Through Five Administrations

[L Verge]

And therein lies the fascination for so many of us. It becomes a game to see what we can prove or disprove or surmise about. James O. Hall used to call us his Baker Street Irregulars because we were willing to dig deeper for answers. He also said that once one was bitten by the assassination bug, there was no known cure.

As you might have guessed, I'm addicted! What has irritated me the most over the past forty years, however, is the automatic assumption that, if one is interested in the assassination, one must be anti-Lincoln. Those of us who have "raised" Surratt House up to a "respectable level" had to endure a lot of bull-stuff from the Lincoln field for the first ten or twenty years. We were literally considered the enemy by the die-hard Lincolnites. Many of us are excellent Lincoln historians and able to discuss his flaws as well as his virtues - and I think there were plenty of both... That's what makes many people interesting as well as controversial.