Tidwell revisited

[McCastle]

(12-12-2020 08:58 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(12-11-2020 10:26 AM)McCastle Wrote:  Meanwhile, John Surratt had given several different reasons for rushing down to Richmond immediately after the arrest of Augustus Howell. He told David Barry that he had to take the woman in his charge to Richmond, although there is no evidence at this point that Sarah Slater went any further than Port Tobacco. Mary Surratt told Louis Weichmann that John was going to Richmond for a clerkship. George Atzerodt had a letter and claimed Surratt told him "he was in trouble."

Joe, in Come Retribution it says, "At the same time that Harney and his men left Richmond, John H. Surratt was in the city. He arrived there on 29 March with Sarah Slater who had come from Montreal with dispatches from Jacob Thompson and Edwin G. Lee for Secretary of State Benjamin."

Do you feel Slater's alleged presence in Richmond is just an assumption on the part of the authors (as you indicate there is no proof)? Thanks, Joe.

I do Roger. I think it is an assumption that may have originated with statements by Louis Weichmann and David Barry in which John Surratt was to accompany Sarah Slater to Richmond. Taken at face value, it made sense to believe that Sarah Slater stayed with Surratt for the entire journey to Richmond. David Barry claimed he, along with Sarah and John, stayed overnight at Port Tobacco. and although he says Surratt ran the blockade, he never said that Sarah went with him.

When John Surratt returned to his mothers house in Washington on April 3rd, he seems to have returned alone. He asked Weichmann to exchange some gold pieces for greenbacks saying he was going to New York, but in Surratt's lecture he insisted that he did not go to his mothers house but rather to a hotel, which probably led some to believe that Surratt had Sarah stashed somewhere before going to New York. It's just a guess though. There is simply no evidence that she was with Surratt when he returned to Washington, let alone when he crossed the Potomac on his way to Richmond.

I could be mistaken, but I think Confederate spy Olivia Floyd of Port Tobacco, who was also thought to have been Sarah Slater, once took dispatches to Popes Creek that Sarah Slater later delivered.

If the dispatches were delivered directly into the hands of Sarah Slater at Popes Creek, is it possible that David Berry left Sarah in Port Tobacco because she was a local?

Perhaps a smitten George Atzerodt was trying to throw authorities off her trail by claiming she was from North Carolina.