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John Wilkes Booth wasn’t originally planning to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
Booth and his allies wanted to abduct the 16th president, but the stage actor and Confederate sympathizer opted to kill Lincoln only after a number of kidnapping attempts failed and the South teetered on the edge of collapse. He was shocked to find that not everyone was elated at the murder of the president, even in the former Confederacy. Once the deed was done, the federal government immediately launched a massive search for Booth and his conspirators.
Author and Lincoln scholar James Swanson’s 2006 book, “Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer”, chronicled the search for the architects of the president’s death. Now, a new limited series on Apple TV+ based on that book details the hunt for Booth from Ford’s Theatre to the Garrett Farm near Port Royal, Virginia, and dramatizes what The New York Times bestseller called “the world’s best known but least understood crimes.”
The trailer opens with John Wilkes Booth boldly declaring that he would be the most famous man in the whole world. Strangely enough, he didn’t have to shoot Lincoln to gain fame; he was already the 19th-century equivalent of a Leonardo DiCaprio or Robert DeNiro. But Booth’s career was hardly the most important thing on the actor’s mind.
Anthony Boyle (“Masters of the Air“) stars as Booth, who truly believed…
