Conspiracy Theory : The Abraham Lincoln Assassination

The leading alternative to the theory that John Wilkes Booth and a few others conspired to murder Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson and William Seward is a Confederate conspiracy. The details, motivation and evidence for such a conspiracy are presented along with the evidence that challenges the theory.




The Lincoln Conspiracy, a book published in 1977, contended there was a government plot to conceal Booth's escape, reviving interest in the story and prompting the display of St. Helen's mummified body in Chicago that year. The book sold more than one million copies and was made into a feature film called The Lincoln Conspiracy, which was theatrically released in 1977. A 1998 book, The Curse of Cain: The Untold Story of John Wilkes Booth, contended that Booth had escaped, sought refuge in Japan and eventually returned to the United States. In 1994 two historians, together with several descendants, sought a court order for the exhumation of Booth's body at Green Mount Cemetery, which was, according to their lawyer, "intended to prove or disprove longstanding theories on Booth's escape" by conducting a photo-superimposition analysis. The application was blocked, however, by Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan, who cited, among other things, "the unreliability of petitioners' less-than-convincing escape/cover-up theory" as a major factor in his decision. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals upheld the ruling. No gravestone marks the precise location where Booth is buried in the family's gravesite. Author Francis Wilson, 11 years old at the time of Lincoln's assassination, wrote an epitaph of Booth in his 1929 book John Wilkes Booth: "In the terrible deed he committed, he was actuated by no thought of monetary gain, but by a self-sacrificing, albeit wholly fanatical devotion to a cause he thought supreme."

In December 2010, descendants of Edwin Booth reported that they obtained permission to exhume the Shakespearean actor's body to obtain DNA samples. However, Bree Harvey, a spokesperson from the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Edwin Booth is buried, refuted reports that the family had contacted them and requested to exhume Edwin's body. The family hopes to obtain DNA samples from artifacts belonging to John Wilkes, or from remains such as vertebrae stored at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Maryland. On March 30, 2013, museum spokesperson Carol Johnson announced the family's request to exhume DNA from the vertebrae had been rejected.