Devil's Game - The Civil War Intrigues of Charles Dunham

[L Verge]

Yes, not word for word, but a hard skim years ago when it came out. Author is a member of the Surratt Society and was a speaker at one of our conferences. Book is good, but can be confusing in spots because Charles Dunham was a confusing character!

Sidebar: It was very interesting getting Mr. Cumming to speak at the conference. He is Canadian. First, my attempts at communicating via e-mail kept bouncing back because filters were describing his last name as being pornographic. He get a big kick out of that - said he's been called a lot of things, but never pornographic.

Once we got past that hurdle, the next challenge came two days before the conference when he attempted to get through customs to enter the U.S. The Canadian authorities held him in custody(!) until I sent a faxed letter on government letterhead stating that he was donating his time to speak at our meeting.

Of course, we offer meager honorariums to all our speakers. In this case, we just waited a few weeks and sent him a nice thank-you note with check enclosed. I have yet to be subpoenaed, so I guess it worked.

The first time we invited Barry Cauchon to cross the border to speak at the conference, I expected the same thing to happen. Luckily, Barry has dual citizenship.

I really should write a book. Not about the Lincoln assassination nor Mary Surratt. It would have to be about the silly, weird, ridiculous things that I have learned and have had happen to me while working at Surratt House.