Program on C-Span this weekend

[L Verge]

Christmas managed to curtail my reading of The Lincoln Deception, but I was able to finish it today. As for Roger's guess above of Lafayette Sabin Foster -- BINGO! Think weak Republican from Connecticut who represented the cotton mills and interests of his state.

Again, let me stress that this book is a work of fiction, but very well done. Personally, I do not believe that Mrs. Surratt ever revealed anything to John A. Bingham. There appears to be no record that he ever conversed with her; nor do I think that she was high enough up on the conspiracy food chain to be able to tell him of anything significant enough to bring down the republic.

Ignoring that, here's the basis of David O. Stewart's fictional plot: As I stated before, Stewart writes that the plot was a coup d'etat - not the simple assassination of Lincoln, Johnson, Seward, and maybe Grant. His line is that the plot was financed by Northern traders in cotton and tobacco with ties to the Confederacy. On the Confederate side, he ties the plot more to military leaders than to political leaders (to my dismay, Judah Benjamin is not mentioned once!). He also throws in some Union military leaders who might assist - like William Tecumseh Sherman.

By the time this novel is set - 1900 - many of those involved are dead, but those still alive are duty bound to keep the secret. The one military leader chosen by the author to be the remaining bad guy is Gen. James Longstreet. The civilian bad guys that remain are tied to the Cotton Exchange in NYC and to a boss at Tammany Hall. I believe they all may be fictitious names for real financiers, but there is one name that has me intrigued -- Julius Spencer. The father of J.P. Morgan was Junius Spencer Morgan, who founded the firm that we now know as J.P. Morgan. Junius was partnered with a man named Peabody during our Civil War, and their firm was the U.S. financial representative to England. The fictitious partner in the book is named Samuel Barstow, and the Tammany Hall culprit is named Boss Croker (Boss Tweed?).

Here's the fun part: Julius Spencer in the book is a cousin of Lafayette Sabin Foster. Wall Street money meets an open political door and finds a politician with little clout and one who can be controlled. Now we just have to remove some obstacles, whose names are Lincoln, Johnson, STANTON, and Grant. Betty O is going to have a heart attack at this point because the author calls Powell stupid! He goes after the wrong guy - his target was supposed to be Stanton, not Seward.

With Foster at the head of government, he becomes the puppet of the financiers. If he doesn't, they intend to bring McClellan into office. In any case, the idea is to merge the old Confederacy with the new U.S. wheelers-and-dealers and gain peace as well as to explore the possibilities of acquiring Canada and Mexico - and of course, making a ton of money for themselves along the way.

Are you up to speed on this? Do you need a score card yet? There is one more little tidbit that may or may not please Jenny on this forum. The hero of the book is a Dr. Fraser, real name Campbell, who is supposedly the doctor who heard Bingham almost reveal the secret on his deathbed. Fraser sets out to solve the mystery and finds love along the way (sigh!). She is a lovely, young widow by the name of Eliza Scott, who is manager for Creston Clarke, Asia Booth's son and nephew to JWB. Eliza was raised for part of her life by Asia and became an actress for awhile. Creston kept her in the family and made her his manager. Are you ready for the big one?

In the book, Eliza is really the illegitimate daughter of John Wilkes Booth and his mistress, Ella Starr. Don't laugh - it is possible. Remember that Booth brought Ella to D.C. about four months before the assassination, that she wrote a letter urging her love to meet with her, that she attempted suicide after learning what he had done. I'm not saying that it is probable, but it is possible.

I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Fraser's partner throughout the book - a black man by the name of Speed Cook. Speed is based on the real-life baseball great Moses Fleetwood (Fleet) Walker of Steubenville, Ohio (Stanton's hometown) who was the last African American to play in the big leagues between 1888 and 1947. Walker was a hard fighter for black rights and even wrote a pamphlet in the early-1900s advocating that his people should return to Africa because they would never be treated fairly in the U.S. In this book, Speed/Fleet is really a James Bond figure. With a knife and his brain, he can get himself and Fraser out of more trouble than Bond ever could with all his fancy gadgets -- and Speed is a happily married man who doesn't need a harem to surround him... His thoughts and the incidents that surround him, however, give a brief glimpse into the early-20th century's race problems.

Okay, there's my nutshell evaluation. I am not sure that one can call a book about assassination a fun read, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I love good murder mysteries anyhow, but it is even more fun when one knows the background information and can make educated guesses as one follows the plot. After you finish reading every scholarly tome, you need to read something like this book to clear the intellectual cobwebs from your mind.