Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America

From the author of the National Book Award longlisted title The Ground Breaking, a riveting new look at the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, replete with evidence pointing to a much larger Confederate conspiracy.

Told with a page-turning pace and eye-opening cast of characters, Ellsworth sets out to correct a pivotal moment of American history that we have gotten completely wrong—until now. Jam-packed with fresh, revelatory evidence, Ellsworth’s research strongly infers that by the time that the house lights dimmed inside of Ford’s Theatre on the evening of April 14th, 1865, Booth had been working alongside, if not in direct concert with, the Confederate Secret Service for nearly a year.

Historians have long ignored that during the last ten months of the Civil War, the Confederacy launched a desperate, audacious war of terror against the north. In the North, Rebels attempted to derail trains, set buildings on fire, spread smallpox, and undermined public support for the Union army. Instead, history books and schools teach that John Wilkes Booth acted alone, was admired by neither side, and was a second-rate actor. This couldn’t have been further from the truth: Booth was charming, a world-famous performer, and—most importantly—an ardent supporter of the Confederacy.

In the sweltering summer heat of 1864, President Abraham Lincoln had a front-row view of the Civil War, as he dodged firing bullets from the approaching Confederate army at Fort Stevens. It was the first time in American history that a sitting president would come under enemy fire, but the history books would put a far greater focus on his assassination just eight months later. In Midnight on the Potomac, Scott Ellsworth rewrites history, arguing that the two events were in fact connected and that Lincolns’ assassination was likely ordered by leaders of the Confederate Army.

Story Locale:Washington, DC

About the Author

Scott Ellsworth is the New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Game, which was the winner of the 2016 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, and The Ground Breaking, which won the Housatonic Book Award. He has written about American history for The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Formerly a historian at the Smithsonian Institution, he is the author of Death in a Promised Land, his groundbreaking account of the 1921 Tulsa race riot. He lives with his wife and twin sons in Ann Arbor, where he teaches in the Afroamerican and African studies department at the University of Michigan

Author Residence: Ann Arbor, Michigan

Author Hometown: Tulsa, Oklahoma