Decapitation of the Union

[Wild Bill]

You all left out the late Rick Stelnick's contention in "Dixie Reckoning" that Booth was a great user of "blue mass," which allegedly addled his mind. But then there were dozens of such "patent medicines" in the 19th century, of various ingredients and efficacy, one of the more common being Laudanum (whiskey, opium, and whatever else the producer thought might give it a special kick). The Civil War generation, on and off the battlefield, was known for its addictions. It is often blamed on the terrible, painful wounds suffered in battle, but there was more to it than that, judging from the civilian use. It was not until TR and his generation passed the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906?) that the present prohibitions came into effect. Remember that original Coca Cola was a mild form of cocaine.

[RJNorton]

(10-12-2015 11:36 AM)L Verge Wrote:  however, the physicians conducting his autopsy commented on his strong physique.

Laurie, like you I have read this in many books. Several years ago I was exchanging messages with Dr. John Sotos (who believes Lincoln was dying of cancer). I asked him about this information concerning Lincoln's physical condition during the autopsy. Dr. Sotos replied as follows:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++


(1) Curtis wrote a letter a week after the autopsy. This letter mentions nothing about Lincoln's physique.

(2) Curtis wrote two more pieces, one in 1903 for the NY Sun, and one about 1907 for a collection of Civil War recollections. Obviously, these were written a long time after the autopsy, and they furnish the opinions so often ascribed to Curtis. Their long delay knocks down their reliability immediately.

(3) Curtis's statement is not in the language of medicine. He uses lay terms. This makes his assessment suspect again.

(4) Curtis is demonstrably effusive when he says Lincoln had "strong bones." How does he know? There is no way to know that. Older women today get sophisticated x-ray bone scans precisely to learn if their bones are strong. Curtis did not have x-ray eyes and, indeed, x-rays were not discovered until 1895.

(5) Curtis is demonstrably nonspecific when he says Lincoln had "well-rounded muscles." What does that mean, precisely? There is no medical reason at all for commenting in the roundedness of muscles. I have never seen anyone with square muscles! :-) Small muscles can be well-rounded, just as large ones can.

(6) It is almost more important what he didn't saythan what he did say. He did not say the muscles were large. In fact, he said they were "sinewy." As used at the time, "sinewy" muscles are not large. They are stringy, tendon-like. He is saying Lincoln had small muscles.

(7) Curtis had an axe to grind. Not that extreme, of course, but it is clear that his description could easily have been influenced by his beliefs. His 1903 article talks about a weird theory that prominent men have good bodies. He is using Lincoln in support of this theory, and in this article he makes his most-cited comments about Lincoln's physique.

(8) Curtis's statements simply do not fit with the large mass of other evidence available from contemporaneous observers. And I ask you, how could a 6'4'' man, who by his own description weighed less than 180 pounds in 1859, and who clearly lost substantial weight after that -- how could such a man possibly be well muscled? I am 6'0'' and 170, with very little body fat (a common characteristic among cardiologists) and no one has ever called me well muscled, or anything other than skinny.

(9) The MEN2B hypothesis can explain Curtis's use of "sinewy," his failure to call the muscles large, and even one possible interpretation of "well-rounded." It can also explain why Curtis (and others) were so struck with the appearance of Lincoln's muscles, and thought them athletic when, in 1865, they were not.

[L Verge]

I am not a devotee of Dr. Sotos's premise...

[Eva Elisabeth]

I don't understand what exactly Dr. Soto wants to claim or prove - that Dr. Curtis' description is non-telling (to a doctor - but was he addressing doctors?), or that his account was wrong and the opposite (whatever that looks like) true? I think he can't prove anything, IMO there's not even an indication strong enough to seriously suspect anything. Even if Dr. Curtis embellished a bit - why shouldn't there have been a grain of truth in that Lincoln was not a total physical weakling and pushover? (Did Dr. Soto comment on the ax story?) In the end, we don't know, but Dr. Soto can't know any better either.
And just to help Dr. Soto's imagination (which is obviously limited to the set of technical terms) - this is my idea of well-rounded muscles:
   

[RJNorton]

(10-12-2015 04:44 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  (Did Dr. Soto comment on the ax story?)

