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

[mikegriffith1]

Here are more facts that most books on the Lincoln assassination ignore or minimize:

* In his testimony at the conspiracy trial, Louis Weichmann, one of the prosecution’s key witnesses, did not claim (1) that Booth visited Mary Surratt at 9:00 PM on April 14; (2) that she was “nervous, agitated, and restless” after this alleged meeting; and (3) that prior to Lincoln’s inauguration, Mary Surratt was “in the habit” of saying that “something was going to happen to old Abe which would prevent him from taking his seat.” Weichmann did not make any of these claims until after the trial. He made these claims in an August 11, 1865, affidavit to Col. H. L. Burnett, six weeks after the conspiracy trial ended.

In his belated and curious August 11 affidavit, Weichmann claimed that he “later ascertained” that the person who supposedly visited Mary Surratt at 9:00 PM on the night of the assassination was Booth. As mentioned, he also claimed that after this supposed meeting, Mary Surratt was visibly nervous and agitated. He did not explain how he “ascertained” that the alleged visitor was Booth; nor did he explain why he did not claim at the conspiracy trial that Mrs. Surratt was nervous and agitated after this alleged meeting.

* Two years later, at the John Surratt trial, Weichmann made a number of claims that he had never made before. For example, he claimed that when he and Mary Surratt were about to leave for the Surrattsville tavern at around 2:30/2:40 on April 14, Mrs. Surratt said, “"Wait, Mr. Weichmann, I must get those things of Booth's" (The Trial of John Surratt, volume 1, p. 391). That was the first time he had ever claimed that she said Booth gave her “things” that day. He said nothing about this in his testimony at the conspiracy trial nor in his affidavit to Burnett.

* At the conspiracy trial, Weichmann said that the package that Booth allegedly gave Mary Surratt looked like “two or three saucers” wrapped in paper (The Conspiracy Trial for the Murder of the President, Ben Poore transcript, volume 1, p. 85). At the John Surratt trial, he said it looked like “three or four saucers wrapped together” and that he thought it was a “glass dessert dish” (The Trial of John Surratt, volume 1, p. 447).

How could one pair of small field glasses/opera glasses wrapped in paper appear to be several dishes wrapped in paper? Go look at pictures of the alleged Booth field glasses, or field glasses that were similar in size. Imagine wrapping them in some paper, and then try to imagine how the package could look like a “glass dessert dish” wrapped in paper. A pair of field glasses wrapped in paper would be rectangular in shape and would look noting like some plates wrapped in paper.

Lloyd said that when he unwrapped the package, the only thing in it was a pair of field glasses. So no one can say that perhaps Mary Surratt put the field glasses on a few dishes and wrapped them in paper to disguise their appearance.

* When Lloyd testified at the John Surratt trial, he refused to identify the alleged Booth field glasses as the ones he had seen. He said (1) that his impression was that the alleged Booth field glasses entered into evidence were not the ones he saw, (2) that the field glasses he saw had the words “field glass” written in the top-center (whereas the alleged Booth field glasses did not), (3) that the writing on the field glasses that he saw was larger than the writing on the alleged Booth field glasses, and (4) that the lettering of that writing was yellow (whereas the lettering on the alleged Booth field glasses was not) (The Trial of John H. Surratt, vol. 1, p. 288).

* The accounts relating to the field glasses are riddled, literally riddled, with contradictions and questionable statements. Lt. Luther Baker gave conflicting accounts of his alleged discussions with the Garretts about the field glasses and his alleged “finding” of the field glasses.

During a portion of his testimony at the John Surratt trial, in one breath Baker said that he saw the field glasses "at the Garrett place, where Booth was captured," but a few moments later he said that he found them "about nine miles from Garrett's place" (http://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/2014/...sses.html; The Trial of John H. Surratt, vol. 1, p. 321). In one of Baker’s accounts, a young boy, only five or six years old, not only knew which one of his older siblings had received the field glasses as a gift but also knew that the field glasses had been in the Mr. Garrett’s writing desk! Lucinda Holloway, a relative who lived in Mr. Garrett’s home, gave an account that markedly contradicts Baker’s accounts, not only as to when the field glasses were found but with whom Baker spoke and who told him where the field glasses were located.

