Louis Weichmann

[Pamela]

(10-09-2015 06:05 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Pamela, do you perhaps know the answer to Roger's question here?
http://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussio...-2691.html

I've never seen his middle name. His high school diploma is hand lettered Louis Weichmann. Risvold lists examples of occasions when his name was spelled slightly different.

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Susan, I responded to your suggestion of a "bright pupil" with a sample of Abel's report that demonstrates that he wasn't bright, imo. Have you read the report? When I read it I hear the voice of a twelve year old which is weird considering that he was 83 at the time he wrote it. My take is that Abel was aware of a manuscript and another manuscript which was actually a copy but at the suggestion of his clergy became a second book. His recollection of the content went about as far as, Weichmann was the main or only witness in the assassination trial. He never read it, he never took it home with him. I think Weichmann may have told him some incidents in the story which He either misremembered or never understood to begin with.

[Gene C]

Excuse me if I have missed this in a previous post, is Abel's statement on line, or in any published book?

I can agree he might not have been the brightest light in the room , (especially after reading his comments about Stanton )

The reliability of his statement is certainly weakened due to the lapse of time (over 50 years) between when he witnessed events and later recorded them.

[L Verge]

"The reliability of his statement is certainly weakened due to the lapse of time (over 50 years) between when he witnessed events and later recorded it."

And may account in some ways for the historical errors that we note in what he wrote... Few of us can recite "the facts" that we read in a manuscript when we were fifteen.

[Susan Higginbotham]

(10-10-2015 06:35 AM)Pamela Wrote:  

(10-09-2015 06:05 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Pamela, do you perhaps know the answer to Roger's question here?
http://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussio...-2691.html

I've never seen his middle name. His high school diploma is hand lettered Louis Weichmann. Risvold interesting occassions for different spellings of his name.

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Susan, I responded to your suggestion of a "bright pupil" with a sample of Abel's report that demonstrates that he wasn't bright, imo. Have you read the report? When I read it I hear the voice of a twelve year old which is weird considering that he was 83 at the time he wrote it. My take is that Abel was aware of a manuscript and another manuscript which was actually a copy but at the suggestion of his clergy became a second book. His recollection of the content went about as far as, Weichmann was the main or only witness in the assassination trial. He never read it, he never took it home with him. I think Weichmann may have told him some incidents in the story which He either misremembered or never understood to begin with.

I've read excerpts from it. It reads to me like the writing of someone who was reasonably intelligent, especially when one considers Abel's patchy education and his advanced age. But it's all in the eye of the beholder, and the older my eyes get, the less I am inclined to say "never."

[Pamela]

I am not willing to minimize the inherent stupidity of his report, as do Susan and Laurie. For example, "I don't know who Stanton hated the most, Lincoln or the South, and to make matters worse, the large landholders, who had many slaves, gave a grand party in Washington, and of course many office holders were invited. But Stanton was not, and he vowed to get even with the South. Stanton was very jealous of Lincoln. He tried every way to belittle him in the eyes of the people, as he wanted to run the country himself."

So, Stanton hated the South and fought the South...because he didn't get invited to a party?? That must have been some party! (I bet the large landholders regretted snubbing Stanton) It's so dumb it hurts.

Gene, you can buy the 6 page report for a few bucks from the Surratt House Museum. I need a new printer/scanner. Maybe when I get one, I can scan the report.

[Susan Higginbotham]

(10-10-2015 08:19 PM)Pamela Wrote:  I am not willing to minimize the inherent stupidity of his report, as do Susan and Laurie. For example, "I don't know who Stanton hated the most, Lincoln or the South, and to make matters worse, the large landholders, who had many slaves, gave a grand party in Washington, and of course many office holders were invited. But Stanton was not, and he vowed to get even with the South. Stanton was very jealous of Lincoln. He tried every way to belittle him in the eyes of the people, as he wanted to run the country himself."

So, Stanton hated the South and fought the South...because he didn't get invited to a party?? That must have been some party! (I bet the large landholders regretted snubbing Stanton) It's so dumb it hurts.

Gene, you can buy the 6 page report for a few bucks from the Surratt House Museum. I need a new printer/scanner. Maybe when I get one, I can scan the report.

