Assassination Trivia

[Steve]

Steve,
I beginning to think you're right about Dr. Taft being the surgeon Clara Harris described. Earlier, I described one point against Taft being the man:

(01-18-2021 03:49 AM)Steve Wrote:  Also Dr. Taft recalls people asking for water, indicating that Leale had already reached Lincoln before he started climbing up to the box.

It turns out I was wrong on that point. I just looked over a letter Dr. Leale wrote to a Dr. Dwight Dudley of Maine on May 28, 1865 about the assassination, the trial of the conspirators, and the Grand Review of the Armies:


https://www.shapell.org/manuscript/earli...ssination/


There's a minor detail that was omitted in his official report of a month earlier. When he first came into the box, Leale heard people call for water before he asked for brandy and water.

So with two apparent inconsistencies explained -Clara Harris being mistaken about the uniform and the cries for water being pushed just a tad forward in time enough so Taft can be the doctor climbing into the box before Capt. Bedee; Occam's Razor would indicate the simplest solution is that the doctor was Taft rather than some naval surgeon who mysteriously vanishes from the record as the President begins to be treated.

Capt. Bedee's account written decades later, recalls Lincoln still being in his chair as he climbed into the box while the man who climbed ahead of him, Taft's contemporaneous account has Lincoln already on the ground. Was Taft distracted after he initially climbed into the box and missed seeing Lincoln moved to the floor? Or did Bedee see Lincoln in the chair when he stopped climbing halfway up to the box in order to help Taft into the box and just jumbled his memory over time?