(05-27-2015 06:29 AM)BettyO Wrote:  Here is the McClearmont testimony -

Reading your book, John - I must say that it is fascinating and I'm really enjoying it! You bring up some good points -

Here is the McClearmont testimony from the Surratt Trial: Vol I, pp. 365-366.

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I have known about "Mrs. Condby's Boarding House and Restaurant" for awhile. I remember Mr. Hall talking about it - I looked it up in the 1864 DC City Directory and she did indeed keep a boarding house and restaurant.

It is my opinion that the "boys" either met at the Canterbury Music Hall on the night of the 14th - or rather, Mrs. Condby's - NOT the Herndon House.... Mr. Hall also seemed to think the same thing....

(05-27-2015 09:23 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  This is off the topic of this thread, but I commend both Betty and John for taking such a serious look at the location and time of that final meeting (and both of their efforts to figure it out). It's always been something I have wondered about since Powell checked out of the Herndon House several hours before the meeting apparently took place.

(05-23-2015 09:55 PM)John Fazio Wrote:  Roger and Bill:

I come to this a little late, but let me weigh in.

It is not necessary to postulate that Booth found Harney in the Old Capitol Prison through informants, though that is of course possible. He would have had a hard time communicating with him there, assuming he could even get to see him. The far greater likelihood, in my opinion, is that he was informed of the failure of Harney's mission and the capture of Harney at Burke Station by telegraph and ordered to proceed with the contingency plan, which Surratt had most likely received in Richmond when he was there in late March and early April, returning to Washington on April 3 and leaving for Montreal the next morning, stopping first in New York to see Booth (who was in Boston). Thus it was that Booth advised Surratt in Montreal, on the 10th (Harney was captured on the 9th, per Crawford) that their plans had changed and that in consequence thereof he was to return to Washington forthwith, which he did, or at least began to do, "immediately", or so he told McMillan. In these circumstances, it doesn't make a lot of sense that he would stop in Elmira and blithely patronize tailors and haberdashers. In my opinion, Booth did not "decide to do his (Harney's) job for him"; he had already been instructed to approximate Harney's intended results if Harney's mission failed. I agree that at least Lincoln, Johnson, Seward, Stanton and Grant were targeted. Many others may also have been targeted (as many as 15, per the Confederate agent "Johnston"), but the evidence for these is weak.

It is unlikely that Surratt was on the train with Grant, but it is nearly certain that someone was and that the someone's assignment was to assassinate Grant. Remember that there were many more involved in the conspiracy than Booth and his action team. Remember that Powell said to Eckert that "All I can say about this is that you (Federal prosecutors) do not have the one-half of them" and that it was his "impression" that others had been assigned to make such disposition with respect to other Federal officeholders as he was to make of Seward. What this tells us is that would-be assassins were in motion that night other than Booth and his team, such as it was, and that whoever was assigned to kill Grant was almost certainly outside of Booth's immediate team.

I regard the letter to Grant as genuine (there is nothing self-serving about it) and so, apparently, did Grant and Julia. It appears in all of Grant's biographies, in Julia's Memoirs and in a conversation Grant had with Lamon in 1880. Further, Josiah Bunting III claimed that Julia actually heard the scuffling on the platform. Further, the reference to a locked car door in the letter squares perfectly with Grant's expressed recollection. It is nearly impossible that Surratt--the cold-blooded killer of Union POW's and Union agents on the Potomac, whose deeds, if known by McMillan, he said, would make him "stare" or "gape"-- would have authored such a letter, which is very persuasive evidence that Surratt was not on the train. Who would Booth have assigned to do the job? Why do we automatically assume that Booth did the assigning? Booth was himself being handled, an assignee as well as an assignor. Why wouldn't one of his handlers, or in any case someone other than he, someone in a position of greater authority, have made the assignment?

Where was Surratt on the 14th? I believe the greater likelihood is that he was in Washington, but it is still an open question. One must at least consider the possibility that he made use of a double. There is, in fact, reference to a Surratt "personator" in the literature. If there were such, and he made use of him, it would explain everything. In any case, it is not necessary to determine where he was to exclude him as the would-be assassin of Grant.

All of the foregoing, and much more, is in my book, "Decapitating the Union". The more copies one orders, the cheaper they are. In fact, if one orders 100,000 or more copies, one gets them for nothing.

John

(06-10-2015 08:28 PM)Pamela Wrote:  As for who was on Grant's train, maybe it was Surratt. Surratt was full of derring do, like Booth (at least on stage), he was partners with Booth and judging from Booth's behavior toward the Grants on the 14th, Grant's murder was tremendously important. As for the letter, Surratt could have had someone else write the letter. It would make it look like someone else attempted the assassination. That was a trick he used with Weichmann more than once.

(06-19-2015 05:47 PM)Pamela Wrote:  ......like the way the Lincolns and Clara Harris and her fiancé travelled to the theater.