Was Stanton a murder target?

[John Fazio]

(12-12-2016 09:38 AM)Dave Taylor Wrote:  

(12-11-2016 03:11 PM)John Fazio Wrote:  Kees:

Easy boy, I wasn't serious about the doppelganger; I was merely trying to highlight the flagrant inconsistency between Demond's letters (especially the one of June 12, 1916) and everything we know from other sources about the movements of Booth and Herold on April 14. Demond, and, later, as you point out, Dana, seem certain of the identity of the two men at the bridge, differing only on time of arrival and time of release. I frankly do not know how to reconcile the accounts. I doubt that anyone is intentionally lying (for what purpose?),so there must be another explanation. If you can offer one, other than the doppelganger theory, I am all ears.

John

As we have discussed before, Frederick Demond and David Dana are NOT reliable sources due to the huge discrepancies in their later accounts and the heavy influence of Finis Bates on both of them. In this way, there is NO reliable evidence that places John Wilkes Booth in Maryland on the morning of April 14th. See this thread: http://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussio...l#pid50430 and David Dana's error filled account: https://boothiebarn.files.wordpress.com/...rticle.pdf

Dave (and Laurie too, since you commented):

Thank you for the references, which I have read.

Sorry for not responding to this sooner. Since I have been retired, I find myself busier than when I was working.

In my opinion, we cannot simply throw Demond's and Dana's writings out the window and pretend they do not exist. Even without corroboration, it strains credulity to believe that Demond would falsely state that "On the morning of the 14th of April as Drake and myself (were) sitting down on a log by the side of the road two men came along. They started to go by. When I asked them where (they) were going they said only looking around...I asked them for their names but they would not (tell) me. Well if you won't we shall hold you until we get orders to let you go...but I think that you...are that actor that I have seen your photo of. He then said that I was right and that his companion was Herold...About 2 or 3 o'clock, an orderly from Headquarters came across the Bridge and gave Corporal Sullivan an order to let the men go. We did so." He has no reason to say any of this this if it, or something very much like it, did not happen. Forget Bates. He is merely the addressee; he is not the one relating what had happened at the bridge on the 14th. Only Demond's statements are relevant. But it strains credulity to the breaking point to reject not only Demond's statement, but also the statement of Dana, which is substantially the same and therefore corroborates Demond's statement and is in turn corroborated by it. Dana said (on Dec. 12, 1897) that "On Friday April 14, 1865, two men appeared before the guard on the road leading into Washington from the east. Refusing to give their names or state their business, they were arrested and put in the guard tent....This was about 1:00 o'clock in the afternoon. In an hour or two they gave their names as Booth and Herold. At 4:00 pm I received an order from General Auger to release all persons held by the guards. Booth and Herold were released as soon as the orders reached the guard, and they proceeded at once to Washington, reaching there about 6:30 in the afternoon. Clearly, the statements of both men attest to the same incident and clearly, therefore, something like this happened.

The question is: How do we square these statements with everything else we know about the movements of Booth and Herold that day, which I will not detail, other than to say that Ford could not have been mistaken about the identity of Booth when he showed up at the theater about noon. Which, then, is the more reasonable conclusion: That both Demond and Dana fabricated the story out of whole cloth,for no apparent reason, advantage or benefit, or that, in fact, part of the conspiracy, which was widespread and involved more than just Booth's immediate action team (about which, more in another response), involved placing two men who resembled Booth and Herold at the bridge in the morning for the purpose of establishing an alibi for the two men if the same were needed, just as Surratt may well have done in Elmira? The fact that the two men refused, initially, to identify themselves, which almost guaranteed that they would be detained, which was their purpose, is probative of the greater likelihood of this explanation compared to the total fabrication theory. The possibility that the real Booth and Herold showed up at the bridge on another date, and that the visit may have been conflated by Demond and Dana, exists, but strikes me as not as likely as the alibi theory. The alibi theory may seem far-fetched to you, but surely it is not as far-fetched as concluding that two independent sources, who attest to fundamentally the same incident, were both lying for no apparent purpose, advantage or benefit.

John