Why Everything You Think You Know About the Lincoln Assassination is Wrong: Part II

by Dave McGowan | Feb 9, 2014

I know what you must be thinking here: “How the hell could you leave Francis Tumblety out of the previous post? Compared to him, guys like Boston Corbett, Henry Rathbone and Edwin Stanton seem perfectly sane. And whose name was in the news in a weirder way in the years following the assassination than the esteemed Dr. Francis Tumblety? And in addition, doesn’t he deserve honorable mention for the ridiculous facial hair alone?”

I can’t really argue much with any of that. I think it was probably a subconscious omission so that I would have something really good to start this post with. Because as stories go, the Francis Tumblety story is pretty damn good. And seriously strange. But before getting to that, I must also quickly add Father Wiget to the list. Not much can be dug up on him other than that he was assigned as Mary Surrat’s spiritual adviser during the brief period that she sat in her cell waiting to be executed, and he died shortly thereafter.

Moving on now to the man of the hour, Francis Tumblety was arrested on May 5, 1865, on suspicion of being complicit in the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Tumblety was an associate of – and by some reports a sometime employer of – executed conspirator David Herold. His arrest was ordered by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. To be fair to Tumblety though, it should be noted that he was only one of some 2,000 people who were arrested as possible conspirators. That’s how things work in a democracy, you see – falsely imprison first, ask questions later.

The esteemed Dr. Francis Tumblety

In any event, Tumblety was held for nearly a month before being released on May 30, 1865. Prior to his arrest, he had lived a very colorful life. Born circa 1833 and raised in New York, Tumblety was widely viewed as a charlatan and a kook. While still a minor, he reportedly peddled pornographic materials. He soon transformed into a quack “Indian herb doctor” who was run out of various parts of the country for running cons. In one reported case, he was directly involved in the death of a ‘patient,’ though he suffered no repercussions for his actions. According to one account, he kept a collection of human uteruses on display in his Washington, DC home.

Some twenty-three years after his arrest in Washington, Tumblety took up lodging in, of all places, a boardinghouse in London’s Whitechapel district. He was identified at that time, and has been identified by various researchers since that time, as being a prime suspect in the still unsolved Jack the Ripper murders. Following an arrest on November 7, 1888 for “gross indecency,” Tumblety fled the country on November 20 under an assumed name and quickly made his way back to the US, where he died some five years later.

What are the odds, one wonders, that the very same guy would be suspected of involvement in two such completely different and seemingly unconnected crimes? Two crimes separated by a vast ocean and the passage of nearly two-and-a-half decades? Probably about the same odds that a guy like John Phillips would have connections to both the Black Dahlia murder and the Manson bloodbath.

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Pictured below is the single-shot derringer that, according to the legend we all know so well, John Wilkes Booth used to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. One of the most iconic pieces of historical memorabilia that this country has to offer, it has been displayed for decades, viewed by millions, and written about by thousands. But after the passage of 149 years, it doesn’t appear that anyone has ever thought to question why Booth, an intelligent and educated man by all accounts, would choose such a ridiculous weapon to take with him on his mission.

Let’s imagine that it is the evening of April 14, 1865, and you are John Wilkes Booth. Your mission is to assassinate the president. In a crowded theater. In the middle of Washington, which, at the time, is heavily fortified and militarized. Because there is, you know, a war going on. And the enemy’s base of operations – in Richmond, Virginia – is only 100 miles away. So the nation’s capital is crawling with armed military personnel, armed police patrols, and armed thugs in the employ of Baker and Stanton.

Your mission then is not going to be an easy one. The president is under armed guard, or at least he’s supposed to be. He’s also supposed to be in the company of General Ulysses S. Grant, who is known to always be armed. Of course, Grant has fortuitously opted to get the hell out of Dodge just hours before he was to have accompanied the Lincolns to the theater, but you shouldn’t have any way of knowing that, just as you shouldn’t have any way of knowing that Parker will desert his post. And there will be no shortage of other armed personnel in Ford’s Theater, including Army Captain Theodore McGowan (no relation), who is seated very near the door to Lincoln’s box seats.