Hi Eva. Yes, back in 2011 I also asked Dr. Sotos about that. He replied as follows:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I have looked mighty hard for the first-hand account of the axe story and cannot find it.

Francis Carpenter is often cited as the primary source, but he is not. He cites a newspaper called "The NY Independent," but I think he is making it up. First, the days of the week he writes in his story don't fit the calendar. Second, I looked at all the issues of the Independent between Lincoln's Virginia visit and the publication of Carpenter's book, and the story is not there. The only substantial Lincoln material in The Independent is the long series of articles that Carpenter himself wrote. Carpenter was known to make stuff up.

I looked at every other eyewitness recollection of the hospital visits. It is pretty disjointed material. But there are at least three eyewitnesses who mention nothing about it: Sen. Sumner, Marquis de Chambrun, and a young soldier named Wilbur Fisk who wrote an effusive, detailed letter home on April 20 that did not mention axe work. It is likely that Sen. Harlan and William Crook were with him, too. Their reminiscences of that trip mention no axe work. By contrast, Keckley says that Lincoln returned to the River Queen that night so weary that he wanted to go to bed immediately.

And, somehow, this 1869 account from Lawrence Gobright has been overlooked: "... a visit to City Point early in April. While there, the President passed through the wards of several hospitals... He looked feeble, and was, for this reason, met with a remonstrance from all the surgeons in charge for attempting the hand-shaking of several thousand of men."

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thanks, Roger! (I seem to recall Sumner did say something about this?!)
BTW - while the doc can hardly imagine Lincoln athletic I can hardly imagine someone with a BMI of 23,1 (in the very upper normal range) looking skinny.
Sylvie Guillem is 5'8'' at 117lbs, and IMO doesn't look skinny but would well represent my athletic-well-rounded-muscles-idea, too:
   
(And - who knows - maybe there's some unconscious ax to grind behind "no one has ever called me well muscled," too ?)

[L Verge]

While I wasted time searching for the comments about Mr. Lincoln's physique in items related to his autopsy, I should have gone immediately to Kathy Canavan's great book, Lincoln's Final Hours. I was searching for the wrong doctors' comments.

On page 102, Kathy writes: "Each time they turned down the sheets, they revealed a brawny chest and the immensely muscular arms expected of a much younger man, in unbelievably perfect proportions. Several visitors gasped in surprise the first time they saw the doctors turn down the covers. It was hard to believe the president was in the sixty-second day of his fifty-seventh year. Mr. Lincoln had the perfect male body. There was not a single flaw in any part. Dr. Leale said he could have been the model for Michelangelo's Moses, possessing the same massive grandeur."

She cites Field's Memories of Many Men and of Some Women, p. 324, and Dr. Charles Leale, quoted in an unidentified article in the NPS files and used in Twenty Days by the Kunhardts, p.49.

We need to keep reminding ourselves that Woodward, Curtis, and Stone (those who performed the autopsy on Lincoln at the White House) were intent on documenting the death wound to the head -- not the rest of the President's body.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Great points, Laurie!! Just to add - 180lbs at 6'4'' is a BMI of 21,9 - very normal. The WHO defines the minimum weight for a normal BMI as 18,5 (kg/m2). At 6'4'' this would correlate with a minimum weight of 154lbs. To me anyway, as for his body (not the lines of sorrow in his face) Abraham Lincoln in his presidency didn't look extraordinarily slim, and he looked slimmer before his presidency - just compare the upper body and shoulders:
           

[Eva Elisabeth]

(10-12-2015 05:38 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Thanks, Roger! (I seem to recall Sumner did say something about this?!)

I mistook this for a 1878 account by Egbert Ludoricus Viele (edited by B. Binzel in the January 2015 Surratt Courier) who was ordered to accompany the presidential party, including Secs. Stanton and Chase (not Sumner...), and several others, to Fortress Monroe on board revenue cutter "Miami" in early May 1862.

