Did William Coggeshall Save Lincoln's Life?

[Gene C]

(09-23-2016 10:26 PM)John Fazio Wrote:  I assure you that his being an Ohioan has nothing to do with it. I do not relate too much to my home state, but I do relate to being an American, though not always with pride, not when I contemplate some of the serious mistakes we have made as a country, such as the near annihilation of Native Americans; the enslavement of an entire race of people for 76 years, followed by 11 years of wholesale murder and property destruction, otherwise known as Reconstruction, and almost another century of Jim Crow disenfranchisement and subjugation of these same people; and instigation of war against our southern neighbor for no reason other than territorial aggrandizement.

I respect your opinion re Coggeshall, needless to say, but I do have a couple of questions for you: Let us assume that the story of his possibly saving Lincoln's life on the journey from Springfield to Washington is a hoax. In your opinion, what is its source, i.e. who fabricated the story---Coggeshall, Mary or Freda--and why? The Romans used to ask "cui bono", meaning "who benefits" from an act, and one still sees the term occasionally in legal discourse.
Cui bono, with respect to the Coggeshall story? Who benefited and how?

John

There is a lot to comment on here, but I'll stick with the last paragraph. "who fabricated the story,... and why."
Just because we don't know the why, doesn't diminish the fact that the story doesn't seem plausible, and for many of us who have commented on, very likely never happened.
An attempt on Lincoln's life, by a bomb that does explode, with witnesses to see or hear it - but the only mention of it is by a widow, 47 years after it happened, and she did not personally witness the act. It was at least 40 years after she could have even heard the story (if she heard it from her husband) that she writes about it.

So who fabricated the story? If (and I think it's at least a medium sized "if"), Mary fabricated the story, why? An old and faded, mixed up memory? How about an attempt to leave her children and grand children a heroic image of their father, something they could be proud of, because they never got much chance to know him?

Maybe William Coggeshall fabricated the story. He wanted his wife and children to be proud of him, so he fabricates the story. He seems to have been away from home a lot, so this story helps justify his absence. We will probably never know.

The why or the motive is nice to know, (why did Booth shoot Lincoln?) but so many times, the why doesn't change the facts.
For now, I'm convinced the event never happened.