Lincoln in the Telegraph Office on April 14, 1865

[wpbinzel]

The July 2016 issue of The Surratt Courier featured an article that I wrote, which I understand has raised a few eyebrows. Because not all are members of the Surratt Society (and I encourage you to join: http://www.surrattmuseum.org/surratt-society ), I have been asked to post the article on this Forum for discussion and comments. I have been granted permission by the Surratt Society to do so.

(Reprinted from The Surratt Courier, July 2016, with permission)

LINCOLN IN THE TELEGRAPH OFFICE ON APRIL 14, 1865
by William P. Binzel

Most readers of The Surratt Courier have likely read David Homer Bates’s account of the events of April 14, 1865 in the War Department Telegraph Office in multiple books and articles. Bates was a teenager when he came to work at the War Department, and in 1865, at age 22, he was the manager of the War Department Telegraph Office and Cipher Operator. Forty-two years later, he published Lincoln in the Telegraph Office in serial form in The Century Magazine, and then as a book. In Bates’s recollection of what occurred on the day Lincoln was assassinated – which first appeared in print in the September 1907 issue – there was a new revelation: because General Grant had declined, President Lincoln wanted the powerfully-built Major Thomas T. Eckert, Chief of the United States Military Telegraph Corps, to accompany him that evening to Ford’s Theater, and Eckert’s boss, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, said no. According to Bates:

On the morning of April 14, when Lincoln made his usual visit to the War Department, he told Stanton that Grant had canceled his acceptance of the theater invitation. The Secretary again urged the President not to go and, when he could not persuade him, told him he ought to have a suitable guard. Lincoln said, “Stanton, do you know that Eckert can break a poker over his arm?” The Secretary not knowing what was coming looked around in surprise and answered, “No. Why do you ask such a question?” “Well,” Lincoln said, “I have seen Eckert break five pokers one after another over his arm and I have been thinking that he would be the kind of man to go with us to the theater to-night. May I take him?”

Stanton, still unwilling to encourage the theater project said that he had some special work for Eckert that evening and could not spare him. Lincoln then said, “Well, I will ask the Major myself, and he can do your work to-morrow.” He then came into the telegraph office, told Eckert of his plans for the evening and that he wanted him to be one of the party, but that Stanton said he had some work that must be attended to. “Now Major,” he added, “come along, you can do that work to-morrow, and we want you with us.”

Eckert, taking his cue from Stanton’s attitude, told the President that it would not be possible for him to accept, because of an appointment that could not be broken.

“Very well,” Lincoln then said, “I shall have to ask Major Rathbone to go with us, because Stanton insists upon having some one to guard me, but I would rather have you, Major, since I know you can break a poker over your arm.”

It is idle to conjecture what might have been the result if our alert and vigorous chief had accompanied the President to Ford’s Theater that night. Had he done so the probabilities are, in view of Eckert’s previous knowledge of the plot to kidnap or kill the President, that Booth might have been prevented from firing the fatal shot and Lincoln spared to finish his great work. (1)

Bates’s admonition against idle conjecture was not heeded by Otto Eisenschiml. In 1937, he used Bates’s recollection as the cornerstone to build his “case against Stanton.” (2) He stated that neither Stanton or Eckert were – or even planned to be – in the War Department offices that evening. In fact, because it was Good Friday, Secretary Stanton released all War Department employees who wished to leave at 10 a.m. for the remainder of the day in order to allow them to attend religious services. (3) Apparently, Eckert’s plans for the evening were nothing more exciting than a shave. (4) From that, Eisenschiml leads the reader to the conclusion that Stanton’s motivation was to knowingly and intentionally refuse to provide protection for the President. Why? Because, according to Eisenschiml: “There was one man who profited greatly by Lincoln’s death; this man was his Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton.” (5)

Eisenschiml’s notions enjoyed a forty year run, but have now been thoroughly debunked, most notably by William Hanchett. (6) Hanchett points out that Bates admired Stanton and would likely have been pained that his recollection was used to promote a theory that his erstwhile employer contributed to Lincoln’s death, much less that he led the plot. Bates believed that Stanton’s efforts were fueled not by a desire to leave Lincoln defenseless, but rather to discourage the President from needlessly exposing himself to danger. (7) Although mischaracterizing Bates’s recollection as a “charge,” to his credit Eisenschiml at least questioned the veracity of Bates’s account: “David Homer Bates’[s] charge that Stanton and Eckert brusquely refused Lincoln’s request to give him the protection he desired for the evening of April 14 is so serious that a confirmation of his story from other sources would be desirable. Unfortunately, no corroborating witnesses have been found, and it is improbable that any existed. Bates did not publish his account until 1907 — forty-two years after the event. Is it possible the incident never happened, and was only a product of an elderly man’s imagination?” (8) Indeed. For more than one hundred years now, Bates’s recollection has been widely incorporated into writings about the day’s events leading to Lincoln’s assassination. But is it true?

