Assassination Trivia

[Steve Whitlock]

(01-24-2021 07:35 AM)Steve Wrote:  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?

Steve Williams,

After reading reading about Capt Bedee of the 12th NH Reg't in the link you provided I must conclude that the Captain's account is quite unreliable. I am one of your biggest fans, so please don't take offense.

There are some serious errors in that statement. He comments on a remarkably composed Mary Lincoln, when we know she was justifiably shattered and not composed at all.

He mentions Mr. Lincoln in his chair with his head back, and with no mention of Dr. Leale, when we know that Lincoln's head was forward on his chest after he was shot, and he couldn't be on the floor, unless Dr. Leale was present to do it.

There are too many fingers in the pie, or in this case poor Mr. Lincoln's head, as now Capt. Bedee claims to have his finger in the hole where Lincoln was shot.

Even the author of the book notes some discrepancies in the Bedee account. However, somehow the Captain had papers of Mr Lincoln's which is provable by the arrest and release of the Captain, as described in the book, with statements of those involved.

So, Captain Beede was there in some capacity, maybe at the Peterson house, but his account is too flawed, other than I want it to be true for the part where he assisted Dr. Taft to climb up to the Lincoln box.

For me, all the accounts were negatively impacted by time, and the accounts I will cling to are the 1865 statement of Dr. Leale and the account by Dr. Taft, as stated in the newspaper, and in "We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts" By Timothy Sean Good (which you again so graciously provided with a link).

Both Capt. Gatch and Capt. Bedee have flawed accounts, so I stand by my previous statement that the surgeon who climbed up to the Lincoln box from the stage was Dr. Taft, who was in uniform.

Elsewhere in the book is mention that Capt. Bedee was injured in the head by shrapnel, and in a later battle he was shot in the head and rendered "temporarily insane", but later recovered to further serve. Did being shot in the head affect his memory in later years? I don't know, but there are too many problems with his account.