Prior to Booth entering the box Simon P. Hanscom delivered an envelope to the President. The message turned out to be of little importance; it asked for a permit for two former Confederate
officials to visit Washington and have a meeting with Lincoln.
I thought the message was in the National Archives. It is not the papers Edwin Beede picked up since those are apparently lost. Can anyone confirm the whereabouts of the Hanscom papers?
Rich, do you have a copy of W. Emerson's Reck's A. Lincoln - His Last 24 Hours? If so, take a look at pp. 165-167. Dr. Reck felt the most plausible explanation is that the Hanscom dispatch was in the papers Bedee picked up. From there they passed through several hands, and one guess is that they are now mixed in with thousands of other papers in the LOC. At least that is what Dr. Reck thought. He passed away in 1995. I really like his book.
Thank you Roger. Beede turned the papers he found over to Stanton so I guess what was in them was known. I was aware that the papers Beede found were thought to be lost.
Roger, do you have some great database that enables you to find this info or just a great memory?
Hi Rich. I really do not know. I do have a database on my computer, and certain facts just stick in my brain, but I am very poor at writing essays. When I was in school I got FAR better grades from teachers who gave objective tests rather than essay tests. My grades fell in college when I had a higher percentage of teachers who used essay questions in their tests.