Something I've Wondered About....

[BettyO]

Quote:Where in the world did the idea that Powell slept like a baby and scarfed his breakfast get started? I have that in more than one account, not just the NY Times and James Swanson.

Maybe that is how so many apparently incorrect legends around the young man persist to this day...that he was Booth's efficient, ruthless, bloodless killing machine, and that unlike the others he went to the gallows unrepentant. I even remember reading somewhere that he might have had brain damage.

Either way, the perception has always been that Powell wasn't quite normal.

I agree 100% Laurie!

Toia, thanks a lot!

The press needed a scape goat and apparently Powell was it. These stories/myths have been handed down for years upon years. I've just discovered a "different" young man than the one previously portrayed, that's all. Nothing to disparage Swanson or any other researcher.

In an apparent sole interview with journalist, William Wilkins Glenn, Reverend Augustus Stryker, who was in the death cell with Powell as well, and pastor to his girlfriends, the Branson sisters, stated that Powell was a decent young man who "attended St. Barnabas [Episcopal Church] quite regularly morning and evening. After some weeks he spoke to him one day after church and asked him if he had been in the Confederate army. Powell told him that he had. Afterwards, they became more intimate and Powell came frequently to see him. Mr. Stryker found him gentlemanly, intelligent and earnest...." To quote Glenn, "I am glad to hear this of Powell. It is quite evident that no promise of gain influenced him. He was induced to join with Booth in the assassination of men whom he considered most wicked with the conviction that he was benefiting his cause and doing a deed for which his county would hereafter thank him...." (from Between North and South - a Maryland Journalist Views the Civil War by William Wilkins Glenn, Associated University Presses, 1976, (pp. 242-243)

This is the same story that Powell told Gillette the night before he died; that he had been told by men high up in the Confederate hierarchy that he would be a "hero" and was performing a deed for which his "country" would forever thank him. I also believe, like Laurie and Messrs. Hall, Tidwell and Gaddy, that his orders were dispatched from Richmond and Canada.

This sounds like a somewhat naive and unsophisticated young man to me - not a psychopath. When he could have hung out in saloons, brothels, pool halls and the like, strangely this young man was attending church services!

I'll probably get eaten alive for saying this, but I'm not here to deify or apologize for Powell - just to set the record straight....and what one uncovers is, to me, utterly fascinating!

Now - let's see if we can find any recollections of the hanging from the guards who were there! More fascinating stuff!!