Otto Eisenschiml's background

[mikegriffith1]

Eisenschiml was a legitimate scientist and a careful scholar. He earned advanced degrees in chemistry and was well published in the chemical and oil industries. He worked as an industrial chemist for the Scientific Oil Compounding Company and eventually became the president of the company. Along the way, he developed a deep interest in American history.

Advocates of the military commission's version of the assassination have long tended to dismiss and apply pejorative labels to any scholar or author who substantively rejects the official version. But Eisenschiml was a careful scholar and a skilled researcher.

Eisenschiml used a number of research assistants and regularly consulted with professional historians and serious scholars, such as Professor R. Gerald McMurtry of Lincoln Memorial University; James Wilkerson, a long-time student of Booth's activities; W. H. Cathcart, Director of the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland; and Herbert A. Kellar of the McCormick Historical Association.

Like any other author, Eisenschiml did make a few mistakes in his writing, but they were few and far between. In reading the critiques of Eisenschiml's research on the Lincoln assassination, I have noticed that they highlight his few errors, repeatedly use appeals to authority, and fail to deal with the vast majority of his evidence and arguments.

If anything, at times Eisenschiml was too cautious, such as his ultimate rejection of the considerable evidence that Booth was not the man who was shot in Garrett's barn. I believe that if Eisenschiml were alive today and read the research on this issue by Neff, Guttridge, and Arnold, he would change his mind.