Louis Weichmann

[Pamela]

Of course and I always keep that in mind. There are some historians that don't. Sloan's comment sounded arrogant, thoughtless and dismissive, JMO. I do think weight should be given to historical figures who knew Weichmann, watched him testify, and had important roles in those historical events.

I haven't read Herndon's book; I better catch up. Annie Weichmann and her gang might have made herself useful with him.

I'll take a guess regarding Conroy, Mulcahy and Abel. Abel was an alter boy for Mulcahy and mentioned that he was going to Weichmann's school for free tuition in exchange for office work. Mulcahy's Weichmann radar began spinning out of control. Over a period of time he pumped Abel for info. There were multiple copies of the manuscript. Those copies became two books to Abel and Mulcahy but not in reality. Maybe Abel typed copies or not; he caught glimpses of the writing in Louis's office. Maybe he helped pack them up to ship to Holt, Richards or Porter. Perhaps he saw portions of the chapter on Father Walters but didn't read it through and wouldn't have understood it if he did. That chapter sent Mulcahy into overdrive and became The Pope and the Southern Confederacy. BTW, was there a northern confederacy? oh yeah, Canada! The reality was that Weichmann very clearly said there was no Papal conspiracy, since the Pope ordered Surratt's arrest, but that there were individual clergy who supported the southern cause, but were not part of a vast conspiracy.

Mulcahy passed the tale on to Conroy who might have added some Catholic guilt and assorted codswallop of his own to the mix, and saw the necessity of sending this very important historical account to the Lincoln studies in Fort Wayne or whatever it was. Abel felt the vital importance of writing his version 70 years later and filed it in St Mary's where Ewald found it and drew inspiration. The rest is history, and pun intended, so to speak.

Maybe Weichmann did tell Abel about the conspiracy and trials one night during a storm. Perhaps there is some truth to some of the anecdotes of Weichmann's behavior. But what never happened, not in a million years, was that he sent a manuscript home a poorly educated 15 yr old boy to read.