The Confederate Connection???

[John Fazio]

(02-23-2018 12:07 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Even those of you who are not students of the Lincoln assassination likely know that there has been a controversy since 1865 as to the complicity of the Confederate hierarchy in the conspiracy. It created quite a few ripples when the books Come Retribution (Tidwell, Hall, and Gaddy) and April '65 (Tidwell) came out over 20 years ago.

I hope this C-Span video of a 1998 conference at Ford's Theatre will play all the way through for you. All three of these fine scholars have passed from us, but this gives you a good indication of their work.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4531263/w...-a-tidwell

There is a new scholar in the field who is focusing on the role of Judah Benjamin, and with a little luck, a publisher will soon snap up his ms, print it, and get it added to the story.

For about forty years, whenever someone asked me about a member of Lincoln's Cabinet being the mastermind of the conspiracy, I would always tell them they were looking in the wrong Cabinet. Turn south and check out Judah Benjamin. I have no real expertise in this -- just a gut instinct based on a very interesting person.

Laurie:

Thank you very much for this material. Unfortunately, I was only able to play Tidwell's remarks. I gather there were additional remarks made by Hall and Gaddy. If so, is there a way I can access these?

As for your gut instinct about Benjamin, I believe you are on the money. My own conviction, based on the evidence as I know it, is that Benjamin represented the insulation between Davis and the dirty work. Accordingly, it was Benjamin, rather than Davis, who was most often and for most things the mastermind of the year-long terror campaign against the North (March, 1864---after the Wistar and Dahlgren-Kilpatrick Raids and, more specifically, the Dahlgren Papers---through April, 1865). Most telling is the fact that John Surratt, Jr., who was Booth's right hand, was Benjamin's official courier, according to Benjamin's biographer, Eli Evans.
Also telling is the fact that according to Ste. Marie, Surratt made almost weekly visits to Richmond to confer with Benjamin and, according to Weichmann, with Davis too (though Surratt told Ste. Marie, in Italy, that he had not met Davis, but worked for men who were under his immediate direction). Also telling is the fact that Benjamin left the country after the fall of Richmond, after burning as many Confederate records and correspondence as he could, embarking on an incredibly difficult journey to, in his words, "get as far away from the United states if it takes me to the middle of China". Despite the ordeal of the journey, he made it to England. Most significantly, and unlike thousands of other Confederates who left the country after the war, he never returned to the United States and never spoke about his role in the American Civil War. He was too smart a man not to realize that despite all the means that he and Davis had employed to cover their tracks, that the truth would inevitably be revealed (as Tidwell, Hall and Gaddy did many years later) and that when it was revealed, he would not escape the hangman. It is possible, indeed one might even say probable, that he had his ethnicity in mind (he was, of course, Jewish) when he calculated his chances of survival after the war. He could be fairly certain that the revered and Christian Davis would escape serious punishment (which turned out to be the case), but knew that he most likely would not. I am eager to obtain a copy of the new work that focuses on Benjamin's role in the assassination.

John