Was Stanton a murder target?

[John Fazio]

Friends:

We have here another conundrum in connection with the assassination. There are many: Surratt's whereabouts on the 14th comes to mind. I grant that Booth's trip to Baltimore on the 13th, though not impossible, is problematic. Not only is there difficulty reconciling "Justice's" sighting in Baltimore with Ford's and Hess's testimony, there is more than difficulty--there is flagrant inconsistency--between their testimony and Frederick Demond's letters, which place Booth and Herold on the Maryland side of the Navy Yard Bridge on the morning of the 14th (which is consistent with Laurie's ancestors putting Herold in Maryland on the night of the 13th-14th and the fact that it is known that Booth did not sleep in his room at the National that night) and which also state that Booth and Herold were incarcerated in the Block House until 2:00 or 3:00 pm, because they had refused to give Demond their names. To thicken the stew, there is the account given in the April 18, 1865, New York Times of Booth conversing with an acquaintance on the sidewalk next to the Kirkwood House on the 14th and then being joined by "a boy", who must have been Herold, who said to him "Yes, he (i.e. Johnson) is in his room." To thicken it still more, there is Julia Grant's account of a "White House messenger" who came to her suite in Willard's about mid-day, whom she later identified as probably Herold (and who fits the description), and of four men, one of whom was certainly Booth, another Herold and the other two most likely Powell and Atzerodt, in the dining room of Willard's, eavesdropping on her conversation with Mrs. Rawlins and her daughter. And let us not forget Booth's conversation with Mathew's on the Avenue between 4:00 and 5:00 pm and his stop-off at Deery's at about 4:00 pm for a bottle of brandy.

The suggestion has been made that perhaps the conspirators, or at least some of them, made use of look-alikes (e.g. James William Boyd), which would explain a lot, including why 5 witnesses put Surratt in Elmira, N.Y., on the 14th and 13 or 14 put him in Washington. There is actually evidence for this (see Chamberlin's letter to Stanton on p. 1226 of The Lincoln Assassination, but it is weak.

I cannot possibly reconcile all these divergent accounts (and probably some I am leaving out) of Booth's and Herold's whereabouts on the 14th (or Atzerodt's and Powell's either); I doubt that anyone can. For this reason, it is probably best if we do not even try. Let us, instead, stick to what we do know, or that is at least most probable, and which is not dependent upon their whereabouts. That is to say: O'Laughlen came to Washington on the 13th from Baltimore with three friends; that he went to the National that night and saw Booth, or so he said to one of his friends; that he went again to the National the following morning and most likely saw Booth again, despite his denial, because the circumstantial evidence favors it; that someone came to the Stanton home on the night of the 13th apparently ill-motivated; that the someone was identified, convincingly, as O'Laughlen at the trial by three persons who were at Stanton's home that night; and that Atzerodt stated that the intruder was O'Laughlen and that his alibi was bogus. It is not reasonable to conclude from this that O'Laughlen made two trips to the National, within, perhaps, 15 hours, inconveniencing his friends in the process, for the purpose of making idle social calls on Booth. It is more reasonable to conclude that the visits were related to the assassination and that O'Laughlen was, to that extent at least, still in the game , a fact corroborated by Atzerodt's statement. And this is true whether Booth went to Baltimore or not. Telegram? Possible. But it would have been sheer madness for Booth to put in a telegram the kinds of things he wanted to discuss with O'Laughlen--toxic, in the extreme. Somehow, whether it was by personal visit, a written communication, an oral message, whatever, Booth advised O'Laughlen that he needed him in Washington for a service that was related to the conspiracy. In response thereto, O'Laughlen came and did what was asked of him.

John