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Lincoln's Avengers: Justice, Revenge, and Reunion after the Civil War. By Elizabeth D. Leonard. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. Pp. 367. Cloth, $25.95.)
Abraham Lincoln's assassination has received considerable attention in recent years. Edward Steers's superb Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (2001) comes first to mind. In Lincoln's Avengers Elizabeth Leonard goes over much the same ground but differs by her concentration on Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, the lead investigator and prosecutor of the accused conspirators. More important conceptually, she sees Lincoln's assassination as the beginning of Reconstruction, not just the last chapter of the Civil War. The assassination, after all, substituted Andrew Johnson, the "stubborn, intractable scrapper" (xii) and white supremacist, for Abraham Lincoln, the flexible pragmatist and black men's friend. The ensuing political warfare between Johnson and the Republican Congress led in turn to congressional adoption of civil rights and votes for blacks as the most acceptable way to reconstruct and readmit an unrepentant South. Leonard starts with the John Wilkes Booth conspiracy in...