So you have to assume that you’re going to have to get past at least two armed attendants, and probably more, to get to the president. And you’re going to have to do that without firing a shot, since you only have one and you will need to save that for Abe. And since the only realistic chance you have of actually killing Lincoln with your wildly inaccurate weapon is by sneaking up behind him and delivering a contact wound to his head, you’re going to have to get past any guards without making any noise. And since Grant is supposedly also on the hit list, you’re going to have to kill him as well, which I guess you’ll have to do by bludgeoning him with your empty gun. That should work out pretty well.

Ford’s Theater, circa 1865

You’re not on a suicide mission, by the way, so even if you somehow manage to successfully assassinate the president, and presumably General Grant as well, you’re still going to have some major problems on your hands. First of all, you’re going to have to make your escape from a theater full of people, many of them armed. Because in April 1865, the beginning of the era that will be mythologized as the ‘Wild West’ days, there are guns everywhere and everyone is packing heat. And you, of course, will have blown your wad and will be unarmed.

If you somehow manage to make your way out of the theater, then you will face the daunting prospect of making your way out of the city and across the Potomac. And as I may have mentioned, DC is swarming with armed soldiers, armed spies and armed police, as well as armed citizens. And your only means of defending yourself will be with a dagger, which probably isn’t going to be very effective.

Your goal is to reach the Navy Yard Bridge, which will get you across the Potomac and to relative safety. But even if you reach it, you’ve still got a big hurdle to overcome: the bridge has a strict curfew and the armed guard is under standing orders not to allow anyone to cross without explicit authorization. If you attempt to cross without anyway, you will be shot. A gun might come in handy, but you won’t have one.

The Navy Yard Bridge, John Wilkes Booth’s passage out of town

To recap then, you have set a very ambitious goal for yourself. You must first get to the president, who is sitting in a private box in a crowded theater with at least two armed attendants. You must then kill the president with a single shot, because your weapon doesn’t allow for second chances, and also somehow kill General Grant. You must then, in an unarmed state, make an escape first from the theater and then from the city, and you must get past an armed guard at the bridge. And you have to do all of that with just one bullet. It’s hard to see how anything could go wrong with such a brilliant plan.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are other weapons available. Weapons better suited to your mission. And as an alleged Southern operative, you should surely know that. It was, after all, Confederate guerilla groups that pioneered the shock-and-awe tactic of using overwhelming force in the form of multiple revolvers. We’ve all seen images of Wild West gunslingers riding hard with their reins in their teeth, six-shooters blazing in both hands. It’s only natural to dismiss such images as a hackneyed Hollywood creation. But strangely enough, it’s actually not. Rebel groups like Mosby’s Rangers and Quantrill’s Raiders really did train to do exactly that. And they wore custom-made holsters that could hold as many as six revolvers, three on each side. That allowed them to get off as many as 36 shots before their overwhelmed Union adversaries, armed with muskets, could reload and get off so much as a second shot.

Those semi-mythical figures in American history that we know as Frank and Jesse James, and Jim, Bob, John and Cole Younger, and Bill, Grat, Bob and Emmett Dalton, learned the skills they later employed as Wild West ‘outlaws’ while riding with the likes of William Quantrill and “Bloody Bill” Anderson. But that’s not really the point here – the point here is that revolvers are easy to come by and might serve you better than a nearly-worthless single-shot derringer. And according to the official story, you definitely have access to at least two of them (pictured below).

There are other things you might want to consider as well, such as not committing the crime as John Wilkes Booth. You are, after all, a famous stage actor, which means that you are also a wardrobe and makeup guy. Because in your era, you and your contemporaries have to handle those duties yourselves, so you travel with a couple large trunks full of stuff like wigs and fake beards. You could easily don a convincing disguise so as not to be easily recognized. Then you don’t have to worry about getting out of the city alive; all you have to do is make it out of the theater, quickly ditch the disguise, and then you can circle around and rejoin the crowd at Ford’s without arousing any suspicion at all.

And you do, after all, have a lot at stake. Even if you manage to make an escape from DC, your lifestyle and career will be distant memories. All the fame, all the female adoration, all the success, all the wealth … it will all be gone if you commit the crime as John Wilkes Booth. So you might want to put on a disguise. And replace that derringer with a revolver or two. And maybe bring an accomplice or two along for additional firepower. You have quite a few co-conspirators to choose from.