That Stanton worried about Lincoln’s safety is well documented. Two weeks earlier, Lincoln travelled to City Point, Virginia to meet with General Grant. On April 2, 1865, Lincoln sent a telegram to Stanton saying that he (Lincoln) planned to visit Grant at the front in Petersburg. Stanton telegraphed him back and urged him not to go, saying in part: "Consider whether you ought to expose the Nation to the consequence of any disaster to yourself in the pursuit of a treacherous and dangerous enemy like the rebel army." (9) Lincoln did not receive the telegram until after he returned from visiting Grant on April 3. He replied to Stanton: "Yours received. Thanks for your caution; but I have already been to Petersburg, staid with Gen. Grant an hour & a half and returned here. It is certain now that Richmond is in our hands, and I think I will go there to-morrow. I will take care of myself." (10) As such, Bates’s recollection is out of character for both men. Stanton was constantly advocating for Lincoln’s personal safety and, failing in his effort to discourage him from attending the theater, it would seem highly unlikely that the Secretary would refuse any measure requested by the President for his protection. Likewise, “Mr. Lincoln at all times manifested a total indifference to danger to his person.” (11) If Bates’s account is true, it would seem that it was the one and only time that Lincoln made a request for protection, and to claim that he made it mere hours before he was shot, stretches one’s credibility.

Whether Lincoln even visited the War Department on the day of April 14 is in dispute. In testimony pertaining to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson three years later, Stanton had no recollection of Lincoln being in his office that day. (12) The only corroboration of a Lincoln visit comes from William H. Crook, a Lincoln bodyguard: “[L]ate on the afternoon of the 14th, I accompanied Mr. Lincoln on a hurried visit to the War Department. . . . By this time we were at the War Department and he went into his conference with Secretary Stanton. It was shorter than usual that evening. . . . He came out of the Secretary’s office in a short time.” (13) In his account, Bates does not acknowledge Crook’s presence in the War Department offices that day. That could be because Bates’s Lincoln-Stanton meeting occurred “on the morning of April 14”; Crook’s version of the meeting takes place late that afternoon. Both accounts were written in excess of forty years after the fact, and neither can be used to verify the other (as Eisenschiml tries to do). By the time that Bates published his recollection of Lincoln’s request for Eckert’s company, of the other possible witnesses, two (Lincoln and Stanton) were dead; Crook made no mention of it; and Eckert, while still alive, was 82 years-old in 1907. Throughout his life, Eckert never referenced having had an opportunity to have saved Lincoln from his assassin. He died in 1910 at age 85.

There is an additional potential witness who provided details of the operations and meetings in the War Department in April 1865. Charles A. Dana was the Assistant Secretary of War from 1863 to July 1865 (and was succeeded in that position by Eckert). He published his Recollections of the Civil War in 1898. Dana recounts a trip he made to the White House to see Lincoln on the afternoon of April 14, but makes no mention of Lincoln’s presence at the War Department that day or of any request for Eckert to accompany the President to Ford’s Theater that evening. (14)

Grant’s account of that day is inconsistent with Bates’ recollection. Grant states that:

[W]e were invited by the President and Mrs. Lincoln to accompany them to the theater on the evening of that day. I replied to the President’s verbal invitation to the effect, that if we were in the city we would take great pleasure in accompanying them; but that I was very anxious to get away and visit my children, and if I could get through my work during the day I should do so. I did get through and started by the evening train on the 14th, sending Mr. Lincoln word, of course, that I would not be at the theater. (15)

Accordingly, Lincoln’s proposition to Grant was an in-person “verbal” invitation for “the evening of that day,” which implies that the invitation was issued on April 14. (16) Grant accepted with an opt-out. Lincoln and Grant’s last face-to-face meeting was at a Cabinet meeting, which began at 11:00 a.m. (17) Given the subjects discussed, the meeting likely lasted at least an hour, perhaps as long as two. (18) It was sometime after the pair parted in the early afternoon that Grant sent “word” to the President declining the invitation. Consequently, Lincoln would not have known “on the morning of April 14,” as reported by Bates, that Grant would not be accompanying him that evening to Ford’s Theater.

After Grant backed out of attending the performance of Our American Cousin, Lincoln was, by several accounts, less than enthusiastic about attending the theater that evening. In all likelihood, he cared even less about whether he and his wife were accompanied by another couple. For Mary Todd Lincoln, however, it would have been a “social embarrassment” if they arrived at the theater alone. (19) According to one website, before Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée (and step-sister) Clara Harris were invited, fifteen people declined the Lincolns’ invitation. (20) While the President and Major Rathbone were acquainted, it is doubtful that their relationship was such that Lincoln himself would have invited the couple. It is far more likely that the invitation originated from Mary to her “dear friend” Clara. (21) That the invitation did not arrive “until approximately six o’clock [p.m.] on April 14, 1865,” is evidence of a very late effort to recruit them. (22)

If Bates’s account is to be believed, immediately after the muscular Eckert turned down Lincoln’s invitation, the President’s first thought was “I shall have to ask Major Rathbone to go with us.” It has never been explained why Rathbone was at the top of Lincoln’s mind. At five-foot-ten, the 28 year-old Rathbone was taller than average, but “slender with a quiet demeanor,” so it wasn’t because Rathbone was as physically imposing as Eckert. (23) Clara Harris may have been a last-chance-date for Mary Lincoln, but there is no reason to believe that her husband viewed Henry in the same way. Absent any other evidence or context, having been spurned by Eckert, it is highly unlikely that the President’s immediate default on the morning of April 14 was Major Henry Rathbone. The delayed and very late last-minute invitation supports that as well. It also must be noted that all those who may have been invited by the Lincolns were invited as guests, and not as guards.

