James L. Hoare

[Steve]

(05-10-2018 07:22 AM)John Fazio Wrote:  Hello Everyone:

My understanding is that Hoare's testimony was part of Charles Dunham's and George Sanders' plot to plant intentional perjury in the trial and before the Boutwell Committee so that when it was exposed as such, the case against the Confederate leadership would collapse, which it did. (Conover, incidentally, was one of about 20 aliases used by Dunham, who was one of the most extraordinary characters in history.)

John,
I checked your book and you cite the 27 May 1865 W.W. Daniels letter to Stanton as evidence of George Sanders' being behind Charles Dunham's fake testimony ring.

For anybody interested, Daniels' letter is here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=GvYpUe...on&f=false

In the letter, Daniels only says that Sanders told him they would plant testimony to "rebut every particle of testimony implicating him and other parties in the assassination." That doesn't sound anything like Dunham's Conover testimony which tried to implicate the Confederacy in the assassination. Even if it was a ploy by Sanders to discredit the association of the Confederacy with the assassination, why didn't Sanders do that? Although, the veracity of "Conover's" testimony was questioned at the time, it was the Judge Advocate's Office that exposed Dunham following Hoare's confession in April 1866. And it was Gen. Holt himself that ordered the sting that gathered further evidence against Dunham and turned the information over to the House Judiciary Committee.

If Sanders was behind "Conover", he could have easily discredited the trial by leaking Dunham's identity to the press. Also when "Conover's" testimony was challenged in the press, Dunham had his brother-in-law and law partner, Nathan Auser testify at the trial under his own name that he knew "Conover" for years to help establish Conover's reliability. That doesn't seem like something Sanders would do if he was trying to discredit the trial.

The Daniels letter, though, does describe Dr. Augustus Bissell's testimony saying John Surratt was in Elmira on April 14, 1865 during the Surratt trial. Bissell's later criminal history, including perjury, would be consistent with giving false testimony for money.

Since it was mentioned earlier, I think I should also point out that I think it makes no sense to believe Holt was aware of Dunham fabricating "Conover's" testimony during the trial, since the Judge Advocate's Office was so involved in Dunham's exposure.