Genetic Lincoln

[Steve]

I don't know who the 2 gentlemen were that Dr. Leale mentions, who arrived before Dr. Taft and Dr. King.

"When I reached the President he was in a state of general paralysis,[29] his eyes were closed and he was in a profoundly comatose condition, while his breathing was intermittent and exceedingly stertorous.[30] I placed my finger on his right radial pulse but could perceive no movement of the artery. As two gentlemen now arrived, I requested them to assist me to place him in a recumbent position, and as I held his head and shoulders, while doing this my hand came in contact with a clot of blood near his left shoulder."

His account for the arrival of Dr King and Dr Taft comes later in the narrative.

Steve,

One of the two people who assisted Dr. Leale moving Lincoln off the rocking chair was Capt. Edwin Bedee of the 12th New Hampshire Inf. who was the second person to climb up into the box. From the way Leale described it, it seems like the unknown man who preceeded Bedee climbing up into the box was the other man who assisted. I haven't found any first-hand accounts by Bedee but I've found this account written three decades later by Asa Bartlett based on Bartlett's interview of Bedee:

https://books.google.com/books?id=TXAhAA...&q&f=false

Bedee says the man who climbed into the box before him claimed to be a doctor. (Note that Bartlett's description of Bedee's account seems to confuse this physician with Leale once describing how another doctor (Leale) broke through the box door.)

Clara Harris's 18 April 1865 affidavit describes this unknown man as dressed in the uniform of a naval surgeon:

   
(ref: New York Times - 23 April 1865 pg. 3)

At first I thought this person was Dr. Taft and that Clara Harris was mistaken about the uniform. (She had been with Bedee; he was a returned POW not a member of the VRC). But Taft's description of the night didn't match and he describes hearing Leale's calls for water. Also, one of the spectators said Taft climbed after the others climbed into the box:

https://books.google.com/books?id=hbesCQ...ed&f=false

(By this time Clara Harris was with Mrs Lincoln according to Leale's account and likely wouldn't have been there to help Taft into the box like the others as described in her affidavit.)

This "naval surgeon" doesn't seemed to have crossed over with the President to Peterson House, so I can understand why Dr. Leale wouldn't know his name. But once Leale starts examining the body he seems to disappear completely from the accounts. Bedee and Harris both claim the man was a doctor. Why didn't he make more of an impression on the others? I haven't been able to find any later newspaper accounts of this man coming forward and giving his story.