Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth

[Jenny]

(12-16-2015 07:41 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Great information, Jenny, and I love the illustrations. Wonder if the widow Bean had married into the family by that name in Southern Maryland. Beantown no longer exists, but it was the closest village to Dr. Mudd in 1865.

I think I read that William Bean was born in Pennsylvania but I don't have anything to back it up, unfortunately. They lived in Norfolk, VA, until his death.

[Gene C]

This weeks chapter is "The Assassins Death

A fairly good accounting of the capture and death of Booth.
What I found interesting is there is no mention of what Booth was doing the several days in between his visit to Mudd's house and Port Royal.
At the time this was written, hardly anyone new.

It is mentioned that Booth had a diary.
Another interesting thing, at the time almost everyone believed Baker had dumped Booth's body in the Potomac.

Townsend eloquently wrote "
In the darkness, like his great crime, may it remain forever,
impalpable, invisible, nondescript, condemned to that worse than damna-
tion, - annihilation. The river-bottom may ooze about it laden with
great shot and drowning manacles. The earth may have opened to give it
that silence and forgiveness which man will never give its memory. The
fishes may swim around it, or the daisies grow white above it; but wo
shall never know. Mysterious, incomprehensible, unattainable, like the
dim times through which we live and think upon as if we only dreamed
them in perturbed fever, the assassin of a nation's head rests somewhere
in the elements, and that is all ; but if the indignant seas or the profaned
turf shall ever vomit his corpse from their recesses, and it receive humane
or Christian burial from some who do not recognize it, let the last words
those decaying lips ever uttered be carved above them with a dagger, to
tell the history of a young and once promising life -- useless ! useless !

[Eva Elisabeth]

(I'm afraid other than agreeing on your post I right now can't think of anything else to say - except that I still find Rollins deserves more key role attention.)

[RJNorton]

"The fellow (David Herold) began to talk of his innocence and plead so noisily that Conger threatened to gag him unless he ceased."

I'd love to know Herold's exact words (claim) of innocence as he gave up and came out of the barn. Is there a record of what Herold initially said?

[Gene C]

Letter 5 - "A Solution of the Conspiracy"
https://archive.org/stream/lifecrimecapt...8/mode/2up

This section has all kinds of interesting information in it, so let's get started.

The conspiracy compared to the Rye House Plot (I'd never heard of it either) p40.
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye_House_Plot

This interesting quote on p40, "Strange and anomalous as the facts may seem, John Wilkes Booth was the sole projector of the plot against the President which culminated against the good man's life."

And interesting comments also on p40, about a house belonging to a Mrs. Greene (Rose Greenhow?), mined and furnished with underground apartments, manacles and all accessories to private imprisonment. Can anyone out there in cyberland tell us more about this.

p41, Booth's bank book was found in Atzerodtt's room at the Kirkwood Hotel (that is awfully convenient, why would he leave it there?) and...
Lewis Payne - "He was one of three Kentucky brothers, all outlaws, and had himself, it is believed, accompanied one of his brothers, who is known to have been at Saint Albans the day of the bank-delivery."
(I'll bet you didn't know that )

There is more, but I want to hear from you

[L Verge]

(12-26-2015 08:42 PM)Gene C Wrote:  Letter 5 - "A Solution of the Conspiracy"
https://archive.org/stream/lifecrimecapt...8/mode/2up

This section has all kinds of interesting information in it, so let's get started.

The conspiracy compared to the Rye House Plot (I'd never heard of it either) p40.
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye_House_Plot

This interesting quote on p40, "Strange and anomalous as the facts may seem, John Wilkes Booth was the sole projector of the plot against the President which culminated against the good man's life."

And interesting comments also on p40, about a house belonging to a Mrs. Greene (Rose Greenhow?), mined and furnished with underground apartments, manacles and all accessories to private imprisonment. Can anyone out there in cyberland tell us more about this.

p41, Booth's bank book was found in Atzerodtt's room at the Kirkwood Hotel (that is awfully convenient, why would he leave it there?) and...
Lewis Payne - "He was one of three Kentucky brothers, all outlaws, and had himself, it is believed, accompanied one of his brothers, who is known to have been at Saint Albans the day of the bank-delivery."
(I'll bet you didn't know that )

There is more, but I want to hear from you

I've been too busy to do my reading assignment, Gene, but in answer to the house belonging to the Greene's (not Rose Greenhow), check the previous thread that Susan H started on Virginia Lomax and John Mosby. In post #3, I mention the Greenes' home, originally the Van Ness Mansion, and the theory that a kidnapped Lincoln might have been taken there.

I also wonder if it could have been a staging point for the project to mine the White House. Thomas Harney was not captured with enough ammo to blow up one wing. Could Confederate agents and supporters have been storing up additional powder and appliances within the city? The Greenes were definitely Confederate supporters and they were in close proximity to the White House.

[RJNorton]

(12-26-2015 08:42 PM)Gene C Wrote:  p41, Booth's bank book was found in Atzerodtt's room at the Kirkwood Hotel

Has it ever been determined for certain exactly how John Wilkes Booth's bank book found itself in George Atzerodt's room at the Kirkwood House? Did Booth plant it there? Did Herold plant it there? If not, why would Booth give his bank book to Atzerodt?

[RJNorton]

Gath writes, "Atzerodt had a room almost directly over Vice-President Johnson's. He had all the materials to do murder, but lost spirit or opportunity."

This concept is included in many books, and it is also what I taught in my classroom. However, in his own statements, Atzerodt denied ever agreeing to kill Johnson. What is the truth - did Atzerodt agree to kill Johnson but then lost his nerve, or did he tell Booth "no" all along?

