Presidential security

[RJNorton]

(11-26-2013 04:38 PM)J. Beckert Wrote:  Mary Lincoln's upbraiding of Parker is on record somewhere.

Joe, I don't know about Pendel, but one version of this comes from Elizabeth Keckly. The following information comes from the second page of the article here:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-ar...guard.html

"Incredibly, Parker remained on the White House security detail after the assassination. At least once he was assigned to protect the grieving Mrs. Lincoln before she moved out of the presidential mansion and returned to Illinois. Mrs. Lincoln’s dressmaker, former slave Elizabeth Keckley, recalled the following exchange between the president’s widow and Parker: “So you are on guard tonight,” Mrs. Lincoln yelled, “on guard in the White House after helping to murder the President.”

“I could never stoop to murder,” Parker stammered, “much less to the murder of so good and great a man as the President. I did wrong, I admit, and have bitterly repented. I did not believe any one would try to kill so good a man in such a public place, and the belief made me careless.”

Mrs. Lincoln snapped that she would always consider him guilty and ordered him from the room. Some weeks before the assassination, she had written a letter on Parker’s behalf to exempt him from the draft, and some historians think she may have been related to him on her mother’s side."