Why Lincoln died

American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies
By Michael W. Kauffman
Random House, 508 pp., illustrated, $29.95

It is dangerous to be an American president. Four of our presidents -- Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy -- have been murdered while in office, and attempts have been made on the lives of seven others -- Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt (after he left the presidency), Franklin D. Roosevelt (as president elect), Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford (twice), and Ronald Reagan. In other words, assassins have tried to kill about one out of four of our chief executives.

This alarming statistic makes little impression on most Americans. We think of political murder as something that occurs in backward Balkan or Middle Eastern countries. One reason for our complacency is the broadly optimistic American spirit, confident that our political institutions are so progressive and so nearly perfect that no sane person could really wish to upset them. That confidence is strengthened by awareness that, with few exceptions, attempts to kill our presidents have not been the work of conspiracies but of single individuals, mostly social misfits, suffering from obsessions and delusions. So nearly everyone has forgotten about Charles Guiteau, Garfield's assassin, and Sarah Jane Moore, who tried to shoot President Ford, and the others in this national rogue's gallery.

But the plot to assassinate Lincoln was different. Planned by the brilliant and charismatic actor John Wilkes Booth, who was a member of the notable theatrical family, it was executed as part of a group effort to kill the top leaders of the Union government. The story raises endless questions: How many people were involved in the plot? What were the motives of the killers? Were there larger forces behind the assassination? A score of books have been written about it. The latest, and by all means the best, is Michael W. Kauffman's fascinating and compelling ''American Brutus."

Kauffman has been studying the Lincoln assassination for more than 30 years. He has searched every possible archive for letters, diaries, and other papers about Booth and his fellow conspirators, and he has located numerous documents still in private hands. He has intimate knowledge of all the places in Washington connected with the plot -- like Ford's Theatre, where the president was shot; the Petersen house, where Lincoln died; the home of Secretary of State William H. Seward, who was attacked at the same time as the president; and Mary Surratt's house, where, according to President Andrew Johnson, the plot was hatched. For years Kauffman has expertly conducted guided tours of the escape route that Booth followed in southern Maryland, and he knows every inch of these country roads. He is unwilling to rely on belated or hearsay evidence. To settle a controversy over just how long it took to burn the Virginia tobacco shed where Booth was finally cornered, Kauffman, with the help of some Civil War reenactors, ''burned down a genuine Civil War-era tobacco barn." It is hard to think that there is anything about the Lincoln assassination plot that he does not know.

Equally important, Kauffman tells his story with vigor and skill. It begins with an absorbing account of the assassination itself and of Lincoln's final hours. Much of this story is familiar, in its general outlines, but Kauffman's research enables him to enrich it with fresh details, quietly correcting errors of previous writers. To take a small example, he argues, contrary to received opinion, that Booth did not break his leg when he jumped from Lincoln's box at Ford's Theatre, shouting ''Sic semper tyrannis," but afterward when ''his horse tripped and rolled over on him."

The longest and most original part of ''American Brutus" is Kauffman's account of Booth's early life and professional career. He refutes claims that Booth was affected by a family taint of madness or that he suffered from an unhappy childhood. Instead, as his mother's favorite, he always exhibited ''sunny self-assurance" and, as a lover of nature and a gentle poet, was ''a captivating person." Equally erroneous are charges that he was a failure as an actor, especially when compared with his older brother, Edwin. Instead, by 1860 ''his career was off to a phenomenal start. He was the darling of society, the favorite of critics, and the idol of countless belles."

Kauffman began his book thinking of Booth as ''a tragic figure, torn between competing ideals," but his research convinced him that he was a cunning and complex conspirator who deliberately used his intellect, physical presence, and acting skills to entice others into his plot. Once they were involved, Booth carefully preserved evidence that he could hold over his fellow conspirators, so that none could expose the plot without implicating himself. For instance, many of them thought they were planning to kidnap President Lincoln and hold him hostage until Confederate prisoners were released. This hare-brained plan has come down in history as a failure, but to Booth, who knew it could never succeed, it was ''anything but a failure," because it gave him something more to hold over each of his co-conspirators if they thought of defecting.

Clearly Booth's plan was to kill Lincoln. Afterward he was astonished at the nearly universal condemnation of his mad act. He had, he confided to his diary, only done ''what Brutus was honored for, and what made [William] Tell a Hero." Yet, he wrote in his posturing, defensive fashion, ''I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat. . . . I have too great a soul to die like a criminal." But die he did, after a desperate attempt to escape through southern Maryland into Virginia, a story as suspenseful as any detective thriller.

Many of Kauffman's conclusions are controversial and likely to be the subjects of endless debates among Civil War historians, but there can be no doubt that he has done a superb work of research and analysis. ''American Brutus" makes it clear why, of all the attempts on the lives of American presidents, the Booth conspiracy to murder Lincoln continues to fascinate us.

David Herbert Donald, emeritus professor of history at Harvard, is the author, most recently, of ''We Are Lincoln Men."