Was Stanton a murder target?

[John Fazio]

Everyone:

1. Paige, Knox's testimony is indeed unequivocal. So is Stanton's. (If he was not the Secretary's son, he was surely a relative. The Secretary's son is given as Edwin (Lamson), Jr., who would have been 23 in 1865, which is about right for him to be "David Stanton". Why he is called David at the trial is anyone's guess. Curiously, the elder Stanton and Mary (his first wife) had a second child, Lucy, who died in her second year, but one of those named by Knox as being in Stanton's home on the 13th is "Miss Lucy Stanton". Perhaps she was Edwin Jr.'s daughter or a niece.) And so is John C. Hatter's. But you are mistaken in your belief that Stanton was not targeted. See below.

2. Dave, in my judgment, the identity of the intruder remains unknown, though I believe, with Paige, that it was most likely O'Laughlen, despite the alibi. What is not doubtful, to me, is O'Laughlen's continuing complicity through the 14th. We know he was summoned to Washington personally by Booth, who went to Baltimore for that purpose on the morning of the 13th. We know, too, that O'Laughlen dutifully obeyed Booth, arriving in Washington at 5:30 pm on the same day. We know, further, that he went to the National that evening and met with Booth and that he went there again the following morning and almost certainly met with him again. Note that this summoning and these meetings all happened immediately before the assassination and attempted assassinations. I believe it is safe to conclude, therefore, that they were related to the assassination and attempted assassinations. In the evening of the 14th, we both know where O'Laughlen is alleged to have been--far from Stanton's home, but in the same way that his alibi for his whereabouts the previous evening may have been contrived, so too may his alibi for the 14th have been contrived. But it is altogether possible, too, that Booth had made as much use of O'Laughlen as he planned to do and made provision for another or others to take care of Stanton, just as he made provision for another to take care of Grant. See pp.333-336 of Decapitating for candidates. As for whether or not Stanton was a target, see my earlier entries and see below.
3. Brtmchl, if O'Laughlen was at Stanton's home on the 13th, it wasn't just to see Grant, but to obtain information preparatory to the assassinations planned for the next night. There is no evidence that O'Laughlen was assigned to kill Grant. Booth told Powell, Herold and Atzerodt at the Herndon House that he would take care of Grant. O'Laughlen could not have been aboard Grant's train for the purpose of assassinating him, but someone was, because Atzerodt said so. We don't know who was at Stanton's door, but O'Laughlen is more than a possibility. Atzerodt was elsewhere.
4. SSlater, Stanton had nothing to do with the assassination. That theory, first put forth by Eisenschiml and supported by Roscoe, has been now thoroughly discredited by many historians. See, e.g. Chapter 6 of Hanchett's The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies.
5. Roger, you surprise me. You ignore all the evidence given above in my previous entries, as well as other evidence adduced in Decapitating, relative to the targeting of Stanton. You also ignore all the evidence of "others" involved in the conspiracy to decapitate the government. See pp. 255-258 and 333-336 of Decapitating, especially paragraphs 1 through 12 on pp. 333,334. It was my good fortune to talk to Mike Kauffman personally and I have, of course, read American Brutus. I came away from both experiences with the distinct impression that he was as nice a guy as one could hope to meet, but that he did not fully appreciate the breadth of the conspiracy against the government, in the same way that Tidwell, Hall and Gaddy, Hanchett, Winkler and others have. He even favors Dr. Mudd's innocence. See Steers's work on that subject. It was not necessary for Booth to even meet with O'Laughlen, much less to assign Stanton's assassination to him, at the Friday night Herndon House meeting; either he already had his assignment (he had met with him twice within the previous 24 hours) or the matter was taken care of by "others" in the same way that the assassination of Grant was taken care of by "others".
6. Wild Bill, we agree again. Now if I can just persuade you that the Confederacy represented Maeterlinck's 10,000 men guarding the past*, you and I can ride off into the sunset together with our .44's.

*At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.--Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949).

John