The Lincoln Conspiracy

Most accounts of Lincoln's assassination treat John Wilkes Booth's plot as a lone, spontaneous act. The Lincoln Conspiracy argues otherwise: Meltzer and Mensch reconstruct a coordinated plan that also targeted Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward on the same night, intended to cripple the federal government at a moment of maximum vulnerability just after the Civil War's end.

The book also surfaces a lesser-known thread — an earlier, unsuccessful 1861 plot to assassinate Lincoln before his first inauguration, foiled by an early private-detective operation, and its unsettling parallels to what would eventually succeed four years later. Meltzer and Mensch draw on primary documents and existing scholarship to build a fast-paced narrative history rather than a dry academic account.

Written in the accessible, momentum-driven style Meltzer brings from his thriller fiction, The Lincoln Conspiracy is popular narrative nonfiction aimed at general readers rather than Civil War specialists.