72
James R. Ford, testimony, July 9, 1867, in Trial of Surratt, p. 582.
73
Alford, “Hunter,” p. 11. For Robert Lincoln, see Jason Emerson’s fine Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012).
74
New York Evening Post, June 24, 1878; New York Herald, June 25, 1878.
75
“Booth’s Romance,” Atlanta Constitution, Jan. 15, 1882; F. A. Burr, “Booth’s Bullet,” Washington Evening Star, Dec. 7, 1881; Samuel A. Chester, statement, April 28, 1865, 4/163–64, NA M599.
CHAPTER 9. COME WEAL OR WOE
1
New York Times, Feb. 15, Feb. 25, and April 21, 1865; New York Tribune, Feb. 25, 1865; William G. Beymer, On Hazardous Service: Scouts and Spies of the North and South (New York: Harper and Bros., 1912), pp. 254–55.
2
Theodore C. Pease and James G. Randall, eds., The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, 2 vols. (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1925–33), vol. 2, pp. 7–8, 19; Isaac Markens, President Lincoln and the Case of John Y. Beall (New York: author, 1911), passim; Joseph George Jr., “The Trial and Execution of Two Confederate Agents in New York,” Lincoln Herald, vol. 89 (Fall 1987), pp. 102–111. John P. Hale was not one of the six senators who signed the petition to Lincoln.
3
D. F. St. Clair, “Why Booth Shot President Lincoln,” New Voice, vol. 16 (June 10, 1899), pp. 1, 15. If the editor Mark Pomeroy, a veteran Lincoln hater, was not the father of this story, he was its favorite uncle. In 1870, when he did a major exposition on the topic, he wrote that he first became aware of Booth’s Beall connection in 1867. The essence of his version was that “[Lincoln] lied to a dangerous man, and the dangerous man, with erratic ideas of chivalry, stung by the insult and broken faith, fired with grief-tinted anger, to avenge the death of a bosom companion.” Pomeroy’s Democrat, July 27 and Sept. 14, 1870.For Hale’s alleged involvement, see Pomeroy’s Democrat, Aug. 24, 1870; Washington Chronicle, Sept. 5, 1886; New York Times, April 30, 1876; New York Truth, quoted in Indianapolis Western Citizen, January 11, 1882; Joseph George Jr., “And a Follow-Up on the John Yates Beall Subject,” Surratt Courier, vol. 26 (Feb. 2001), pp. 3–4.
4
There was never any intimacy and apparently no contact between the two men after 1859. Daniel Lucas, Beall’s biographer and closest friend, wrote, “The whole story about John Wilkes Booth and his connection with Beall is a fabrication without a particle of truth.” Lucas’s daughter Virginia noted that she found in her research “not an allusion in all [Beall’s] correspondence, nor in his diary, nor in his prison experience to the name of Booth.” Virginia Lucas, “John Yates Beall: An Appreciation. Notes Also on the Wilkes Booth-Beall Tradition,” Confederate Veteran, vol. 35 (Aug. and Sept. 1927), pp. 301, 337–38.Isaac Markens, who wrote to Beall family members and wartime associates around 1910, heard the same thing. His papers at the Virginia Historical Society contain the statement of Beall’s brother William, made to a cousin, that “he was certain that his brother John never met or knew Booth.” Similarly, James H. McNeilly, an intimate friend and amanuensis of Beall’s fiancée, Martha O’Bryan, wrote Markens, “I came to the conclusion that it was doubtful if Beall ever knew Booth. Certainly he never had an intimacy with him. I think the whole story was a fabrication for sensational purposes.”Markens did well in demonstrating that Booth was not Beall’s wartime associate and played no role in the pardon controversy. While regrettable, it is not surprising that he and his sources would have missed the association vouched for by McCullough (below). Booth was in Charlestown for two weeks only and not then an important enough personality to draw much notice among the mass of strangers in town. Edwin’s denial in Washington Constitutional Union, April 21, 1865; Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, April 25, 1865.
5
Clipping, n.d., James T. Brady Papers, VHS; Baker, History, p. 544.
6
Cincinnati Enquirer, April 18, 1892; notebook, p. 91, Micou-Daniel Papers; Susan B. Eppes, Through Some Eventful Years (Macon, Ga.: J. W. Burke, 1926), p. 216.
