to and pump, if superficially, through out the book. Stanton, though arrogant, officious, and dictatorial in his management of the war, is typically considered to have been devoted to Lincoln and was one of his fiercest and most loyal lieutenants. The two authors raise some questions, but never provide enough evidence or detail to really make a case one way or the other that Stanton was involved in the assassination.
Also, the authors continually narrate from the viewpoint of how events unfolded. So every action of Lincoln, in particular, are interpreted and painted with a fatalistic brush. For instance, we have this on the morning of the shooting. "Every aspect of Lincoln's early morning has the feel of a man putting his affairs in order: reading the Bible, jotting a few notes, arranging for a last carefree whirl around Washington with his loyal wife, and setting his son on a path that will ensure him a successful future. All of this is done unconsciously, of course, but it is notable." In reality, Lincoln did many of these things every morning of the war. His habit, as the authors themselves point out, is to read from the Bible daily. He often went first to his office to tend to paperwork and then downstairs for breakfast. His carriage ride with his wife and his advice to son occur because the war was coming to an end and not because he knew it was the last day of his life. But the authors can't seem to help themselves in over-writing and over-noting how coincidental things look in the light of the assassination.
The narrative is often painted with purple prose. In the first half of the book, especially, there are many chapters that abruptly end with simplistic sentences that disrupt the flow to point to the looming death, as if the reader needs to be reminded. Here are just a few examples:
- "But for now President Lincoln is alive and well, walking the ruined streets of the conquered Confederate capital."
- "But in an instant, his thoughts revert back to President Lincoln, who now has only five days to live."
- This is my favorite, the opening to Chapter 32: "Two thousand years after the execution of Jesus, there are still many unanswered questions about who was directly responsible for his death and what happened in the aftermath. And so it is, on Good Friday 1865, that a series of bizarre occurrences will take place."
All in all, the book proves a frustrating read for a serious historian as it never dives too deeply into issues, characters, or themes. In their attempt to write both a history book and a thriller, they don't quite achieve either. Killing Lincoln does have a strong narrative drive and raises conspiracy questions that will prove of interest to some readers. But I came away feeling that O'Reilly and Dugard had missed the mark and never really provided any new insight or emotion into one of the most important 24 hour periods of our country.
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