The hypothesis of the film is that, far from being the work of the ringleader of a lonely band of Confederate-sympathizing fanatics as most historians agree that it was, Lincoln's assassination was the result of a vast conspiracy involving Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Chief of National Police Colonel Lafayette Baker, and various Northern Senators and politicians who were determined to stop Lincoln from carrying out his lenient Reconstruction policies towards the South. The movie further proposes that the man killed at Garrett's farm in Virginia was not actually John Wilkes Booth, but instead was another man named James William Boyd.[3][4]
