Atzerodt Confession

[John Fazio]

(02-19-2017 06:24 PM)JMadonna Wrote:  Here is something else that confused me.
In another statement Atzerodt says:

He(Booth) took me into the room and introduced me to a young man he called James Wood. 5 This was after the fall of Richmond and two or three days before the President was killed and proposed to go to Richmond to open a theater if we could get passes.

"Wood" was an alias used by Powell but didn't Atzerodt already meet Powell at Gautier's the month before? If so who was this guy?

Jerry:

I have asked this question before and was told that Wood was an alias of Powell and that the reference to Wood, therefore, simply means Powell. I didn't care for the answer then and I still don't, and this despite the fact that later in the same confession, Atzerodt speaks of Wood going up to Seward's house to kill him. The problem, as you point out, is that Atzerodt had already met Powell at Gautier's and should therefore have not needed an introduction to him by Booth. Furthermore, Atzerodt knew Powell as Payne, not Wood. In his later confession of July 6. 1865, he says that "Herold and I than went to the Herndon House, Mrs. Murray's, corner of Ninth and F Streets. It was then about 8 o'clock, and saw Booth, Wood and Payne in Wood's room". Here he clearly differentiates between Wood and Payne, indicating that they were two separate people. This at least partially explains the difficulty of having an 8 o'clock meeting on the 14th in Powell's room inasmuch as we know that Powell checked out of the Herndon House at about 4:00 pm. Many theories have been advanced to explain this inconsistency (including a couple by me), but the truth may simply be that they did not meet in Powell's room, but in Wood's room. The matter is complicated further by the fact that in the earlier April 25 confession, he says that "I went up to Woods to the Navy Yard about 12 o'clock after the assassination..." Who is he talking about? Powell? I thought Powell was on his way to the Benning Road Bridge and Baltimore at or about midnight. What would he have been doing in the Navy Yard? It is, as the King of Siam said in The King and I, "a puzzlement".


John