The American Spectator : Civil War Thrill Ride

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Civil War Thrill Ride

By Shawn Macomber on 12.28.09 @ 6:07AM

With The First Assassin, well-known conservative journalist John J. Miller has penned a superlative thriller.

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MILLER: This was dispiriting but hardly unexpected. Shortly after The First Assassin was published, a left-wing blog encouraged its minions to trash the book in the customer comments section of Amazon.com. These online vandals had not read my novel, of course. They just wanted to engage in a kind of high-tech book burning. So now there are a bunch of fraudulent one-star reviews on my Amazon.com page. The good news is that many readers who have read the book have posted their own reviews, mainly positive. This has provided some balance against the smear artists.

TAS: The First Assassin was published on your own Woodbridge Press, but the book has nevertheless received much attention, great reviews, and seems to be selling well. It must be edifying to know you've built enough of a reputation in one world to have people take note of what you do in another, no?

MILLER: The initial burst of interest came from readers who know my work as a non-fiction writer. Their support has been indispensable. I'm more grateful than they probably know. The decision to publish The First Assassin under my own imprint would not have been possible without them. I've released non-fiction books with major publishers and had expected a similar kind of experience with The First Assassin. When I finished the manuscript, I turned it over to my agent. He wasn't able to sell it. First-time novelists always face skepticism and the rotten economy made things worse. So I decided to experiment with self-publishing, which is completely different from what it was just a few years ago. I partnered with CreateSpace.com, a print-on-demand subsidiary of Amazon.com. I gathered blurbs from writers such as Vince Flynn and Brad Thor and hired a professional designer to help with the cover and interior. Self-publishing also means self-promotion, so I've tried to put out the word about The First Assassin without getting too tacky. I hope I've succeeded.

Page: < 12

topics:
Abraham Lincoln, Political Assassination

About the Author

Shawn Macomber is a contributing editor to The American Spectator.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (11) | Leave a comment

Derek Leaberry| 12.28.09 @ 10:59AM

Just think how many American men would not have died had Lincoln been eliminated before he could unleash such destruction.

RAMIII| 12.28.09 @ 1:29PM

Yes, and we would still have slavery as well as border skirmishes along the northern sections of the southern states. Your post is patently ridiculous. People would probably still be dying. You must have never had to solve a conundrum of choices.

Chico| 12.28.09 @ 11:51AM

Sounds interesting, and I will pick it up. But I have to pick one nit: Booth was not the First Assassin, nor was anyone in that era. Richard Lawrence took two shots with two pistols at Andrew Jackson while he was president. Both guns misfired, and Old Hickory had to be prevented from beating the would-be killer with his cane.

Rich Rostrom| 12.28.09 @ 6:49PM

"What would have happened to the United States if Lincoln had been shot dead a month after his inauguration?"

That is largely dependent on the personal qualities of Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, who is pretty much of a question mark. He exemplifies the joke about the widow with two sons: one went off to sea, and the other became Vice President, and neither was ever heard of again.

swtor credits| 12.28.09 @ 8:49PM

Just think how many American men would not have died had Lincoln been eliminated before he could unleash such destruction.

Derek Leaberry| 12.29.09 @ 8:52AM

And remember that the first liberal to shred the Constitution was not Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson but "Honest" Abraham Lincoln.

nealer| 12.30.09 @ 1:23AM

When Union troops took over Southern territory, slavery ended on a defacto basis (not by law, but by practice.) The battle of Antietam created the situation that allowed President Lincoln to put out the Emancipation Proclamation which applied to territories still in rebellion as of Jan. 1, 1863. In January of 1865 the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution was introduced in Congress to end the concept of slavery in that document.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Lean.....id=3221720

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