He Served in Place of Abraham Lincoln

[Susan Higginbotham]

(01-29-2016 06:56 PM)maharba Wrote:  What were supposed to be the sneering comments? Or "scorning comments", as you said now? From the newspaper article I cannot see he knew about the pension request/issue nor that he was still alive at all. From where do you evidently know he knew? It seems to me, Larner just reported what he knew at the time the interview was held. So, what sneering/scoring comments do you refer to?>

Eva, did you read the articles Roger linked to, the fuller narrative in many details? After "the Grand High Priest" made his outrageous claim of Summerfield being a loser, it got in the newspaper. The family and Summerfield apparently DID find
"Noble's" assertion to be sneering, dismissive. And the family apparently sent a correction of sorts to newspapers, stating that Summerfield was gainfully employed and not as the High Priest so glibly asserted. I agree with the Summerfield's
family. But I can see that others may think the exalted Priest was blameless in his comments, and I and the Summerfield family just might be wrong.

Who is the other of the both supposed to be in "Do you not see the irony in both their treatment of Summerfield and that they refused him even a small pittance of a pension?" (Lincoln was long dead.)>

You also said in this thread, Eva,
As for the pension - I am sure Lincoln would have taken care of that had he been alive. >>

Well, that explains it. Lincoln would have stepped forward, shook Summerfield's hand, perhaps prayed with him, and made good the DENIED pension. But, who might the several plurals be? Folks who certainly remembered that Lincoln did have
a Stand-In for him, folks at the War office who denied his pension, etc.

My thinking: The war was "long" ago and emotions/interest in it had faded as it had already been the case at Surratt's trial. I think someone just made a legal, emotionally neutral decision. >>

That must explain it. Why Summerfield is never taught.

I think you're overlooking something: the Pension Office was a bureaucratic maze that was swamped with applications in the postwar years. Whoever denied it was probably a low-level clerk who handled numerous applications at once and had no reason to single out Staples' (why do you keep calling him Summerfield?) for special attention.

You are also assuming that Staples met the requirement for eligibility that his disability be service-related. If he wasn't eligible and had been granted a pension anyway simply because he had been Lincoln's representative recruit, chances are that you would be decrying this as an example of favoritism by Lincoln's old cronies.

As for the "Grand High Priest's" comment, whether it was malicious, thoughtless, or simply the product of a mistaken memory, the fact that it was corrected by Staples' family without any protest on the part of Larner or anyone else weighs against the notion of some sort grand conspiracy to eliminate Staples from history.