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[Susan Higginbotham]

The original article in the Critic quotes Richards as stating that the stage was "entirely" free of all persons. The reprinted version in We Saw Lincoln Shot mistakenly renders "entirely" as "nearly." See column 7:

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/s...d-1/seq-1/

(That's why I prefer to check originals whenever possible. Mistakes do creep in.)

As for Grant, you're quoting quite selectively. Later in the article, Richards states that "in a few seconds word went round that General Grant had been shot," which suggests that the audience thought that the person shot had been Grant. The Presidential party, however, had entered the theater late and with fanfare, and with Major Rathbone and Clara Harris in the place of the Grants, so the audience at that point was well aware that Grant was not in the theater, whatever Richards himself might have supposed when he entered the theater.

Incidentally, J. B. Stewart in his April 15 statement makes no mention of meeting Richards at the theater after the assassination.

I've read Richards' letters to Weichmann. Interestingly, as Richards himself admitted to Weichmann, McDevitt was adamant at the time of the Richards-Weichmann correspondence that Richards had not been at the boardinghouse after the assassination, and McDevitt didn't place him there in his 1865 testimony either. In fact, none of the four men who came to the boardinghouse place Richards there, IIRC.