This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

It's a great thrill to welcome my colleague of many years.

Patrick K. O'Donnell.

He's the author of many bestsellers.

The one in question right now, it's April 2025, 160 years ago.

It was April 1865.

The end of a tragedy, the beginning of tragedy, the Civil War, and Lincoln's murder.

The book, The Unvanquished, The Untold story of Lincoln's special forces, the manhunt for

Mosby's Rangers, and the Shadow War that forged America's special operations, tells so many

stories that we can go in any direction.

But we're going to follow the events of April 14th to May of 1865, especially concentrating on the assassin booth,

his escape into unknowns, and finally his death on the 26th, a gunshot by a man who was asked not to shoot, but he did. In any event, Patrick,

I congratulate you for the story within the story, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

We begin, however, to establish where we are in the war. What is the Confederate Secret Service in 1865, 1864?

Where is it? What is it and what is its mission? Good evening to you, Patrick.

Good evening, John. The Confederate Secret Service is a shadowy, opaque organization that was really about 100 years ahead of its time in many of the

operations that it was conducting in 1864 and 1865. The book The Unvanquished is about the

irregular war of the Civil War. It's an untold story of the shadow war, specifically focusing on three parts.

The Confederate Secret Service, Mosby's Rangers, and the Union Jesse Scouts, or Lincoln Special Forces.

All three of these elements merge together at one point or another.

But it's my two main characters.

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