In this startling and original work, best-selling author Charles Higham addresses America's great historical mystery. Did John Wilkes Booth act alone on the night of Good Friday, 1865 or was he part of a wider conspiracy? Drawing from letters, diaries, previously unstudied records of official hearings, railway timetables, and obscure shipping manifests, Higham has woven a spellbinding account of intrigue and proves conclusively that high-level figures, including those in government and trade, were involved in the murder plot. Higham reveals that Lincoln unwittingly sealed his own doom. By allowing trading with the South in contradiction of his own laws, he enriched a circle of powerful people who, once he had outlived his usefulness and handed over the arrangements to others, marked him very quickly for assassination.