The Reason Lincoln Had to Die

[L Verge]

First, Mr. Wesley, let me welcome you to this Forum. From your opening salvos, I can tell that things might heat up a tad -- and we welcome different opinions that can be fortified with documented evidence. As director of the Surratt House Museum, I have been interacting with beginners and scholars (and everything in between) for forty years. It can be a fun and educational experience -- most of the time.

In those forty years, I have had the pleasure to be friends with and mentored by 20th-century leaders in this field -- James O. Hall, John C. Brennan, Gen. William Tidwell, Michael Kauffman, Bill Hanchett, Ed Steers, Betty Ownsbey, Kate Larson, Elizabeth Leonard, Tom Turner, Terry Alford, and many others. The author, Don Thomas, has included many excellent books in his bibliography. If he actually read and absorbed each of those books and compared their facts with his facts, he deserves a good pat on the back.

Since the Surratt House has an excellent research center with many fine collections housed there, I have to ask if Mr. Thomas or you availed yourselves of that resource? If not, you would be amazed at the amount of time and research many of those who have gone before have expended and left very few leaves unturned -- and also did not turn a blind eye to certain "facts," letters, etc. as you suggest.

I just posted to some friends that I have Mr. Thomas's book sitting on my kitchen table with every good intention of reading it. However, as I said to them, I can't bring myself to start just yet. I have been a nut on the Lincoln assassination since I was about ten and have an impressive collection of books on the subject -- as do many of the contributors to this forum. I must admit that I have gone through the good, the bad, and the ugly with authors for so long -- and been disappointed so many times when their publicity hype did not match their research skill levels -- that I am very jaded.

I do hope that, as I read this book, something jumps off the page and makes me scream, "Now, that makes sense, and here's original documentation to support it!" When that happens, I will surely post on this site. I believe that I speak for most who are reading this: We do enjoy new and supported theories and positions and are ready to welcome this book to our shelves, if it passes the test.

P.S. I notice in several places that you refer to Atzerodt's "lost" confession as never being found until the 1970s. One of my staff members at the museum (and a good friend for forty years), Joan Chaconas, is the one who "found" the original in the Doster family holdings after a member of that family took a tour at our museum and mentioned the papers. However, that confession had appeared in newspapers at least once at the time of the trial, so it was not totally lost. People like Hall and Brennan had perused the news article for years before Joan visited with the Dosters. It will be interesting to see what Mr. Thomas has brought to light that others didn't see or preferred to "forget."