The Lincoln Assassination and John Wilkes Booth: Was Booth a Double Agent?

The McHales are of course completely unbiased.

Outside a Georgetown restaurant a group of crime writers is calling it a night when somebody brings up an old case one of them has been mining for years.

“Guilty!” declares James Swanson, author of “Manhunt” and other books about Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!”

In Swanson’s opinion, one person associated with the plot to kill the 16th president didn’t get the punishment he deserved: Samuel Mudd, the Charles County, Md., physician who treated John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after the actor shot Lincoln.

Tried by a military commission with other accused conspirators, Mudd escaped being hanged by a single vote. Instead, he was sentenced to life in prison at Fort Jefferson, a 19th-century military outpost in Florida’s Dry Tortugas .

------------

Conor McHale, the doctor’s great-great-great-granson, and I are getting together for lunch at Wok and Roll in Chinatown. Miss the plaque on the building, and you’d never know this was once Mary Surratt’s boarding house, where the conspiracy against Lincoln was planned.

McHale, editor of the Dr. Samuel A. Mudd Society newsletter, is well versed in the life of his medical ancestor. Many of his relatives are, too, and a pair is joining us: Mary McHale, Mudd’s great-granddaughter, and Robert Summers, his great-.
http://publicpolicyseminars.com/2015/03/24/the-last-trail-of-a-lincoln-conspirator/

"If Booth hadn't broken his leg, nobody would have heard of Dr. Mudd," says Mary Mudd McHale, the doctor's great-granddaughter.

Her husband, John E. McHale, a retired FBI agent and former Prince George's County police chief, has examined the case in a book he's written, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd and the Lincoln Assassination. "You can't prove legally if he's innocent or guilty," he says. "They never proved his guilt. The guy should have been set free."

The Mudds of Maryland

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/20...154_1_samuel-mudd-fort-jefferson-dry-tortugas

 
A few points in response to recent replies:

* Mudd did not identify Booth when he was questioned because the soldiers had, incredibly, brought a picture of Edwin Booth, not one of John Wilkes Booth.

* Someone needs to explain why Luther Baker, one of the two officers hand picked by Lafayette Baker to accompany the search party, took off with the corpse from the barn for several hours, against Lt. Doherty's orders. What was he doing with the corpse for over three hours?

Answer: He could have been changing Boyd's clothes from his gray uniform to dark clothes similar to the ones Booth was seen in, and perhaps using ink to write Booth's initials on the back of Boyd's left hand. However, it is by no means certain that the corpse "identified" on the Montauk had Booth's initials on his left hand. The only person who said he saw those initials was Charles Dawson, a clerk at the National Hotel who had seen Booth at the hotel on occasion. The autopsy report did not mention any initials on the corpse's left hand, and the one and only autopsy photo soon disappeared after it was delivered to Lafayette Baker.

* The only reason that Dana and Lovett went to Mudd's house was that Mudd had sent George Mudd into town to get some Army officers to come and interview him about his two recent suspicious guests. That's hardly the action of a guilty man. If Mudd had not done that, Dana and Lovett might not have stopped at his house, since his house was several miles out of the way from the logical route Booth would have been expected to take.

* Of course, one can discount Hardy's testimony that Mudd mentioned Booth's boot before being told his house would be searched, but common sense should tell us that if Mudd believed that Booth's boot was incriminating evidence, he would have simply burned it long before Dana or Lovett showed up.

* The "testimony" that placed Dr. Mudd at Mary Surratt's house was and is a joke, and was thoroughly debunked at the trial. Even Weichmann would not go along with that belated tale.
 
I'm probably not qualified to enter this discussion, but there has always been some whispering that the real JWB was never captured . . . and eventually made his way to Mississippi.

Yeah I know . . . that sounds like a bizarre conspiracy theory, but who knows ?

This may be of interest to some of you:

http://andspeakingofwhich.blogspot.com/2015/04/john-wilkes-boothin-mississippi.html

Not bizarre at all. Many Americans at the time doubted the War Department's claim that Booth was shot in Garrett's barn. The "identification" of the body from the barn was dubious and suspicious, to put it mildly. The failure of the War Department to produce a single autopsy photo for private viewing by Senators and Representatives and White House officials further fueled doubts about the department's story, especially when the public learned that the one and only autopsy photo that Stanton and Baker had allowed to be taken had disappeared. I mean, how in the world do you lose such a crucial piece of evidence in the crime of the century?

Dr. May's "identification," clearly given under duress, didn't help matters at all. At first May said the corpse looked nothing like Booth and that he could not believe it was Booth. Only after the military authorities on the scene talked with May did he agree to identify the body based on the scar on the right neck. Yet, in his memoirs, May stated that never had he seen a body's appearance change so dramatically from how it looked when it was alive. Interestingly, he added that the corpse had a broken right leg, whereas Booth had a broken left ankle.

Finally, it is quite odd that the autopsy report says nothing about seeing the initials JWB on the body's left hand. Only one person of the 14 who identified the body that night said anything about seeing the initials.
 
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The McHales are of course completely unbiased.

Outside a Georgetown restaurant a group of crime writers is calling it a night when somebody brings up an old case one of them has been mining for years.

“Guilty!” declares James Swanson, author of “Manhunt” and other books about Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!”

In Swanson’s opinion, one person associated with the plot to kill the 16th president didn’t get the punishment he deserved: Samuel Mudd, the Charles County, Md., physician who treated John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after the actor shot Lincoln.

