Was Stanton a murder target?

[loetar44]

We don’t know anything about Booth’s whereabouts between noon Thursday April 13 and “fully 11 am” Friday April 14.

How much weight (if any) should we give to Charles Wood's testimony at the John Surratt trial? Wood was a barber in Washington.

In his book on John Surratt, author Andy Jampoler writes:

"Charles Wood, a barber who had a chair in Brooker and Stewart's parlor on E Street, began the reconstruction of Surratt's schedule of April 14. John Wilkes Booth, John Surratt, Michael O'Laughlen, and someone who sounded a lot like George Atzerodt in Wood's description, came into Brooker and Stewart's together before midmorning he said, not long after Wood himself got to the shop after shaving the convalescent Secretary Seward in his bed at home a few blocks away. 'Mr. Surratt,' Wood continued, 'took my chair immediately on Mr. Booth's getting out...This time Mr. Surratt said to me, 'Give me a nice shave and clean me up nicely; I am going away in a day or two.'"

So we have a barber testifying Booth, Surratt, O'Laughlen, and possibly Atzerodt all came into the parlor together on the morning of the assassination. I realize Surratt was most likely in Elmira NY, but was the barber right about the other two or three men?

A. Lincoln, His Last 24 Hours, by Waldo Emerson Reck, p. 67: “Booth’s first known movement after breakfast at the National Hotel on April 14 took him to the barber shop of Booker and Stewart on E Street near Grover’s Theatre. After Charles H.M. Wood shaved him and “trimmed his hair round and dressed it,” he dropped in at Grover’s Theatre …” No mention of the others!

The House on H. Street: The Conspiracy to Murder Abraham Lincoln by Daniel J. Weingrad, “Chapter 6: “The weather was beautiful and in the mid 60’s as Booth took a six or seven block walk up Pennsylvania Avernue to E. Street near Grover’s Theatre. At a barbershop whose sign identified it as “Booker & Stewart”, he removed his jacket and loosened his cravat. By the way he was greeted and fawned over, it was obvious he was a regular patron.” No mention of the ohers!