Throng

HISTORY CHANNEL - Friday 26 February, 8.30pm

This special will reveal the story behind the largest manhunt in history- the search for John Wilkes Booth. For 12 harrowing days in April 1865, more than 10,000 Federal troops, along with the nation's best detectives and man hunters, scoured the countryside of Virginia and Maryland for the killer of Abraham Lincoln and Booth's co-conspirator, David Herold. The hunt was led by cavalry officer Colonel Everton Conger whose path had crossed Booth's on several occasions before they had the roles of the hunter and the hunted. This special will show how, through dumb luck and twists of fate, Booth and Herold escaped capture for nearly two weeks by the slimmest of margins. And it will portray how the Lincoln assassination and the Booth manhunt affected the nation.