Tried by a military commission with other accused conspirators, Mudd escaped being hanged by a single vote. Instead, he was sentenced to life in prison at Fort Jefferson, a 19th-century military outpost in Florida’s Dry Tortugas .

------------

Conor McHale, the doctor’s great-great-great-granson, and I are getting together for lunch at Wok and Roll in Chinatown. Miss the plaque on the building, and you’d never know this was once Mary Surratt’s boarding house, where the conspiracy against Lincoln was planned.

McHale, editor of the Dr. Samuel A. Mudd Society newsletter, is well versed in the life of his medical ancestor. Many of his relatives are, too, and a pair is joining us: Mary McHale, Mudd’s great-granddaughter, and Robert Summers, his great-.
http://publicpolicyseminars.com/2015/03/24/the-last-trail-of-a-lincoln-conspirator/

"If Booth hadn't broken his leg, nobody would have heard of Dr. Mudd," says Mary Mudd McHale, the doctor's great-granddaughter.

Her husband, John E. McHale, a retired FBI agent and former Prince George's County police chief, has examined the case in a book he's written, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd and the Lincoln Assassination. "You can't prove legally if he's innocent or guilty," he says. "They never proved his guilt. The guy should have been set free."

The Mudds of Maryland

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/20...154_1_samuel-mudd-fort-jefferson-dry-tortugas

When Swanson deals with McHale's book and with Ewing's closing argument, please let me know. I notice you didn't quote Swanson dealing with any of the points in McHale's book or in Ewing's closing argument.
 
especially when the public learned that the one and only autopsy photo that Stanton and Baker had allowed to be taken had disappeared. I mean, how in the world do you lose such a crucial piece of evidence in the crime of the century?
It was never lost because it was never taken....as I provided earlier in the thread.

Dr. May's "identification," clearly given under duress, didn't help matters at all. At first May said the corpse looked nothing like Booth and that he could not believe it was Booth. Only after the military authorities on the scene talked with May did he agree to identify the body based on the scar on the right neck. Yet, in his memoirs, May stated that never had he seen a body's appearance change so dramatically from how it looked when it was alive. Interestingly, he added that the corpse had a broken right leg, whereas Booth had a broken left ankle.
There was evidence Booth's body was decomposing quickly even before the autopsy. Booth had lived out in the woods for more than a week, was weakened by his broken leg and probably fairly stressed out. The body wasn't treated exactly like Lincoln's after his death...body placed in a wagon, placed on a ship and locked in a strong box all before the autopsy. The weather was also warm even for April so the body sitting on a hot metal ship....yeah, not going to last long. And May identified the scar without seeing it first before confirming his identity.

Most of what you bring up is all smoke and mirrors...same tactic magicians use with their audience. But begin to line up the facts and the audience quickly see the illusion.
 
Yet, in his memoirs, May stated that never had he seen a body's appearance change so dramatically from how it looked when it was alive. Interestingly, he added that the corpse had a broken right leg, whereas Booth had a broken left ankle.
BTW...could you elaborate how long afterward Dr. May wrote his memoirs? I'm sure the audience would like to analyze how many years had passed prior to him remembering back.
 
For those who might be interested, I have web-published an article that provides a detailed reply to William Hanchett's criticisms of the Neff-Guttridge documents used in their book Dark Union. The article is titled "Unwanted Evidence: William Hanchett, the Neff-Guttridge Documents, and Evidence that Lincoln Was Killed by a Radical Republican Plot." Here's the URL:

http://miketgriffith.com/files/unwanted.pdf
 
From the time I began to study the Civil War, the traditional version of the Lincoln assassination never made sense to me. Why in the world would any genuine Confederate assassination conspiracy target Abraham Lincoln when it was well known that Lincoln wanted a lenient, conciliatory reconstruction? And why in the world would any Confederate in his right mind also try to kill William Seward, who supported lenient, conciliatory reconstruction and who had been an outspoken advocate of compromise before the war? Why would any genuine Confederate assassination conspiracy perform actions that would give the Radicals a golden excuse to impose a draconian reconstruction on the South? It has never made any sense to me.

As I learned more about the Civil War, other questions about the Lincoln assassination occurred to me. Wouldn't a genuine Confederate conspiracy try to kill Edwin Stanton first and foremost? Wouldn't any rational Confederate conspiracy target the leading Radical Republicans in Congress, such as Benjamin Wade, Henry Wilson, Charles Sumner, and Thaddeus Stevens, men who were known for their hatred of the South and for their desire to brutalize and subjugate the South? These men would have been the top targets in any genuine Confederate assassination conspiracy.

My first inkling that John Wilkes Booth was a double agent came in an article by Civil War scholar Clyde Wilson in which Wilson indicated that he suspected that Booth was a double agent. But Wilson said nothing else on the matter. When I read this, I thought, "What?! Well, that would explain a lot!"

Not long after I read Wilson's intriguing statement, I became aware of the fine scholarship of Otto Eisenschiml, a scientist and Civil War scholar who wrote in the early 1900s. I read Eisenschiml's book Why Was Lincoln Murdered? which makes a strong circumstantial case that the conspiracy that killed Lincoln was not a Confederate conspiracy but a Radical Republican conspiracy led by Edwin Stanton. Eisenschiml also raises questions about Booth's true allegiance and suggests that he was in fact a double agent for the Union. Eisenschiml followed up Why Was Lincoln Murdered? with In the Shadow of Lincoln’s Death in which, among other things, he expands on some points made in the first book.

Then, recently, I stumbled across two more books that present additional evidence that Booth was a double agent and that leading Radical Republicans were behind the assassination. The books are Theodore Roscoe’s Web of Conspiracy: The Complete Story of the Men Who Murdered President Lincoln and The Cosgrove Report: Being the Private Inquiry of a Pinkerton Detective into the Death of President Lincoln.

Roscoe was a noted author and scholar in the mid-1900s. Among other things, he was commissioned by the U.S. Navy to write two histories of submarine and destroyer warfare in World War II: United States Submarine Operations in World War II (1949) and United States Destroyer Operations in World War II (1953), Roscoe’s Web of Conspiracy was published in 1959. It is arguably the most scholarly book ever written that posits a Radical Republican conspiracy in the Lincoln assassination. He discusses numerous actions by Stanton that seem to defy innocent explanation and that point to a deliberate attempt to conceal facts and spread disinformation about the assassination.

The Cosgrove Report was edited by former CIA analyst George O’Toole. O’Toole edited a manuscript written by a private detective named Michael Croft, and Croft’s manuscript was based on a manuscript and other materials written and collected by Nicholas Cosgrove, a detective for the Pinkerton Detective Agency during and after the Civil War. The manuscript and materials were handed down to Croft by an attorney named Raymond Lawson, who was one of Cosgrove's grandchildren. O’Toole arranged for the book to be published in 1979 and was recently reprinted.

One thing that is so fascinating about the book is that Cosgrove made some claims that seemed unlikely, if not fantastic, at the time and that were only verified much later. Cosgrove also provided numerous small details that Croft was able to corroborate through extensive research.

Cosgrove’s claims and conclusions were so explosive that the manuscript was written as a historical novel. The novel contains much fiction, but it also contains a great deal of fact. Croft spent years researching Cosgrove’s manuscript and produced an annotated version with a detailed foreword and afterword. The novel is interesting, but the notes and the foreword and afterword are the heart and meat of the book, since they present facts to support the novel.

Croft presents the following facts:

* Booth’s sister said that her brother stated that the abolitionist John Brown was an “inspired” man and the “grandest character of this century.” Such a view of Brown was unheard of among genuine Confederates (it was also a distinctly minority view among Northerners).

* Booth’s sister also said that Booth told her that he could travel through Union lines because he received a pass signed by General Grant.

* Booth’s older brothers, Edwin and Junius, were associated with none other than Lafayette Baker, one of Stanton’s henchmen. Junius reportedly became good friends with Baker before the war.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, I know that “mainstream historians” have summarily dismissed Eisenschiml’s and Roscoe’s research, and they have scoffed at the idea that the Lincoln assassination conspiracy was anything but a Confederate conspiracy. I have read many of the “mainstream” reviews of the Eisenschiml and Roscoe books, and not one of them makes any substantive effort to address the evidence that Eisenschiml and Roscoe present; instead, they make a giant appeal to authority and stress that “no reputable historian” agrees with Eisenschiml and Roscoe. (Actually, Eisenschiml’s research team included a professional historian.)
Answer this question; What happened to the missing pages from Booth's diary which Sec.of War Stanton some how found in his possation
 
From the time I began to study the Civil War, the traditional version of the Lincoln assassination never made sense to me. Why in the world would any genuine Confederate assassination conspiracy target Abraham Lincoln when it was well known that Lincoln wanted a lenient, conciliatory reconstruction? And why in the world would any Confederate in his right mind also try to kill William Seward, who supported lenient, conciliatory reconstruction and who had been an outspoken advocate of compromise before the war? Why would any genuine Confederate assassination conspiracy perform actions that would give the Radicals a golden excuse to impose a draconian reconstruction on the South? It has never made any sense to me.

As I learned more about the Civil War, other questions about the Lincoln assassination occurred to me. Wouldn't a genuine Confederate conspiracy try to kill Edwin Stanton first and foremost? Wouldn't any rational Confederate conspiracy target the leading Radical Republicans in Congress, such as Benjamin Wade, Henry Wilson, Charles Sumner, and Thaddeus Stevens, men who were known for their hatred of the South and for their desire to brutalize and subjugate the South? These men would have been the top targets in any genuine Confederate assassination conspiracy.

My first inkling that John Wilkes Booth was a double agent came in an article by Civil War scholar Clyde Wilson in which Wilson indicated that he suspected that Booth was a double agent. But Wilson said nothing else on the matter. When I read this, I thought, "What?! Well, that would explain a lot!"

Not long after I read Wilson's intriguing statement, I became aware of the fine scholarship of Otto Eisenschiml, a scientist and Civil War scholar who wrote in the early 1900s. I read Eisenschiml's book Why Was Lincoln Murdered? which makes a strong circumstantial case that the conspiracy that killed Lincoln was not a Confederate conspiracy but a Radical Republican conspiracy led by Edwin Stanton. Eisenschiml also raises questions about Booth's true allegiance and suggests that he was in fact a double agent for the Union. Eisenschiml followed up Why Was Lincoln Murdered? with In the Shadow of Lincoln’s Death in which, among other things, he expands on some points made in the first book.

Then, recently, I stumbled across two more books that present additional evidence that Booth was a double agent and that leading Radical Republicans were behind the assassination. The books are Theodore Roscoe’s Web of Conspiracy: The Complete Story of the Men Who Murdered President Lincoln and The Cosgrove Report: Being the Private Inquiry of a Pinkerton Detective into the Death of President Lincoln.

Roscoe was a noted author and scholar in the mid-1900s. Among other things, he was commissioned by the U.S. Navy to write two histories of submarine and destroyer warfare in World War II: United States Submarine Operations in World War II (1949) and United States Destroyer Operations in World War II (1953), Roscoe’s Web of Conspiracy was published in 1959. It is arguably the most scholarly book ever written that posits a Radical Republican conspiracy in the Lincoln assassination. He discusses numerous actions by Stanton that seem to defy innocent explanation and that point to a deliberate attempt to conceal facts and spread disinformation about the assassination.

The Cosgrove Report was edited by former CIA analyst George O’Toole. O’Toole edited a manuscript written by a private detective named Michael Croft, and Croft’s manuscript was based on a manuscript and other materials written and collected by Nicholas Cosgrove, a detective for the Pinkerton Detective Agency during and after the Civil War. The manuscript and materials were handed down to Croft by an attorney named Raymond Lawson, who was one of Cosgrove's grandchildren. O’Toole arranged for the book to be published in 1979 and was recently reprinted.

One thing that is so fascinating about the book is that Cosgrove made some claims that seemed unlikely, if not fantastic, at the time and that were only verified much later. Cosgrove also provided numerous small details that Croft was able to corroborate through extensive research.

Cosgrove’s claims and conclusions were so explosive that the manuscript was written as a historical novel. The novel contains much fiction, but it also contains a great deal of fact. Croft spent years researching Cosgrove’s manuscript and produced an annotated version with a detailed foreword and afterword. The novel is interesting, but the notes and the foreword and afterword are the heart and meat of the book, since they present facts to support the novel.

Croft presents the following facts:

* Booth’s sister said that her brother stated that the abolitionist John Brown was an “inspired” man and the “grandest character of this century.” Such a view of Brown was unheard of among genuine Confederates (it was also a distinctly minority view among Northerners).

* Booth’s sister also said that Booth told her that he could travel through Union lines because he received a pass signed by General Grant.

* Booth’s older brothers, Edwin and Junius, were associated with none other than Lafayette Baker, one of Stanton’s henchmen. Junius reportedly became good friends with Baker before the war.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, I know that “mainstream historians” have summarily dismissed Eisenschiml’s and Roscoe’s research, and they have scoffed at the idea that the Lincoln assassination conspiracy was anything but a Confederate conspiracy. I have read many of the “mainstream” reviews of the Eisenschiml and Roscoe books, and not one of them makes any substantive effort to address the evidence that Eisenschiml and Roscoe present; instead, they make a giant appeal to authority and stress that “no reputable historian” aguerees with Eisenschiml and Roscoe. (Actually, Eisenschiml’s research team included a professional historian.)
Question which I have not found a answer to and may add to this issue; What happen to the missing pages from Booth's diary which some how Sec.of War Stanton had possession of ,supposedly.?What was on those pages which certain person of importance may not have wanted released?Then maybe Booth just edited them or used them as rolling papers.Prehabs one day one will find them in a book which one of his mistresses left behind,then maybe Nixon's missing eight min. tape will be found in John Dean's desk from the White House.
 
It was never lost because it was never taken....as I provided earlier in the thread.

You proved nothing but repeated a back-up cover-up claim that emerged when the issue of the disappearance of the autopsy photo became public. Lafayette Baker ordered Detective Wardell to supervise the processing of the autopsy photograph, and Wardell recounted in some detail how he did this. He then took the photo and the plate to Baker. You might read these two articles, one from the Smithsonian Institution and the other from the journal Navy Medicine:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/documenting-the-death-of-an-assassin-159798338/

http://library.indstate.edu/rbsc/neff/PDFs/guttridge_identification.pdf

From the Smithsonian Institution article, quoting Wardell:

Under no circumstances was I to allow him [Gardner] or his assistant out of my sight until they had taken a picture and made the print, and then I was to bring the print and the glass [negative] back to the War Department and give it only to Col. [L.C.] Baker [chief of the Secret Service] or Secretary of War Stanton. ...[Gardner] was told that only one plate was to be made and it was to have only one print made and both were to be given to me when finished….

“Gardner took the plate and then gave it to the assistant and told him to take it and develop it and to make one print. I went with him and even went into the dark room. About 4:00 in the afternoon I got the plate and the print from the assistant and took it to the War Department. I went in to the outer office and Col. Baker was just coming out of the War Office. I gave him the plate and print and he stepped to one side and pulled it from the envelope. He looked at it and then dismissed me.​

There was evidence Booth's body was decomposing quickly even before the autopsy. Booth had lived out in the woods for more than a week, was weakened by his broken leg and probably fairly stressed out. The body wasn't treated exactly like Lincoln's after his death...body placed in a wagon, placed on a ship and locked in a strong box all before the autopsy. The weather was also warm even for April so the body sitting on a hot metal ship....yeah, not going to last long. And May identified the scar without seeing it first before confirming his identity.

Let's start with your last claim first: Dr. May did not identify the scar without seeing it. By May's own account, he asked if the body had a scar on the back of its neck, and Dr. Barnes (one of the autopsy doctors) said it did. May later stated that it was on the basis of that scar that he agreed to ID the body as Booth, but Dr. Arnold has observed that it is impossible for a doctor to say that this or that scar was made by his surgery. Furthermore, there were lots and lots of soldiers who had scars on the back of their neck as a result of combat wounds.

As to the body's condition when Dr. May saw it, May himself said that he had never seen a body change so drastically in appearance from how it looked in life. NEVER. He added that the body was freckled, but Booth had no freckles.

Most of what you bring up is all smoke and mirrors...same tactic magicians use with their audience. But begin to line up the facts and the audience quickly see the illusion.

No, it's just that you are so committed to the fairy tale put forth by the military commission that you won't logically and objectively consider the mountain of evidence that refutes it. You might want to remember that your side is now in the minority when it comes to Dr. Mudd and Mary Surratt, and especially when it comes to the legality and conduct of the military commission.

I notice you did not venture to explain why Lt. Baker took off with the body from the barn for over three hours. Any person who is not committed to believing the traditional story would agree that Baker's action was and is extremely suspicious and unusual. It is hard to imagine an innocent explanation for it. Even when Lt. Doherty's courier caught up with Baker and told him to halt, Baker sent the courier back and refused to return to Doherty.
 
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Answer this question; What happened to the missing pages from Booth's diary which Sec.of War Stanton some how found in his possession.

We don't know what happened to the missing pages, and it's not clear when the pages were removed after the diary was obtained. The people in the chain of possession all had motives to lie about the condition of the diary. Even with the missing pages, the diary was deemed too problematic to use in the conspiracy trial and Stanton and Baker and Holt suppressed its very existence during the trial. There were newspaper reports that Booth's diary was found, but without government confirmation those reports were soon discarded as false rumor. The diary's existence was not revealed until Lafayette Baker talked about it in his book History of the United States Secret Service in 1866. Baker's book caused a firestorm of controversy and led to a Congressional investigation.

One statement from the diary that I'm sure led Stanton et al to suppress the diary was Booth's comment that he was tempted to go back to Washington because he felt he could clear his name:

Though I have a greater desire and almost a mind to return to Washington, and in a measure clear my name, which I feel I can do.​

Obviously, that statement can logically be taken to imply that he had done the bidding of some authorities/powerful figures in Washington. When Booth's diary was published, many researchers zeroed on this statement and noted its implications. When I first read it, I did a double-take to make sure I'd read it correctly, because its implications are startling.

Booth also stated in his diary that until the day of the assassination, he had not thought about killing Lincoln. That statement alone would have badly damaged, if not destroyed, the War Department's already flimsy case against Mary Surratt.

Interestingly, material in the Andrew Potter papers suggests that as of the day of the assassination, the plan was still to carry out a kidnapping and that Booth surprised his handlers/backers by rashly deciding to kill Lincoln instead. But this might have been a cover story to shield the people behind the assassination from blame.

By the way, Baker wrote cipher notes in which he claimed that Stanton and other Radicals had been behind Lincoln's death. Those notes were discovered in 1857 in a magazine that we know Baker owned. Baker also stated that he was being followed and that he feared for his life. At the hearing on Baker's will, witnesses mentioned seeing attempts on Baker's life and on hearing Baker express fear for his life.

I discuss all of this in Unwanted Evidence: William Hanchett, the Neff-Guttridge Documents, and Evidence that Lincoln Was Killed by a Radical Republican Plot.

Traditional historians like Hanchett have ardently rejected the Baker cipher notes, the will-addendum hearing, and the Potter papers because these materials show that the traditional version of Lincoln's death is loaded with myth, distortions, and omission.

Even without these materials, we have known for a very long time that the military commission's prosecutors used bribed witnesses, coerced witnesses, and evidence that was so obviously fake that it would have been laughable if the matter had not been so serious (such as the floating cipher letter and the fireplace note). The commission's wild claim that Confederate leaders had directed the conspirators soon fell apart when Conover was exposed as a conman who had been bribing witnesses to implicate Confederate leaders. Yet, the prosecutors never formally withdrew the charges against the Confederate leaders.

Finally, earlier someone claimed that at the autopsy the body looked so different from Booth because so much time had elapsed since he had died. This is erroneous and is another example of people just grasping for excuses to ignore clear evidence. The man in the barn was shot at sunrise on April 26, i.e., around 5:20 AM. The body was taken aboard the USS Montauk for identification and autopsy less than 24 hours later--at right around 1:45 AM the next day, and the "identification" began immediately. Even in very warm weather, 20 hours is not enough time for a body to undergo such a radical change in appearance that it bears no resemblance to how the person looked in life.

Forensic sources tell us that a dead body does not even begin to noticeably bloat until about 72 hours after death. The internal organs don't start to decompose until about 24 hours after death. Just Google murder cases where the body wasn't discovered until 24-48 hours after death and you'll find that friends and relatives had no problem identifying the body (assuming, of course, that the face had not been blown away or badly damaged, etc.). So when Dr. May walked up to the body of the man from the barn, there was no reason that he should have said, "There is no resemblance in that corpse to Booth. nor can I believe it to be him." Nor should May have said, "Ncver in a human had a grcater change taken place . . . every vestige of resemblance to the living man had disappeared."
 
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We don't know what happened to the missing pages, and it's not clear when the pages were removed after the diary was obtained. The people in the chain of possession all had motives to lie about the condition of the diary. Even with the missing pages, the diary was deemed too problematic to use in the conspiracy trial and Stanton and Baker and Holt suppressed its very existence during the trial. There were newspaper reports that Booth's diary was found, but without government confirmation those reports were soon discarded as false rumor. The diary's existence was not revealed until Lafayette Baker talked about it in his book History of the United States Secret Service in 1866. Baker's book caused a firestorm of controversy and led to a Congressional investigation.

One statement from the diary that I'm sure led Stanton et al to suppress the diary was Booth's comment that he was tempted to go back to Washington because he felt he could clear his name:

Though I have a greater desire and almost a mind to return to Washington, and in a measure clear my name, which I feel I can do.​

Obviously, that statement can logically be taken to imply that he had done the bidding of some authorities/powerful figures in Washington. When Booth's diary was published, many researchers zeroed on this statement and noted its implications. When I first read it, I did a double-take to make sure I'd read it correctly, because its implications are startling.

Booth also stated in his diary that until the day of the assassination, he had not thought about killing Lincoln. That statement alone would have badly damaged, if not destroyed, the War Department's already flimsy case against Mary Surratt.

Interestingly, material in the Andrew Potter papers suggests that as of the day of the assassination, the plan was still to carry out a kidnapping and that Booth surprised his handlers/backers by rashly deciding to kill Lincoln instead. But this might have been a cover story to shield the people behind the assassination from blame.

By the way, Baker wrote cipher notes in which he claimed that Stanton and other Radicals had been behind Lincoln's death. Those notes were discovered in 1857 in a magazine that we know Baker owned. Baker also stated that he was being followed and that he feared for his life. At the hearing on Baker's will, witnesses mentioned seeing attempts on Baker's life and on hearing Baker express fear for his life.

I discuss all of this in Unwanted Evidence: William Hanchett, the Neff-Guttridge Documents, and Evidence that Lincoln Was Killed by a Radical Republican Plot.

Traditional historians like Hanchett have ardently rejected the Baker cipher notes, the will-addendum hearing, and the Potter papers because these materials show that the traditional version of Lincoln's death is loaded with myth, distortions, and omission.

Even without these materials, we have known for a very long time that the military commission's prosecutors used bribed witnesses, coerced witnesses, and evidence that was so obviously fake that it would have been laughable if the matter had not been so serious (such as the floating cipher letter and the fireplace note). The commission's wild claim that Confederate leaders had directed the conspirators soon fell apart when Conover was exposed as a conman who had been bribing witnesses to implicate Confederate leaders. Yet, the prosecutors never formally withdrew the charges against the Confederate leaders.

Finally, earlier someone claimed that at the autopsy the body looked so different from Booth because so much time had elapsed since he had died. This is erroneous and is another example of people just grasping for excuses to ignore clear evidence. The man in the barn was shot at sunrise on April 26, i.e., around 5:20 AM. The body was taken aboard the USS Montauk for identification and autopsy less than 24 hours later--at right around 1:45 AM the next day, and the "identification" began immediately. Even in very warm weather, 20 hours is not enough time for a body to undergo such a radical change in appearance that it bears no resemblance to how the person looked in li
Forensic sources tell us that a dead body does not even begin to noticeably bloat until about 72 hours after death. The internal organs don't start to decompose until about 24 hours after death. Just Google murder cases where the body wasn't discovered until 24-48 hours after death and you'll find that friends and relatives had no problem identifying the body (assuming, of course, that the face had not been blown away or badly damaged, etc.). So when Dr. May walked up to the body of the man from the barn, there was no reason that he should have said, "There is no resemblance in that corpse to Booth. nor can I believe it to be him." Nor should May have said, "Ncver in a human had a grcater change taken place . . . every vestige of resemblance to the living man had disappeared."
Was Sec,of War Stanton on Booth's list of those to be murdered that night .He would have been the one that should have been at least number two even over Steward.If there were any political enemies who feared that Lincoln would prevent their post war strategy towards the South ,then one only needs to consider certain senators on the Radical side ,Steward ,Wade,and prehabs certain well positioned generals in the War Dept.(nice conspiracy ?) who clear the way for Booth.Booth need not have known them ,still the result of the Lincoln removal aided their goals.Political murders have always aided the party who would have benefited.Whose not to say that Augusta did not have Cleo. murdered,European kings and queens did not use the medical /alchemist to be free of certain family members or even mates?Sometimes all that would have had to be said was "I wish someone to remove this problem" and it would be done.
 
We don't know what happened to the missing pages, and it's not clear when the pages were removed after the diary was obtained. The people in the chain of possession all had motives to lie about the condition of the diary. Even with the missing pages, the diary was deemed too problematic to use in the conspiracy trial and Stanton and Baker and Holt suppressed its very existence during the trial. There were newspaper reports that Booth's diary was found, but without government confirmation those reports were soon discarded as false rumor. The diary's existence was not revealed until Lafayette Baker talked about it in his book History of the United States Secret Service in 1866. Baker's book caused a firestorm of controversy and led to a Congressional investigation.

One statement from the diary that I'm sure led Stanton et al to suppress the diary was Booth's comment that he was tempted to go back to Washington because he felt he could clear his name:

Though I have a greater desire and almost a mind to return to Washington, and in a measure clear my name, which I feel I can do.​

Obviously, that statement can logically be taken to imply that he had done the bidding of some authorities/powerful figures in Washington. When Booth's diary was published, many researchers zeroed on this statement and noted its implications. When I first read it, I did a double-take to make sure I'd read it correctly, because its implications are startling.