[Gene C]

Interesting points....

Gath wrote on p41, "I am equally certain that Booth's project was unknown in Richmond."

I hesitate to mention this, but Gath writes on p42 "I mention it as an exceptionable remarkable fact, that every conspirator in custody is by education a catholic. These are our most loyal citizens elsewhere, but the western shore of Maryland is a noxious and pestilential place for patriotism."
(and property values have suffered for years )

and..."Having a son and several daughters, she (Mrs. Surratt) moved to Washington soon after the beginning of the war and let the tavern to a trusty friend - one John Lloyd"

Well, you can't get all the details right.
Just wait and see what he says about Mrs. Surratt on page 43.

[Gene C]

Here is Townsend's comments about Mrs. Surratt on p.43,
"Treason never found a better agent than Mrs. Surratt. She is a large, masculine, self-possessed female, mistress of her house, and as lithe a rebel as Belle Boyd or Mrs. Greenhough. She has not the flippantry and menace as the first, nor the social power of the second; but the rebellion has found no fitter agent."

and on p47,
"But Mrs. Surratt protested that she had never seen the man (Payne) at all, and she had no ditch to clean.
How fortunate girls, she said, that these officers are here; this man might have murdered us all.
Her effrontery stamps her as worthy of companionship with Booth. Payne had been identified as a lodger of Mrs. Surratt's, as having twice visited the house under the name of Wood. The girls will render valuable testimony at the trial."

And regarding Booth's visit to Mudd's house the night of the assassination, "They contracted with him for twenty five dollars in greenbacks to set the broken leg." and ..."The doctor was assisted by an Englishman, who at the same time began to hew out a pair of crutches.

And I found this interesting on p.48 about Samuel Cox,
"It was this man (Cox), doubtless, who harbored the fugitives from Sunday to Thursday, aided, possibly, by such neighbors as the Wilson's and Adamses."
I find it interesting that since this was known, why was Cox never placed on trial? Surely the government could have found someone to testify against Cox.

There is a lot of interesting information in this chapter, some of it incorrect, but this is what the public was being told at the time.

[Wild Bill]

Interesting description of Mrs Surratt who was once known far and wide as the Belle of Prince George's County.

Booth and Herold never contracted with Mudd at all, did they?--they just gave him $25. The Englishman was Mudd's employee, Best, who was acting under the doctor's orders with no real knowledge who Booth and Herold were

I wonder if the Feds really thought that they could get either Cox or the Adamses. The only witness against Cox was Swann who was contradicted by Cox's female employee, both witnesses being black, and suspect in the mores of the time. The witness against Adamses, also black, Owens, was dead, whom the Feds beat to death under interrogation.

One needs to be really careful with GATH as he is an apologist for Yankee intelligence, superiority and vengeance over Confederate inferiority, stupidity and evil, constantly.

[RJNorton]

Gath writes, "On the Friday night of the murder the departments were absolutely paralyzed. The murderers had three good hours for escape; they had evaded the pursuit of lightning by snapping the telegraph wires, and rumor filled the town with so many reports that the first valuable hours, which should have been used to follow hard after them, were consumed in feverish efforts to know the real extent of the assassination."

Is this not quite the embellishment if not an outright falsehood? I have sometimes read that the telegraph lines were deliberately cut in Washington on the night of Lincoln’s assassination. Yet I have never read of John Wilkes Booth's plans or capability to do such. Some have blamed Stanton for this as part of his alleged role in the conspiracy. Stanton, himself, sent a 1 A.M. telegram to New York:

War Department,
April 15, 1865-1 a. m.

John A. Kennedy,

Chief of Police, New York:

Send here immediately three or four of your best detectives to investigate the facts as to the assassination of the President and Secretary Seward. They are still alive, but the President's case is hopeless, and that of Mr. Seward nearly the same.

Edwin M. Stanton,

Secretary of War.

Isn't Gath wrong? Isn't the assumption that all telegraph lines out of Washington were mysteriously cut a falsehood?

[Wild Bill]

Isn't there an article on all of this?

Arthur F Loux, "Mystery of the Telegraphic interruption," Lincoln Herald, 81 (Winter 1979), 234-37.

Lou finds that the shut-down involved only one of several telegraphic companies, which had as a customer the military telegraph. The shut down was intentional to prevent possible communication between co-conspoirators and from keeping Lincoln's assassination from the Deep South where it might have interfered with Inion soldiers accepting the peaceable surrender of Confederate troops.

There are also relevant articles by Louz and James O Hall in Dillon's The Lincoln Assassination: From the p\Pages of the Surratt Courier, III, 7-9, 11-12.

[L Verge]

Art Loux set a lot of assassination theorists on their ear back in the 1970s with his research on this telegraph matter. Only one commercial line was shut down, as Bill stated above; military lines remained up and running the whole time.

[RJNorton]

Bill and Laurie, many thanks. I thought there was a ton of exaggeration in Gath's words.

I feel the articles in the Courier that Bill referenced were very good. Perhaps most interesting was that Dr. Mudd, while imprisoned at Ft. Jefferson, became acquainted with the gentleman (William Henry Heiss, Sr.) who shut down the telegraph line Bill and Laurie mentioned. Heiss got to know Mudd while he (Heiss) was installing telegraph cables in the Florida Keys. Mudd, who enjoyed woodworking, made a cane for Heiss. Heiss used it for the rest of his life. And in 1981 Heiss's grandson donated the cane to the Dr. Mudd House Museum. I assume the cane is still there today.