7
A. W. Smiley, second interview with Louis J. Mackey in Miller, Booth in the Pennsylvania Oil Region (1987 ed.), p. 72. McCullough’s statement, made to Townsend and published in the Cincinnati Enquirer on July 2, 1885, provides the key that allows historians to put the relationship between the two men in proper perspective.
8
New York Tribune, May 20, 1867.
9
J. E. Buckingham Sr., Reminiscences and Souvenirs of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Washington: Rufus H. Darby, 1894), pp. 29–30; “Voluntary Statement of David E. Herold,” Washington, D.C., April 27, 1865, 4/442–85, NA M599; Laurie Verge, “That Trifling Boy …,” Surratt Courier, vol. 27 (Jan. 2002), pp. 4–9; Jane E. Herold, statement, April 20, 1865, 4/402–10, NA M599; New York Morning Advertiser, May 16, 1895; Christian Times (Chicago), June 8, 1865; Noah Brooks, “Pen Pictures,” clipping [1865], LFFRC.
10
Mudd, Life of Mudd, p. 31.
11
Oldroyd, Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, p. 274.
12
Washington Evening Star Extra, July 7, 1865; Troy Weekly Times, May 6, 1865.
13
Betty J. Ownsbey, Alias “Paine”: Lewis Thornton Powell, the Mystery Man of the Lincoln Conspiracy (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1993), pp. 1–42. Powell was arrested, tried, convicted and executed as Lewis Payne, his actual identity not being determined until the conclusion of the trial. The statements of Mrs. Branson and her daughters, 3/188–205, and of Preston Parr, 5/517, NA M599; Baltimore Sun, Nov. 15, 1900; Betty J. Ownsbey, “Those Elusive Branson Ladies Again: Lewis Powell, the Seward Assassin, and His Baltimore Lady Loves,” Surratt Courier, vol. 38 (Jan. 2013), pp. 3–17.
14
Argument in defense of Powell by his attorney, W. E. Doster, in Steers, The Trial, pp. 313–14.
15
Tidwell, Hall, and Gaddy, Come Retribution, p. 339.
16
Powell claimed to work in Parr’s shop. Oldroyd, Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, p. 167; Ownsbey, Alias “Paine,” p. 39. The Boston Post, July 8, 1865, noted “he was led into the conspiracy by Booth and John Surratt.” Powell “claimed to be acting as a soldier under Booth,” whom he recognized as his superior officer, but he did not claim to “hold any grade or commission in the confederate army,” nor was he aware that Booth held one. Thomas T. Eckert, testimony, May 30, 1867, in Impeachment Investigation, p. 674.
17
“Mrs. Surratt’s Case,” St. Louis Globe Democrat, n.d. [1888], LFFRC.
18
J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, “The Fourteenth of April,” Century Magazine, vol. 40 (Jan. 1890), p. 432; Alford, “John Wilkes Booth and George Alfred Townsend.”
19
Steers, The Trial, p. xlv; statement of Herold’s boyhood friend W. M. Clarke, manuscript (1923), copy courtesy of my friend Bill Luetge; S. P. Currier, statement, n.d. [1865], 4/228–30, NA M599.
20
H. B. Smith, Between the Lines: Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After (New York: Booz Bros., 1911), p. 257.
21
Weichmann to Thomas Donaldson, Philadelphia, April 20, 1886, copy courtesy of Robert L. Keesler; Weichmann, True History, p. 88.
22
Curtis C. Davis, “In Pursuit of Booth Once More: A New Claimant Heard From,” Maryland Historical Magazine, vol. 79 (Fall 1984), p. 226.
23
Washington Evening Star, Dec. 7, 1870. Weichmann denied foreknowledge of any conspiracy against Lincoln’s person, but from conversations Spangler heard in the exercise yard from fellow prisoners Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt, the Ford’s Theatre carpenter implicated him “in a knowledge of the original plot to abduct, and with furnishing information” from his office. C. C. Carrington Scrapbook, vol. 2, p. 193, John Hay Library, Brown University; Atzerodt, statement, April
25, 1865, 3/596–602, NA M599; New York Tribune, May 20, 1867.
24
Baltimore Clipper, March 6, 1865; Morning Cleveland Herald, March 6, 1865; miscellaneous items in scrapbook titled “Newspaper Clippings on the Assassination and Burial of Abraham Lincoln,” Newberry Library, Chicago; Washington Sunday Star, March 7, 1915.
