My Journey on Lincoln's Assassination

[mikegriffith1]

(09-06-2018 03:52 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(09-05-2018 11:14 PM)SSlater Wrote:  Not everyone will see the same story exactly the same way.

Do I ever agree with that! Example: Read Bettie Trindal's Mary Surratt: An American Tragedy. Then read Kate Clifford Larson's The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. Then ask yourself: are these two books actually about the same woman?

Larson seems determined to find Mary Surratt guilty, no matter what. For example, she dismisses the claim that Mrs. Surratt had poor vision because she notes that Surratt was able to read and sew. Yes, she could read and sew--because she was near-sighted. Even then, she could not read and sew with gas light but only in daylight. Several witnesses confirmed that Mrs. Surratt had difficulty recognizing people unless they were very close to her and in good light. Plus, she had only seen Payne briefly on a few occasions.

I watched one of Ms. Larson's presentations on YouTube. She suggested that Reverdy Johnson's failure to appear at the trial more than a few times indicated that he believed Mrs. Surratt was guilty. That's quite a reach. Johnson specified that his workload would not allow him to appear in court as often as he would like. Plus, the prosecutors and at least one of the judges had severely insulted him in court and had even questioned his moral fitness to act as counsel. Yet, Johnson wanted the court to delay Lloyd's testimony one day so he could cross-examine him, but the court refused. Johnson wrote part of the team's closing argument. Johnson was the one who directed his team to try to get a writ of habeus corpus. So to suggest that Johnson's limited appearances at the trial indicate that he believed Mary Surratt was guilty seems like a rather severe reach.