Booth's Denial of Foreknowledge of the Attack on Seward

[mikegriffith1]

When Guttridge and Neff and Shelton pointed out that Booth denied involvement in the attack on Seward and even expressed “horror” over it in his diary, the denial rang true and made sense to me. Said Booth, “I have only heard what has been done (except what I did myself) and it fills me with horror.”

Surely if Booth had ordered the attack on Seward, he would have defended it just as strongly as he defended his shooting of Lincoln. If he had no qualms about admitting that he murdered Lincoln, he would have had no qualms about admitting that he ordered the attack on Seward.

Even according to the official version, Booth said nothing about taking any action against Seward. In fact, there is no record that Booth even spoke critically of Seward. Yet, we are asked to believe that on the spur of the moment, literally hours before the assassination, Booth not only decided to kill Lincoln but to have his accomplices kill Seward and Johnson.

As I have mentioned before, even when I knew little about the Lincoln assassination, the attack on Seward made no sense. Any Confederate-backed attack would have targeted Stanton, Wade, Butler, Sherman, Julian, Stevens, etc., not Lincoln, Johnson, and Seward.

Seward was known to support Lincoln’s soft, forgiving Reconstruction terms. Confederate leaders knew this quite well from the meeting at Hampton Roads when Seward and Lincoln met for several hours with CSA Vice President Alexander Stephens, CSA Assistant Secretary of War John Campbell, and CSA Senator Robert Hunter.

Booth’s denial of foreknowledge of the attack on Seward becomes even more intriguing when we consider the huge holes in the official story of the attack. One of the strongest points in Shelton’s book is his thorough and revealing analysis of the eyewitness testimony on the attack. Guttridge and Neff’s analysis is much shorter but brings up some important points about the glaring problems with the official version.

And notice that Booth felt no need to say anything about any abortive attack on Johnson or Grant, most likely because he never thought about attacking either man.