Speeches and Lectures on the Assassination

[Rhatkinson]

The c-span.org site contains a ton of lectures and programs on a variety of topics including Lincoln's assassination. It has a search feature where you can enter subject keywords or search by the name of the person speaking. There are some wonderful lectures by respected authors and students of the assassination such as James Swanson that I would invite you to check out for yourself.

I found this speech from Terry Alford given at the Ford's Theater symposium just in March. The speech was very similar to the one Alford gave at this year's Surratt Conference (which was excellent as usual despite my [deserving] placement on the receiving end of some chastisement from Ms. Chaconus for my failure to alert her that I would not need my seat on the bus to the Smithsonian on Friday. My dad, who attended with me as a last minute replacement for my brother, Josh, and who does not share my deep interest (or "obsession" if you ask my wife) with the events of 150 years ago, but who nicely tagged along from SC so that I wouldn't have to make the drive alone, remarked after we were "put in our place" by Ms. Chaconus in the lobby of the Lincoln Center on 10th St. Sunday morning, "boy, that lady doesn't put up with any ******, does she?" Indeed, she does not! haha.)

http://www.c-span.org/video/?324113-6/di...lkes-booth

The only disappointment I had at the conference was missing the Booth escape tour guided by Mr. Swanson due to his illness. Having already been on the tour twice, he was the ONLY reason that I planned to attend again and had looked forward to meeting him for months. If you have never read Manhunt or Bloody Crimes (or for that matter, his JFK assassination book, End of Days, then you are missing out, as he is, in my opinion, THE most gifted writer of history and particularly of the Lincoln assassination, to ever put pen to paper. If you doubt this, please take a moment and read Chapter 4 of Bloody Crimes and I believe that you will agree with me that it is the single best chapter ever written on Lincoln's assassination.

Anyway, c-span has several good talks from Swanson on the assassination that you may enjoy, including these two:
http://www.c-span.org/video/?301645-31/b...ody-crimes

http://www.c-span.org/video/?285248-1/as...am-lincoln

I hope that everyone is well. Take care.

Heath