author
David Miller DeWitt
1837–1912
Best known for sharp, revisionist books on the Lincoln assassination, this 19th-century writer brought a lawyer’s eye to some of the era’s most disputed events. He also had a public career that took him from the New York bar to a term in Congress.
1 Audiobook
The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt
by David Miller DeWitt
About the author
Born in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1837, he moved to Brooklyn as a child, studied at Rutgers College, and later became a lawyer in New York. Alongside his legal work, he served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives from New York in the 1870s.
As an author, he is chiefly remembered for historical works shaped by close legal argument, especially The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt and The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Its Expiation. His writing often revisited famous Civil War–era controversies and questioned accepted judgments.
He died in 1912. For audiobook listeners, his appeal lies in that blend of courtroom reasoning and dramatic history: his books do not read like distant textbooks so much as forceful cases built from the past.