What do you think?
Do historians today say that Jefferson Davis put out a hit on Lincoln?
If not, then who did, and where did Boothe's money come from?
The William J. Cooper Jr. biography of Davis mentions the the assassination in several places. I will post a few quotations here.
“While in Charlotte, Davis learned that his great antagonist Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated. All accounts agree that Davis voiced regret at Lincoln’s death. He also observed that Lincoln would have been more lenient on the South than his successor was likely to be.”
“In the immediate aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination and the concurrent plots against other high-ranking government officers, the War Department, with Secretary Stanton’s enthusiastic endorsement, claimed that Davis was intimately involved in the conspiracy that resulted in Lincoln’s murder as well as other failed intrigues. But the trials in late May of the assassin John Wilkes Booth’s immediate associates brought forward no new damning evidence. In subsequent investigations this supposedly crystal-clear certainty turned murky. A few officials clung to the theory of Davis’s responsibility, but most observers found the evidence flimsy, even fraudulent.”
“By autumn no responsible government official continued to believe that Davis had been involved with Lincoln’s murder . . .”