You also might want to reconsider whether Ford’s Theater is the best place to do this. According to numerous historians, Lincoln has a bad habit of ignoring advice from aides and strolling around Washington unescorted at times, leaving him seriously vulnerable. That might make it a bit easier to successfully pull this off.

Fanny Brown, one of Booth’s many paramours

In summary then, your best bet is probably to make the attempt on Lincoln’s life when he is alone and unprotected. And you should probably bring along some more impressive firepower, just in case. If you are determined to do it in the theater, you should don a disguise and bring along a couple other gunmen in case one or more of you are killed or physically prevented from reaching the president. The dumbest thing you could probably do would be to go it alone, as John Wilkes Booth, and arm yourself only with a derringer. But I guess you can’t argue with success … right?

Meanwhile, one of your comrades-in-arms, Lewis Paine/Payne/Powell, has a difficult task ahead of him as well. His goal is to kill Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, who is recuperating at his stately manor in the heart of DC after being severely injured in a fall from a horse-drawn carriage just nine days earlier. Seward had suffered a broken lower jaw, a fractured right arm, torn ligaments in his foot, and heavy bruising over much of his body.

The 63-year-old secretary is therefore physically vulnerable, but assassinating him is still not going to be easy. For starters, Paine is going to have to gain access to the estate. Then he’s going to have to find Seward without knowing the layout of the home or which floor or which of the many rooms the secretary is in. And he’s going to have to get past a lot of people, because there are no less than eight other able-bodied adults in the home, five of them men, two of whom are military personnel. And there are readily accessible weapons in the home. And, as I may have mentioned, there are armed patrols all over the city, and they are quite capable of quickly responding to any signs of a disturbance at the Secretary of State’s residence.

The rear view of Ford’s Theater and ‘Baptist Alley’

The attack on Seward has been all but written out of our history books, but in 1865 it was portrayed as an integral component of the plot against Lincoln, particularly during the show trial of the alleged conspirators. It is now mentioned only in passing, if at all. Which is probably because the story doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

In the home are: William Seward, the injured Secretary of State; William Bell, Seward’s black servant; Frederick Seward, William’s son as well as his Assistant Secretary of State; Major Augustus Seward, another son and a career Army officer (who will be promoted in a few weeks to lieutenant colonel); Private George Robinson, Seward’s personal attendant (who will be promoted to sergeant in a few weeks); Emerick Hansell, a US State Department courier; Frances Seward, the secretary’s wife (who will be dead very soon); Fanny Seward, his daughter (who will be dead fairly soon); and, finally, the wife of one of the Seward sons.

Payne of course is going it alone, just like Booth, for reasons that have apparently never required an explanation. The five able-bodied men in the house, at least a couple of whom are likely armed, will pose a physical challenge. The three women will pose less of a physical threat, but one or more of them are very likely to run out into the street to summon any nearby patrols. And just the fact that there are so many people in the way will make it extremely difficult for Powell to control the situation.

 Another of Booth’s paramours, this one unidentified

Paine’s mission is not unlike Booth’s; he must enter the building, work his way past any resistance to get to his target, take out his target, work his way back out of the building past any resistance, and then somehow find his way out of Washington. But unlike Booth, Payne won’t have even a single bullet to work with. Instead, he is going in armed only with a bludgeon and a knife. And he’ll be coming out with nothing but the clothes on his back.

Technically speaking, he will be carrying a gun, but it doesn’t work and so is only useful as a bludgeon. In a city overflowing with guns, Paine has chosen to bring one that doesn’t work. Which means that, luckily for the Sewards, no one is going to die.

Paine though is going to leave quite a trail of destruction once he enters the estate, which sits just a half-dozen blocks from Ford’s Theater. Frederick Seward will be left gravely injured, with his head reportedly split open and his skull fractured in two places. Major Augustus Seward will also receive severe head injuries, with one report claiming that he was half scalped. Private Robinson will also be seriously wounded, with deep stab wounds to his chest. Emerick Hansell will receive at least one deep, very serious chest wound as well. Fanny Seward will be wounded as well, in some unspecified manner. And William Seward – who is lying in bed on his back, unable to defend himself – will be brutally stabbed about the head and neck, but will, despite his already weakened condition, miraculously survive.