"Few were aware of the physical strength possessed by Mr Lincoln. In muscular power he was one in a thousand. One morning, while we were sitting on deck, he saw an ax in a socket of the bulwarks, and, taking it up, held it at arm's length at the extremity of the helve with his thumb and his forefinger, continuing to hold it there for a number of minutes. The most powerful sailers on board tried in vain to imitate him. Mr Lincoln said he could do this when he was eighteen years of age, and had never seen a day since that time he could not. It occurred to me that...his abduction...would have determined very disastrously to those who should have the temerity to undertake it."

[John Fazio]

(10-02-2015 04:56 PM)MajGenl.Meade Wrote:  Enjoyable as the travelogue and linguistics are, to return for a moment to the book... which I purchased at the Surratt Museum (100 points), I've just finished the first read-through and will shortly embark on the more leisurely and detailed examination. (I have to be careful here because John's an acquaintance and packs a mean punch! :-). Besides my mother always told me to say two positive things before saying anything else.

I'm glad I bought it. I'm glad I have it, although like Meade's new horse the price is pretty digging. It's also literally a heavy work to read in bed at night - my arms got tired. But there's lots of good stuff in there.

One of my peeves is John's technique of stating a thing as conjecture and later in the book stating the same thing as a virtual certainty and then later as an absolute (using terms such as, "As we have already learned in Ch. xx").

In this very thread we see a similar process but in reverse:

06-30-2015, 06:41 AM John Fazio
Herold most likely knew the truth. He too had been to Canada.

06-30-2015, 05:07 PM John Fazio
Herold in Canada? It is not stated with certainty, but the evidence comes from the testimony of James B. Merritt at the trial of the conspirators. He said "I think I saw the prisoner, D. E. Herold, in Canada." (See Pitman, p. 35)

In the course of one day, John moves from a certainty to a not-certainty but granted, it's a chat and not a considered essay. Nevertheless, the point if not queried would have remained as a certainty

Allied to that is the apparent cherry-picking of Merritt et al. They are, as John points out, horrendous liars but he avers that in order to make their story more believable they included some truth. Coincidentally, the true bits are all exactly the same truths as John needs for his thesis. Thus to protect the project, Herold's presence in Canada cannot be suspect because Merritt said it but because Merritt (honest man!), said "I think..." On the other hand, he's correct; "I think" is enough to make the identification weak.

But I have John to thank for my new nightmare - scores of Mosby's men surrounding Ford's Theatre whistling in the dark. The reasoning seems to be: I think Mosby was more involved; some people heard whistles; Mosby men often whistled; therefore they were all around Ford's Theatre to help Booth; QED!

The chief defect of the book is, I believe, the almost complete lack of any evidence (other than conjecture from unrelated particles) that Judah Benjamin had any role in the assassination and that pretty much goes for the Cabinet and Davis. "Because blankets" does not equal "therefore bullets" - perhaps in a civil case.

To a degree I was reminded of some of Theodore Roscoe's techniques in "The Web of Conspiracy" which I'm also having to read more carefully now to compare the two works.

A deeper reading of Decapitation may change my mind on this, but at present, anyone expecting a smoking gun will be disappointed (and John certainly promised no such thing).

I'll close with another positive. There is much meat in John's book and it's worth chewing over more than once.

Peter:

Sorry, this is long overdue.

I did not "cherry pick" from the testimony of Montgomery, Dunham and Merritt; I used only those parts of their testimony that were corroborated by other sources and witnesses, including George B. Hutchinson, Samuel P. Jones, Henry Von Steinacker, Hosea Carter, William E. Wheeler and Henry Finegas and including the Boutwell Committee.

As for Mosby men in Washington and around Ford's Theatre, the totality of the evidence, eyewitness, material and circumstantial, as set forth on pages 355 and 356, supports the claim that they were "almost certainly" there. Furthermore, I had additional and good evidence of Mosby men in Washington bars in the days leading up to the assassination, but it wound up on the cutting room floor in the interest of brevity.