25
Mark H. Dunkelman, “For Old Abe and the Union, of Course,” Lincoln Herald, vol. 98 (Fall 1996), p. 90; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), vol. 2, p. 765.
26
Philadelphia Press, March 6, 1865, also giving a description of the confused scene outside the Senate chamber. The tickets of most guests were “useless, [and] these wretched beings wandered about the passages, like Paris outside of Paradise, unable to hear or see.”
27
Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, April 17, 1865; National Police Gazette, April 29, 1865.
28
Washington Evening Star, March 3, 1865. Ladies could enter from the terrace through the principal western door of the Capitol.
29
Chester, statement, April 28, 1865, 4/163–64, NA M599. Chester errs in stating that Booth was on the stand, as statements of those in the Rotunda make clear.
30
A sample ticket is in the collections of the Illinois State Historical Library. Bingham in Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 23, 1873. Donald R. Kennon, chief historian of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, was generous in helping with matters dealing with the Capitol’s history and personalities.
31
Roswell Parish, diary, March 4, 1865, Bartlett Collection, Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University.
32
The original 1876 affidavits of Buxton and of four Capitol policemen who witnessed John W. Westfall’s encounter with Booth are gathered in the Ward Hill Lamon Papers, Huntington Library. Lamon published them in “The Real Lincoln,” Washington Critic, Sept. 17, 1887. The historian Benson J. Lossing revived Westfall’s story in an article titled “A Reminiscence,” Independent, vol. 36 (Feb. 14, 1884), pp. 3–4. Also: Weichmann, True History, pp. 90–94; D. Mark Katz, “Booth’s First Attempt,” Incidents of the War, vol. 1 (Spring 1986), pp. 8–11, 18.
33
Marquis de Chambrun, “Personal Recollections of Mr. Lincoln,” Scribner’s Magazine, vol. 13 (Jan. 1893), p. 26.
34
Westfall, affidavit, May 13, 1876, was owned by Osborn H. Oldroyd and is in the collections of the Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site.
35
French to Frank O. French, Washington, D.C., April 24 and 30, 1865, Benjamin B. French Family Papers, LOC.
36
Chester, statement, April 28, 1865, 4/140–70, NA M599; Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, vol. 1, p. 49.
37
Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, Nov. 8, 1873.
38
Washington Star, undated citation [ca. 1909] on Clara E. Laughlin’s Washington interviews, Folder 223, Box 4, Barbee Papers, Georgetown University Library; Laughlin, The Death of Lincoln (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1909), pp. 41–42.
39
The Senate Executive Journal reveals that Lincoln submitted Hale’s nomination on March 10, 1865, and that the Senate approved it by unanimous consent on the same day. Thanks to Donald A. Ritchie.
40
Lot 63 (text illustrated on p. 219), Parke-Bernet’s sale of the Oliver R. Barrett Lincoln collection, Feb. 20, 1952. Wentworth in John Wentworth, The Wentworth Genealogy: English and American, 3 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1878), vol. 2, p. 730.
41
Daily Chicago Tribune, Nov. 23, 1873.
42
Burton G. Brown Jr., “Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century America” (PhD dissertation, Boston University, 1972); Mary F. Bednarowski, “Nineteenth Century Spiritualism: An Attempt at a Scientific Religion” (PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1973); Emma H. Britten, Nineteenth Century Miracles: A Complete Historical Compendium (New York: Wm. Britten, 1884), and Modern American Spiritualism: A Twenty Year Record (1870; rpt. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1970).
43
Terry Alford, “Charles J. Colchester’s Life among the Spirits,” Northern Virginia Review, vol. 5 (Spring 1990), pp. 1–6.
44
Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 24, 1865.
45
Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), pp. 217–21; Jennifer Fleischner, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly: The Remarkable Story of the Friendship between a First Lady and a Former Slave (New York: Broadway Books, 2003), pp. 258–60; Wayne C. Temple, Abraham Lincoln: From Skeptic to Prophet (Mahomet, Ill.: Mayhaven, 1995), pp. 196–201.
46
Jay Monaghan, “Was Abraham Lincoln Really a Spiritualist?” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, vol. 34 (June 1941), pp. 209–32; Decatur (Ill.) Daily Republican, Oct. 24, 1891, courtesy of Michael Burlingame.
