Decapitation of the Union

[Susan Higginbotham]

All Weichmann is doing is paraphrasing the April 1896 Century Magazine article, which is here:

http://www.unz.org/Pub/Century-1896apr-00889

I'm having a hard time believing that Booth would have a theatrical engagement in Meadville, given that his other engagements in 1864, at the height of his success, were in major cities, much less that he would drag himself from a sickbed to keep it. Erysipelas was a serious illness (it killed John Stuart Mill in 1873). Even if he had only a mild case of it (and all the evidence suggests otherwise), the pain and swelling would have interfered with his ability to give the physical style of performance for which he was noted.

I noticed that the Century article also gives Lewis Powell a wife and baby in St. Louis.

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This letter by F. T. Munson, dated May 8, 1865, sheds some additional light on the window story:

May 8/65

Hon. James B. Fry, Provost Mar.

Dear sir,

Allow me to call your attention to the enclosed copy of an inscription on a pane of window glass taken out of a window in the McHenry Hotel, Meadville, PA, after the assassination of our Pres. Abraham Lincoln & as I understand now framed or about to be & shown to travelers who stop at said hotel. I have some friends who are now visiting me to whom it was shown with the remark that one hundred dollars had been offered for it but it could not be had as the time might come when it would be worth $20,000. I see that our government are said to be suppressing the sale of the assassins photographs which is right. Would it not be proper for this memento in question to be put where no mortal eyes ever would behold it again. I need not say to you that loyal hearts feel not only hurt but indignant that such a memento should be thus shown & valued in our midst.

Yours Truly

E. T. Munson
Frankln, PA.



In The Lincoln Assassination: The Evidence, where this letter is reprinted, Steers et al write that the pane was removed from room 22, which Booth had not occupied when he stayed at the hotel on June 10 and June 29. There is a letter from the hotel cashier to that effect here:

https://archive.org/stream/johnwilkesboo.../Meadville