assassination

[Pamela]

(12-02-2015 09:36 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(11-29-2015 08:09 AM)Jim Woodall Wrote:  Following Bull Run, John Holohan was arrested and charged with treason. Some of the charges included causing the stampede at Bull Run and also threatening the president. There are several articles in the local papers covering this. If my memory serves correctly, he was eventually let go after ye olde "loyalty oath." It makes for interesting reading.

see:
National Republican, 31 Jul 1861, pg 3 - stampede, threatening

"Arrested for Treason. Yesterday John Holohan was arrested by the military authorities, on the oath of citizens, charging him with complicity with the rebels, and threatening that the President should not be allowed to remain in this city longer than three months. It is supposed that be, by some means, passed himself off as a wagon-master at the Bull Run engagement, and added not a little in creating the stampede among the baggage wagons. He was committed to jail by Justice Donn."

Seeing John Holohan's feelings makes me wonder all the more why Weichmann did not move out of the Surratt boardinghouse. I know Weichmann gives an explanation in his book, but seeing this information on John Holohan makes me wonder even more how sincere he was. I would have been very uncomfortable living there if I were 100% Union as claimed by Mr. Weichmann.

Weichmann had spent three years studying for the priesthood in an overwhelmingly pro south environment in St Charles College. From the Townsend interview, " When the war broke out, the whole school was, with few exceptions, favorable to the success of the Rebellion. The teachers seemed to have little enthusiasm for the liberty of opinion, the secular education, and the republican civilization of the North....We were kept ignorant of Union victories." The sponsor for priesthood that he was assigned to was Bishop McGill in Richmond, who rejected him after the trial because of his testimony. Weichmann was used to finding himself amidst Confederate sympathizers and anticipated a future in Richmond where he would be ministering to a population actively sympathetic to the Southern cause. He explained his state of mind this way," Religion, I have always looked upon as something above the mere politics of the day, and vague theories about human government. Religion is eternal, immutable, it has existed for ages past, and will exist when empires and kingdoms shall have crumbled to dust....My principles are: loyalty to God first, then to country, and if for a moment I thought that in any action I would be called to perform for the country I would displease God, not all the armies of creation could force me to it."
Gilbert Raynor , a fellow clerk at the Office of the Commissary of Prisoners (or whatever it was called) said this about Weichmann, "Seemed more vehement in his expressions against the South and the Secessionists than any man in the office." Do you believe Weichmann was putting on an act so no one would suspect he was stealing dispatches and handing them to Surratt? If so, why didn't Weichmann use Surratt's services to get his letters to Bishop McGill instead of the ships of truce?