The Reason Lincoln Had to Die

[mikegriffith1]

I just finished reading an incredible little book by Don Thomas titled The Reason Booth Had to Die, published just last year (2017). Relying mainly on primary sources, Thomas makes a strong case against the traditional story/the military commission's scenario. His most interesting section is his discussion on the 1977 FBI analysis of Booth's diary, which found that large chunks of the diary were tampered with, and much content removed from it, after the War Department obtained it. This is hard, physical evidence of the cover-up that followed Lincoln's murder.

Also, I was interested to read that Thomas found several accounts of the apparent signal whistles near Booth's escape route. Guttridge and Neff discussed these signal whistles as well.

Despite what the book's title might suggest to some, the book says very little about the controversy over Booth's fate. Thomas assumes Booth died at Garrett's farm. Thomas does not appear to have done much research on the issue, possibly because he indicates that he finds the theory to be far-fetched and wild.

Thomas shows that Stanton and his military commission did all they could to suppress and ignore any leads that led away from their version of the assassination and that involved investigating plausible suspects beyond the handful of direct accomplices they were willing to acknowledge.

Thomas examines Louis Weichmann's story and finds it to be severely lacking in credibility.

Thomas has an information-packed website on the Lincoln assassination. It includes numerous free articles on the case:

https://reasonlincoln.com/