Breaking a leg

[wsanto]

The Wood telegrams are quite a revelation. In my opinion, they are truly an amazing breakthrough with regard to the issue of Booth's broken leg.

Up to Dave Taylor's making this reveal in this forum there was scant evidence that Booth broke his leg at Ford's.

Yet despite this scant evidence, history had taught us that Booth broke his leg falling awkwardly to the stage during his initial escape. For over 100 years Booth's claim plus the incontrovertible fact the he fell awkwardly had been enough evidence until it was challenged by Mr. Kauffman's research.

Mr. Kauffman has made an excellent case that history was wrong and that Booth actually broke his leg in a horse fall between the Navy Yard Bridge and Surrattsville. A lot of smart people have discarded this previously accepted history and subscribed to Kauffman's relatively new theory.

Now we have the Wood telegrams which reveal that there must be something more to the story. Something that has not been discovered and might never be discovered. Wood either created the leap theory based entirely on his own deduction or he learned something that convinced him to discard what Mudd told the investigators about Booth's horse falling and what Davis' claimed about the condition of the Bay Mare.

If it was his own theory, based solely on his own deduction, he must have felt awfully smart when Booth's diary confirmed it weeks later. If you subscribe to Mr. Kauffman's theory this is what you have to believe.

I'll be quite honest, I don't believe Wood based his theory on his own deduction. The telegrams indicate that he is rather convinced; more so than one, if not a complete egomaniac, would be of his own power of deduction. The tone of the last telegram especially indicates, to me at least, that he learned this story from someone that knew the truth and convinced him of this conclusion.

Perhaps it is someone that could not be a witness because of the color of his or her skin or their position in society or the potential repercussion of their testimony. Unfortunately, this evidence may be forever lost to history unless Wood has left behind a yet undiscovered memoir or diary that indicates his thinking at this time.