DC Sites

[John Fazio]

(05-13-2013 12:20 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  John, kudos on all research you have done. Assuming you are correct, could the whole thing have begun with Oldroyd (1901), and then other authors simply followed his lead? I checked Oldroyd, and here is what he wrote:

"It was ten minutes after eight o'clock when Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln entered their carriage, arriving at the residence of Senator Harris, corner of Fifteenth and H streets, the present site of the Columbian University, ten minutes later, calling for Major Rathbone and Miss Harris, and reaching the theater at half-past eight o'clock."

Roger:

It could have been Oldroyd, or perhaps another of the early assassination historians. This sort of thing frequently happens: someone says something and it becomes Gospel and is followed mindlessly by a long train of secondary authority. The business about Herold accompanying Powell is another such myth. As is the business about "kidnapping". Stop and think about it for a minute, objectively: Do we really believe that Davis, Benjamin, Seddon, Breckenridge, Thompson, Cleary, Clay, Holcombe, Tucker, Sanders, Martin, all the other Canadian Cabinet members and all the other politically and militarily savvy Confederate leaders, listened to a harebrained, madcap scheme about kidnapping the President and holding him for something that was already being done, since January, 1865, namely prisoner exchange, from a 26-year old actor who knew nothing of politics or military science, and said: "Wow. What a great idea, John. Go for it!. I wonder why we didn't think of that."

John