No evidence of Benjamin's and Davis's (B & D's) complicity? Are we talking about the same book? Do you really believe that Booth could have led a 6 to 9-month conspiracy in Washington without the knowledge and approval of B & D? And if they knew all about him, why didn't they stop him? Do you really believe that the Confederate year of terror, which culminated in the Friday night massacre, could have been carried out without the knowledge and approval of B & D? That Blackburn's yellow fever plot, which included the "infected" shirts to Lincoln, was unknown to B & D, despite Stewart's letter? That Surratt lied when he told Ste. Marie that he and Booth had killed Lincoln and that they had acted under instructions from persons under Davis's immediate orders? That the Harney Mission could have been carried out without the knowledge and approval of B & D? That the other half of the conspirators mentioned by Powell carried on their work without the knowledge and approval of B & D? That the arrangements that had been made for the same disposition as Powell was to make of Seward were made without the knowledge and approval of B & D? That Powell, a Mosby Ranger, could have regarded Booth, an actor, as his superior officer without the knowledge and approval of B & D? That Atzerodt's "New York crowd" was unknown to B & D? That the Secret Service's plan to assassinate as many as 15 Federal officeholders on the 14th could possibly have been without the knowledge and approval of B & D? All the conspirators were unemployed, yet they were all rolling in dough. And they all thought they were coming into fortunes, per James O. Hall. Where was all the money coming from, if not from the Confederate government, i.e. B & D? How about Davis's comments upon learning of the assassination? How about the fact that Benjamin fled and never returned. Fleeing, if you did not know, is always a sign of guilt.

As you say, you need to read the book again, this time with an open mind.

John

[Pamela]

First, before I complain!, I must say that I think your book is terrific. I appreciate your approach of organizing and analyzing evidence and versions of events.

I do have a problem with your characterization of Louis Weichmann as a milquetoast, "One has only to look at a photograph of Weichmann to realize he was something of a milquetoast. For that reason, and also, perhaps, because he was bisexual, he was shunted aside and made to feel inferior by those who fancied themselves macho men who had "bloody work" to do and who knew how to ride and shoot."

From Dictionary.reference.com: noun, ( sometimes initial capital letter)
1.
a very timid, unassertive, spineless person, especially one who is easily dominated or intimidated

First, I don't know how to divine those qualities from a photograph exactly (maybe a small chin/ jawline, large eyes with a "deer in a headlight" look? However, like you, I have experience studying faces, for me, it's for portraiture, and if anything, I would say that Weichmann's face expresses strength to the point of stubbornness or resoluteness.

As for the bisexual reference as a reason for "being shunted aside" by "macho men"--aren't we in a more enlightened age where we know that gay or bisexual men, or transsexuals can be every bit as fierce and macho as heteros. Note all the athletes coming out of the closet, as transexuals or gay, including Bruce, now Caitlyn Jenner, who won an Olympic gold medal, had three marriages and six children, military men like the transgender Navy Seal who helped kil Bin Ladin, Kristen Beck, and historically, Alexander the Great, who was homosexual. Two hundred years ago these men would have done their "macho" work and stayed in the closet, unknown to their friends and associates as to their real sexual orientations.
Not to mention, the lack of evidence that Weichmann was homosexual or bisexual. A minor point, apparently.

And for the sake of argument, if we're going to decide someone is a milquetoast because of a photograph, my vote goes to John Surratt dressed as a Papal Zuoave or wearing his Garibaldi jacket, or even the youngest photo of him. But, I would not judge him for those photos. However, he was a member of the Society of Angels at St. Charles, a group that Weichmann said he was much too wild to be accepted by, in the Townsend interview. And Surratt showed weakness by becoming enthralled by Booth and abandoning good sense and a sensible job at the Adams Express Company, to do Booth's bidding, to join a venture that he described as, "utterly impracticable" and a "wild scheme" in the Hanson Hiss interview. Surratt hid behind the skirts of priests in Canada while his mother and men he brought into the conspiracy--Herold, Atzerodt and Powell, endured the trial and died on the scaffold, and his friend Mudd suffered in the Dry Tortugas; he murdered unarmed, starving union men to impress his sneaky, rebel spy girlfriend, and was never man enough to tell the truth about the conspiracy. I'd say Surratt was a much better fit for the definition of milquetoast.

