The Lincoln Assassination- Where Does Responsibilty Lie?

[J_Man0507]

Originally Posted by coltshooter1

I think that Stanton had something to do with the act. He was convinently attacked but not seriously injured. Most writing seem to show he was opposed to the lenient treatment the Souther soilders were recieving and wanted strict penalities against the Confederate goverment and civilians.

Problem is that Stanton was never attacked. Lincoln was shot, Seward was stabbed and Johnson was targetted, but the man assigned to that task chickened out and ran away. Stanton, though not always a good friend of Lincoln in the past, had become very close to the President. Now, not to say he might have been disappointed with how the South was treated after the war (pretty leniently) but if he didn't like the way Lincoln was doing things, he could have gone about it in other ways. The whole notion that Stanton was in on the conspiracy, that there were pages missing from Booth's diary (other than pieces he would have torn out for sending a note) and that it wasn't Booth who was shot at the Garrett farm are just the prattlings of those who want the story to be more exciting that it already is, or have some axe to grind. Booth was the mastermind, with nobody else behind him; not the South, not Stanton.

[larry_cockerham]

Seems to me an awfully large number of folks got hung for their association with John Wilkes Booth. Conspiracy may have been about in some form. Even Confederate sympathy might have been looked upon as conspiracy against Lincoln. Certainly Booth could have accomplished this crime on his own, but I doubt he did.

[Nebka]

Sorry for getting back sooner what my teacher said in class was that he thought that Stanton was behind the assassination.

He made a list of those who was attack that night he said with them gone who would be president and have the most to gain from the assassinations.

Stanton he said would have the most to gain from that.

For a college teacher to say that was someting.

He also said that Lincoln wanted to run the south a easer way that what happened to it after the assassination.

[Jules362]

Originally Posted by larry_cockerham

Seems to me an awfully large number of folks got hung for their association with John Wilkes Booth. Conspiracy may have been about in some form. Even Confederate sympathy might have been looked upon as conspiracy against Lincoln. Certainly Booth could have accomplished this crime on his own, but I doubt he did.

I think those hangings were sort of a knee-jerk reaction to the shock and grief of the murder of a president. It took no time at all for them to be tried and hung, at least in comparison with the time it takes these days to get a criminal to trial, and the years spent on death row before they are executed.

While it's tempting to consider some of the conspiracy theories, I think it's unlikely that it went any further than Booth and his cronies, with the possible knowledge, or more likely, at least whispers of the plot among some Southerners.

The higher-ups in the Confederate government at that time were busy trying to keep from being captured by the Yankees, and in addition, surely they would have known that Lincoln would be easier on the South than Johnson would be. And the reaction of the Southern people who had seen their greatest army surrender just days early, was fear of what the North would do to them in retaliation.

Some things are just too big to be small, and the assassination of a U.S. president is one of those things. At the time JFK was murdered in Dallas, not many people believed (nor do many believe today) that it was the work of just one man. (Personally, at the time, I suspected that LBJ was behind it. I've since changed my mind, but I was young then, and he was easy to hate). With Oswald being shot down just days after the assassination of Kennedy, Americans were left with no place to anchor the anger and outrage they felt...and some of it, as I recall, was simply focused on the city of Dallas, almost as if it had been a city-wide plot. I vaguely recall one or another of the newsmen suggesting that Dallas should be ostracized for a thousand years for what they had done. Shock and grief does strange things to the ability to think clearly.

It only makes sense to me that Booth and the loonies who helped him achieve eternal infamy, plotted and carried out their crime by themselves, and I would agree with the poster here who suggested that Booth's motive probably had something to do with expecting the South to be grateful, and himself to achieve everlasting fame.

[bankerpapaw]

The assassination might have been prevented if Lincoln's bodyguard had not been at the bar next door.

[unionblue]

"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"

unknown