I've heard more outlandish things about Stanton (not that I believe them). Quite possibly Abel over eight decades heard such stories as well, and unconsciously absorbed them without giving much consideration to their accuracy. He never pretended to be a scholar of the assassination, or of anything else.

I spent a while tonight on Newspapers.com browsing through the Anderson, IN paper, and there was quite a bit about Abel. As he was one of the town's older citizens, reporters liked to get his recollections about various subjects relating to the town's history, including Weichmann. They evidently had a higher opinion of his intelligence than you do. It probably helped, of course, that he was a gregarious man who was happy to reminisce.

After retiring (he was a glass blower), Abel could have parked himself in front of the TV. Instead, he chose to travel, first with his wife, and then, after his wife's death, with one of his daughters. He went to every state, Europe, the Middle East, and Cuba, and appears to have enjoyed himself thoroughly. There are newspaper photographs of him riding a donkey and patting a porpoise.

When he died on December 30, 1976, at age 94 (his obit picture is below), he had lived a long, full life. If that's stupidity, I'll take it.

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Here's a clipping from the February 19, 1959, Anderson Daily Bulletin in which Abel recalls his meeting with Weichmann. There are some factual errors, but given that Abel is recalling an encounter that took place about 60 years before, I think he can be forgiven:

[Pamela]

Nice try, Susan. The fact that Abel lived a happy, active, well travelled and long life isn't the issue, and not related to how bright he was. I'm very happy for him.

The problem is that Father Conroy got information from a still young Abel, his parishioner, and wrote a report on Weichmann, which he gave to a Lincoln foundation. Somehow, between the two of them, the "Weichmann" story took a nasty, erroneous, and largely fictional turn that fed into the Catholic myth that Mary Surratt was an innocent Catholic woman betrayed by her Catholic boarder and was executed as a result. And to top it off, Weichmann was revealed to be writing a book accusing Catholics and the Pope of conspiring to assassinate, etc.

This goofy Father Conroy report has been repeated in varying degrees by historians as fact, and got written up by Ewald in the Surratt Courier. A guess is that Abel was manipulated by Conroy to a large extent. And, of course, Weichmann got trashed again despite the fact that the source of the story, Abel, clearly liked and respected him.

[Gene C]

Well, that explains it all.
It's not the inherently stupidity of Abel's report as much as it is the goofy Father Conroy's report. And between the two of them, (Intentionally or unintentionally, that is the question.) they manage to twist the story into a nasty, erroneous, and largely fictional turn that fed myths about the Catholic Church and Mary Surratt. And then over 100 years later, Ewald stirs it all up again with his article in the Surratt Courier.

Can anyone say "vast government conspiracy"?
It is a good thing they didn't have emails back then.

I'm starting to pick up some bad vibes on this thread. Fortunately, I have contacted a medical professional from Haiti (witch doctor, you may ask?) who says - If you stand on your left leg, and close your right eye, turn around three times while swinging a fried chicken over your head and whistling When Johnny Comes Marching Home, and then drink some Kentucky Bourbon from a Dixie Cup, followed by an over ripe Georgia peach, you might be able to understand how this could happen. Then again maybe not.

[Pamela]

And then you, Gene, get full credit for unearthing the folder and asking innocent questions in post #1

[Gene C]

Thank you, but I can't claim full credit, I couldn't have done it without everyone's help.

Which reminds me of a song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-07_2DWfEmQ

[L Verge]

Excellent piece of research, Susan! I had no idea that Abel lived until 1976. Erich Ewald was doing his early research just about that time, so Abel's death may have been one of the things that spurred him on in trying to find the "real" Weichmann. Erich was right there in the heart of Anderson.

I find it a little strange that this newspaper interview that Susan has given us seems to suggest that Weichmann was telling Abel that he had tried to spare Mrs. Surratt by telling the authorities that she didn't approve of what she thought the men were up to. That is certainly contrary to his final efforts to nail his landlady to a cross...

As for Abel's description of Stanton, he certainly was not alone in making the Secretary of War out to be an ogre. He was also born after the war and grew up during the time that revisionist historians were taking great delight in condemning Stanton. In our assassination field, Abel likely was exposed to the publicity that surrounded the works of Otto Eisenschiml. Otto's condemnation of Stanton would mesh nicely with the nasty Stanton that Weichmann had discussed with the teen-age Abel.

