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

[Laurie Verge]

Your thoughts above on how we need to consider the role of Northern Copperheads are the reasons why Bill and I have clung to the hope that Dixie Reckoning would ultimately be published -- but I want some serious re-writing done as far as the style in which the material is presented so that the really important points jump off the page at you without all the superfluous rhetoric that indicates (to me) a writer who is trying to impress people with how smart he is!

I then hope that the so-called "original" papers and files will be turned over to respectable scholars and archivists for intense study and verification or refutation. I believe that this will require not only assassination scholars, but general Civil War and 19th-century social historians who are able to find careless phrases, etc. that suggest forgeries. This is largely how the transcripts of the "lost pages of the diary" were exposed and how Steers, McPherson, and Chaconas have worked to debunk the Neff assertions.

Personal comment about Booth's statement about returning to Washington to clear his name: For years, I wanted it to mean that he was going to expose his bosses. I think I have resigned myself to thinking that he meant he was going to announce his political and social reasons for assassinating Lincoln in an open forum.