Planning, Conspiracy, and the Unexpected Theme Analysis

Chasing Lincoln’s Killer describes a successful conspiracy to kill the president, but it also shows that important historical events are often the result of unpredictable circumstances and luck. For example, John Wilkes Booth could have harmed Lincoln on two other occasions. During the President’s inauguration speech, if Booth had taken the opportunity presented to him by chance, he easily could have shot the president from the crowd. And a year earlier, Booth planned with a group of conspirators to kidnap the president to try to change the course of the war. Yet this carefully hatched plan came to nothing, demonstrating that it is important not only to plan, but also to take opportunities as they present themselves.

In the end, Booth was able to carry out his dream to assassinate the president and impact the country’s future as the result of an unexpected stroke of luck. It was only because Booth unexpectedly discovered that Lincoln would be watching a play at Ford’s Theater that he could carry out a plan to assassinate the president. He was then able to use his knowledge of the theater and his trusted position as a well-known actor among the theater’s staff to gain the access he needed to quickly plan an assassination for that very night. His co-conspirators, on the other hand, who were tasked with killing other important figures in the government, did not have a lucky circumstance fall into their lap, and they all failed in carrying out their murderous missions.

Booth was not the only one to assume that a conspiracy would be necessary to achieve a great crime like the murder of the president. When they learned about the assassination of Lincoln and the attack on Secretary of State Seward, the authorities in Washington assumed that these acts were part of a conspiracy directed by the Confederate authorities. While they were right that Booth had planned his actions and directed a group of his followers, the assassination was not part of a larger conspiracy planned by the leadership of the Confederacy.

As both Booth and the Union authorities were to learn, however, events that change the course of history are not necessarily the result of carefully hatched schemes, but can come about as a result of planning, chance, or both.