Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse »

James Swanson is the Edgar Award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. Swanson has degrees in history from the University of Chicago, where he was a student of John Hope Franklin, and in law from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has held a number of government and think-tank posts in Washington, D.C., including at the United States Department of Justice. Swanson serves on the advisory council of the Ford's Theatre Society. Born on Lincoln's birthday, he has studied and collected books, documents, photographs, art, and artifacts from Abraham Lincoln's life—and death—since he was ten years old.

On the morning of April 2, 1865, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, received a telegram from General Robert E. Lee. There is no more time—the Yankees are coming, it warned. Shortly before midnight, Davis fled the capital, setting off an intense and thrilling chase in which Union cavalry hunted the Confederate president.

Two weeks later, President Lincoln was assassinated, and the nation was convinced that Davis was involved in the conspiracy that led to the crime. To the Union, Davis was no longer merely a traitor. He became a murderer, a wanted man with a one-hundred-thousand-dollar bounty on his head. Davis was hunted down and placed in captivity, the beginning of an intense and dramatic odyssey that would transform him into a martyr of the South's Lost Cause. Meanwhile, Lincoln's final journey began when soldiers placed his corpse aboard a special train that would carry the fallen president through the largest and most magnificent funeral pageant in American history.

The saga that began with Manhunt continues with the suspenseful and electrifying Bloody Crimes. James Swanson masterfully weaves together the stories of two fallen leaders as they made their last expeditions through the bloody landscape of a wounded nation.

The Washington Post - John C. Waugh

This marvelous book is the story of President Abraham Lincoln's long journey home to Illinois following his assassination at Ford's Theater. And it is the parallel story of Confederate President Jefferson Davis's sorrowful journey into captivity after the war…these two journeys are rivetingly told, in absorbing, meticulous detail. Bloody Crimes is a book about death, but it exudes life. Drawing liberally on firsthand accounts, Swanson covers these dramatic parallel journeys day by day, shifting from one to the other in gripping counterpoint.

List of Illustrations

Introduction

Prologue 1

1 "Flitting Shadows" 3

2 "In the Days of Our Youth" 42

3 "Unconquerable Hearts" 66

4 "Borne by Loving Hands" 98

5 "The Body of the President Embalmed!" 131

6 "We Shall See and Know Our Friends in Heaven" 160

7 "The Cause Is Not Yet Dead" 194

8 "He Is Named for You" 232

9 "Coffin That Slowly Passes" 268

10 "By God, You Are the Men We Are Looking For" 304

11 "Living in a Tomb" 333

12 "The Shadow of the Confederacy" 359

Epilogue 388

Acknowledgments 404

Bibliography 408

Notes 433

Index 449