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It is difficult to believe that the attack on Secretary of State Seward ever took place at all. Lewis Paine supposedly gravely wounded six people in hand-to-hand combat, four of them able-bodied men, and yet, as photos taken soon after his arrest just days later reveal, he didn’t have so much as a scratch on him. He supposedly left his hat, gun and knife behind, creating a handy evidence trail, but why would he leave his only weapons behind? He also allegedly left a bloodstained coat with gloves and a fake moustache in the pocket in the woods just outside of DC. Lewis Paine was apparently a very considerate attempted assassin.

 Lewis Paine, April 1865

The descriptions of the conditions of the victims came from the first three people to conveniently arrive at the crime scene: Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, and Surgeon General Joseph Barnes. You know, just your typical first responders. None of them reported seeing Augustus there. Stanton initially claimed that only William Seward, Fred Seward and George Robinson were injured; Augustus Seward, Emerick Hansell and Fanny Seward were later added to the victim list, apparently so that the prosecution would have suitable witnesses. It was an entire month before Fanny Seward came forward with her account of the attack.

Augustus was later presented at trial as both a victim of and an eyewitness to the attack – the attack that very likely didn’t take place, in the home he wasn’t actually in at the time. His testimony was wildly at odds with that of Robinson, with both men claiming that they had been in the room and personally witnessed the attack on William Seward. Not only did their accounts significantly differ, but neither really explained why it was that with the two of them in the room, and with Frederick and Hansell in the home as well, they were unable to defend the secretary.

This remarkable image of Paine, captured in April 1865, has been lovingly colorized

It is impossible to determine whether the alleged attack ever took place, but it appears extremely unlikely. It does not seem logistically possible for one barely armed man to have done what Paine is supposed to have done. And it doesn’t seem physically possible for him to have done so without sustaining a single visible injury. There is no tangible evidence that Paine ever entered the home. The only ‘evidence’ that has ever existed is the dubious (and conflicting) accounts told by the alleged victims and by the high-ranking cabinet officials who just happened to be first on the scene.

Let’s now briefly review the key elements of this story: two assassins; three targets; numerous people to get through to get to those targets; numerous other people to get by to flee the scene; a city essentially under martial law; and one – exactly one – bullet. Anyone see anything wrong with that scenario?

… to be continued

 

 http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/anatomy-of-a-presidential-assassination-part-ii/

Why Everything You Think You Know About the Lincoln Assassination is Wrong: Part I

by Dave McGowan | Jan 24, 2014

In just a little over a year – in what will be an historic 150-year anniversary – the American people, and likely people all around the world, will come together in remembrance of the man who was once rather preposterously described by a biographer as “the most gentle, most magnanimous, most Christ-like ruler of all time.” That man, of course, was Abraham Lincoln, allegedly the 16th and most beloved President of these United States.

 

I say “allegedly” here because it is hard to see how someone could be the president of an entity that didn’t actually exist. And the reality is that during Lincoln’s tenure, there was no such thing as the “United” States. There were Northern states presided over by Washington, and there were Confederate states presided over by a parallel government in Richmond, but there certainly weren’t any “united” states. Wouldn’t it then be just as accurate to describe Jefferson Davis as the 16th president of the United States? Just checking.

 

I also say “allegedly” here because Lincoln was most certainly not, during his lifetime, a beloved man. He was thoroughly despised throughout half the country, and wasn’t even all that popular in the north. He received merely 40% of the popular vote in 1860 and could have, as more honest historians have noted, been very easily defeated had the Democratic Party bothered to field a viable candidate. But Lincoln was clearly the anointed one.

 

As we all know, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by famed actor and Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth on the evening of April 14, 1865 (which happened to be Good Friday) while attending a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC. Just five days earlier, General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, effectively signaling an end to the unfathomably bloody US Civil War. What is less widely known is that the assassination of Lincoln was allegedly part of a larger plot that was to have included the simultaneous assassinations of General Grant, Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William Seward and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

 John Wilkes Booth, in a Masonic pose

This alleged plot, which is part of the official history of the Lincoln assassination, obviously involved people other than John Wilkes Booth. Nine of those people faced trial as co-conspirators, eight by military tribunal (Mary Surrat, David Herold, George Atzerodt, Dr. Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlen, Edward Spangler, and Lewis Paine [or Lewis Payne, or Lewis Powell, depending upon who is telling the tale]), and one who later stood trial alone (John Surrat). Four were executed, three received life sentences, one was given a six-year prison term, and one was acquitted. As for Booth, he was captured and gunned down at Garrett’s barn on April 26, 1865 and so never made it to trial.

