Decapitation of the Union

[MajGenl.Meade]

Enjoyable as the travelogue and linguistics are, to return for a moment to the book... which I purchased at the Surratt Museum (100 points), I've just finished the first read-through and will shortly embark on the more leisurely and detailed examination. (I have to be careful here because John's an acquaintance and packs a mean punch! :-). Besides my mother always told me to say two positive things before saying anything else.

I'm glad I bought it. I'm glad I have it, although like Meade's new horse the price is pretty digging. It's also literally a heavy work to read in bed at night - my arms got tired. But there's lots of good stuff in there.

One of my peeves is John's technique of stating a thing as conjecture and later in the book stating the same thing as a virtual certainty and then later as an absolute (using terms such as, "As we have already learned in Ch. xx").

In this very thread we see a similar process but in reverse:

06-30-2015, 06:41 AM John Fazio
Herold most likely knew the truth. He too had been to Canada.

06-30-2015, 05:07 PM John Fazio
Herold in Canada? It is not stated with certainty, but the evidence comes from the testimony of James B. Merritt at the trial of the conspirators. He said "I think I saw the prisoner, D. E. Herold, in Canada." (See Pitman, p. 35)

In the course of one day, John moves from a certainty to a not-certainty but granted, it's a chat and not a considered essay. Nevertheless, the point if not queried would have remained as a certainty

Allied to that is the apparent cherry-picking of Merritt et al. They are, as John points out, horrendous liars but he avers that in order to make their story more believable they included some truth. Coincidentally, the true bits are all exactly the same truths as John needs for his thesis. Thus to protect the project, Herold's presence in Canada cannot be suspect because Merritt said it but because Merritt (honest man!), said "I think..." On the other hand, he's correct; "I think" is enough to make the identification weak.

But I have John to thank for my new nightmare - scores of Mosby's men surrounding Ford's Theatre whistling in the dark. The reasoning seems to be: I think Mosby was more involved; some people heard whistles; Mosby men often whistled; therefore they were all around Ford's Theatre to help Booth; QED!

The chief defect of the book is, I believe, the almost complete lack of any evidence (other than conjecture from unrelated particles) that Judah Benjamin had any role in the assassination and that pretty much goes for the Cabinet and Davis. "Because blankets" does not equal "therefore bullets" - perhaps in a civil case.

To a degree I was reminded of some of Theodore Roscoe's techniques in "The Web of Conspiracy" which I'm also having to read more carefully now to compare the two works.

A deeper reading of Decapitation may change my mind on this, but at present, anyone expecting a smoking gun will be disappointed (and John certainly promised no such thing).

I'll close with another positive. There is much meat in John's book and it's worth chewing over more than once.