J. J. Reford and J. J. Chaffee...who were they?...Really??

[Bill Richter]

Ok, I have not taken a secrecy pledge, but as it involves a forthcoming book by Rick Stelnick, Dixie Reckoning, I will only give a quick overview, all of it off the top of my head Please bear with me if I get some of it screwed up and accept my apology ahead of time.

I would have to look Chaffee up so I will skip him, but both he and J J Reford are part of the so-called New York Comspiracy that was in competition with Booth to assassinate Lincoln and is hinted at in several books and by Booth himself. The New York crowd was composed of the Old Dutch families from the 1600s who were still in control of much of NYC finance and trade during the Civil War. What put Stelnick on to these guys was the address on Water Street that was known by historians for years through the letters to John Surratt and another Confederate agent R D Watson from the De Mille company. Their goal was to lengthen the Civil War even for a few months so as to increase their war profits. If De Mille sounds familiar, they were connected to the great movie mogul C B De Mille, one of the modern heirs to the De Mille fortune in trade.

The De Mille's wanted not to assassinate Lincoln because they were making so much off illegal trade between the US and the CS during the war. If this sounds familiar a similar tale comes out of the Neff and Gutteridge book Dark Union. Booth went ahead and did the assassination under Confederate auspices as put forth in T, H, G's Come Retribution. So the De Milles, angered by Booth breaking a supposed deal not to kill the president, sent their assassin J J Reford after the actor to kill him in revenge, but he arrived too late at Garrett's to do the job himself. Then, much like the 20th century Kennedy assassination, Reford hunts down and eliminates anyone who might have known the truth about the New York Conspiracy.

It has been a couple of years since I read all of this and wrote the intro to Stelnick's book, which I understand is forthcoming "shortly" whatever that means. He and his publisher have gotten together after the New Jerseyite Stelnick was wiped out in the Storm Sandy this last fall, losing his condo, car and his computer and all of his computer files.

I hope I have got this correct and apologize again to the readers of this email and to Stelnick for the errors. It is a book well worth reading, no matter one's viewpoint as to its feasibility. Stelnick makes a good case.