Exhumation of Conspirators

[Steve]

I wonder who the correspondent was. Even though it is in a scrapbook belonging to G.A. Townsend, it is not clear (at least to me) if the article was written by Townsend or by someone else, and Townsend just wanted to save it.

It does seem, however, that Johnson's opinion expressed in this article years later meshes very well with his oft-quoted comment on Surratt owning the nest where the egg was hatched. I would also comment that the "crazy" Annie Surratt was not the only one attempting to see Johnson that day. She was accompanied by Fr. Walter; of course, the fact that the priest was in clerical collar at least might have swayed Officer Muzzy to not want a Catholic to see the President... When Mrs. Stephen Douglas arrived, she evidently swept past Muzzy or another guard and went on into the President's office. Didn't do any good, either.

The University of Delaware has a collection of Townsend's papers:

http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/townsend.htm

Which includes scrapbooks of his articles/writings. Are there other articles of Townsend's in the scrapbook of his held by the Library of Congress? If there are, and considering that Townsend did extensive reporting on the assassination, I would say there is a good chance that he wrote the article.

The correspondent said that he got the quote from Johnson in Tennessee during Johnson's 1872 run for Congress. Does anybody know if Townsend was in Tennessee in 1872?