My Journey on Lincoln's Assassination

[L Verge]

(10-29-2018 04:07 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(10-29-2018 03:11 PM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  You are supposing that it is just a cosmic coincidence that the gas lights got shut off along Booth's escape route in Washington just after he shot Lincoln.

Mike, I do not think I have read about the gas lights before. Can you cite your source please.

I second Roger's request for a source of your statement regarding street lights being shut off to assist Booth in his escape. If you read the history of the Washington Gas Light Company (which was founded in the 1840s), you find that Pennsylvania Avenue was the first and only full street to have outside gaslights and remained so for decades. Even then, the lights were shut off on nights when the moon was full.

Some upper class neighborhoods later got outside lights, which served more to "show off" the residences. The majority of the city was in the dark when the Civil War began, and needless to say, the military had first grabs at what gaslights could be generated. Washington City did not really become a City of Lights until electricity came along ca. 1880s.

And while we are on the subject of heating and lighting generated from the oils within coal, I need to mention (and will post again elsewhere) that Dr. Arnold made a boo-boo in his book by stating that the soldiers set the Garrett barn on fire by pouring down kerosene and lighting it (page 230).

Kerosene (coal oil) had really just been "discovered" before the Civil War, and during the war, the military got most of it that could be produced. It is really illogical to think that Conger and crew carried along even one pint of the flammable liquid on the slight chance that they would need it to flush out the fugitives.

So, we are then left to imagine that Conger confiscated it from the Garretts when he needed to light the little parcel of straw/hay that he used to start what would become a conflagration. There is very little chance that a defeated Virginia family out in the boondocks would have had kerosene around -- even before the war. During the 1850s and 60s, the standard form of lighting in homes was candle power or camphene-burning lamps -- the latter being a volatile mixture of turpentine and alcohol. Given their circumstances in Caroline County, Virginia, in April of 1865, I would bet that the Garretts depended chiefly on candles.

It is so important for good historians to understand the people and times of which they write... Susan Higginbotham of this forum has mastered that art and should teach it to beginning history writers!