Killing Lincoln: The Real Story

[Steven Hager]

Stanton kept his wife's corpse in the house and may have even dressed her up for holidays. But there was another young girl who died, and Stanton dug her up because he could not believe she was dead.

Vallindigham was tried and convicted of speaking against the Union, and could have been imprisoned or worse, but instead Lincoln banished him to the South. But within a few weeks, he was known to be traveling through the Northern states in disguise in support of the Southern cause.

---

Yes, it was just a hung jury for John Surratt, but since his mother swung from the gallows and was just the inn keeper, while her son was the confessed Confederate spy who admitted to a kidnap plot, but not an assassination, I qualify that as "winning." I wonder why ten months seems like too brief a time to write a book, how long do you think Bill O'Reilly worked on his Lincoln book? I guarantee I put more time on mine than he did on his. I've published 11 books and never spent more than a year on one. We can argue about the minute details of the case endlessly, but that really goes in circles and gets nowhere. Charles A. Dunham is the political fixer who worked for Stanton and the Radicals and is suspiciously missing from the official historical narrative. Why was it necessary for Stanton to handle the cross-examination of Louis Weichmann by himself at the tribunal? I find this suspicious as well. Weichmann was one of the War Department informants inside Booth's conspiracy. I suspect Stanton wanted to make sure any questions fielded to Weichmann did not cross into dangerous territory since the War Department knew all about the kidnap plot in advance, and could have arrested Booth at any time, weeks before the assassination, but instead Booth remained on the loose.

---

You can dispute the allegations Stanton kept corpses around the house on occasion, but you cannot dispute the fact he seized the rocking chair Lincoln was murdered in and had it moved to his office. This seems like the action of a victor seizing a trophy more than someone grieving over a lost comrade in my humble opinion. The impeachment was sparked by Johnson attempting to fire Stanton, at which point Stanton barricaded himself in his office until the trial was over. I do not buy much of what is told about Stanton today, and feel he contributed to creating his own myth, and I don't buy the story of his sudden death. Grant may have known the truth, as he delayed signing Stanton's elevation to the Supreme Court until after his death.