(08-02-2019 12:10 PM)mike86002000 Wrote: I just finished Mr. Prindle's book, "Booth’s Confederate Connections". It's "a keeper". There are lots of clear photos, and a useful index. Footnotes are collected at the back, as I prefer. They mostly include information about sources, not additions to the text. I intend to go through it again, make notes, and follow up on some things. There are a few things that I immediately question.
One is a picture on page 105. It's captioned "John Surratt as he was dressed in Elmira, New York." Mr. Prindle theorizes that the red Garibaldi jacket and pantaloons, that Surratt had made for him in Elmira were to make sure people noticed and remembered him there, establishing an alibi at the time of Lincoln's murder. That implies foreknowledge of the timing of the assassination. Surratt is supposed to have had this foreknowledge because he was the courier who delivered the orders to Booth from Richmond, to change the plot from abduction of Lincoln, to assassination of Lincoln and government heads.
The photo is a familiar one , usually labeled as Surratt in the uniform of a Papal Zouave. Surratt, (if it is really even him), has a mustache, but no goatee. His costume includes a fez, complete with tassel, and white leggings worn below bloused pantaloons. The jacket has a large cross on each lapel. If he had walked around Elmira dressed like that, he would not only have been noticed, but probably locked up as insane.
Perhaps Mr. Prindel intended it only as an illustration of what a Garibaldi jacket looked like. It's not a good example of that, either. In Italy, Garibaldi's followers wore distinctive red jackets or shirts. They wouldn't have had crosses on the lapels! The Papal Zouaves were organized to oppose Garibaldi. Their uniform, as in the photo, wouldn't have included anything called a Garibaldi jacket, certainly not a red one.
I don't think the nature of the cloths Surratt wore in Elmira is really that important to Mr. Prindel's "bombshell". Simply a red jacket would have got Surratt noticed and may have been called a Garibaldi jacket just because it was red. "Pantaloons" may be just another word for trousers, and I doubt they were red. I suspect his costume was much more conservative than the photo depicts. It's unfortunate that the photo is used that way in this book.
However, if the picture was taken in Italy, much later, as I believe, why would Surratt pose for the camera while he was hiding from the law? Was it arrogance or pride? Is that really him? Is this the photo the government requested from the Vatican?
Mr. Prindle mentions the existence of a 14 page manuscript of a speech Booth planed to deliver. I don't remember hearing about that before. I have a collection that is supposed to include everything Booth wrote that could be found. The lady who published the collection actually bought all the original examples of Booth's writings she could. If it's mentioned in there, I don't remember it. I'll look, again. Has anyone else heard of this manuscript? I don't think it's the letter he left with his sister. This is supposed to be a speech to be delivered in a theater.
Re the pardons: For those who believe they were granted for any reason other than to block the appeal of Boynton's Ex Parte Mudd et All decision, Mr Prindle offers his ocean front property in Kansas and Nebraska!
That's not an exact quote, but it's "the gist".
Mike
Don't tell Sandy Prindle (a very good friend), but I have not read each and every page of the book and seldom look at photos until getting to them during reading. However, if he claims that John Surratt had a Zouave outfit made in Elmira, he is incorrect. I am at home without my books and I cannot remember the precise name of the style of jacket that he did have made there, but it was a popular fashion (especially in Canada) at the time. He mentions it in one of the letters he is said to have sent to his mother. Someone with a memory or a book, please help me out as to the name of that darn jacket!
As for the Zouave outfit that he is photographed in AFTER the assassination, his escape, and his trial: It was part of his money-making plans to get back on his feet since he was economically hurting by 1868. We have a copy of a letter that he wrote to William Norris, his former chief Confederate operative, asking for assistance. He took a job teaching school (and was not very good at it). Selling photographs in conjunction with his planned and failed lecture series was the reason for that photo -- and the uniform of the Zouaves was a crowd-pleaser - and still revered as a symbol of Col. Elmer Ellsworth's death in Alexandria, Virginia, at the beginning of the war. I am not sure that his stint in Rome earned him the same type of Zouave attire. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.
I am drawing a blank on the 14-page manuscript that Booth intended to deliver in a theater.
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