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RE: Assassination Trivia
Good job, Joe! In his 1870 lecture at Rockville, Maryland, John Surratt said:
Doubtless you all know who Louis J. Weichmann is. They were sent to him because he knew of the plot to abduct President Lincoln. I proclaim it here and before the world that Louis J. Weichmann was a party to the plan to abduct President Lincoln. He had been told all about it, and was constantly importuning me to let him become an active member. I refused, for the simple reason that I told him that he could neither ride a horse nor shoot a pistol, which was a fact. These were two necessary accomplishments for us. My refusal nettled him some; so he went off, as it afterwards appeared by his testimony, and told some government clerk [Captain Gleason] that he had a vague idea that there was a plan of some kind on hand to abduct President Lincoln. This he says himself: that he could have spotted every man on the party. Why didn't he do it? Booth was sometimes rather suspicious of him, and asked me if I thought he could be trusted. Said I, "Certainly he can. Weichmann is a Southern man," and I always believed it until I had good reason to believe otherwise, because he had furnished information for the Confederate government, besides allowing me access to the government records after office hours. I have very little to say of Louis J. Weichmann. But I do pronounce him a base-born perjurer; a murderer of the meanest hue! Give me a man who can strike his victim dead, but save me from a man who, through perjury, will cause the death of an innocent person. Double murderer!!!! Hell possesses no worse fiend than a character of that kind. Away with such a character. I leave him in the pit of infamy, which he has dug for himself, a prey to the lights of his guilty conscience.
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Assassination Trivia
