Those Booth Horses Again -

[wsanto]

I am not sure but that Bill Santo has contradicted the material he printed in post 58 above about horse injuries in post 87 above. They are all there and now he denies that?

I cannot find anyplace where Thos Jones said that Mudd confessed he lied to him about Booth falling with his horse. But Mudd lied like a rug according to Ed Steers, His Name Is Still Mudd.

Bill,

This is the quote of Thomas Davis I believed Mr. Kauffman used as his primary source evidence of Booth's horse being injured to support his theory of the horse-fall. You can find it in "The Evidence"

Q. What kind of horses were they?

A. One was a roan horse, medium size; a mark about the saddle where he had been hurt; his shoulder was swelled right smart; mark was behind the saddle, an old sore; the swelling of the shoulder was fresh; swelled right smart; I cannot remember whether he had white stockings; or whether he had any mark upon his forehead; he was a light roan. The saddle was light, government blanket with a row of holes down it. The other was a small bay mare. The colored man told me he had a white star on his forehead. I did not notice; she was lame in her left front leg she was very lame before taken out of the stable and taken to water about 10 or 11 o'clock


The problem is Mr. Kauffman apparently confused the horses. It was Herold's horse (the roan) that had a freshly swollen shoulder and an old injury behind its saddle. Davis does go on to say Booth's mare was very lame in the left leg later that morning but she was also the horse that was taken out for Herold to ride that afternoon when he and Mudd rode to Bryantown. (not so lame I guess).

In another statement Davis describes Booth's mare as being in "excellent trim" with a small piece of skin missing from the inside of its left foreleg (not evidence of a horse fall IMO)

That is the reason I claim that the evidence of Booth's mare being injured in a horse fall has been erroneously represented by Mr. Kauffman and erroneously argued since. It doesn't mean there wasn't a horse fall but it does mean, IMO, that there is no real evidence the mare was injured from a fall (which is where this all began on this thread)

I never said Thomas Jones stated that Mudd admitted the horse fall was a lie but that in his (Jones') book he gives his opinion the horse-fall story was a lie concocted by Mudd for cover.

Respectively,

Bill C