Louis Weichmann

[Pamela]

(03-20-2015 04:47 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(03-19-2015 05:29 PM)Pamela Wrote:  This may have been discussed before, but in case it hasn't, I was wondering about a couple of incidents. Any thoughts about what Mary Surratt would have done if Weichmann wasn't given a half day off on April 14th? Would she have gone to his place of employment to ask him to take off work? Would she have gone to Surratt tavern by herself? Would she just not have gone? Also, she had Weichmann write the note to Nothey on the 14th including signing her name. Why did she have Weichmann write the note? Any ideas?

I really do not know. All I can say is how different history might be if Stanton had not let War Department workers off to attend religious services that Good Friday. Laurie can best answer this, but my initial thought is that she would not make such a trip all alone. But who knows!

It was that last trip that was really her undoing, at least in terms of her sentence, just hours before the assassination and almost-slaughter at Seward's house, and the fact that Herold and Booth only took one of the carbines, so that afterwards investigators found the match for the one found with Booth still in the tavern. She even told Lloyd to have whiskey for the conspirators, despite her hatred for the stuff due to her husband's alcoholism. She tossed Atzerodt from her boarding house because of bottles found in his room.

Booth must have had world class charm to have kept Mary in the game after Weichmann found her sobbing for fear of John's safety the day of the attempted kidnapping. Anna was also angry at Booth for putting her brother in danger. I was surprised in reading The Evidence to see only one interrogation of Mary Surratt. There must have been more, especially since she didn't have a lawyer at first.