Louis Weichmann

[Pamela]

I reread Ewald's article and in it he said that Abel (a former student of Weichmann's, only 15 years old at the time and did office work in exchange for tuition) placed his reports in the church files so I suppose Abel worked for the church at some level. This Church, St Mary's is where Weichmann's brother was pastor, followed by Mulcahy and then Conroy. Both Mulcahy and Conroy despised Weichmann, and Conroy came to the church after Weichmann's death, never knew him, but he knew he hated him.

It's difficult to get through father Conroy's report because it's so crazy, "...he (Louis Weichmann) turned against her (Mary Surratt) with the open flaming mouth of a hyena at the trial before the military tribunal." Conroy says that from information he got from Abel, Weichmann was writing a book called "The Pope and the Southern Confederacy" which describes how the Pope instigated the Southern rebellion and supported it to the end. He speculated that possibly Weichmann claimed to represent this papal conspiracy and then disclosed the plot to the north in order to become a hero. Conroy suggested that after Weichmann's death his brother would have found and destroyed the manuscript for obvious reasons.

In Abel's writings, at least the parts Ewald put in his article in the Surratt Courier, there's no mention of a Pope book, but Abel said Weichmann was writing two books to ease his conscience and that Mary Surratt was innocent. It gets really funny when Abel recounts an event at Mary's boarding house. Booth, Mary, John and other unnamed "boys" were present when Booth gave John a knife with which to assassinate Seward, Mary grabbed it and chided the boys. Booth retrieved the knife.

How does that prove Mary's innocence exactly?

Abel wrote his report and placed it in church files before Weichmann's book was edited and published by Risvold. Ewald dismissed the actual book by Weichmann as"... having nothing of great value to the historian beyond a few irrelevant details."