Thomas F. Harney

[John Fazio]

(11-18-2014 05:45 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(11-17-2014 03:47 PM)John Fazio Wrote:  8. Three witnesses at the trial testified that O'Laughlen was at Stanton's home on the night of the 13th. Their testimony was corroborated by Atzerodt in one of his confessions.

John, do you know if the reception given by Ellen and Edwin Stanton was announced in the newspapers? The reason I ask is I am curious how O'Laughlen knew to go there as I believe these witnesses said the person they identified as O'Laughlen asked for both Grant and Stanton. Is it your feeling that the person was definitely O'Laughlen? Do you feel that if Grant and Stanton had been produced when asked for that O'Laughlen was going to shoot them both during the reception?

Linda, thank you for the information on Flower's book.

Roger:

First, let me correct something in my earlier email re the evidence favoring the Stanton-as-intended-victim conclusion. I left out number 15. Here it is:

15. No less an authority than our own Wild Bill Richter concluded, in The Last Confederate Heroes, Vol. 1, that the Confederate Government planned the destruction of Abraham Lincoln "and his government" (pp. 360, 361). Bill and I are far apart on our sentiments and sympathies re the war, but interestingly we came to the same conclusions as to what really happened on April 14, as did Tidwell, to whom he dedicates his book, as "The man who figured it out".

Now, to your questions, which, IMO, are very good ones.

I do not know if the reception was announced in the newspapers, but IMO it wasn't necessary. O'Laughlen almost certainly learned of it from Booth, with whom he met at the National shortly after his arrival in Washington from Baltimore on the 13th, from where he had been summoned by Booth. The question then becomes: How did Booth know? And the answer is almost certainly that he had a source or sources of information in the government , about which much more can be said if I had the time and space. Tidwell came to the same conclusion. It was doubtless from this same source or sources that Booth learned that the Lincolns and the Grants would be attending the theatre on Friday night, long before noon on the 14th (the conventional widom). See p. 423 of Come Retribution. Whether the intruder at Stanton's home on the 13th was O'Laughlen is one of the great unknowns, but I believe it was, because O'Laughlen met with Booth late in the day on the 13th (as said) and again in the morning of the 14th. This suggests strongly that he was given an assignment by Booth on the 13th and that he reported the results of the assignment to Booth on the 14th. In one of his confessions, Atzerodt said that there was no doubt that O'Laughlen knew "much of all the affairs" and that "although an alibi was tried to be made out, there is no doubt in the minds of those who know all the circumstances of O'Laughlen but that he did visit Secretary Stanton's home as charged in the testimony before the Commission."

No, I certainly do not believe O'Laughlen would have killed anyone on the 13th. Booth had a plan. The massacre was to take place on the 14th. A murder of a high official on the 13th would have thrown a gigantic monkey wrench into his delicately calibrated machinery.

John