A "new" Lincoln story by Bill Tidwell.

[John Fazio]

(08-24-2018 11:53 PM)SSlater Wrote:  I was recently given a stack of OLD history magazines by a person I did not know. I thought they were trash, but I smiled and said Thank you. One of the books was a 2001 copy of "The Civil War Times". In it was a story written by Bill Tidwell, titled "The man who shifted the Blame". He must have written it in 1995 +/-. (He died in 1999). (He wrote "Come Retribution" in 1988) This story is about how George N. Sanders used his skills to foil the Federals effort to pin the Lincoln murder on the Confederacy.
(There are pictures of George N. Sanders, Brig. Gen. William Carroll and Capt. Thomas Himes.)
Tidwell sums up the whole process of "Preventing the Union from blaming the Confederacy, for the death of Lincoln" with- His (Sanders) plan worked.
I was not familiar with this writing, is it rare? Is anybody as behind the times as I am? If you NEED a copy, I will attempt to copy it. It should be readable, even if it is dark.
P.S. Tidwell continues and tells about any punishment doled out and some personal life of these guys.

John:

I am familiar with the article. I am also familiar with the plot, which was engineered by deliberately planting perjury in the trial of the conspirators, i.e. perjury that was designed to be exposed as such. The fraudulent perjury was given by Richard Montgomery, Charles Dunham and James B. Merritt. The purpose, obviously, was to cause the case against the unindicted co-conspirators (much of the Confederate leadership, including the prize--Davis) to collapse, as soon as the perjury was exposed, which it did. The same ploy, you may recall, was used by Agatha Christie in her great play, later a movie, Witness for the Prosecution[i]. The entire affair is covered in pretty good detail on pages 357-363 of Decapitating the Union. Tidwell saw through the flim-flam. So did H. Donald Winkler. So did I.

John