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The Last Lincoln Conspirator: John Surratt's Flight from the Gallows | 
 enlarge | Author: Andrew C. A. Jampoler
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $18.45
You Save: $11.50 (38%)
New (24) Used (8) from $17.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 114215
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 1591144078
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.7092
EAN: 9781591144076
ASIN: 1591144078
Publication Date: October 15, 2008
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Product Description
Despite all that has been written about the April 1865 assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the story of John Surratt--the only conspirator who got away--remains untold and largely unknown. The capture and shooting of John Wilkes Booth twelve days after he shot Lincoln is a well-known and well-covered story. The fate of the eight other accomplices of Booth has also been widely written about. Four, including Surratt's mother, Mary, were convicted and hanged, and four were jailed. John Surratt alone managed to evade capture for twenty months and escape punishment once he was put on trial. In this tale of adventure and mystery, Andrew Jampoler tells what happened to that last conspirator, who after Booth's death became the most wanted man in America.As the first full-length treatment of Surratt's escape, capture, and trial, the book provides fascinating details about his flight from New York, where he was on a Confederate spy mission scouting the huge Union prisoner of war camp in Elmira, through eastern Canada to a hideout in Liverpool, England, and on to France and the Papal States. His twenty-month flight, including nearly one year of enlisted service in the Papal Zouaves (the pope's army), is a remarkable adventure through mid-century Europe and locations unknown to most Americans of the time. Despite an uncontrollable tendency to babble to strangers about who he really was and what he had done, Surratt, frequently sheltered by sympathetic Roman Catholic priests, managed to stay at large during a flight that took him across three continents and over the Atlantic Ocean and half the Mediterranean Sea. Finally caught in Alexandria, Egypt, he was returned to Washington to stand trial in 1867. Jampoler brings Surratt to life as he traces the wily young man's remarkable journey and the bitter legal proceedings against him that bizarrely led to his freedom. After his trial, Surratt lived out his life peacefully in Baltimore, marrying a relative of Francis Scott Key and dying at the age of seventy-two. The book's cast of characters includes a menagerie of the nineteenth century's most colorful personalities.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Tracking Surratt November 13, 2008
A most interesting book on the escape, then criminal justice activity involving John Surratt, a son of the first woman executed by the federal government and himself charged with being in on the conspiracy to murder President Lincoln.
Andrew Jampoler writes with wry humor and from a deep fountain of knowledge as he takes the reader along on a brisk tale with many side journeys into interesting bits of historical and cultural information. You learn, among many things, about the Zouves, ship traffic over the Atlantic, the criminal justice system of late 1860s America, and the fate of many of the minor players (witnesses, prosecutors, defenders, etc.) involved in the attempt to wrap up of a crime that shook our nation. This is a volume where one profits by reading the footnotes.
This book does not claim to be a full history of the conspiracy, let alone of John Wilkes Booth. It does help for a reader to have some prior understanding of the events leading to Ford's Theatre. But if you want to know, as I did, how John Surratt ran, was caught, then beat the charge--read this book.
 An excellent social history of 19th century America and Europe October 25, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
The fateful seconds of a football game are many times determined by the momentum of numerous previous plays. Of course, during ESPN Sportscenter, you only see the scoring plays without the background material. Andrew Jampoler ensures that you get most of the requisite background material to understand the world situation that enabled the escape of John Surratt, "The Last Lincoln Conpirator."
The book opens with eight of the nine Lincoln Conspirators in Federal custody awaiting their court date. Amidst the abundant background material, we learn of the trial and execution of four of the criminals, and life sentences in the Dry Tortugas for the remaining four. Jampoler describes the final hours of the condemned, and finishes the chapter with an analysis of the death penalty in 19th century America.
Surratt was in Elmira, New York on the date of the assassination on a spy mission for the confederacy. As news of the assassination broke across the United States, Surratt knew he was a wanted man. He quickly made the decision to flee the United States and try his luck elsewhere. Along with descriptions of the communities across Canada, England, Italy and the Vatican that were sympathetic to the Confederate cause, Jampoler traces the movements of Surratt through these countries. In many instances, there was no primary source material for Jampoler to draw from, so he uses alternate sources to describe what the times and environment would have been like for Surratt.
With the chapter of the trial, Jampoler finally hits his stride with an excellent summary of the 19th Century justice system in America, with John Surratt as the case study. A disbarment of one of the key lawyers; a mistrial; and a surprise verdict - this case had more twists than a good mystery novel.
Jampoler finishes the book with a post-punishment biography of the remaining 30+ years of Surratt's life in Baltimore, where he married and became a successful businessman.
At the end of 275 pages, I know Surratt was accused of participating in the Lincoln and Seward kidnapping and assassination conspiracies, but John Surratt's exact contributions to the cabal are still unclear. This is not a criticism of Jampoler, but of the lack of substance in the Federal case against John Surratt, Jr. Along with the shipboard boasting to fellow shipmates that served as his "confession", the case was marred by a lack of physical evidence, manufactured witnesses, and suppressed exculpatory evidence. Jampoler does do an excellent job describing the trial against Surratt.
There are a few things that keeps Jampoler's book from being a great book. Jampoler's meandering writing style makes it sometimes challenging to follow the storyline. The book lacks any description of the actual plotting leading up to multiple Lincoln and Seward assassination and kidnapping plots the criminals stood accused of. In spite of the book's description stating much has been written on the subject, it would have been beneficial for readers like me who are new to the subject. I also thought think the failure to discuss the initial investigation that led the Federal agents to the Surratt boarding house to be a serious omission. The book does an outstanding job of documenting the chase through Europe, but there was very little about how John Surratt initially became the most wanted man in America.
If you are looking for a story on crime and punishment, this book will leave you wanting for more. The book does an adequate job of documenting the flight and trial of John Surratt, Jr. It's real strength is in its excellent description of the Southern sympathies in both the social and political history of 19th Century America and Europe.
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