Did Surratt and Slater know about Harney's Mission?

[John Fazio]

(04-18-2016 09:38 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  John, thank you very much for replying to my questions!

Please bear with me as the idea there was never a serious kidnap plot is contrary to what I've read in most (if not all) books except for yours.

Roger:

Error takes on a life of its own, like the name of the Lincolns' carriage driver; the way in which the Lincolns, Rathbone and Harris made their way to the theater on the fateful night; what Herold did and did not do on the fateful night; Booth's broken leg; and the simple conspiracy theory, the rogue operation myth that has persisted into our own time. The simple truth is that there is only one original source, one horse's mouth, for the kidnapping story, and that of course is Booth, and, more specifically, reference to the same in his diary and in one of his letters to Asia. All others who speak of it were merely repeating what Booth told them. If the story is a cover story concocted by the Secret Service to conceal the true purpose of Booth's conspiracy and to facilitate the recruitment of an action team, then Booth is lying, in which case every member of his action team who repeats the story and who was not privy to Booth's true purpose (I believe that only John Surratt and Powell knew his true purpose) is also perpetuating falsehood, though they don't know it. By extension, every historian, scholar, researcher, writer and enthusiast who reads Booth's diary entry and/or the reference in one of his letters to his sister, or one of the references to the story made by John Surratt, Powell, Arnold, Herold, Atzerodt or O'Laughlen, and who then puts the same out as fact, is also unknowingly perpetuating falsehood. Thus does error become entrenched over a period of 150 years, despite compelling, indeed overwhelming, evidence to the contrary for those who take the time to dig it out.

John