Where was John Surratt on April 14, 1865 ?

[John Fazio]

(01-17-2018 07:15 AM)Gene C Wrote:  John, with all the info available today, it is easy to get confused about who said what, and under what circumstances.

We know that some of the witnesses were hopeful to be rewarded in some way for their testimony, some were intimidated, and some were just inconsistent and unreliable, either on purpose or because they just couldn't keep their stories straight.

For me, Ste. Marie is unreliable and Susan Jackson quite possibly was intimidated.
John, can you share with us why you believe that Ste. Marie's testimony is reliable?
(you may need/want to start a separate thread on Ste. Marie)

Gene:

The short answer is: I DON'T consider him reliable IN EVERY INSTANCE. To say that someone is unreliable is not to say that everything he said is therefore false. When evaluating the veracity of a statement, writing, etc., we have little choice but to apply the usual tests of truth, i.e. the criterion of embarrassment, the criterion of discontinuity, the criterion of multiple attestation and the criterion of coherence, and then hope for the best, knowing that there are no certainties, that possibilities are infinite and that we must, therefore, content ourselves with probabilities. We know that Ste. Marie was in some degree untrustworthy because he gave two different accounts as to where Surratt said he was on April 14: in his Affidavit he said "in New York prepared to fly" and in his testimony at Surratt's trial he said that Surratt had said he was in Washington and left town by train, after the assassination, disguised as an Englishman. It was for this reason that his counsel refused to admit the Affidavit in evidence, thereby throwing away perhaps the best evidence they had so as not to affect their theory of his presence in Washington. His trial testimony was deemed to be so ineffective that defense counsel did not even bother to cross examine him. But bear in mind that in order for Ste. Marie to claim the reward money, which, I agree, was most likely hs purpose in following Surratt and joining the Papal Zouaves himself, he had only to establish Surratt's presence in Italy so the U.S. government could get their hands on him. The substance of his conversations with Surratt was therefore unnecessary and therefore most likely, in my judgment, to be true or substantially true, especially those parts that are corroborated by other sources and those parts that are consistent with the overall theory of complicity of the Confederate government and its Secret Service in the assassination and attempted assassinations that occurred on April 14. It is for this reason that the following two statements made by Ste. Marie in his Affidavit are, in my judgment, true, namely that Surratt had said to him: "Damn the Yankees, they have killed my mother, but I have done them as much harm as I could, we have killed Lincoln the n_____'s friend" and that "I have also asked him if he knew Jefferson Davis, he said no, but that he had acted under the instruction of persons under his immediate orders. Being asked if Jefferson Davis had anything to do with the assassination, he said 'I am not going to tell you'". Both of these statements have the strong ring of truth to them. They are unnecessary to Ste. Marie's purpose and they are exactly what we should expect Surratt to say, in the circumstances, not realizing that "I am not going to tell you" is as good as an affirmative answer. Be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. We know that Charles Dunham was a scoundrel and a perjurer (with purpose), but we can be reasonably certain that his statement that Jacob Thompson had said that "The purpose (of the conspiracy) was to leave the government without a head" is true.

John