When was it to late to kidnap?

[BettyO]

Since I feel (aka Hall, Gaddy and Tidwell's work) that the Confederate hierarchy with Benjamin as perhaps the main acting head of the push behind a kidnapping plot, was instigated at the insistence of the government, those Confederate troops in the field in the Eastern Theatre disbanded primarily on April 9 with the Surrender; however, Mosby’s men didn’t disband until April 21 (of which Powell was a part) and those troops in the Western Theatre didn’t completely disband until May of 1865. There were still troops out in the field.

The Confederacy had been used to using “terrorism” aka the plot to burn New York, the supposed “yellow fever plot”, Harney’s plot to blow up the White House, etc. for quite a while. The Kidnap Plot was essentially simply another of these supposed “plots.” When did it turn to murder? That is anyone’s guess. I feel that wires could have possibly been crossed, since there were still troops out in the field at the time. There were Confederate agents (Jones, Cox, Mudd, et. al.) all throughout Maryland and Virginia who aided agents and others back and forth through the lines. The Confederate cabinet was active in both New York and Canada. Although Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, Mosby’s men were still working out in Virginia as well as in Maryland and there were still active units out west.

Booth could have assumed that a plot to assassinate was eminent or handed down to him by Confederate officials – or he could have been acting on his own interpretation of affairs which were at the time going on. It’s one of the things that make studying the assassination so interesting!