 

And that, in a nutshell, is the official narrative of the Lincoln assassination. It is an unusual narrative, to be sure, because it explicitly acknowledges a ‘conspiracy’ surrounding the death of a president. Of course, many of the details are usually left out when the story is told, leading many to think of John Wilkes Booth as just another ‘lone nut’ assassin. But Booth was hardly a lone nut and there was in fact a conspiracy at the heart of the Lincoln assassination, though the people targeted by the government weren’t the real conspirators; the real conspirators were the very people who orchestrated the witch hunt against the scapegoats.

 

But before we get to that, let’s first skip ahead and look at some of the forgotten aftermath of the assassination, because there is always much to be learned by examining the fates that befall those involved to varying degrees in political conspiracies, especially those unfortunate souls whose names are largely consigned to the dustbins of history.

Let’s begin with Sergeant Thomas “Boston” Corbett, the Jack Ruby of the Lincoln assassination. Corbett was a strange character if ever there was one. How strange, you ask? Strange enough to have reportedly castrated himself circa 1858, and to have then opted not to seek medical attention until he had tended to other, apparently more important, business. He was widely considered to be mentally unbalanced, shockingly enough, and he often spoke of hearing disembodied voices. He was mockingly referred to by his fellow soldiers as “the Glory to God man” due to his rather unorthodox religious beliefs, which he wasn’t shy about sharing.

 Thomas “Boston” Corbett

Due to his bizarre behavior and his unwillingness, or inability, to follow orders, Corbett had been court-martialed and discharged from the service. For some unexplained reason though, he was allowed to re-enlist in 1863 and he quickly thereafter rose to the rank of sergeant. In April 1865, he was assigned to the elite team that captured Booth and, in defiance of direct orders, he personally shot and killed the man who was said to be Booth. Corbett was never reprimanded or disciplined for his actions and in fact profited handsomely by touring the country for years as “The Man Who Killed Booth.”

 

In 1887, Corbett was appointed as the clerk/doorman of the Kansas state legislature. Things didn’t go so well for him after that. According to some reports, one day he just decided to shoot the place up, though other accounts hold that he didn’t fire his weapon but merely brandished it and issued threats. Whatever the case, he quickly found himself committed to a mental asylum. He managed to escape soon enough though and may have briefly surfaced in Texas before never being seen or heard from again.

 

Let’s next turn our attention to Major Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris, the couple who were sharing the presidential box at Ford’s Theater with Abe and Mary Lincoln. At the time, Rathbone was dating Harris, who was both Rathbone’s stepsister and the daughter of US Senator Ira Harris. Rathbone was reportedly deeply cut when he attempted to disarm and detain Booth, who escaped by leaping over the railing and onto the stage.

 Clara Harris

Major Henry Rathbone

Rathbone later married Harris and the two started a family and moved to Germany, where Rathbone served as the US Consul to Hanover. Things didn’t work out so well though for the Rathbones; in December 1883, Henry tried to kill his children and, when thwarted in that effort, instead shot and brutally carved up wife Clara, before turning the knife on himself. Like Corbett, he was sent off to an asylum, but unlike Corbett, Henry Rathbone spent the rest of his life there.

 

Since I mentioned Mary Todd Lincoln just a couple paragraphs ago, I should probably mention that she also ended up in an insane asylum. Always a bit on the crazy side, Mary became considerably crazier after the assassination, exhibiting increasingly erratic behavior and suffering from vivid hallucinations. She was ultimately committed by her own son, Robert Todd Lincoln.

 Mary Todd Lincoln

To say that Robert Lincoln had some rather unusual aspects to his life story would be quite an understatement. To begin with, we could note that he had the distinction of being the only man in history with direct links to three presidential assassinations. Just twenty-one when his father was gunned down, he subsequently was present at the assassinations of James Garfield in 1881 and William McKinley in 1901. He was also the only Lincoln son to survive his childhood; brother Eddie died at age 3 in 1850, brother Willie at age 11 in 1862, and brother Tad barely made it to age 18 before dying in 1871.

