Unwanted Facts: Facts that Most Books on the Lincoln Assassination Ignore

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(12-01-2018 08:07 AM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  

(11-30-2018 07:01 PM)Steve Wrote:  It's unfortunately unknowable how Lincoln would've approached Reconstruction policy.

Huh? He laid out his Reconstruction policy several times. You might want to read Welles' article. It's available online:

https://archive.org/details/lincolnjohnsonth00well

(11-30-2018 07:01 PM)Steve Wrote:  Although, he did seem to favor giving voting rights and educating former slaves. On those issues he seems closer to the Radical Republicans than Pres. Johnson was.

Lincoln was nowhere near the Radicals on black suffrage in the South. He wanted suffrage limited to educated blacks and those who had served in the Army, and even then he made it clear that this matter should be left up to the reconstructed states. Again, you might want to read Welles' article, because Welles discusses this issue.

There are several other good sources on this, but Welles' article is available online. Another good online source is Albert Mordell's compilation Civil War Reconstruction: Selected Essays By Gideon Welles:

https://archive.org/stream/gideonwelles0...p_djvu.txt

Yet another good online source is Dr. Richard Current's long article "Lincoln's Plan for Reconstruction":

https://www.americanheritage.com/content...nstruction

(11-30-2018 07:01 PM)Steve Wrote:  But whatever Lincoln's Reconstruction policy would've been, it would likely have evolved in response to events in the South. I find it hard to believe that Lincoln would've approved of the 1865-1866 "Black Codes" and their broad vagrancy laws that allowed them to arrest former slaves for minor offenses and sentence them to involuntary labor which Pres. Johnson didn't seem to have a problem with.

One, Lincoln made it clear that he would leave such matters up to the reconstructed states.

Two, those black codes, as many scholars have detailed, were patterned after Northern black codes. I agree that some of the black codes were too harsh, but even the worst ones were similar to the ones in Indiana and Illinois. If you doubt this, you might start your research by reading Dr. C. Vann Woodward's famous study The Strange Career of Jim Crow:

https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Career-Ji...0195146905

Finally, someone asked for evidence that the 86 pages were removed after the War Department got the diary. Anyone who asks this question and who claims they have read the 1977 FBI report either did not really read the FBI report or did not understand it. The report details the intricate editing, cutting, and reconstituting that was done to the diary to remove the 86 pages. This would have required many hours of work and access to the needed materials. If someone has a scenario for how Conger or Lafayette Baker had the time and materials to do this editing between the time Conger said he "found" the diary and the time Baker turned it over to Stanton, I'd like to hear it.

You, sir, are dead wrong in your last paragraph. The FBI did not find any indication that the diary was tampered with by the War Department. Quite a few Surratt members were privy to that investigation and report because of our close ties with the instigator - James O. Hall.

If I remember correctly, Ed Steers's book on Lincoln Hoaxes et al gives good coverage to this as well as the continuing saga of Neff, Balsiger and Sellier. You will enjoy also reading about the Deep Throat escapades with Joseph Lynch.

I urge everyone reading this to remember that the "diary" was really not a journal. It was an appointment book that Booth and most actors carried to write down their dates for performances, rehearsals, meetings, etc. -- the SmartPhone of the day.

That little book had been with Booth since 1864, and there would be very little chance of determining when pages were removed because of being full and outdated, because Booth needed to send a quick note (as in the later Stuart incident), etc. One gentleman on a Surratt bus tour over the Booth escape route even suggested that pages were used for hygienic purposes while Booth and Herold were on the run with few opportunities to find an outhouse...

As for Lincoln's Reconstruction policies, Wild Bill gave an excellent talk on this two years ago at our Surratt conference. The title was "My Policy is to Have No Policy." It was so detailed that I asked Bill to turn it into a booklet for sale in our museum. It may have sold out by this time.