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

[mikegriffith1]

Below are some additional sources on evidence that most books on the Lincoln assassination ignore or minimize. All of these sources strongly challenge the military commission’s version of the assassination, and they include most of the points I presented in my original post for this thread.

Dr. Thomas Reed’s book Avenging Lincoln’s Death: The Trial of John Wilkes Booth’s Accomplices (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015, paperback version published in 2017). Dr. Reed is a professor emeritus of law at the Widener University School of Law. Here’s what the publisher says about the book:

The book analyzes the trial transcript and other relevant evidence relating to the guilt of Booth’s alleged accomplices, as well as a careful application of basic constitutional law principles to the jurisdiction of the military commission and the fundamental fairness of the trial. The author found that the military commission trial was unconstitutional and unfair because Congress never authorized trial by military commission for these eight civilians. President Johnson exceeded the scope of his authority as commander in chief by ordering the accomplices to be tried by military commission. He failed to follow the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863 that required him to turn over the alleged accomplices to civilian authorities for prosecution. The accomplices were convicted on perjured testimony and the Government was allowed to drag in unrelated evidence of Confederate atrocities to poison the minds of the panel of officers. (https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781611478297/Av...omplices#; see also https://www.amazon.com/Avenging-Lincolns...B0148Z69W0

Civil War scholar H. Donald Winkler’s book, Lincoln and Booth: More Light on the Conspiracy (Cumberland House, 2003. Winkler has authored three highly acclaimed books on nineteenth-century historical subjects, including Civil War Goats and Scapegoats and The Women in Lincoln’s Life. He has been a featured speaker at Ford’s Theater and at the Carl Sandburg National Historic Site. Excerpt:

[John] Surratt was charged as an accomplice in Lincoln’s murder, which meant that the prosecution had to prove he was involved in the assassination—a major task considering that Surratt was 300 miles from Washington when Lincoln was killed. The prosecution, with the aid of the War Department’s hired witness hunters, drummed up a dozen people who swore they saw Surratt in Washington on that date. One of them even claimed that he saw Surratt in the vestibule of the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre. . . .

Surratt’s able attorney Joseph H. Bradley easily broke down these testimonies, drawing out so many inconsistencies that all their stories were highly suspect. Bradley, who defended Surratt without remuneration, further outmaneuvered the prosecution by showing convincingly that Surratt had been in Elmira, New York, from April 13 to 15. For the clincher, Bradley tried to secure the register of Surratt’s hotel in Elmira, which contained his signature for the dates indicated, but the register had mysteriously disappeared, and as Bradley noted, “the proprietors and servants of the hotel were scattered in every direction.” (p. 245)

Dr. Robert Ferguson’s book The Trial in American Life (University of Chicago Press, 2008). Ferguson was a professor of law and literature at Columbia University, and earned his law degree and his doctorate in American civilization from Harvard University. Excerpt:

Mary Surratt was the most peripheral of the four convicted defendants who, on July 7, 1865, faced the hangman’s noose for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. “Mrs. Surratt is innocent,” claimed Lewis Payne, who stood beside her on the scaffold and was the most active member of the conspiracy after John Wilkes Booth. “She doesn’t deserve to die with the rest of us.” But no one in authority wanted to hear those words from anyone in the summer of 1865, much less from an assassin like Payne. . . . (p. 153)

The court officer best placed to sift through all of the evidence was the courtroom reporter who also took down every witness’s testimony during prior interrogation. He left a stunning summary of what he had learned. “That Mrs. Surratt, who was hanged with the three male conspirators who were concerned in a plot to assassinate President Lincoln and other high government officials, was entirely innocent of any prior knowledge of or participation in those crimes, is, to my mind, beyond question,” Benn Pitman, this official stenographer, would write later. Pitman would detail his reasons and conclusions on several occasions, and he would add: “I again affirm my solemn conviction that Mrs. Mary Surratt was innocent of the crime for which she was hanged”. . . . (p. 161)

The defense had an answer for each incriminating fact and insinuation. Mrs. Surratt’s son, John, had escaped to Canada, and he was the one who brought the conspirators into his mother’s house. Where was the evidence that he had confided in her? Available letters proved that Mrs. Surratt went to her farm in Maryland on legitimate business on both occasions [April 11 and 14]. It was hardly surprising that a landlady on the margins of society would treat a leading figure like Booth, a well-known actor from a famous family on good terms with official Washington, with respect when he entered her modest home. . . .

Mrs. Surratt’s failure to identify Lewis Payne could also be explained. She was extremely nearsighted, the hallway where Payne stood at some distance was dark, Payne had changed his appearance drastically since previous meetings, and Mrs. Surratt was under arrest. Why should she speak when anything she said would be used against her? Others in the house also failed to identify Payne. All of the facts were “explainable so as to exclude guilt,” and, facts aside, “where was the guilty knowledge” required to convict? By law in a conspiracy case, defense counsel reminded the court, “the intent or guilty knowledge must be brought directly home to the defendant.” The prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. (pp. 162-163)

Dr. John Chandler Griffin’s book Abraham Lincoln’s Execution (Pelican Publishing Company, 2006). Dr. Griffin is a professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina and the author of several books on historical subjects, including the Civil War. In 1998, Dr. Griffin was awarded the Order of the Silver Crescent, South Carolina’s highest award, by Gov. Jim Hodges. Excerpt:

Miss Chapman goes on to say that Charles Bishop unwrapped the blanket from the corpse [at the 1869 viewing of the body of the man shot in Garrett’s barn] and stood for long moments gazing at the remains. Says Miss Chapman:

“Mr. Charles Bishop then carefully drew off one of the long riding boots, which were still on the feet of the body, which had evidently lain in the earth for years, and as he did so the foot and lower portion of the limb remained in the boot. An examination was then made, and it was plainly seen that the ankle had been fractured.”

The fact that the corpse was apparently wearing two boots is a most remarkable revelation, for according to the official records of the assassination, Dr. Samuel Mudd cut away the boot encasing Booth’s fractured leg on the morning of April 15, 1865. Dr. Mudd inadvertently kept the boot at his home, where it was later discovered by Federal officers. . . .

If the military commission had this boot in their possession long before “Booth” secretly had been buried beneath the flooring at the military arsenal, just how could that boot possibly have gotten back on the corpse being investigated at Weaver’s Undertaking Parlor in Baltimore, Maryland, in February 1869? . . . If the military commission was telling the truth when they displayed the boot of John Wilkes Booth, then it stands to reason that the corpse examined at Weaver’s Undertaking Parlor, the corpse wearing two boots, was not that of John Wilkes Booth. (pp. 408-409)

And you know what? Not one of these books is offered for sale at the Surratt House Museum’s gift shop. In reading through the gift shop’s list of books for sale, one sees an extreme bias in favor of the military commission’s story. Out of the 40-plus Lincoln assassination books on the list, only two challenge the military commission’s version.

In fact, even after all we have long known about the bogus nature of much of the military commission’s evidence, especially its Confederate conspiracy theory, some of the books offered at the gift shop double-down on that theory, and one of them even goes to the ludicrous extreme of suggesting that General George McClellan might have been involved in an assassination plot against Lincoln!

You would think that since the Surratt House Museum receives taxpayer money, its staff would ensure that the gift shop offered a more balanced selection of books. You would also think that the staff would feel some moral obligation, or at least some sense of basic fairness, to carry a few more books that defend Mary Surratt, especially since they are getting paid to run her house as a museum.