And I don't know where you find the evidence that Weichmann was made to feel inferior. If you can direct me to it, I'd like to study that information. Weichmann was two years older that Surratt, was intelligent and talented, an upper classman in school and someone who Surratt asked help for in obtaining a teaching position after his father died. It was Surratt who sought Weichmann's company and whom Weichmann treated with courtesy and friendship, and introduced John to accomplished men, fellow boarders, when he visited him in Washington City. Weichmann hoped to help Surratt obtain "sensible" employment as he did for St. Marie.

In regards to your suggestion that Weichmann gave information to Augustus Howell, in order to deflect "ostracism and belittlement" in the Surratt boarding house--that's simply your imagination. Weichmann explained the conversation he had with Howell in the Evidence and the source of the information he shared, which was available in newspapers, and there is no reason to believe that Weichmann wasn't truthful. However, there was plenty of reason to discount Howell.

[Gene C]

Interesting points Pamela.
John, I haven't read your book yet, and the answer may be in there, but what is your source that Weichmann was bi?
My guess is that if you can tell that from a photograph, Booth and Surratt surely could have figured that out by personal observation and would have used that against Weichmann in some manner to serve their own purposes. (I can tell they would do that kind of thing by looking at their photo's )

And I agree somewhat with Pamela's disagreement regarding Weichmann as a milquetoast. Weichmann appears somewhat meek, humble, unpretentious. Cautious, but not cowardly. Looking for adventure but intelligent and with enough personal conviction not to get too involved or caught up in circumstances around him (within his control) that were illegal or treasonous.

You've looked into this more than I have, but I don't follow your train of thought without more explanation.

[HerbS]

So what are the odds that both Weichmann and John Surratt were both somewhat-"switch-hitters"? I tend to think they were and that is ok with me!

[RJNorton]

Here again we get into the discussion of what was a common practice in the 19th century. Does Weichmann's testimony really mean anything regarding his sexuality?

According to Poore, here is Weichmann's testimony about sharing a bed with John Surratt:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Q. Were you in the habit of seeing John H. Surratt almost every day when he was at home, at his mother’s?
A. Yes, sir: he would be seated at the same table.
Q. Was he frequently in your room, and you in his?
A. He partook of the same room, shared my bed with me, slept with me.

[John Fazio]

[i][i]

(11-12-2015 08:24 PM)Gene C Wrote:  Interesting points Pamela.
John, I haven't read your book yet, and the answer may be in there, but what is your source that Weichmann was bi?
My guess is that if you can tell that from a photograph, Booth and Surratt surely could have figured that out by personal observation and would have used that against Weichmann in some manner to serve their own purposes. (I can tell they would do that kind of thing by looking at their photo's )

And I agree somewhat with Pamela's disagreement regarding Weichmann as a milquetoast. Weichmann appears somewhat meek, humble, unpretentious. Cautious, but not cowardly. Looking for adventure but intelligent and with enough personal conviction not to get too involved or caught up in circumstances around him (within his control) that were illegal or treasonous.

You've looked into this more than I have, but I don't follow your train of thought without more explanation.

Gene:

Weichmann's sexual orientation: Kauffman, "American", p. 362. I am not in my library, so I cannot tell you his source.

I did not say, nor imply, that Weichmann was in any way cowardly. On the contrary, I believe he displayed enormous courage and he is, in fact, among the most heroic figures in the saga. See pp. 298, 299 of "Decapitating" for accolades to his steadfastness in the face of every adversity.

John