These are the kinds of contradictions and doubtful statements you get when a story has been fabricated.

* At the John Surratt trial, Weichmann admitted, under intense cross-examination, that he told John Ford that he had told Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that he had seen a letter from John Surratt dated April 12 that indicated that John Surratt was in Canada, and that he did not see John Surratt during the 10-14 days leading up to the assassination:

Q. Did not you state to him [Ford] that you had told the Secretary of War that John Surratt had left here a considerable time before the assassination, and that, from a letter which you had seen, he must have been in Montreal at that time?

A. I may have said that; I may have said that I had not seen John Surratt for a considerable time before the assassination, and that I had seen a letter from him dated April 12; but I did not state to the Secretary or to Mr. Ford that I knew where John Surratt was when the blow was struck, because I did not know.

Mr. Bradley. I do not know whether you knew or not; that is not the question. I ask you if you did not tell Mr. John T. Ford that you had had an interview with the Secretary of War, and had told him all you knew about that affair, and of John Surratt's whereabouts at the time of the assassination, and that you had not seen John Surratt for ten days or two weeks before, and that you had seen a letter which satisfied you that John Surratt was in Canada at the time?

A. I believe I have told Mr. John T. Ford that; I have told it on the stand here; but I did not tell Mr. Ford that I knew where John Surratt was when the assassination took place. (The Trial of John Surratt, volume 1, p. 449)

Of course, as has been noted in previous replies, the defense established beyond any reasonable doubt that John Surratt was not in Washington at the time of the assassination, contrary to what the War Department and its prosecutors had claimed.

* Both Weichmann and Lloyd were kept in prison during the conspiracy trial and were only released after they had given testimony that was satisfactory to the prosecutors. In other words, when Weichmann and Lloyd testified during the conspiracy trial, they knew that if they did not testify as the prosecution wanted, they would remain in prison.

* One of the items of evidence that the War Department claimed was found by Detective John Lee in George Atzerodt’s room at the Kirkwood House was a single, lone spur, which was supposedly found lying on the floor. Incredibly, and amazingly conveniently, Weichmann claimed that this spur was the missing spur to three pairs of spurs that were found in Weichmann’s closet at the Surratt boarding house!

In any case, the clerk who accompanied Lee to inspect Atzerodt’s room said he only saw Lee find a pistol, nothing else—no jacket, no spur lying on the floor, no knife. And the prosecutors never explained how this one lone spur came to be lying on the floor of Atzerodt’s room, which had just been cleaned.

* The two doctors who autopsied the body of the man shot in the barn wrote conflicting descriptions of the bullet’s path through the neck. Dr. Barnes said the bullet traveled at an upward angle, while Dr. Woodward said the bullet traveled at a downward angle. In 1993, a team of forensic anthropologists from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) and the National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM) examined the vertebrae and spinal cord and “were able to establish” that the bullet “entered high on the right and exited low on the left side of the neck,” and that it “was not self-inflicted” (Gretchen Wordon, “Is It the Body of John Wilkes Booth,” Transactions and Studies of the College of the Physicians of Philadelphia, 5:16, December 1994, p. 78). Note that the downward angle must have been rather sharp, since the bullet entered “high” on the right side and exited “low” on the left side.

* The fact that the AFIP-NMHM pathologists determined that the bullet entered on the right side of the neck and traveled markedly downward means that when the victim was shot, he was not facing the shooter, and that the shooter must have fired from a position significantly above the victim. This is further evidence that Boston Corbett lied about shooting the man in the barn and lied about what the man was doing when he was shot.

Dr. Robert Arnold examined the vertebrae specimens and the photographs of them and found that the bullet track was undeniably at least 25 degrees below horizontal. One of the photos showed a rod placed in the bullet track through the neck “and it clearly demonstrated the entry as being at least twenty-five degrees from the horizontal” (The Conspiracy Between John Wilkes Booth and the Union Army to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln, pp. 264-265). Dr. Arnold is a retired Navy surgeon and assistant coroner.

* None other than Congressman Benjamin Butler, one of the most virulent of the Radical Republicans, became convinced that Mary Surratt was “an innocent woman” and that the military tribunal had convicted her “without sufficient evidence” (Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, March 26, 1867, p. 118).