What Was The Role of David Herold

[John Fazio]

[quote='John E.' pid='12345' dateline='1359993607']
Hello John,

Kudos to you on a great article. I always love when someone challenges the story as its been told for umpteen years. Also, kudos to Dave Taylor for asking the question 'Where's the source ?" a few years back...

I have a question: You seem to give a lot of attention to the lights being turned off in the theater in regards to Booth's assassination plan.

Weren't the lights to be extinguished to aid the kidnapping and not the murder ?
[/quote


John:

Thank you very much for your compliment and for remembering Dave Taylor.

John, the next shibboleth and icon that I will attempt to destroy is "kidnapping". There is a chapter in my book by that title and I believe it destroys the myth that Booth first contemplated kidnapping, but changed his mind to murder in the days leading up to the assassination. In my judgment, the Confederates were not so stupid as to imagine that kidnapping the President and holding him hostage would have done them the slightest good. There is good evidence that Booth was contemplating murder as early as 1863, and certainly as early as
April, 1864. Eckert believed such intent dated to January, 1865, at least. Neither Harris nor Bingham believed the kidnapping story. The other so-called kidnapping plots, (Joseph Walker Taylor; Bradley T. Johnson; Thomas Nelson Conrad and Daniel Mountjoy Cloud), were either vetoed by higher authority or came to nothing, perhaps elaborate ruses to deceive Union intelligence. Forget kidnapping. Zero in on the real plot, which followed the Wistar and Dahlgren-Kilpatrick raids, in which Confederate leaders believed they had been targeted by Lincoln and Stanton for death. After those raids, the gloves were off and the goal became multiple assassinations. Kidnapping is kid stuff.

John