47
Nettie Colburn Maynard, a trance medium befriended by Mrs. Lincoln, mentioned the president’s meetings with Colchester, as did Warren Chase, who claimed that Lincoln sent for Colchester frequently. Nettie Colburn Maynard, Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist? (Philadelphia: R. C. Hartranft, 1891), pp. 92, 178, 254; Noah Brooks, Washington in Lincoln’s Time (New York: Century, 1895), pp. 64–66; Warren Chase, Forty Years on the Spiritual Rostrum (Boston: Colby and Rich, 1888), p. 96; “Lincoln’s Spiritualism,” clipping [1891], LFFRC; Thomas Coulson, Joseph Henry, His Life and Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), pp. 308–9. Henry subsequently learned how Colchester produced noises in different parts of a room when he had a chance conversation with a maker of electrical instruments who provided the medium with a special concealable apparatus for that purpose.
48
Maynard, Lincoln, p. 173; Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 19, 1865; Earl W. Fornell, The Unhappy Medium: Spiritualism and the Life of Margaret Fox (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), p. 122. Boston’s Banner of Light, the leading spiritualist journal, asserted that although Colchester led thousands to spiritualism, he was unprincipled. Issue of May 19, 1866; Brown, “Spiritualism,” p. 149.
49
Alford, “Wonderful and Mysterious,” pp. 14–18.
50
Nashville Dispatch, April 25, 1865; T. L. Nichols, A Biography of the Brothers Davenport (London: Saunders, Otley, 1864), for a contemporary account. Arthur Conan Doyle, The History of Spiritualism, 2 vols. (New York: George H. Doran, 1926), devoted a chapter to these brothers, “probably the greatest mediums of their kind the world has ever seen” (vol. 1, p. 226).
51
San Francisco Chronicle, January 26, 1941; Boston Evening Transcript, July 28, 1899; Banner of Light, Aug. 5, 1899.
52
Bunker, testimony, June 26, 1867, in Trial of Surratt, vol. 1, pp. 329–30; exhibit 4 of the conspiracy trial, 15/260–63, NA M599.
53
Sylvan J. Muldoon, Psychic Experiences of Famous People (Chicago: Aries, 1947), p. 153. Nettie C. Maynard corroborates the fact that Colchester warned Lincoln, but for Lincoln’s statement about that warning one needs Muldoon’s source, which the author has been unable to learn. It parallels Maynard’s account (pp. 181–82) but is not drawn solely from it.
54
Arnold to Booth, Hookstown, Md., March 27, 1865, 15/343–46, NA M599; Arnold, Memoirs, pp. 9–10, 23.
55
Cincinnati Enquirer, Aug. 3, 1884.
56
Booth’s bankbook, preserved at the Chicago Historical Society, shows deposits of $1,750, all but $25 withdrawn by January 18, 1865. Joseph Simonds to Booth, Franklin, Penn., Dec. 31, 1864, 2/314–16, and Thomas H. Carmichael, statement, [1865], 4/198, both NA M599; Detroit Free Press, April 17, 1893; Arnold, Defence and Prison Experiences, p. 25; Townsend, Life, Crime, and Capture, p. 23.
57
James O. Hall with Michael Maione, “To Make a Fortune.” John
Wilkes Booth: Following the Money Trail (Clinton, Md.: Surratt Society, 2003). The authors present details of Booth’s finances and of the monetary expectations of certain team members. However, they fail to prove their central thesis that “Booth was promised a large reward—a fortune—if he captured Lincoln and delivered him to Richmond as a hostage.” They cite no evidence as to when, where, or by whom such a promise was made.
58
Edward Frazier, statement, June 8, 1865, in Poore, The Conspiracy Trial, vol. 3, pp. 424–31; Tidwell, Hall, and Gaddy, Come Retribution, pp. 166–67.
59
Davis to Lincoln, July 2, 1863, Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. 9, p. 254, and Davis’s emendation of letter to George W. Randolph, July [n.d.] 1862, vol. 8, p. 292; Judd in Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, eds., Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 93.
60
Kauffman, ed., Memoirs of a Lincoln Conspirator, pp. 12, 34, 42, 127–28, 136.
61
New York Herald, Sept. 4, 1904.
62
Booth told Atzerodt that he would open a theater in Richmond. Detroit Advertiser and Tribune, July 10, 1865.
63
Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth Page 55
