Confronting Bad History -- How a Lost Cause and Fraudulent Book Caused the John Wilkes Booth Exhumation Trial

""Frank Gorman led the legal effort that successfully discredited the fraud that was the ""Booth-escaped- justice"" book. In Confronting Bad History, Gorman enlightens a new generation on how this conspiracy theory was always rooted in the Myth of the Lost Cause and white supremacy."" Dave Taylor, Historian and Author of LincolnConspirators.com ""Americans love conspiracy theories. What if the evidence concerning one was tried in a court of law? This book addresses the persistent belief by some that John Wilkes Booth was not killed two weeks after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865, but that he went on to live a long and secret life in Texas and elsewhere. The author is the attorney who represented a Baltimore cemetery in litigation to exhume a body that established history says is Booth's. Was there a conspiracy and a cover up by the government? The book goes witness by witness through the trial, weighs the evidence, and explains the outcome. A great read for lovers of American history, of conspiracy theories, and of the legal process. Highly recommended."" Stan Haynes, Author of The First American Political Conventions (Three Volume Series) ""John Wilkes Booth was killed by federal troops on April 26, 1865, at Garrett Farm in Virginia. President Andrew Johnson released Booth's body in 1869, and it was reinterred in a family plot in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore. Nevertheless, rumors, articles, books, and films have swirled that the assassin of Abraham Lincoln escaped and had a long life under assumed names. In 1994, escape stories persisted and culminated in litigation in 1994-96 to exhume Booth's body. Francis J. Gorman was the attorney for the Cemetery who presented the history expert witnesses, proved that the escaped justice story was baseless, and that Booth body should remain undisturbed. The courts agreed. Mr. Gorman's book, Confronting Bad History, explores the history and the litigation in a compelling story that needs to be told for anyone who has an interest in Lincoln's assassination."" William P. Binzel, President, The Surratt Society (an international organization which fosters research on Lincoln, his assassination, and related topics) and past-President of the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia ""Frank Gorman, the Baltimore attorney who kept the conspiracy fans from digging up the body of John Wilkes Booth, knows what it can take to preserve an accurate account of American history. Even before the internet and social media, he shows the lies and myths that grow around momentous events were hard to kill. Gorman persuasively frames the fascinating story of Booth's afterlife with the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, whose devotees felt they had to do something to obscure the crime of the Lincoln assassination."" Scott Shane, former reporter for The New York Times and The Baltimore Sun, author of Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland ""This book shows how history is up close and part of current events. The author takes us on a journey to 1865 and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, to a book published in 1907 that states that John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin, did not die at Richard Garrett's farm, but instead lived into the twentieth century. This belief, reinforced over the years led to a 1995 trial in which petitioners hoped to exhume the body interred at Green Mount cemetery to show that Booth was not there. Attorney Gorman, who defended the cemetery, takes the reader through the trial to its conclusion and how facts prevailed."" Tom Hanchett, Author of Disgracefully Easy