FYI on Stringfellow

[John Fazio]

John and Roger:

What was the nature of the mission he undertook in Washington in March, 1865, at the behest of Jefferson Davis? Inasmuch as Lincoln was assassinated in mid-April, can we be criticized for assuming that it had something to do with the assassination and attempted assassinations that occurred on April 14? This view receives support from the fact that he mentions that he was in constant communication with an officer who occupied an important position about Lincoln, adding that he made this officer a proposition. The view receives further support from the fact that Stringfellow left the country for two years after the assassination, going to Canada and returning to Virginia in 1867. All of this is circumstantial evidence, I grant, but as any prosecutor will tell you, circumstantial evidence isn't bad, frequently preferable to eyewitness testimony and material evidence. Any thoughts on who the officer who was near Lincoln might be? Robert Lockwood Mills thinks it was Parker. I argued against this conclusion in Decapitating the Union, but I offer no one in his place. That there was treachery in the Federal government, however, is, in my opinion, certain. The evidence for it is clear and convincing, including the means employed by the fugitives to get across the Navy Yard Bridge. Remember that the grunts and the hatchet men went to the gallows and the Dry Tortugas, but the masterminds walked. When has it ever been otherwise?

John