 

According to Robert Lincoln’s own account, he was involved in a truly bizarre incident in late 1864/early 1865, not long before the death of his father. The younger Lincoln was saved from serious injury and possible death when he was pulled to safety by a stranger during a mishap on a train platform. That stranger just happened to be Edwin Booth, an older brother of John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln later maintained a long-term friendship and possible romance with Lucy Hale, the daughter of US Senator John Hale and a former paramour and fiancé of John Wilkes Booth. Small world, I guess.

 Robert Todd Lincoln

Speaking of Edwin Booth, on June 9, 1893, just as his casket was being carried for burial (he had died two days earlier), Ford’s Theater mysteriously collapsed, killing 22 people and injuring another 68. The building had been converted into a government record storage facility and some of the records of the assassination were lost in the wreckage. Shit happens.

Edwin and John’s sister, Rosalie Booth, died under mysterious circumstances in January 1880; rumors at the time spoke of a “mysterious assailant.” Edwin Booth Clark, a son of sister Asia Booth and therefore a nephew of John Wilkes Booth, attended Annapolis and became a US Naval officer, but he thereafter disappeared at sea. Officially, he committed suicide by jumping overboard. And Junius Brutus Booth, the patriarch of the Booth clan, is said to have gone insane.

 The Booth siblings – John Wilkes, Edwin and Junius, Jr.

US Senator Preston King, credited with being one of the guys who supposedly prevented a mercy petition on behalf of Mary Surrat from reaching President Andrew Johnson, decided on November 12, 1865 to go swimming in New York with a bag of bullets tied around his neck. Officially, his death was a very innovative suicide. US Senator James Lane, the other guy credited with supposedly preventing the mercy petition on behalf of Surrat from reaching Johnson, shot himself in the head while jumping from a carriage in Leavenworth, Kansas on July 1, 1866. Or else he slit his own throat. Whichever sounds better to you.

Senator Preston King

 Senator James Lane

US Senator John Conness, a likely conspirator and a pallbearer at Lincoln’s funeral, was committed to an insane asylum, where he later died. There was a lot of that sort of thing going around in those days. The body of William Peterson – the owner of the boardinghouse where Lincoln was taken immediately after being shot, and where he died the next morning – was found on the grounds of the Smithsonian loaded with the drug laudanum. His death, needless to say, was ruled a suicide.

 Senator John Conness

Colonel William Browning, who was Vice President Andrew Johnson’s personal secretary as well as being a personal friend to John Wilkes Booth (Browning claimed that Johnson was close to Booth as well), is believed to have been murdered, though details are sketchy. Less sketchy were the murders of Frank Boyle and William Watson, both of whom had the misfortune of physically resembling John Wilkes Booth. Both of their bodies were turned over to the War Department by overzealous vigilantes for the reward that was being offered. Stanton’s department covered up the murders by unceremoniously disposing of the bodies, one of which was dumped into the Potomac River.

Frances Adeline Seward and Frances Adeline “Fanny” Seward had the misfortune of bearing witness to the staged attack on William Seward, sitting Secretary of State and the husband of Frances and the father of Fanny. Frances died of a reported heart attack on June 21, 1865, the summer solstice, just two months after the assassination of Lincoln and the alleged attempt on her husband’s life. Fanny died the next year, on October 29, 1866, just before Halloween. She was just twenty-one; the cause of her death remains unknown. A few years later, in 1870, William Seward legally ‘adopted’ his young ‘companion,’ Olive Risley, as his ‘daughter.’ Risley was 26 at the time and Seward was 69.

 William Seward, in a Masonic pose, with daughter Fanny

Lafayette Baker was undoubtedly one of the central conspirators involved in the Lincoln assassination. As ‘Honest’ Abe’s spymaster and head of the NDP, forerunner of the US Secret Service, Baker had instituted a reign of terror, just as he had previously done as a member of San Francisco’s Vigilance Committee, running roughshod over the US Constitution. Under Baker’s (and Stanton’s) tyrannical watch, there were 260,000 dubious arrests made and some 38,000 people held without trial as political prisoners. Baker also introduced such innovations as midnight raids, forced entry without warrants, imprisonment without bail, and summary arrests.

