Surratt Society Meeting and "Conference" 2021

[Rob Wick]

Roger,

It seems to me that one possibility could be that at the time no one thought much about Stanton's comments because of the overwhelming emotions wrought by Lincoln's death. If I'm not mistaken given that Hay did most of the writing of the Lincoln, and that he had a flair for the dramatic in his writing, that he knew that Stanton's words were a fitting coda to the Lincoln drama. What seems equally telling is that very few people tried to refute the quote even though Stanton was long dead and couldn't verify or refute any utterance. I cannot think of anyone who said that Stanton never said anything after Lincoln died, although at this time of the morning my thinking isn't the clearest.

Best
Rob