What I've Read: Bloody Crimes

After thoroughly enjoying James Swanson's first book about Abraham Lincoln's assassination and the hunt for Booth (Manhunt), I was intrigued when I heard that there was a sequel I figured I needed to check it out.

Bloody Crimes is focused on two main arcs: Lincoln's funeral pageant, and the hunt for Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. I will openly admit that the hunt for Davis is not exactly an episode of The First 48. It's slow and methodical, and by the time it reaches the final capture you are reminded how, more often than not, things back in the late-1800s were often affected by luck than skill. I mean, just think of the fact that trains maxed out at about 10 miles an hour, and cities didn't have paved roads, many streets were just wooden planks. It's crazy stuff.

It is not insulting of wince-inciting when you read it as the cover calls it, a death pageant. A pageant indeed it was. He got a month's worth of viewings. A month! Think about how good embalming is today. You have viewings that last a few hours. Now subtract 150 years off the human history calendar and consider what embalming must have been like then. And instead of a few hours, it was a month of hundreds of thousands of people walking by his open coffin. Nuts.

One of the best parts of the book is the epilogue, when you read about how much of American history was shaped in those two months in April 1865. Two months. 60 days. Civil War ended, president shot and killed, the trial and execution of conspirators, the end of the Confederacy. Just amazing. Plus, its amazing that Lincoln's funeral has been the standard for every presidential funeral since. Jackie Kennedy was still wearing her blood-soaked dress when she told JFK's funeral handlers, "Make it like Lincoln's." That was the power of what kind of ceremony those men created 100 years earlier in less than 4 days.

It's less action-packed than Manhunt is, but Bloody Crimes is no less important in understanding the history and traditions of our country.