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The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. By Kate Clifford Larson. (New York: Basic Books, c. 2008. Pp. [xx], 263. $26.00, ISBN 978-0-465-03815-2.)
The presidential assassination that punctuated the end of the Civil War has long been the subject of fascination and scrutiny. Most studies of the crime, however, focus on the men who were convicted of it. John Wilkes Booth, who died almost immediately after capture, is the most well known, but the plot was too complex for only one person to have carried out; eventually four others received prison terms, and four more were sentenced to death. One of the executed was Mary Elizabeth Jenkins Surratt. In The Assassin 's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln, Kate Clifford Larson offers a version of the assassination conspiracy that places Surratt at the center.
Larson's research into Surratt's...