What Was The Role of David Herold

[John Fazio]

(02-01-2013 06:31 PM)JMadonna Wrote:  

(02-01-2013 01:32 PM)John Fazio Wrote:  Jerry:

... But does the reference to Booth and Herold having gone to the Kirkwood and having "seen" Johnson truly mean that they actually met him and did business with him, or might it mean only that they had observed him from a distance, presumably to confirm his residence there, size up his m.o., etc., in preparation for the kill?

- It's possible but why didn't Booth go with Atzerodt his designated trigger man? Why did he later tell Atzerodt to get a pass from Johnson and tell how to go through his secretary? Because Booth already did so with Herold seems more likely to me.

(02-01-2013 01:32 PM)John Fazio Wrote:  Granted that the fugitives made it across the bridge, nothing was said by Cobb about passes, nor do his statments and testimony lend themselves to a supposition that passes were a part of their tranactions. My conclusion about Cobb is that:

1. General Order No. 5 was not being strictly enforced, contra Kauffman; or

2. There was foul play, i.e. Cobb's passing them was pre-arranged and paid for.

The second possibility may have more to it than is commonly supposed, because entirely too many things went Booth's way that night. (Roscoe suggests the possibility.) It is hard to believe that Booth and Herold would have approached the bridge unless they were certain they would be passed, but with no mention or suggestion of passes, I look for another reason.

Agreed - too many things went right that night for it all to be a string of lucky coincidences. When things go wrong in government scapegoats are always found.As you once wrote its the grunts that pay the price not the higher-ups. Had Cobb taken a bribe he surely would have been found out and court-martialed. Yet he did not even get a reprimand.This tells me that they couldn't because he did everything by the book.

BtW - Do you have anything new coming out?

Jerry:

Your reasoning re the passes is sound and I am going to take account of it in my writing. Nevertheless, I am troubled by the fact that neither Cobb nor Fletcher says or even hints at anything about passes in their statements and testimony at the trial. It seems to me that if Booth and Herold had passes, Cobb would simply have said so, thereby getting himself off the hook. The notion that he was covering for Johnson under Stanton's coaching is, in my opinion, most unlikely. I do not believe either man would have risked the slightest imputation of wrongdoing in the circumstances. Their skirts had to be completely clean. If Johnson gave the fugitives passes, he would have been much better served by simply acknowledging the fact and asserting that he did so in perfectly good faith, than to cover it up, risk exposure and the consequent wrath of the country and removal from office. In my opinion, undue influence on Cobb is the more likely of the two explanations for his behavior. Consider, in this connection, his premature death (or disappearance) a couple of years later, allegedly in Michigan. Pure speculation, of course, all the way around. But it is too much to believe that it was simply more good luck for Booth and Herold. Would they have ridden to the bridge with anything less than complete certainty that they would be pemitted to pass? What were they prepared to do if Cobb had rejected their bid for passage?

As to the future, I am in the final stages of a book on the assassination, tentatively titled Lincoln's Assassination: Toward a Consensus. The material that just appeared in the Courier is from the book.

John