Why was Booth admitted into the presidential box?

[loetar44]

The facts concerning how John Wilkes Booth actually made his way into the president’s private box is still (my opinion), even after 150 years, NOT exactly known. To enter the president’s box Booth had to pass two doors, both closed and unlocked: the outer door (which opened into a short passageway), and a second, inner door. There was no one stationed in the passageway and Lincoln’s police officer bodyguard, John Parker, had unaccountably left the chair placed for him practically in front of the outer door and had gone somewhere else.

Was Forbes monitoring entry through the outer door? Or, was there someone sitting just outside that door, and was it Forbes? We have the account of an Union army officer, who happened to witness the brief encounter between Booth and a man sitting outside the outer door, later describing what he had seen: Booth, apparently recognizing the man, walked up and, after reaching into his vest pocket, presented a card, whereupon Booth was allowed to enter the door. Did this indeed happen? A traditional view (set forth in innumerable accounts of Lincoln’s death) is that Booth was able to enter the outer door unchallenged by anyone at its entrance.

Forbes still remains (my opinion) a something of a mysterious figure. And isn’t it very strange that he never has given a witness statement in the investigation that followed the assassination? If he allowed Booth entrance he was the most important witness! Why was he never called as a witness?

Occam’s razor (a scientific problem solving principle) states that among all kinds of hypotheses the one with the fewest assumptions is true. And what is the simplest explanation here, the one with the fewest assumptions? According to me: Forbes was not there at all! He was NOT a witness.

According to most scholars, Forbes did not leave any known written or verbal account of the events. However, according to Timothy S. Good’s “We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts (1995)”, Forbes prepared in 1892 a one-paragraph account of the events at Ford’s Theatre in which he acknowledged being in Lincoln’s box when Lincoln was shot but said nothing about letting Booth into that box.

The fact that Charles Forbes was positioned at the outer door to Lincoln’s box was mentioned in newspaper articles shortly after the assassination. George S. Bryan’s 1940 book on the assassination does also mention this. But in most other accounts it is omitted. Forbes’ presence at the door is also omitted in almost all movie or TV versions of the Lincoln assassination. It was not until 1983, when William Hanchett re-identified Forbes as “the man who allowed Booth to reach Lincoln’s chair,” in his “The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies”. From that day it became the most popular theory. In 1984 an historical society placed on Forbes’ unmarked grave a tombstone which reads in part: “He accompanied the Lincolns to Ford’s Theatre on the night of April 14, 1865 and was seated just outside the box when the president was shot.”

Nowadays authoritative books on the assassination mention Forbes’ presence in the theatre and his decision to pass Booth into the box. But is it a proven fact that Forbes (or someone else ???) had stationed himself near the outer door of the president’s box? Is there any hard evidence to support this? Or is it one of the many hypotheses (myths) that still surround Lincoln’s death? That Booth may have used the name of Senator Hale, to gain entry to the box, and that Stanton wanted to protect Hale's good name and therefore did not call Forbes as a witness, is according to me speculation (but certainly an interesting theory; in politics anything can happen).

If there was no one positioned near the outer door to Lincoln’s box when Booth entered through that door, declares a lot. Who was that Union army officer, who said that he witnessed the brief encounter between Booth and a man. Did he recognize Forbes? How reliable is his account? Did he say that Booth spoke with “someone” and that this “someone” was later interpreted as “almost certainly Forbes”, which is of course no hard evidence at all. Did others see the brief encounter?