Louis Weichmann

[L Verge]

Whoa, Pamela, you are throwing your spear at the wrong person if you think that I am a supporter of the "innocent Mrs. Surratt" theory. I know Surratt House isn't haunted 'cause if it were, her ghost would have gotten me a long time ago for giving my personal opinion of understanding why the government acted as it did in arresting the conspirators and trying them before a military court and why the specific four were executed.

Likewise, your anti-Southern bias ain't gonna work on this broad! And don't even start on the "she was a slave holder" angle because her former slaves testified on her behalf -- at a time when they had the full power of the federal government to support them if they chose to condemn her as an evil mistress. Aunt Rachel continued to support Mrs. Surratt for another thirty-plus years as revealed in a newspaper interview in the 1890s. And finally, throwing the death statistics around isn't going to cut it either. Mrs. Surratt's actions did not cause the Civil War and the death of 700,000+ people. Her actions, if accurately proved, assisted in the death of one person (four if you count Booth and Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt).

To me, the issue comes down to Mary Surratt having enough evidence (albeit circumstantial, perhaps, by our standards) against her to cause her destruction. I have often suggested to museum visitors and others that she must have been deaf, blind, and downright stupid not to know that her son was up to something dangerous.

I feel the same as far as Weichmann, so I wonder why it took him so long to report to Gleason (if he did). It also gave him every reason to protect himself first when push came to shove. I happen to believe the basics of his testimony, but I also think he exaggerated a tad. I think also that the public, both North and South, felt that he practiced the first law of nature -- self-preservation. That's why he didn't get a hero's reception then or now. As much as we all enjoy his memoir as edited by Mr. Risvold, it has yet to receive a 100% approval rating by historians in the field. I remember one who referred to it as pure self-vindication.

This opening of the Weichmann wound has brought two new things for me to ponder: First, you refer to Msgr. Conroy as a nut, but reading his statements and some comments by others, he was reciting what he had been told by Msgr. Mulcahy, who knew Weichmann and his family personally. I want to know what made Mulcahy bad-mouth them so badly. My second question mark concerns what I just read this week about Holt seeing to payments being made to Louis on various occasions after both trials - as well as securing government positions for him. As James O. Hall was wont to say, "Follow the money trail."