Circa 1867, Baker published a book revealing the existence of what was said to be Booth’s suppressed diary. He subsequently barricaded himself in his home and told friends that a secret cabal was intent on killing him. Press reports from December 1867 through February 1868 tell of repeated attempts made on his life; he was shot at twice, stabbed on his own front porch, and beaten by three or four men who attempted to abduct him. Nevertheless, when he turned up dead on July 3, 1868, the cause of death was said to be meningitis, necessitating an immediate, sealed burial. A later exhumation though indicated that the cause of death was actually arsenic poisoning. Baker left behind cryptic notes alluding to a conspiracy behind the Lincolnassassination involving eleven members of Congress, twelve US Army officers, three US Navy officers, one governor, five bankers, three nationally known newspapermen, and eleven wealthy industrialists.

 Lafayette Baker

Police officer John F. Parker had the dubious distinction of being the guy who was supposed to be guarding Lincoln at the time of the assassination, except that he instead opted to wander over next door to get good and drunk. Parker had a seriously checkered history with the department, having been written up on multiple occasions for conduct unbecoming an officer, the use of insolent language, visiting a house of prostitution, inappropriately discharging his weapon, sleeping on duty, and being drunk on duty. He was nevertheless assigned the task of guarding the president, a development that historians have been unable to explain. And he was assigned that task just in time to be neglecting his duties when Lincoln was shot.

 

Parker was never reprimanded in any way for abandoning his post and leaving the president vulnerable. In fact, he was returned to duty at the White House, an honor usually reserved for senior officers with unblemished records. He was released from duty though in 1868, just after Stanton relinquished his post as Secretary of War. Parker was never seen or heard from again, and it is believed that he was either killed or went into hiding to avoid being killed.

 

Next up is Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War and a seriously deranged individual. Prior to his emergence on the national scene, Stanton’s greatest claim-to-fame was securing an acquittal for US Representative Daniel Sickles on murder charges. On February 27, 1859, Sickles had gunned down the unarmed Philip Barton Key II, US Attorney for the District of Columbia and the son of famed composer Francis Scott Key. Stanton argued a temporary insanity defense for the first time in US history.

 Edwin Stanton

The media, apparently every bit as corrupt in those days as it is today, overwhelmingly supported Sickles while vilifying both Key and Sickles’ wife, who had reportedly been having an affair. Though standing trial for a capital offense, Sickles was allowed to stay in his jailer’s apartment, have unlimited visitors, and, most amazingly, retain his weapon. As already stated, Sickles was acquitted and was subsequently allowed to retain his seat in the House of Representatives. He later became a Civil War general and the US Minister to Spain.

 

Elsewhere in Stanton’s biography, we find that at various times in his life he personally ordered the exhumation of at least two bodies, one of them being his daughter Lucy, who was dug up circa 1842. According to reports, Stanton kept his daughter’s decomposing corpse in a special container in his home for at least a year. Nothing there that would cause anyone to question his fitness to serve as Secretary of War.

 

Stanton became a national figure when he was appointed by President Buchanan to serve as Attorney General on December 20, 1860, just weeks before Lincoln took office. He went on to wield considerable power in both the Lincoln and Johnson Administrations. Indeed, Johnson’s attempted dismissal of Stanton lead directly to the impeachment proceedings begun against him. Stanton’s reign came to an end though on December 24, 1869, when he turned up dead of unstated causes (though some reports allude to suicide, just as his brother had reportedly done in 1846). He had been nominated for a seat on the US Supreme Court by President Grant and confirmed by the US Senate, but he died before he could take that seat.

 

That is a whole lot of tragedy to befall a lot of people who were in a position to know more about the Lincoln assassination than they should have. There was though at least one guy who saw his fortunes rise. Major General Lew Wallace was a member of the hopelessly corrupt military tribunal that sat in judgment of Mary Surrat and others. In 1880, he became far better known as a writer of historical fiction when he wrote and published Ben Hur, the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century. Well over a hundred years later, it is still in print.

 Lew Wallace

… to be continued