The Conspiracy

This dramatic retelling of Abraham Lincoln's murder starts with John Wilkes Booth's plot to kidnap the President and follows the downfall of Booth and his partners after their deadly scheme succeeds.

Booth, an actor who won fame for his Shakespearean roles and an ardent Confederate sympathizer, first tried to abduct President Lincoln and take him to Richmond, there to hold him until the North gave up the war. When that failed, Booth, a few weeks later, managed to enter the presidential box at Washington’s Ford Theater unobserved, to shoot and kill the president. How he plotted both these incidents is dramatized in this broadcast.

This dramatization of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln begins with John Wilkes Booth's conspiracy to abduct the President and traces the deteriorating fortunes of Booth and his accomplices after the success of his deadly plan.