Why was Booth admitted into the presidential box?

[John Fazio]

(04-24-2015 05:08 AM)loetar44 Wrote:  

(04-23-2015 07:50 PM)John Fazio Wrote:  Leotar44:

What documentary evidence do you refer to? What, in the nature of documentary or material evidence, do you suppose could exist? Would it satisfy you? We have Forbes's Affidavit, which, though it does not place him outside the presidential box (a clearly false statement, contradicted by everyone and everything else), at least establishes that he was charged with guarding the presidential party, which would, at the least, put him in the vicinity of the outer door. I think it is hazardous to rely on only one species of evidence, especially if other species exist. I quite agree with you about the fallibility of eyewitness testimony, which is why I and most prosecutors favor circumstantial evidence. It may be stronger than you realize.

In what way is the "whole Forbes story" speculation? Is not everything we believe about history in some degree speculation? History is not "what happened"; it is a record of what happened, and records are always in some degree deficient, because their creators are in some degree deficient. Anything is possible. Booth may have had a double that night. Maybe it wasn't Booth who was killed in the barn. Maybe Surratt had a double, which might explain why 5 people said he was in Elmira on the 14th and 14 said he was in Washington. Maybe O'Laughlen had a double, which might explain why 3 people said he was at Stanton's home on the 13th and 7 said he was with them carousing.

Let me offer a possibility as to why Ferguson (and Crawford) failed to mention Forbes. Booth had earlier made a dry run into the box (per Clara Harris, affirmed by Brooks). He almost certainly chose a moment when Forbes wasn't around (in the box, in the bathroom, who knows). Perhaps Ferguson and Crawford witnessed that entry and conflated it with the second entry. As I said: anything is possible, which is why we, as historians, cannot content ourselves with possibilities, but must insist on at least probabilities, inasmuch as certainty is virtually unobtainable. The probabilities re Forbes are as I have stated them.

John

IMO history is not “what you think” of the past, but “what happened” in the past. And if it cannot be retrieved, or completely known or understood you have to deal with that. It’s my opinion that the past cannot be fully known and if you fill in the gaps with “possibilities” or "probabilities", or things that “might” be happened, you are presenting history that will defeats itself. History is an academic discipline, not a popular pastime or a form of entertainment.

For me history is the study of the human past as it is described in e.g. written documents. I call that “documentary evidence”, belonging to any evidence in the form of documents.

Charles Forbes was never questioned about that night (to say he was questioned in private is speculation) and he was never heard at the subsequent conspiracy trial. He never said in a written document that he was at the moment of the murder in the dress circle or the doorkeeper. So there is no documentary evidence existing that Forbes was sitting in the dress circle or "guarding" the outer door. I respect documentary evidence better than the evidence furnished by eyewitnesses, about which there is always a certain amount of suspicion re. eyewitness accounts.

The man Booth handed his card has NEVER been identified. I know he is widely believed (since the 1980s) to have been Charles Forbes, but others say that Forbes by then had left to have a drink at Taltavull’s. What Booth took from his pocket is also a guess and that it was a falsified pass is speculation.

Leotar44

Sorry for not responding sooner. I have too many balloons in the air.

You say history is "what happened". Respectfully, I disagree. It is not "what happened"; it is a RECORD of what happened". Most of history is not known and never will be, because only a very small part of our lives is recorded, and then only with some degree of inaccuracy. Listen to Walt Whitman on the Civil War, a statement which can easily be applied to anything else in life:

The real war will never get in the books...Its interior history will never be written---its...minutia of deeds and passions will never even be suggested...Think how much, and of importance, will be--how much, civic and military, has already been buried in the grave, in eternal darkness.

"And if it cannot be retrieved, or completely known or understood, you have to deal with that." I am not sure what having to deal with that means, but I AM sure that nothing can be completely known or understood if we include in an event all its antecedent determinants and all its effects and results. Your conclusion must therefore be in error, because your premise is in error.

"It's my opinion that the past cannot be fully known... if you fill in the gaps with "possibilities" or "probabilities" or with things that "might" have happened..." I expressly stated that we should not content ourselves with possibilities or with things that might have happened, because anything is possible. But I also expressly stated that inasmuch as certainty is most often not obtainable, we must content ourselves with probabilities. We do so not because we love them, but because they are all we have. By accepting them, therefore, we do not diminish history as an academic discipline; we affirm it as such, as long as we recognize them (probabilities) to be what they are and nothing more.

"For me history is the study of the human past as it is described in... written documents." That statement exactly contradicts your earlier statement that "In my opinion history is "what happened" in the past, because, as I previously said, very little of "what happened in the past" is recorded in a document. To insist on documentation to confirm history, therefore, is to consign almost all of "what happened" to "eternal darkness".

"Charles Forbes was never questioned about that night..." Do you have a document to support that categorical conclusion? Of course not. Then why should it be asserted as history? Eyewitness testimony, circumstantial evidence and reason, as well as an understanding of human nature, dictate an opposite conclusion. It is logical and reasonable to suppose that he would have been questioned by someone in the government or in the White House, e.g. by Lincoln's secretaries and/or family members. If he was never questioned, how does one account for John Nicolay's writing (in 1902) that "Showing a card to the servant in attendance, he was allowed to enter..." Nicolay, of course, was a White House insider. And how does one account for another White House insider, William Stoddard, writing in 1884, saying that "One of the President's "messengers" was at the end of an inner passage leading to the box-door, for the purpose of preventing undue intrusions. To him Booth presented a card, stating that Mr. Lincoln had sent for him." Both of those statements are corroborated by McGowan's testimony given at the trial of the conspirators in 1865. Recall that McGowan was 5 feet from Booth and Forbes. It is also corroborated by Dr. Leale's statements, given in 1867. It is also corroborated by Booth's diary and Davy Herold's statement of April 27, 1865. It seems to me that the statements made and written by Nicolay, Stoddard, McGowan, Dr. Leale, Booth and Herold, not since the 1980's, but between 1865 and 1902 (to say nothing of partial corroboration from Todd, Koontz, Harper's Magazine and Gath), lift the issue out of the darkness and into the realm of probability, which is all we are ever likely to have and which we should therefore be grateful to have. It seems reasonably obvious to me that Ferguson and Crawford, whose pegs the naysayers hang their hat on, were in some degree distracted, probably by the play, and did not witness the exchange between Booth and Forbes and therefore did not record it, though conflation with Booth's earlier entry remains a remote possibility.

As for what Booth showed Forbes, I did not claim that my belief in the forged authorization is history; merely that, in my judgment, it fits the totality of the circumstances better than any other explanation and is supported by the four oblique references to which I allude in the book.

John