John Wilkes Booth

A new series dramatizes Edwin Stanton's hunt for John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators in the aftermath of the president’s 1865 assassination.

A new television miniseries depicts the pursuit of Lincoln’s killer. But the public appetite for tales about the chase began even as it was happening.

A new history of spiritualism during the Civil War era suggests an unexpected link between the Lincoln family and that of John Wilkes Booth.

How the insurrection on January 6th brought a legendary assassin back to life.

Meet Boston Corbett, the self-castrated hatmaker who was John Wilkes Booth's Jack Ruby.

What would-be killers of the US commander in chief have in common is that they aren’t fervent ideologues; they’re outcasts.

We must be cautious of the inclination to find a “usable history” that proves those points we want to prove, that reinforces the lessons we want reinforced.

Were the Knights of the Golden Circle responsible for Lincoln’s assassination? No one knows, but far-right secret societies always draw power from speculation.

The night violent anti-government conspirators sowed chaos in the heart of Manhattan.

Suspected of orchestrating the Lincoln assassination, the South’s most prominent Jew escaped to London to start a new life as a high-powered lawyer.

Behind the Oklahoma City bombing and even the January 6th attack was a military-style assault in Texas that galvanized the far right.

A new book argues that the American right emerged out of a backlash to multiracial democracy following the Civil War.

Why abolitionist Lydia Maria Child raged at President Lincoln’s political calculations.

The life of Judah Benjamin, a Southern Jew who served in the Confederate government, can tell us only so much about the American Jewish encounter with slavery.

Almon F. Rockwell's newly resurfaced journals, excerpted exclusively here, offer an incisive account of the assassinated presidents' final moments.

As Presidents' Day approaches, historians look back at the most notable recent uses and misuses of "the Great Emancipator's" words.

Abraham Lincoln is widely revered, while many Americans consider John Brown mad. Yet it was Brown’s strategy that brought slavery to an end.

James Shapiro’s recent book looks at why Shakespeare has been a mainstay of the cultural and political conflicts of the country since its founding.

Revisionist biographers have given us countless perspectives, from Honest Abe to Killer Lincoln. Is there a version that’s true to his time and attuned to ours?

Not since Reconstruction has there been such an opportunity for the advancement of racial justice.