David Homer Bates appears to have been capable in the performance of his duties with the U.S. Military Telegraph Corps, but had he not written Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, it is unlikely that history would remember him. While his book provides some interesting insight into the Civil War and the workings of the War Department and the Telegraph Office, its import and most noted and widely cited sections are the five paragraphs at the beginning of this article. Although hijacked by Otto Eisenschiml and used for a purpose that would have been abhorrent to Bates, Eisenschiml’s finding of supposed corroboration of Lincoln’s presence in the War Department that day cannot (like most of Eisenschiml’s writings) be viewed as being credible. That Bates’s version of the conduct and comments were out of character, of questionable content and context, and much too convenient for that moment in time, make it highly suspect. Other than Bates’s naked assertion forty-two years after the fact, there is nothing to support a belief that his account of the events of April 14, 1865 ever happened. For too long, it has been a repetitious cycle of “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” It may be time to retire this legend as a myth.
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(1) David Homer Bates, “Lincoln’s Last Days (Lincoln in the Telegraph Office),” The Century Magazine, September 1907, Vol. 74, No. 5, p. 776.

(2) Otto Eisenschiml, Why Was Lincoln Murdered? (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1937), p. 396.

(3) Louis J. Weichmann, A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and of the Conspiracy of 1865, ed. Floyd E. Risvold (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1975), pp. 163-4.

(4) Eisenschiml, Why Was Lincoln Murdered?, p. 38.

(5) Ibid., p. 396.

(6) William Hanchett, The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983).

(7) Ibid., pp. 171-2.

(8) Eisenschiml, Why Was Lincoln Murdered?, pp. 38-9.

(9) Bates, “Lincoln’s Last Days,” p. 768.

(10) Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. 8, p. 385.

(11) Ward Hill Lamon, The Life of Abraham Lincoln as President, ed. Bob O’Connor (West Conshohocken, PA: Mount Clair Press, 2010), p. 422.

(12) Eisenschiml, Why Was Lincoln Murdered?, p. 34.

(13) Margarita Spalding Gerry, ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1910), pp. 65-7.

(14) Charles A. Dana, Recollections of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1898), pp. 273-4.
In addition to Dana, a survey of some other works written before 1907 that recount the events of April 14, 1865, did not reveal any evidence or indication of Lincoln visiting the War Department that day. For example, see: J. G. Holland, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Springfield, MA: Gurdon Bill, 1866), pp. 517-9; Joseph H. Barrett, Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Loomis National Library Association, 1888), pp. 790-3; John G. Nicolay and John Hay, “Abraham Lincoln: A History,” The Century Magazine, January 1890, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 429-34; George C. Gorham, Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899), Vol. 2, pp. 168-9; Frank Abial Flower, Edwin McMasters Stanton (Akron: The Saalfield Publishing Company, 1905), p. 276-8. The failure of more contemporaneous writings to mention it certainly does not conclusively prove that Lincoln did not make the trip across the White House lawn to the War Department on the morning of his assassination; but no source in the admittedly limited survey supports Bates’ account.

(15) Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1886), Vol. 2, p. 508.

(16) Julia Grant’s memoirs support an April 14 invitation as well. According to Mrs. Grant, a messenger arrived from Mrs. Lincoln “about midday” on the 14th with the invitation. Mrs. Grant declined the invitation, and then sent a note and three staff officers “to urge the General to go home [to Burlington, New Jersey] that night.” Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant, ed. John Y. Simon (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975) p. 155. Consequently, whether the President’s invitation was extended at the cabinet meeting, or during “a short drive with General Grant” earlier that morning (see: Francis Fisher Browne, The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: Browne & Howell Company, 1913), p. 583), it was not declined until sometime after noon.

(17) Basler, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 411.

(18) For an account of Lincoln’s last Cabinet meeting, see: Nicolay and Hay, “Abraham Lincoln: A Life,” pp. 430-1; and Gideon Wells, Diary of Gideon Wells, ed. Howard K. Beale (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1960), Vol. 2, pp. 280-3.

(19) Caleb Jenner Stephens, Worst Seat in the House (Fredericksburg, VA: Willow Manor Publishing, 2014), p. 66.

(20) http://rogerjnorton.com/Lincoln43.html

(21) Stephens, Worst Seat in the House, p. 62.

(22) Ibid., p. 63.

(23) Ibid., p. 76.