Devil's Game

Résumé du livre

Dunham achieved his greatest infamy at the war's end. Called to testify in Washington, he was the most notorious of the witnesses who swore that Lincoln's assassination had been plotted by conspirators in Montreal and Toronto, on orders from Richmond. That testimony (later discredited but never officially challenged) helped lead to the execution of several alleged associates of John Wilkes Booth. Dunham's postwar intrigues were almost as complex, as he continued to collect faked "evidence" of Southern war crimes. Finally convicted of perjury in these schemes, he worked in prison to produce evidence implicating President Andrew Johnson in the assassination, then reversed himself and sold out his associates to the President. Until now many parts of Dunham's wartime (and postwar) career have remained shadowy. Carman Cumming sheds new light on numerous escapades, including Dunham's effort to sell Lincoln on plans for a raid to capture Jefferson Davis and a complex effort in Canada to plan -- and then betray -- cross-border raids. Exhaustively researched, Devil's Game is a striking portrait of a consummate chameleon. Drawing together previous Dunham scholarship, Cumming offers the first detailed tour of Dunham's convoluted, high-stakes, international deceits. A carefully crafted assessment of Dunham's motives, personality, and the complex effects of his schemes make Devil's Game an important and original work that will change some basic assumptions about the secret operations of the Civil War.