Events occurring at Assassination Time

[AussieMick]

I came across an article which describes an attempted aggravated burg (as we call them here, where the owner is at home) on the night of the assassination.

Has anybody perused the April 1865 newspaper articles for suspicious events which could be relevant to the assassination events? It would take quite some time I guess. Plus, some stories may not have come to light until months later. The article below was published in June 1865 ... odd, that it took so long to appear?

Mr Botts was a Virginian who, as I understand it, strongly supported the Union and was involved in peace discussions up until Sumter.


https://www.nytimes.com/1865/06/04/archi...botts.html

"On the night of Good Friday -- the night the late President was murdered -- the residence of Hon. JOHN MINOR BOTTS, at Auburn, Brandy Station, Culpepper, Va., was attacked by a party of seven guerrillas, and the life of that Unionist put in jeopardy.

They arrived near midnight, when all the family had retired, with the exception of Mr. BOTTS and a friend of his stopping with him, the barking of the dogs giving these gentlemen the first intimation of their untimely visitors. On proceeding to the door, in answer to their knock, Mr. BOTTS was confronted by a party of three, whose carbines, cocked and aimed, were presented at his breast. On asking them what they desired, the reply was, "Your money or your life." Mr. BOTTS then suddenly closed and bolted the door, went and armed himself and friend with loaded revolvers, and the two then reopened the door and again faced the party. Seeing the new condition of things, the guerrillas changed their tactics, one of them exclaiming, that as they saw he was a true man, they would not further disturb him. The cowardly midnight robbers then departed, and the next morning several of the neighbors were found to have been the victims of the same party. This is the first time Mr. BOTTS has ever been attacked, and it is a little singular that the occurrence should have taken place on the night of the assassination. -- Norfolk Old Dominion.

[Steve]

The earliest newspaper article I could find on the attack on John Minor Botts was from the 1st column of page 2 of the 29 May 1865 Baltimore Sun:

   

If read literally, it says the attack on Botts occurred on 14 May 1865, not 14 April. But then again a small blurb like this might be copied from another newspaper and the Sun editor didn't realize this other paper meant April.

By 01 June 1865 newspapers across the country began reporting the attack occurred on the same night as the President's assassination:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/...nge&page=1

We'd probably have to check local newspapers not in any database to be sure which paper(s) made the error. (Botts' home was about 60+ miles southwest of Washington DC.) For now, I'll assume 14 April 1865 is the correct date. As for any connection to the assassination because of the same date, I think it's just coincidental.

[AussieMick]

'just coincidental'.
Yes, Steve. I'd agree.
In a large city like Washington, it would be unusual if there were no crimes, other than the assassination and attack on the Seward house, committed on that night. The fact that Washington was (still 'is' of course) the home of many political figures increases the chance that a victim of any crime is going to be a politician.

[RJNorton]

My question is not exactly on topic, but I thought of it when I was reading this thread.

On page 280 of Theodore Roscoe's Web of Conspiracy the author discusses rumors that in a few locations in the USA people "knew" about the assassination before it occurred. Roscoe writes:

"And on the afternoon of the 14th, the Whig Press in Middletown, New York, announced that Lincoln had been killed by an assassin - one of the oddest headlines in the history of journalism."

Can it be discovered if this is true? Did the Whig Press somehow announce Lincoln's assassination before it occurred?

(The same information about the Whig Press's early announcement is on p. 145 of Jim Bishop's The Day Lincoln Was Shot.)

[AussieMick]

From what I see, the Whig Press printed editions on the Wednesday of each week. I guess its possible that a special edition for Friday 14th could have been printed.

I see (according to Newspaperarchive) only 5 newspapers (such as Indianapolis Daily Journal) printed some details of the assassination on the 15th April ... but it is possible those newspapers may have had the habit of printing an edition with "yesterday's " date so it appeared as if they were first with the news. (Like some glossy magazines now have their February 2019 issue in the shops)
Or they had a 'late' edition.
The other thing is that it is conceivable that a newspaper (maybe not the Whig Press) got lucky. There have been instances where the death of the Pope or Queen Elizabeth have appeared in a newspaper by mistake. Every newspaper has these type of stories stored away for when the time comes ... maybe the newspaper in 1865 on April 14th printed an error which came to be true.
Coincidences do happen ... But, no, .... I think we'd all know about it if it happened.

[Steve]

According to Chronicling America's newspaper directory the Middletown Whig Press was published weekly:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83031282/

And Mick is right it only published on Wednesdays, April 12th and April 19th:

https://newspaperarchive.com/middletown-...-1865-p-1/

So, definitely no 14 April 1865 edition.

[RJNorton]

Michael and Steve, thank you!

[Rob Wick]

The first newspaper job I ever had was with a weekly, and we printed on Wednesday. Every weekly I am familiar with prints on a Wednesday. I once asked an old editor why that was. The best he could tell me was "because." Yeah, he wasn't a very good editor.

And as far as pre-written obituaries are concerned, most newspapers didn't do those until newspapers switched from linotype to offset printing. The main reason is because to set a linotype page requires a good deal of time, and a large obituary (over several column inches) would be impractical. Plus, in the old days time wasn't of the essence. When papers switched to offset printing, all an editor had to do was to update bits of information on a pre-written file and send it to the composing room. Most of the media outlets who do pre-written obits, or "advancers" as they are known in the business, are the New York Times or Washington Post or television media like CNN or the other major networks. Often, the media outlet will interview the person being written about (alive, of course). Here's a fun fact. The man who wrote Gerald Ford's obituary (not sure for which newspaper) actually died 11 months before Ford.

I think everyone here is right. Just coincidence.

Best
Rob

[Eva Elisabeth]

Huh, Rob, I have often wondered how media could come up so quickly with perfectly "designed" obituaries on VIPs. (So you are a VIP when your obituary is written during your lifetime...?) As for the timing - was it in linotype not possible and practice (as later - still I think) to leave a column for last-minute news?

[Rob Wick]

Eva,

The very first paper I worked for still had a working Linotype machine that we used to make funeral cards (cards that are handed out at a funeral that has the deceased's funeral information.). In the basement was one of the last newspaper pages set that way. It weighed around 100 pounds, because it was nothing but solid lead. Before the development of the Linotype, most papers were four to six pages because each story had to be set by hand. Once the Linotype was invented everything changed. Yet it still wasn't very fast. If you look at newspapers in the major metropolitan areas, they had rooms full of the machines in order to get a paper (or several editions of a paper) out.

You ask about leaving a column open for last-minute news. Even with the Linotype that rarely happened. What you normally found was a small item on the front page announcing a major event and then follow-ups in later editions (either the next day or week for smaller papers and later editions for major metros). Larger papers would add more details in later editions, and sometimes on major news you would have "extras," or extra editions. Adding news to an already finished page rarely happened. Once the page was put together by a compositor based on the editor's dummy sheet and then tightened in a vice-like lock, you didn't want to have to take it apart. That's why you find many more errors in a page that was set that way because it was too much trouble to redo it.

I think one could say that most pre-written obits are for VIPs. The New York Times and other major media outlets have people whose only job is to write obits. At my level I did a little of everything. I estimate (conservatively) that over my 14-year career I probably wrote 15,000 to 20,000 obits, all of them after the person died. The only obit we had pre-written was for the mayor of one of the towns I worked in. That was in 1990. As of this day, he's still alive.

Best
Rob