A clandestine gala in the most elegant of New York mansions; a billion-dollar cotton-for-contraband deal negotiated at St. Lawrence Hall, Montreal's most sumptuous and exclusive hotel; cabinet-level intrigue in Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Virginia; military and congressional infighting bordering on outright treason; massive funds funneled from a firm in Charleston, South Carolina, to a branch office in Liverpool, England, for the construction of Confederate war ships, the sole purpose of which was to wreak havoc on merchant vessels--all this in the shadows of one of the bloodiest civil wars in human history, one that would claim the lives of more than 700,000 soldiers and civilians and leave scars on the American psyche that would never completely heal. Was all this in the name of emancipation, about the abolishment of a slave class? Or was it something more sinister and more insidious and paradoxically more visionary? In Conspiracy Writ Large: Persons of Interest in the Plot to Kill President Lincoln, Gerry Christmas attempts to answer this fundamental question and invites you to join him in the search for the truth.