Louis Weichmann

[Pamela]

(07-08-2015 11:05 AM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  

(07-08-2015 05:21 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(02-12-2015 01:58 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Long ago I asked this question, and my aging brain does not recall a specific reply (not sure if there was one). For some reason I think I may have read somewhere (years ago) that Weichmann said that on two occasions bullets whizzed past his head at night in the years after the assassination. He felt someone was trying to kill him. Am I imagining this?

Last night while reading Michael Schein's new book I came across what I had read many years ago, although it's not exactly as I remembered it. But there were apparently two assassination attempts against Louis Weichmann in the years subsequent to the assassination. Weichmann's sisters were interviewed in 1926 by Lloyd Lewis. In his book Shein includes what the sisters told Lloyd Lewis:

"One evening, as he was walking home from work, a neighbor woman screamed to him to run. A man was following him on the other side of the street and began to run as soon as Lou did. The woman held the door open and pulled Lou in just as the man fired. The bullet stuck in the door. Another time he was sitting in the second-story window at home reading when a revolver went off across the street and the bullet hit the window sill and fell down into a flower-bed where a little neighbor girl was playing."

Assuming both stories are true the incidents happened when Weichmann was living in Philadelphia. Could John Surratt have tried to kill Weichmann? If not Surratt, who else might have tried?

I don't believe Surratt was the would-be assassin (assuming there was one). He was too obvious a suspect, and after he married and had children, he had a lot more to lose.

I hadn't read about the flower pot incident. There was a third event that his sisters recounted, I believe in a newspaper interview. A man in drag came to his parent's home and his father answered the door. The "woman" asked for Lou and his father wouldn't let "her" enter. When she left, his father followed her to a street corner where she got into a carriage, I believe other men were in the carriage. The family believed the man in drag wanted to shoot Louis. Weichmann said he believed that if wasn't imprisoned for a few weeks before the trial, he would have been murdered.

I wonder how much of John Surratt's anger and contempt for his former friend was genuine. He publicized those feelings but it may have been a way to deflect criticism for bringing others into the plot, including his mother, and then making sure he was safe while others hung or went to prison. Maybe he deluded himself as well and really hated Louis so he could live with himself.

As sneaky as he was and used to taking risks, I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to kill Weichmann. Louis said, that when John and the others returned from the failed kidnapping, John leveled his gun at him, and then said something to the effect that his life was ruined and could Lou help him get a job.

Mary's lawyers made a scapegoat of Louis as part of their defense, and afterwards there was a public backlash against her execution,so I guess any number of Confederates would want to kill him.