Does anyone know...?

[John Fazio]

(09-10-2017 02:16 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Excuse me, John, but please get off your grandstand. Yes, I still follow the precepts of those greats in the field who gave credence to at least Booth and others having what seems preposterous plans to those of us who study history with modern eyes. By the late-winter of 1865, desperation may very well have led to desperate plans.

Laurie:

Yes, it is true that some fine minds, expert in the field, have been taken in by the ruse, no less than Booth's action team, except for Surratt, who surely knew Booth's true purpose. But that is because they did not view it as a separate issue, merely taking Booth at his word, as expressed in his diary and in the letter he left with his sister Asia, and then moving on to what seemed to them to be more contentious issues. But when one focuses on this issue and analyses it in all its particulars, one can come to no conclusion other than that kidnapping was a ruse to conceal his true purpose and to facilitate recruitment to his team. The scheme was, logistically, absolutely unworkable, which is what prompted Arnold to say (in 1865, not today, but in 1865) that he would not permit Booth to be his executioner. Granted that Booth was not very bright, he was not so stupid as to be blind to what was perfectly obvious to Arnold. How were they going to get Lincoln across the bridge, even if they had managed the all-but-impossible feat of getting him out of the box, out of the theater and into a carriage? Would they really have risked the ire of Davis, Benjamin, et al., and consequent imprisonment and possibly execution upon their arrival in Richmond or forced return to Washington? None of it adds up; none of it makes sense; except as a device to facilitate the true purpose, which was multiple assassinations. Weichmann came to the same conclusion. So did Commissioner Harris. So did Bingham. These are not people studying the issue through modern eyes; they were there in 1865. Moreover, the conclusion is completely consistent with Mrs. McClermont's testimony at the Surratt trial, with the fact that on at least three well-documented occasions Booth ordered Powell to murder Lincoln, with Atzerodt's confession of May 1, with the May 10, 1865, letter from the Union agent in Paris, quoting the Confederate agent "Johnston", with Powell's statements to Eckert about Federal prosecutors not having "the one-half of them" (conspirators) and his impression that others were to do to other Federal officeholders what he was to do to Seward, and with all the testimony re conversations between Secret Service operatives in Canada and the letters that came into the possession of the Bureau of Military Justice, all of which speak only of assassination.

Facts are stubborn things.

John