Identification of Booth's body

[L Verge]

James O. Hall, Michael Kauffman, and Steven G. Miller (THE expert on the Garrett Farm Patrol and Boston Corbett) have all said - Steve in a speech at an early Surratt conference - that such an order would be stupid and detrimental to every person involved in the capture. That order pretty much tells the patrol to hold their fire, even when the fugitive is coming out with guns blasting. Therefore, such an official order has not been found by top researchers and likely was never given.

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(10-05-2018 01:54 PM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  

(10-01-2018 06:40 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I think it's more likely that the gov't. wanted no reminders left of the villain - reminders that Southern sympathizers could immortalize or Union supporters could desecrate. Such was the reasoning behind the secret burial at the Arsenal and the unmarked grave in Green Mount. Our modern examples of desecration - from Lincoln statues to a slew of Confederate ones - should prove to us that, in 1865, those in command understood human behavior...

But actually many if not a majority of Americans at the time were very skeptical of the government's claim that Booth had been killed, precisely because of the very shaky identification, the secret burial, etc. Many newspapers expressed doubt about the government's story, and that doubt remained strong and widespread for decades.

In 1866, Senator Garrett Davis of Kentucky expressed the view of many Americans:

Quote:I have never seen myself any satisfactory evidence that Booth was killed. I would rather have better testimony of the fact. I want it proved that Booth was in that barn, why he was not taken alive and brought to this city alive. I have never seen anybody or the evidence of anybody that identified Booth after he is said to have been killed. Why so much secrecy about it? (The Congressional Globe, July 28, 1866, p. 4292)

The government didn't shy away from letting people see John Brown's body, nor Nat Turner's body, and those were cases where there was no doubt about the fact of death. So why did they carry out such an obviously flimsy identification and then secretly bury the body without showing it to long-time Booth friends and family, not to mention leading members of Congress and the press? There was no rational reason for the handling of the body if it was really Booth's body.

Regarding Detective Wardell's account of being ordered to maintain constant observation of the processing of the autopsy photograph, I meant to include as a source Leonard Guttridge's famous article in Navy Medicine on the identification of the body:

http://library.indstate.edu/rbsc/neff/PD...cation.pdf

Finally, retired Navy surgeon and coroner Dr. Robert Arnold makes a compelling argument that the track of the bullet and the damage it caused clearly prove that Boston Corbett could not have fired the shot that felled the man in the barn. This is crucial information.

Whoever shot the man in the barn fired from an elevation about 25 degrees above the man's head, such as from a hay loft in the barn.

There was no reason in the world to shoot the man in the barn, assuming everyone there was acting in good faith and following orders. There was every reason to bring back the man alive, if it was Booth. Corbett was never punished for allegedly committing a serious violation of orders and for supposedly robbing the government of the opportunity to extract more information from Booth, if Booth was the man in the barn.

Both John Brown and Nat Turner were executed in a public setting, so there were plenty of "invited" witnesses.

You may want to register for the 2019 Surratt conference where Dr. Edward Steers of this forum will be speaking on the Neff-Guttridge papers and claims. I met both men when they visited Surratt House years ago and later had conversations with Len Guttridge - a very nice gentleman. On one of the last phone calls we had, he told me that he was regretting getting involved with Mr. Neff.

See another comment that I just posted elsewhere as to why no one has found an order to take Booth alive.