Identification of Booth's body

[Steve]

(01-30-2019 07:04 PM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  Dr. Griffin is a professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina and the author of numerous books on historical subjects, including two books on Lincoln and the Civil War. His biography of Thomas Wolfe received the History Book of the Year Award from the North Carolina Historical Society. In 2000, Governor Jim Hodges of South Carolina named Dr. Griffin to the Order of the Silver Crescent, the highest award the state can give to a citizen. Here is an excerpt from Dr. Griffin’s book on the Lincoln assassination:

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. (Abraham Lincoln’s Execution (Pelican Publishing Company, 2006, pp. 408-409)

Just to add to my reply to Mike above - When the body believed to be Booth's was exhumed in 1869, it was found to have only one boot, with the other foot wearing a shoe. From page one of the 17 Feb. 1869 edition of the Baltimore Sun: