Does anyone know...?

[John Fazio]

Laurie. Dennis and Roger:

Are you intelligent and learned folks still hung up on the kidnapping myth? I can't believe it. Do you really believe that Booth thought he could deposit the "giant" (Lincoln) onto a stage, from a height of 12 feet, into the waiting arms of the "pygmy" (Arnold), from whence they and their gang of amateurs would spirit their captive through thousands of his supporters, armed National Detective Police and armed Union soldiers, and then show up on Davis's doorstep with Lincoln in handcuffs, without the knowledge and approval of Confederate leaders? Arnold himself described the scheme as suicidal and said he would have no part in it. Or do you suppose that Booth really believed he could take his target from his own carriage after his rag-tag bunch of no-accounts and misfits overcame Lincoln's armed cavalry escort of Ohioans and Pennsylvania "Bucktails"? And for what purpose? To hold him in Richmond pending the release of Confederate POW's, even though that had already been authorized by Grant in January, who had set a goal of 3,000 per week? And even if either of these ridiculous scenarios had a dust mite's worth of merit to them, what good could possibly have come to the Confederacy by the release of more POW's in March and April of 1865 when the war was, for all practical purposes, over, which no one knew better than the Confederate leadership?

Please read or re-read Chapter 12 of Decapitating the Union. Then reconsider. The days of mythology are over. Or should be.

John