Frederick Hatch

Not you everyday average book on Lincoln.

This historiography on Lincoln's assassination attempts by Frederick Hatch is done quite well. Gives a nice overview of each attempts at the president's life. The security measures that were in place and write up of each of the members of the Booth/Surratt conspiracies including those who hung, those who where imprisoned, and those who were involved to some degree but not charged.

This is a well written work which used good resources. The narrative has a nice flow to it and covers a subject that is not the usual topic of a Lincoln book.

I would recommend it to any Lincoln fan and civil war buff. Maybe not for those who are looking for more of an overall biography or who are just getting into Lincolnania.… (meer)

I've always been fascinated by the Lincoln Assassination. One needn't look far to find some really off the wall stuff about the assassination (see "Eisenschimel, Otto") or some really useless rehashings of the story (see "Manhunt"). To me the best two volumes on the assassination/kidnap plots are Michael Kaufman's "American Brutus" and Ed Steer's "Blood on the Moon". I really fail to see how the overall story of the Assassination can be improved upon these two works.

But there are other aspects to the events surrounding the night of 14/15 April 1865 that do warrant closer examination. Lincoln's "bodyguard" for example. Exactly what John Parker and Charles Forbes were doing and what orders they had at Ford's Theater has long been debated.

On a broader scale, Lincoln's security during the war as a whole has never been looked at in great detail and given its own study. Sadly, it still hasn't been given this treatment, despite the title of Frederick Hatch's book.

McFarland's new "Protecting President Lincoln: The Security Effort, the Thwarted Plots and the Disaster at Ford's Theater" has promise, but really falls short. It is plagued by a lofty title - one which a book of a mere 170 pages of text could not hope to live up to. My main criticism is that while reading it, and after reading it, I was constantly wondering what is the book's intended audience? Based on the title, I was expecting to be reading about Ward Hill Lamon, William Crook and John Parker. Instead "Protecting Lincoln" contains a confusing mix of Lincoln 101-type material combined with a scholarly mix of a few decent chapters about the actual presumed topic. The sections about Parker et al are very good, but they are wasted amidst all the Assassination basics - a reader appreciating the Lamon/Crook/Parker material would already be familiar with much of the rest of the contents of the book, and vice versa - one approaching from the Assassination 101-level will be thoroughly lost with the couple of chapters of very good scholarly analysis of Lincoln's actual security details. This again comes back to my main criticism of this book - who is the target audience??

I have other - mostly stylistic gripes - with "Protecting Lincoln" as well. The author includes the life years [ex (1809-1865)] with just about every person mentioned in the text. There are also numerous quotations given but no attribution as to who the person was (this is a personal pet peeve of mine). Again, this ties back to the whole target audience issue - Assassination neophytes may not be familiar with some of the peripheral players in the plot, or other Assassination scholars and thus may not appreciate the full meaning of many of the quotations in the text. There's also a smattering of completely unattributed quotes as well (ex 3rd paragraph, pg 31).

Documentation is also an issue - some standard knowledge things are given citations, but others - like when the author tackles the question of the hole drilled in the door of Lincoln's theater box and writes that the staff of Ford's rather than JWB was responsible for it, there is no attribute (pg 113).

All McFarland titles are expensive, but $45 for a paperback of only 200 pages is taking it to an extreme, even for McF. If author and/or publisher intended this to be aimed at the Lincoln novice, the price will do that idea in. The bibliography shows extensive research, for which the author is to be commended.

I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of "Protecting Lincoln." Parts are extremely valuable additions to the Assassination canon; others have no business in a book purporting to be an examination of Lincoln's security. It is almost as though the book were a compilation of essays about Lincoln and the Assassination. That said, Frederick Hatch's "Protecting President Lincoln" is a book that deserves a place on the shelf of any Lincoln Assassination library if for no other reason than the chapter about the White House staff going with Lincoln to Ford's.… (meer)