Tidwell revisited

[JMadonna]

(03-20-2020 05:07 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  John, when you mentioned Grant as a target for assassination, were you referring to what happened on his train which had departed Washington prior to Lincoln's assassination? Apparently a man had been assigned to kill Grant, but when he tried to enter Grant's train car, he was turned back by railroad employees. Then, in a sign of remorse, he later wrote Grant one or more letters saying he was glad he failed in his mission. Do you know if any of these letters still exist? Was the name of the man ever revealed? Did his orders come from Booth?

If the letters still exist they would probably be in whatever papers Grant left behind, but I doubt it. It was mentioned by Lamon in a conversation he had with Grant in 1880. In one of Atzerodt's confessions he mentioned;

“James Donaldson, a low chunky man about 23 or 24 years of age, small-potted, dark complexion (not very) deep plain black suit; only saw him one time & this was Wednesday previous to the murder, he was having an interview with Booth and told him to meet him on Friday eve & he replied he would….. I was under the impression he came on with Booth.”

Atzerodt believed that Donaldson was part of the group, but he never showed up on Friday evening at the Herndon House for final instructions with the rest of the conspirators.

For lack of any other suspects, I speculated that he was supposed to be the hit man for Johnson but Booth reassigned him to Grant. This last minute change, left Booth with no choice but assign the task to either Atzerodt or Herold.