Booth also stated in his diary that until the day of the assassination, he had not thought about killing Lincoln. That statement alone would have badly damaged, if not destroyed, the War Department's already flimsy case against Mary Surratt.

Interestingly, material in the Andrew Potter papers suggests that as of the day of the assassination, the plan was still to carry out a kidnapping and that Booth surprised his handlers/backers by rashly deciding to kill Lincoln instead. But this might have been a cover story to shield the people behind the assassination from blame.

By the way, Baker wrote cipher notes in which he claimed that Stanton and other Radicals had been behind Lincoln's death. Those notes were discovered in 1857 in a magazine that we know Baker owned. Baker also stated that he was being followed and that he feared for his life. At the hearing on Baker's will, witnesses mentioned seeing attempts on Baker's life and on hearing Baker express fear for his life.

I discuss all of this in Unwanted Evidence: William Hanchett, the Neff-Guttridge Documents, and Evidence that Lincoln Was Killed by a Radical Republican Plot.

Traditional historians like Hanchett have ardently rejected the Baker cipher notes, the will-addendum hearing, and the Potter papers because these materials show that the traditional version of Lincoln's death is loaded with myth, distortions, and omission.

Even without these materials, we have known for a very long time that the military commission's prosecutors used bribed witnesses, coerced witnesses, and evidence that was so obviously fake that it would have been laughable if the matter had not been so serious (such as the floating cipher letter and the fireplace note). The commission's wild claim that Confederate leaders had directed the conspirators soon fell apart when Conover was exposed as a conman who had been bribing witnesses to implicate Confederate leaders. Yet, the prosecutors never formally withdrew the charges against the Confederate leaders.

Finally, earlier someone claimed that at the autopsy the body looked so different from Booth because so much time had elapsed since he had died. This is erroneous and is another example of people just grasping for excuses to ignore clear evidence. The man in the barn was shot at sunrise on April 26, i.e., around 5:20 AM. The body was taken aboard the USS Montauk for identification and autopsy less than 24 hours later--at right around 1:45 AM the next day, and the "identification" began immediately. Even in very warm weather, 20 hours is not enough time for a body to undergo such a radical change in appearance that it bears no resemblance to how the person looked in life.

Forensic sources tell us that a dead body does not even begin to noticeably bloat until about 72 hours after death. The internal organs don't start to decompose until about 24 hours after death. Just Google murder cases where the body wasn't discovered until 24-48 hours after death and you'll find that friends and relatives had no problem identifying the body (assuming, of course, that the face had not been blown away or badly damaged, etc.). So when Dr. May walked up to the body of the man from the barn, there was no reason that he should have said, "There is no resemblance in that corpse to Booth. nor can I believe it to be him." Nor should May have said, "Ncver in a human had a grcater change taken place . . . every vestige of resemblance to the living man had disappeared."

Correction: The Baker cipher notes were discovered in 1957, not 1857.
 
Dr. Robert Arnold also points out that the autopsy doctor's (Dr. Barnes’) description of the bullet track and the type of bullet proves that Corbett could not have been the gunman who shot the body that Barnes autopsied on the Montauk, that whoever shot him must have been “on the right side of the victim, above and in front of him,” and that the bullet entered at around a 25-degree downward angle (The Conspiracy Between John Wilkes Booth and the Union Army to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln, p. 264). Corbett said he used his pistol, and Corbett was standing on the ground when he supposedly fired his pistol at the man in the barn.

Dr. Arnold further notes that Barnes’ original description of the missile was “carbine bullet” but that he later changed it to “conoidal pistol bullet,” and that the original card attached to the spinal section “quoted his first description, but it was later changed to pistol ball there as well” (p. 265). The bullet type had to be changed because Corbett supposedly fired his pistol at the man in the barn.

Importantly, Dr. Arnold observes that photographs of the spinal section held by the Army prove that the bullet was a carbine bullet (i.e., rifle bullet), not a pistol bullet:

The picture of the specimen clearly demonstrates that the spinous processes of the vertebrae were completely blown away, the effects of a high-energy missile such as a rifle bullet, not a medium-energy missile such as a pistol ball.​

High-energy missiles that traverse the spinal canal are especially damaging. The pulverized bone is blasted into the spinal canal, and a temporary cavity is caused by the secondary bone and neural tissue missiles, which may be as much as 25 times the frontal area of the bullet. The permanent track was at the C4-C5 (cervical vertebrae) level, and the temporary cavity would likely be about six inches in each direction. The proximal damage would have been to the nerve roots to the phrenic nerves, which supply the diaphragm. Death would have occurred in a few minutes. (p. 265)​

So whoever shot the man in the barn used a rifle and was positioned on his right front and was high enough above him that the bullet entered him at a 25-degree downward angle.

Finally, just FYI, Dr. Arnold was not just any Navy surgeon. He was recognized highly enough by his peers and superiors in the Navy to be selected to train other Navy surgeons and was selected for advanced training at Bethesda Naval Hospital. In addition, he was selected for duty on a Fleet Surgical Team and became the commanding officer of Fleet Surgical Team 4. After he left the Navy (as a captain), he became an assistant coroner. His interest in the Lincoln assassination was peaked when he read the medical evidence relating to the alleged death of Booth and recognized that the medical evidence severely contradicted the official story about Booth’s supposed death.
 
Was Sec,of War Stanton on Booth's list of those to be murdered that night .He would have been the one that should have been at least number two even over Steward.If there were any political enemies who feared that Lincoln would prevent their post war strategy towards the South ,then one only needs to consider certain senators on the Radical side ,Steward ,Wade,and prehabs certain well positioned generals in the War Dept.(nice conspiracy ?) who clear the way for Booth.Booth need not have known them ,still the result of the Lincoln removal aided their goals.

Oh, yes, any Confederate conspiracy would have targeted Stanton, Baker, and Wade, and, if anything, would have provided extra security for Lincoln, Johnson, and Seward. The South had nothing to gain from Lincoln's death and quite a bit to lose from his death.

As for Booth and the Radicals, the Baker cipher notes suggest that Booth was working for the Radicals. We know that Booth was in regular contact with one of Stanton's leading henchmen. Other documents in the Neff-Guttridge collection indicate that Booth was willing to accept a large payment in exchange for killing Lincoln, and that he didn't care where the money came from.
 
Oh, yes, any Confederate conspiracy would have targeted Stanton, Baker, and Wade, and, if anything, would have provided extra security for Lincoln, Johnson, and Seward. The South had nothing to gain from Lincoln's death and quite a bit to lose from his death.

As for Booth and the Radicals, the Baker cipher notes suggest that Booth was working for the Radicals. We know that Booth was in regular contact with one of Stanton's leading henchmen. Other documents in the Neff-Guttridge collection indicate that Booth was willing to accept a large payment in exchange for killing Lincoln, and that he didn't care where the money came from.
Is there any indication that Stanton had possession of Booth's diary ? If he was willing to be PAID that would mean that someone could have paid such a man with a organized group who would be willing to do the dead.This would make him less of a Confederate agent or sympathizer.
 
Let us return to the neck scar that Dr. May used as his basis for identifying the body as Booth: Interestingly, Dr. Barnes said the wound looked like a wound from a burn, not from an incision, but he claimed that Dr. May told him that this was because the wound was torn open on the stage when it was nearly healed:

Q. Describe to the Court the scar which is alleged to have been on his neck.
A. The scar on the left side of the neck was occasioned by an operation performed by Dr. May, of this city, for the removal of a tumor, some months previously to Booth’s death.
Q. What was its peculiar appearance, if it had any peculiar appearance?
A. It looked like the scar of a burn, instead of an incision. . . . (The Conspiracy Trial for the Murder of the President, Ben Poore transcript, volume 2, p. 61)​

A scar from a burn? Could this be one of the reasons that Lt. Baker took off with the body and kept it for some three hours—to burn a scar onto the back of the neck?

Now, Dr. Barnes sought to explain the fact that the scar looked like a burn and not an incision scar: He said that Dr. May told him that it looked like a burn scar because the wound had reopened on the stage when it was nearly healed:

It looked like the scar of a burn, instead of an incision; which Dr. May explained, from the fact that the wound was torn open on the stage, when nearly healed. (p. 61)​

In his report, Barnes said that Dr. May stated that the reopening of the wound left a large scar formed by granulation (Terry Alford, Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 318-319) Dr. May said the same thing at the John Surratt trial (The Trial of John H. Surratt, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867, volume 1, pp. 270-272).

A few points need to be made:

One, when Dr. May testified just two years later in the John Surratt trial, he described the first surgery, the reopened wound, and the second surgery, and he said nothing about the scar looking like a burn. Rather, he described it as a scar made by an incision that had reopened and that was closed again with granulation instead of adhesion (The Trial of John H. Surratt, volume 1, pp. 270-272). He did not say one word about the scar looking like a burn, which is odd since he mentioned it in his April 27, 1865, sworn statement. For reasons that we’ll consider in a later reply, Dr. May had every reason to want to forget about Dr. Barnes’ observation that the scar looked like a burn scar.

Two, since when does re-repairing a wound that was nearly healed cause the wound to look like a burn instead of an incision? How does that work? As we'll see in a later reply, modern medicine has a lot to say about the many differences between burn wounds and incised wounds.

Three, the fact that Barnes said that Dr. May said the scar formed by granulation refutes Michael Kauffman’s attempt to turn Barnes’ statement into evidence for Dr. May’s identification. Says Kauffman,

Booth had torn it open before it had a chance to heal, and the scar looked more like a burn, than the work of a surgeon, which made it distinctive. (American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies, Random House, 2004, p. 323)​

But this will not work. As Dr. Arnold notes, scars formed by granulation are impossible to distinguish from each other. Far from making the scar unique, granulation would make the scar impossible to distinguish from other scars formed by granulation. (Furthermore, Barnes said that Dr. May told him that the scar was reopened when it was nearly healed, not merely “before it had a chance to heal.”)

Four, there’s yet another problem: Dr. May was not the only doctor who operated on the back of Booth’s neck. Booth’s sister stated that on one occasion when John Wilkes came home, a Quaker doctor “lanced a great carbuncle on his neck” and that he “suffered much” from it (Asia Booth Clarke, John Wilkes Booth: A Sister’s Memoir, edited by Terry Alford, University Press of Mississippi, 1996, pp. 84-85).

This surgery was done after Dr. May’s surgery. Unless the carbuncle happened to be in the same location as the tumor that Dr. May removed, and unless the Quaker doctor operated inside the scar left by Dr. May, there should have been two scars on the neck of the body examined on the Montauk, IF the body was Booth.
 
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