Alabama author to hold book signing in Huntsville Jan. 10

HUNTSVILLE — History buffs will be pleased to know that a Tuscaloosa-based author will be signing copies of his new book, “The Million-Dollar Man Who Helped Kill a President,” at the Tennessee Valley Civil War Round Table in Huntsville Jan. 10 at 6:30 p.m.

The book, written by Chris McIlwain, seeks to shed some light on a man named George Washington Gayle whose involvement in the scheme to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln has been largely ignored in history. Some historians say Gayle not only sought to see Lincoln killed, but the scheme to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward was also the brainchild of Gayle. The assassins that became involved were allegedly motivated by money that Gayle raised that would be equivalent to about $20 million today.

McIlwain said he was interested in the Reconstruction era and decided to learn more about the Civil War to find out what motivated Alabamians at the time. In his research, he learned of Gayle

“His was a name that kept coming up as my research of the war and reconstruction continued,” McIlwain said. “He was a very prominent attorney, but also very colorful and sometimes temperamental. Then I came across the information regarding the assassination and noticed that his involvement had never been fully explored.”

Gayle was a prominent lawyer in Alabama during his lifetime, though he was born in South Carolina. As he became more radicalized in his beliefs, he became “Alabama’s most earnest secessionist,” according to a news release from the book’s publishing company, Savas Beatie. Strangely, though, Gayle never served in the Confederate government or military.

With his book, McIlwain hopes to help show readers how their previous beliefs about the motivation behind Lincoln’s assassination are likely incorrect. “It was all about the money,” he said.

The research for McIlwain’s latest book took several years, and it took him another two years to write the book. He said he researched this topic at the same time he was doing research for his first two books, “Civil War Alabama” and “1865 Alabama: From Civil War to Uncivil Peace.”

“I try to move chronologically through the primary sources—letters, diaries, official records—at archives and prepare a timeline I use to guide my writing,” McIlwain said. He added that he also spends a great amount of time reading newspaper accounts from the time period.

One thing McIlwain said made research a little more difficult was that Gayle left little behind in the way of writing that would have given more insight on some topics.

“The fact that Gayle did not leave us a diary or very much in terms of personal or professional letters prevented me from getting inside his head on some important topics,” McIlwain said. “In that case, I had to rely on what his contemporaries said about him and then apply common sense.”

One of the most surprising bits of information McIlwain discovered in his research was that no other book or journal article mentioned that Gayle was indicted by a federal jury, pardoned and later pled guilty to his involvement in the assassination conspiracy.

“I stumbled across it in an 1867 Alabama newspaper article while looking for something else and got a copy of the court file,” he said. “Sure enough, there it was.”

In regard to why Gayle is not a better-known figure in history, McIlwain said this could be because prominent academic historians had written the initial histories and “seemed to tie the story up in a bow” with little to no mention of Gayle, so few people wanted to open the story back up for examination.

Copies of “The Million-Dollar Man Who Helped Kill a President” will be available for purchase at the signing, as well as on www.savasbeatie.com. Savas Beatie is a California-based military and general history publishing company.

Chris McIlwain | CONTRIBUTED

McIlwain was born in Chattanooga in 1955 and moved to Huntsville with his family in 1959 where his father worked as a rocket scientist with NASA. After graduating from Grissom High School in 1973, he moved to Tuscaloosa to earn his undergraduate and law degrees. He has been practicing law there since 1980.

The Tennessee Valley Civil War Round Table’s meeting place, Elks Lodge, is located at 725 Franklin St. in Huntsville.