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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the name of the prison where all of the assassination co-conspirators were sent once captured?

2. What signal did Captain Samuel Cox tell David Herold and John Wilkes Booth that someone they could trust would use as they approached the forest hiding place?

3. How many nights in total did John Wilkes Booth and David Herold spend in the pine forest before they made the attempt to get to Virginia?

4. At what time did Abraham Lincoln die on April 15, 1865?

5. Who accompanied Reverend Gurley when it was time to tell Mary Todd Lincoln that her husband Abraham Lincoln had died?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did Dr. Richard Stuart do to earn the ire of John Wilkes Booth and how did John Wilkes Booth make his feelings about the matter known?

2. What was it about the newspapers brought to him by Thomas Jones that stunned John Wilkes Booth while he was hiding in the pine thicket?

3. Though John Wilkes Booth was angry at the newspapers for suppressing his written explanation for why he had killed Abraham Lincoln that he had given to his actor friend, what was the truth surrounding why his letter had not been published?

4. Within the entirety of the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth, what event acted as the closest the manhunters ever came to capturing John Wilkes Booth, besides the last standoff at Garrett Farm?

5. When James L. Swanson states that John Wilkes Booth had planned in detail the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and his escape from the theater itself, but not much beyond that, what details does he use to support his point?

6. What was ironic about the way in which John Wilkes Booth and David Herold got out of their predicament of getting lost on their way to Captain Samuel Cox's farm?

7. What was the reason for Andrew Johnson's lack of a formal public inaugural address upon his ascendency to the presidency?

8. Why did authorities feel that they had such an airtight case against John Wilkes Booth for killing Abraham Lincoln if they were ever able to bring him to justice in a court of law?

9. What key suggestion did Thomas Jones offer to John Wilkes Booth and David Herold that ended up frustrating any leads gained within the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth?

10. While Thomas Jones was arrested and was briefly imprisoned, he continued to insist on his own innocence and there was no evidence to convict him of any crime. In what way did the truth of his involvement eventually come out?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How does the author get across Abraham Lincoln's tendency to avoid a grand and flashy presence? What ultimate message about how politicians ought to behave is being created within this depiction? Include concrete details from the book to support your claim.

Essay Topic 2

Examine how James Swanson's writing of Chasing Lincoln's Killer displays characteristics of the Realism literary movement and what effect the use of that style has on the narrative. Use concrete details from the book to support your claims.

Essay Topic 3

Discuss three different women that appear within the book's narrative and compare and contrast their characteristics. How do their roles differ and how are their roles similar? Taken together, what depiction of women is present in the overall narrative? Choose concrete details about all three women to support your points.

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