"Alias Paine"

[Linda Anderson]

(01-29-2013 06:29 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(01-28-2013 09:41 PM)J. Beckert Wrote:  I believe Powell was taking his orders from Booth

I have believed that since the 1960's when I first read Jim Bishop's book. In thinking about it, however, what is the evidence that JWB specifically assigned Powell to assassinate Seward? Did "the hit" come from Booth? From Mosby? From Benjamin? From someone else?

I wish we had a tape recording of the "final meeting" in which assignments were apparently made. In truth, we don't even know when the "final meeting" occurred. Most books say it was in Powell's room at the Herndon House on April 14th about 8:00 P.M. However, Mike Kauffman thinks it took place on the night of the 13th. And Betty O makes an extremely logical argument that it took place on the 14th but considerably earlier in the day because Powell had vacated him room at the Herndon House.

Right now the only specific piece of evidence I can think of is in Atzerodt's April 25, 1865, statement where he says, "Booth proposed that we should kill the president. said it would be the greatest thing in the world. This was about half past six or seven o'clock on Friday, that Wood would go up to Seward's house and kill him."

Is there more evidence that the specific order to kill Seward came from JWB? How much credence do we put in Atzerodt's statements?

Could the order have come from elsewhere despite Atzerodt's claim?

Did Powell ever tell Eckert, Doster, or anyone else specifically who give him the order to kill Seward?

Atzerodt said in his statement to Prov. Marshall McPhail on May 1, 1865 that Booth had "visited a chambermaid at Seward's house and that she was pretty." In his confession published in the Baltimore American on January 18, 1869, Atzerodt stated that "A widow woman was living near Mr. Seward's, and Booth said by her influence he could get entrance to Seward's house, through her influence with the chambermaid and house servant. The girl at the house was good-looking and knew the widow."

Seward's nurse George Robinson said that a man looking a lot like Powell knocked at the Seward's dining room window on the mornings of April 13th and 14th inquiring about Seward's health. I tend to believe Atzerodt's statement about the maid because of Robinson's observation about Powell at the window. It sounds like Booth was scoping out the place. Putting the two bits of information together, the assassination of Seward and Lincoln must have been planned at least by the morning of April 13th and most likely before that date.