Decapitation of the Union

[John Fazio]

(10-05-2015 04:16 AM)MajGenl.Meade Wrote:  John

You write that Weichmann is a "good" source. Certainly if one copies information from another writer that source, good or not, must be acknowledged. You say that he is relating something from the Century Magazine - it seems to me that whoever wrote the Century Magazine should be cited as the "primary source" rather than Weichmann as "secondary" or who knows at what remove? His testimony is only that he read this somewhere else - not that he knows it to be true. Evidence that the man could read is not evidence that Booth etched anything.

Weichmann wrote: "The handwriting on the windowpane when compared with the signature of Booth on the hotel register is found to be identically the same, and this fact is further verified and strengthened by a comparison with Booth's handwriting in his diary. There is not the slightest doubt that the writing on the pane of glass is that of Booth..."

In this thread, people make valid arguments that the writing is not, in fact, Booth's. STS Lincolnite offers the unlikelihood that scratching anything in glass will produce comparable handwriting - casting doubt on Weichmann's truth-claim as surely as anyone.

And yet you say Weichmann's story, "Sounds pretty good to me, especially when coupled with evidence of attempted poisoning of the President, probably with the complicity of the druggist's clerk whose name was Herold and whose place of employment was known to serve the Executive Mansion"

"...it is believed" is not evidence. It is an unverified statement with no date provided in your book as to when this alleged "poisoning" occurred. Did it or did it not occur during Herold's brief tenure at Thompson's? Does it or does it not matter that Herold did not sign anything purporting to show that he had prepared the vial of castor oil but shows only that he is the clerk who recorded the charge to Lincoln's account? Yet you make the unequivocal statement that Herold DID make up the vial and I'm splitting hairs. No - I'm saying that's wrong.

That there were threats on Lincoln's life (and at least one attempt) is undoubted. Neither the etched glass nor the castor oil story belong in that list because these claims do not stand, either together or apart. I've not started on the other eleven paragraphs yet.

Peter:

You ARE splitting hairs, but that's O.K.; at least you're thinking.

I grant that if I were writing the book now I would not be as categorical in my judgment as to the etched pane in Meadville. The question of origin now seems less certain to me, based on evidence adduced in this thread.

As for Herold, no categorical statement is made. His working in a pharmacy that served the Executive Mansion from March 1 through July ,1863, coupled with the fact that he was still a pharmacist's clerk through September 4, 1864, at a time when Booth was actively plotting assassination, and the fact that he was one of Booth's co-conspirators, is enough to create some suspicion that he may have had a hand in poisoning the president if there was a poisoning, and that is all the passage says.

As for poisoning, there were at least two occasions when it was suspected as a cause of Lincoln's illness, once when his entire family was sick, early in his presidency, attributed to the consumption of contaminated fish from the Potomac, and once immediately after he delivered the Gettysburg Address, said to have been diagnosed as smallpox. However, it has been written that after 1860 "he went continuously downhill" and that "in his last three months he was sick more than he was well--if he was ever well at all." I do not know if Holland had any of this in mind when he said "it is believed that on at least one occasion the president was poisoned...", but it really doesn't matter, because the passage was not offered as proof of an assassination attempt, but only as one historian's reference to a possible attempt. There are qualifiers in the passage itself and there are additional qualifiers on the preceding page ("...numerous incidents...which may well have been attempts on his life...or that they at least stood a good chance of being (assassination attempts)..."). In writing the book, I exercised my prerogative to include Holland's passage, for whatever value the reader may derive from it. When you write your book, it will be your prerogative to leave it out.

John