Devil's Game - The Civil War Intrigues of Charles Dunham

[Gene C]

Any one read this?

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/cat...28908.html

[L Verge]

Yes, not word for word, but a hard skim years ago when it came out. Author is a member of the Surratt Society and was a speaker at one of our conferences. Book is good, but can be confusing in spots because Charles Dunham was a confusing character!

Sidebar: It was very interesting getting Mr. Cumming to speak at the conference. He is Canadian. First, my attempts at communicating via e-mail kept bouncing back because filters were describing his last name as being pornographic. He get a big kick out of that - said he's been called a lot of things, but never pornographic.

Once we got past that hurdle, the next challenge came two days before the conference when he attempted to get through customs to enter the U.S. The Canadian authorities held him in custody(!) until I sent a faxed letter on government letterhead stating that he was donating his time to speak at our meeting.

Of course, we offer meager honorariums to all our speakers. In this case, we just waited a few weeks and sent him a nice thank-you note with check enclosed. I have yet to be subpoenaed, so I guess it worked.

The first time we invited Barry Cauchon to cross the border to speak at the conference, I expected the same thing to happen. Luckily, Barry has dual citizenship.

I really should write a book. Not about the Lincoln assassination nor Mary Surratt. It would have to be about the silly, weird, ridiculous things that I have learned and have had happen to me while working at Surratt House.

[Thomas Thorne]

I read the book. A truly fabulous character!!

I find it interesting that some proponents of the "Come Retribution" thesis believe that Dunning and Co. were sent by the Confederate conspirators-Benjamin?-to discredit the idea of Confederate government involvement in the assassination by telling lies about their own participation in the plot that would soon be discredited. This seems to me a highly dangerous step. Once the idea of Confederate participation in the assassination was planted in the minds of Holt and Stanton, they would not rest until real evidence of Confederate government guilt was found.

We know many historical examples of governments knowingly accusing innocent people of state crimes. But I can't think of a historical event in which we can all agree the guilty party sought to discredit the idea of their involvement by producing fake evidence and perjurous witnesses attesting to their own guilt. They would have to calculate by the time they were exonerated they would likely have already been executed.
Tom

[Rsmyth]

Carman Cumming is a very nice gentleman who years ago directed me to Dunham's grave in NJ. Thanks again Carman!