Boston Corbett

[Wild Bill]

What Courts Martial? What shot in the back? I guess the neck bones on display at the Medical Museum belong to someone else?

Stanton saw a great benefit in making Corbett a hero--the man who shot the man who shot Lincoln. If Corbett changed his story, it merely reflected what an unbalanced person this self-castrated nut was. No one else fired a shot at the barn. Admittedly Conger and Luther argued which of them did it before Corbett came forward.

The Orlowek thesis that someone else died has not stood the passage of time nor has the John St. Helen story, be it the touring carcass or the man in Texas or Oklahoma. Most of this stuff came from Henry Ford's personal newspaper, the Independent.

There is some argument whether the Cavalry was armed with revolvers or carbines But this can be solved by the assertion that Rick Smith and I assert--namely, that Booth committed suicide, We got a lot of nay-saying over this, but I invite you to read it at “Could John Wilkes Booth Have Committed Suicide?” in SURRATT COURIER, 38 (May 2013), 3-8.