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

[mikegriffith1]

(12-03-2018 07:16 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I started out being generous and thinking that we would just be tolerant and put up with this game of historical ridiculousness. I now want to urge those of our readers who are not up to speed on all the intricacies of the Lincoln assassination story to be very cautious in what you make of all this. I would urge taking it all with a grain of salt, but at this point of the game (and that's what it appears to be to a certain person), you are going to need several blocks of rock salt to digest this. Move over reindeer (and watch where you step...).

Leaving aside your failure to address the facts I've presented about the FBI report on the diary, you and your fellow apologists for the military commission here claim there is nothing suspicious about Stanton’s suppression of the diary and his failure to have Holt and Bingham enter it into evidence at the conspiracy trial. Well, none other than Congressman Benjamin Butler saw the matter very differently when Lafayette Baker revealed the diary’s existence in 1867. This is fascinating because Butler was a Radical Republican (1) who was hated by the South for his harsh treatment of New Orleans as a U.S. Army general during the war, and (2) who had argued in defense of trying the alleged conspirators before a military tribunal.

On the floor of the House of Representatives in 1867, Butler had a heated exchange with one of the prosecutors at the military tribunal, John Bingham, over the failure to introduce the diary as evidence at the conspiracy trial and over the execution of Mary Surratt given the revelations in the diary. David Dewitt discussed this revealing exchange and quoted the main parts of it:

General Butler, the recent defender of military commissions before the Supreme Court, of all men in the world, became her [Mary Surratt's] champion. Bingham, on the floor of the House, bearing upon his brow the laurels won as special judge advocate, in an unlucky hour was provoked by a jocose remark of the gentleman from Massachusetts to hold ''the hero of Fort Fisher not taken" up to ridicule as but a carpet-knight; thereby laying himself open to the following crushing retort:

"The gentleman has had the bad taste to attack me for the reason that I could do no more injury to the enemies of my country. I agree to that. I did all I could, the best I could. . . . But the only victim of that gentleman's prowess that I know of was an innocent woman hung upon the scaffold, one Mrs. Surratt. And I can sustain the memory of Fort Fisher if he and his present associates can sustain him in shedding the blood of a woman tried by a military commission and convicted without sufficient evidence in my judgment.''

Bingham, in reply, protested that he had executed no person, had but acted as the advocate of the United States; and, then, in imperious tones, demanded by what right the member assailed ''the tribunal of true and honorable men who found the facts upon their oath and pronounced the judgment. What does the gentleman know of the evidence in the case, and what does he care?"

This demand, a few days later, Butler took occasion to answer:

"I hold in my hand the evidence as reported under the gentleman's official sanction. . . . The statement I made the other day . . . was the result of a careful examination of the case for another and a different purpose, in the endeavor to ascertain who were concerned in fact in the great conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln. The gentleman says he was 'the advocate of the United States only.' Sir, he makes a wide mistake as to his official position. He was the special judge advocate whose duty it was to protect the rights of the prisoner as well as the rights of the United States, and 'to sum up the evidence and state the law as would a judge on the bench.' Certainly, it was his duty to present to the commission all the evidence bearing upon the case. Now there was a piece of evidence within the knowledge of the special judge advocate . . . which he did not produce on this most momentous trial."

And, alluding to the appearance of the diary before the committee, he continued:

"Now, what I want to know is this: ... If it was good judgment on the part of the gentlemen prosecuting the assassins ... to put in evidence the tobacco pipe, spur and compass found in Booth's pocket, why was not the diary, in his own handwriting and found in the same pocket, put in evidence. . .? And, therefore, I did not charge the able and gallant soldiers who sat on that court with having done any wrong. They did not see the diary, they did not know of the diary. If they had they might have given a different finding upon the matter of this great conspiracy. ... I understand the theory to be that that evidence was not produced lest Booth's glorification of himself . . . should go before the country. I think that a lame excuse. If an assassin can glorify himself let him do so. ... I believe that piece of evidence would have shown what the whole case, in my judgment, now shows; that up to a certain hour Booth contemplated capture and abduction, and that he afterward changed his purpose to assassination. . . .

"Now what I find fault with in the judge advocate ... is that in his very able and bitter argument against the prisoners, no notice is taken ... of this change of purpose and brought to the attention of the men who composed that military tribunal. And if Mrs. Surratt did not know of this change of purpose there is no evidence that she knew in any way of the assassination, and ought not, in my judgment, to have been convicted of taking part in it. . . .

"Although in some aspects of the case it might not have been legal evidence, yet in all aspects it was moral evidence, carrying conviction to the moral sense. It is the dying declaration of a man, assassin though he be, who was speaking the truth, probably to himself, as between himself and his God. . . .

"That diary, as now produced, has eighteen pages cut out, the pages prior to the time when Abraham Lincoln was massacred, although the edges as yet show they had all been written over. Now, what I want to know, was that diary whole?" (Baker when on the stand was positive the leaves were in the book when he delivered it to Stanton.) "Who spoliated that book? Who caused an innocent woman to be hung when he had in his pocket the diary which stated at least what was the idea and purpose of the main conspirator?"

And, quoting from memory the sentence expressing Booth's half-formed purpose to return to Washington and clear himself, he vociferated:

"How clear himself? By disclosing his accomplices? Who were they? ... If we had only the advantage of all the testimony, we might have been able ... to find who, indeed, were all the accomplices of Booth ; to find who it was who changed Booth's purpose from capture to assassination; who it was that could profit by assassination who could not profit by capture and abduction; who it was expected would succeed to Lincoln, if the knife made a vacancy." (The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Its Expiation, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1909, pp. 176-180)