Booth's Escape Route

[Linda Anderson]

(02-11-2013 09:27 PM)L Verge Wrote:  What was the comment that he supposedly said about being able to ring a bell on his desk and have anyone thrown in jail? That would have to infuriate people.

This is from Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man by Walter Stahr:

"He reportedly boasted to Lord Lyons in late 1861 that 'I can touch a bell on my right hand, and order the arrest of a citizen of Ohio; I can touch a bell again, and order the imprisonment of a citizen of New York; and no power on earth, except that of the President, can release them. Can the Queen of England do so much?' In all likelihood Seward never said this to Lyons: there is no trace of the remark in the detailed reports of Lyons to the British foreign minister, and at a dinner party in early 1864 Lyons told an interlocutor that he remembered no such conversation. The quote first appeared in anti-administration newspapers in 1863, and it has been repeated regularly since then. Some historians have agreed with the sentiment if not the wording; one wrote that, "during the first few months of the war, 'Seward had more arbitrary power over the freedom if individual American citizens all over the country than any other man has ever had, before or since.'"