Surratt Society Meeting and "Conference" 2021

[STS Lincolnite]

(04-18-2021 12:04 PM)Steve Wrote:  With all this talk of "Ages" v. "Angels", I think this article may be of interest:

http://www.richardwfox.com/phrase

(Contrary to what this article says I don't think there was a reporter from the New Herald present at Lincoln's, but otherwise I think it's a good read.)

The article Steve posted a link to was based on one of the same title that Fox originally wrote as a post on the ALPLM blog (called “Out of the Top Hat”) on August 2, 2010. I mentioned it (or at least that Fox had addressed the question) briefly in my talk. Both versions of the article (there are only a few differences) are succinct and worth a read. My conclusions on this question mirror Fox’s. The credible, primary source evidence I have yet found for “ages” is weak. The credible, primary source evidence I have yet found for “angels” is non-existent.

Like Steve, for various reasons, I don’t think there was a “New York Herald reporter, pencil in hand” in attendance.

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(04-19-2021 04:21 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  I apologize to Scott if he clearly answered this question in his excellent talk. What surprises me is that there is even a debate on this. All 3 primary sources (John Hay, Dr. Charles Sabin Taft, and James Tanner who were present at the death scene) agree on Stanton saying "ages." No one who was present when Lincoln died claimed Stanton said "angels." So why is there a debate? In many instances what we know of the details of the Lincoln assassination saga is due to only one primary source, but in this case we actually have 3. So can someone clearly enunciate why the 3 primary sources are questioned?

Scott mentioned the names of many authors who use "ages" and many of whom use "angels." But somehow I missed the root cause of the debate.

Why is there a debate about ages or angels?

That is a good question. Part of the reason is related to those witnesses.

First, there are earlier accounts from both Tanner and Taft that do not mention Stanton having said anything. The first published for Tanner where he mentions Stanton having said something that I can find is 1905 (40 years after the fact). His first account (which does not mention Stanton’s words) was a letter on 17 April 1865. The first published account I can find from Taft where he mentions Stanton’s words is 1893 (28 years after the fact). An earlier account he gave and was published, 22 April 1865, does not mention Stanton having said anything. Of course just because they didn’t MENTION Stanton having said something doesn’t mean he didn’t say anything. It may only mean they didn’t think it important enough to mention at the time. Who knows?

The above being the case, for me, the majority reason there is a debate is because the book Twenty Days (a secondary source) by Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt and Philip Kunhardt Jr. associated Tanner to “angels” and some subsequent writers picked it up, took it as fact, and ran with it.

Tanner is really the key here. He is generally considered a reliable source and both “ages” and “angels” have been attributed to him. At least in the modern writings (late 20th, early 21st century) the pro-angels argument is fundamentally based on Tanner’s supposed account. The problem is, most of those who assign “angels” to him lead back to Twenty Days where he is supposedly quoted. But of course, there is no citations in that book. And, as I put forward in my talk I have not found any primary sources that connect Tanner with “angels.” There are in fact numerous primary sources to connect Tanner to “ages.” Part of the pro-angels argument also centers around the fact that Stanton was religious and so “angels” seems more in line with that. But without using a foundation of Tanner’s having used “angels” along with the similar phrase construction to Hay and Taft, for me, that rationale falls apart.