‘Manhunt’ Is a Gripping (Albeit Embellished) Take on Lincoln’s Assassination

We all know the basics of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. In a Washington, D.C. theater 159 years ago, Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by actor John Wilkes Booth, while Lincoln was watching Our American Cousin with his wife. As with so many major events from history the murder has, over time, merely become part of our national story — more and more devoid of emotional heft as time ticks along.

A new seven-part series from Apple TV+ now aims to change that, vividly taking us back to the murder, the political chaos that followed and, most importantly, the 12-day-long chase that culminated in the death of Booth and the trial of (some of) his co-conspirators. Despite a winding storyline and an overuse of time jumps, Manhunt somehow succeeds in being consistently gripping. The series plays out like a crime thriller, only one full of people whose names we might already know.

At the center of the story is Lincoln’s secretary of war, Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies). Stanton puts his own health and personal life at risk as he relentlessly pursues Booth (played by a convincingly petulant Anthony Boyle), while also trying to enact Lincoln’s final political wishes. We enter meetings with the likes of Frederick Douglass (Elvis Nolasco) and President Andrew Johnson (Glenn Morshower). We get to know the determined man in charge of the hunt for Booth, detective Lafayette Baker (Patton Oswald). We even see questions raised about the mental health of Mary Todd Lincoln and her ability to look after herself as a widow.

Manhunt offers an engrossing education about American life during the Civil War and after the assassination. That goes for the famous people at the center of the story, and those unknowns operating on the ground around them. However, as with so many dramatizations of true stories (see also: The Crown — coincidentally also starring Menzies), Manhunt intermingles true events with some flagrant embellishments.

One particularly troubling scene has Stanton burning pages from Booth’s diary. What happened to the diary’s missing pages has long been the subject of conjecture and conspiracy theory. Manhunt makes the bold choice to lay the responsibility at Stanton’s feet even though, in reality, the diary changed hands several times and no definitive answer has ever emerged about what really happened to those pages.

Where Manhunt truly takes on a life of its own is in its depiction of Mary Simms (Lovie Simone). It is true that the real-life Simms and her brother were enslaved by Samuel Mudd — the doctor who briefly housed Booth and treated the assassin’s broken leg. It is also true that Simms, in an extraordinarily brave move, testified against Mudd at his much-publicized trial.

Simms is central to some of the show’s most enthralling storylines. We see her kidnapped as a child and enslaved by Mudd. At the end of the war, she escapes Mudd’s home and starts teaching local Black children how to read and write. After the land granted to her at the end of the Civil War is reclaimed by Johnson’s government, she is forced to return to Mudd’s house. Crucially, in the show, we also see her directly interacting with Booth while he’s on the run, and with Stanton before and after the trial.

Disappointingly, there is no evidence that any of this actually happened.

As far as I can tell from the scant documentation that exists around Simms, in reality she was enslaved by Mudd for four years and escaped from his home in 1864, before Booth was ever on the property. During his trial, Simms testified that Mudd was a Southern sympathizer, protected Confederate soldiers at his home and was friends with John Surratt (another man accused of being a Booth co-conspirator). Simms also testified that Mudd said “he would have killed” Lincoln, given the opportunity. That’s about all we know about her for sure.

So enamored was I with Simms’ story (as told by Manhunt) that this entire review was originally going to center on introducing this little-known but important historical figure. Instead, Simms’ storyline is a reflection of the well-intentioned ways that Manhunt can be misleading. People who worked on the show have since confirmed that Simms “was written as a composite” of multiple people involved in the conviction of Booth’s co-conspirators. The version of Simms we see in the show was intended “to bring some of these heroes to light.”

Given how little documentation the lives of individual enslaved people inspired at the time, embellishing Simms’ backstory in order to bring her role in the trial to the forefront is an understandable choice. That being said, audiences would benefit from a note about Manhunt’s use of artistic license at the top of each episode.

As an overview of the events and politics of the time, Manhunt is undoubtedly useful. That a story with so many moving, conflicting, complex parts succeeds in being relatively easy to follow makes it something of a triumph. But it’s also important, in the midst of watching this entertaining, extremely convincing rendition of reality, to not take its word as gospel. Take it instead as a conduit for further investigation. You might be surprised by what you find out.

‘Manhunt’ airs on Apple TV+ starting from March 15, 2024.