Gene, I also appreciate your prescription for making sense of all these theories intermingled with known facts. Since you want to make it a Southern recipe, don't forget to spit tobacco juice and pick cotton while you're doing this.

[Pamela]

Susan, when you were browsing Anderson, Indiana newspaper articles about Louis Abel did you happen to read the one dated May 24, 1958 which mentioned that Joseph Abel was Father Mulcahy's first altar boy? I think that fact is far more pertinent than petting porpoises and riding donkeys when it comes to understanding Father Conroy's report, which is largely based on Mulcahy's information, or should I say misinformation, and Abel's tale of the two manuscripts. It is certain that Abel would have wanted to please Father Mulcahy, based on their relationship. The article also describes Abel's involvement in St. Mary's Cadets.

https://img0.newspapers.com/img/img?id=1...f15a54e271

[Susan Higginbotham]

(10-16-2015 09:52 AM)Pamela Wrote:  Susan, when you were browsing Anderson, Indiana newspaper articles about Louis Abel did you happen to read the one dated May 24, 1958 which mentioned that Joseph Abel was Father Mulcahy's first alter boy? I think that fact is far more pertinent than petting porpoises and riding donkeys when it comes to understanding Father Conroy's report, which is largely based on Mulcahy's information, or should I say misinformation, and Abel's tale of the two manuscripts. It is certain that Abel would have wanted to please Father Mulcahy, based on their relationship. The article also describes Abel's involvement in St. Mary's Cadets.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but what in Conroy's report indicates that Abel was one of its sources? Conroy claims that Mulcahy was his main source. Even if Abel was a source, Mulcahy died in 1911, and Conroy's statement is dated 1943, so I don't think that Abel felt a pressing need to please Mulcahy 30-plus years after the priest's death.

Edit: Now that I skimmed Conroy's statement, it appears that a lot of his information (such as the claim that Weichmann was writing a book entitled, "The Pope and the Southern Confederacy") came from Weichmann's secretary at the business school who (allegedly) typed the manuscript. That wouldn't be Abel, who worked as a glassblower.

[Pamela]

In his report, Conroy said that the main source of his information on the Weichmanns was Reverend Mulcahy, who always looked at Louis with "undisguised contempt". The fact that many years later, Abel, his altar boy, and who was very young when he attended the business school, wrote a highly erroneous story about Weichmann's manuscript, which btw, reveals Mary Surratt's innocence, (which Mulcahy wanted to hear) and which he filed in the church, and that there were two manuscripts, is very reminiscent of the story told by the "secretary" who was described as a young man, a young secretary. The young man who "acted as Lou Weichmann's s secretary" typed a manuscript as opposed to it being given to him to take home to read by Weichmann, as reported by Abel in his report. Again, the description of the content of the manuscript is, imo, fictional. Conroy said that the young man who acted as secretary, got a job selling office supplies. It's possible that Abel had more than one job during his long lifetime--most people do, and sometimes two or three at the same time.

In other words, I'm suspicious about the identity of the young secretary who had so much information for Father Conroy, and exactly what Conroy wanted to hear. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but I wonder if the person described as a young secretary by Father Conroy, in a report in which he starts out by saying that most of his information came from Father Mulcahy, is actually Abel. The young secretary "worked for his tuition", according to Conroy, so he was a student, without much money, and Abel had to leave school at age 14 due to money problems. If they're not the same person, then there were two young boys (Catholic), providing Weichmann manuscript (and wrong) information to two successive Anderson Catholic priests who despised Louis.

[Susan Higginbotham]

If Abel typed a manuscript for Weichmann, why didn't he say so in his 1959 interview? I can't think of any reason for him to conceal this fact, as he evidently had a good opinion of Weichmann.

Not sure what you mean about information being provided to two priests--do you mean Mulcahy and Conroy? What information was provided to Mulcahy?

I don't find it improbable that Abel and the anonymous secretary were different people--evening schools attract working people, and there could have been any number of people who did various jobs for Weichmann's school in exchange for tuition. Anyway, the always-chatty Abel doesn't mention moonlighting as a typist or selling office supplies in his recollection here (also from 1959):

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BTW, I came across this letter from Weichmann to Judge Bingham just now, reminding Bingham of the "meed of praise" to which Weichmann is entitled and asking him to send him a letter for his book. I wonder if Bingham replied.

http://alplm-cdi.com/chroniclingillinois.../show/8325