Posted on 09/30/2003 12:19:22 PM PDT by sheltonmac
The original source was Powell.
"By April 11, his mind was made up. After to listening to Lincoln speak from the balcony of the Executive Mansion on his plans for reconstruction, Booth--according to Thomas Eckert who interviewed Powell in prison--turned to Lewis Powell and said, "That is the last speech he will ever make!" By April 13, Booth was casing both Ford's Theatre and Grover's National Theatre, anticipating that the President would soon take a night out--his last."
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/lincolnconspiracy/lincolnaccount.html
You have put a tremendous amount of effort into a small facet of the story. Booth was present at President Lincoln's 4/1/65 speech where he advocated voting rights for blacks. It is admittedly hearsay from Eckert that Powell said that Booth said, "This means nigger citizenship." But there is no doubt that Booth did shoot President Lincoln three days later.
This touches upon the techniques of historiography. Both Dr. McPherson and Dr. Oates accept the story of Powell's. You don't. Of course you don't have to. Others will.
Walt
I wasn't talking about the CSA, I was talking about the States.
Right, exactly as I said - an appeal to force. Interesting response, let's take a closer look:
[G] Whether or not it was consistent with the Constitution and the laws at the time is meaningless.
[NS]It's not meaningless. [G] an admission?
[NS]But in the opinion of 5 of the 8 Supreme Court justices the decision was consistent with the Constiution [...] Unilateral secession is illegal.
The use of the word 'but' seems like you agree with the lack of a constitutional mandate. Therefore, whether or not something is 'illegal' seems like a matter for the legislature to decide.
Then McPherson and Oates accept a third-hand account from a biased source and present it as fact.
You accept it as fact, which hardly jives with your refusal to accept multiple first-hand accounts wrt the Butler deportation meeting.
McPherson is not a credible historian. Oates' Lincoln biography is a bit better, though it too is overly worshipful of Saint Abe and riddled with errors on many of the small details. But as always this comes down not to a test of which authorities you claim but rather your own consistency in the matter, Walt.
As others have pointed out you adamantly refuse to believe Ben Butler's first hand account of a colonization meeting with Lincoln yet you'll accept third hand hearsay from Booth without question. If we were to use the court of law test, Butler would be allowed to testify. A third person recipient of Booth hearsay would not.
IIRC that story didn't appear until long after Lincoln was dead and is quite possibly apocryphal. So I ask you again, Walt: Why are you willing to accept it at face value without question when at the same time you adamantly refuse to accept Ben Butler's detailed eyewitness account to a meeting he is known to have had with Abe Lincoln?
[Walt lying] "The original source was Lewis Powell."
[Walt's cited source for this lie:]
An internet article The Trial of the Lincoln Assassination Conspirators, by Doug Linder (2002). The web address goes to the faculty of the University of Kentucky, the academic home of none other than Edward Steers, Jr.
By April 11, his mind was made up. After to listening to Lincoln speak from the balcony of the Executive Mansion on his plans for reconstruction, Booth--according to Thomas Eckert who interviewed Powell in prison--turned to Lewis Powell and said, "That is the last speech he will ever make!"
I stated it correctly, as did Edward Steers. The original source of the fairy tale is Thomas Eckert, speaking in 1867.
The only evidence of any such statement by Paine, Payne, Powell, or whoever he was, is the unsubstantiated claim made by Thomas Eckert long after "Powell" was dead and buried.
This is NO story of "Powell's"
It is a story of Thomas Eckert, first told in 1867.
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A Lawyer/Soldier Called To Serve
Colonel Burnett,
Lincoln
A MAN FOR THE AGES
The execution of the assassins was the closing scene of the greatest tragedy in our history. The assassination removed from the stage of life the greatest figure of the century.
As time goes on, his place seems to grow larger; the estimate of men higher; not only did he seem to be the special instrument raised up by Providence to save and preserve us a nation, but to strike the shackles from millions of slaves. The mighty potency and significance of his utterances and his work in preserving us a nation and making this a land of freedom, each year grows in the minds of men. Not only was he this mighty leader, but he had those peculiar qualities which brought him close to the hearts of the plain people of the country.
No pen can quite describe his personality. Each historian gives certain leading attributes to the man. I met him only two or three times, but was brought in close touch with all the personal anecdotes and the testimony of those who were in daily intercourse with him during his presidential office.
What seemed to impress those about him most, was his absolute honesty, his honesty in thought, word, and deed -- that he was honest with every man with whom he had to deal, and honest with himself; his love of truth and his perfect confidence in the ultimate triumph of truth, his grand simplicity of nature and speech, -- the great brain that seemed to grow and fit itself to all new and great occasions, to be equal to any and every emergency, and his loving, kindly nature, which seemed to draw in and hold in his heart not only his fellow countryman, but all who lived and toiled and suffered; and he had no emnity, or hatred of any human being, not even for those who were wicked or in the wrong, only a hatred of the wrong itself, and a great yearning that the erring might be brought to see the right and the truth and do the things which would make for truth and righteousness.
Of his gentleness and tenderness and kindliness of heart, an instance given by his friend Speed will best illustrate. Lincoln and the other members of the bar from the Capitol at Springfield had been attending Court at Christiansburg, and Speed was riding with them towards Springfield. He tells us that there was quite a party of these lawyers riding two by two along a country lane or road. Lincoln and John J. Harding brought up the rear of the cavalcade.
We had passed, said Speed, through a thicket of wild plum and crab-apple trees and stopped to water our horses. Harding came up alone. Where is Lincoln? we inquired. Oh, replied he, when I saw him last, he had got two young birds which the wind had blown down from their nest, and he was hunting the nest to put them back. In a short time, Lincoln came up having found the nest, and placed the young birds in it. The party laughted at him, but he said, "I could not have slept if I had not restored those little birds to their mother."
You will remember also his letter to the mother who had given all her sons to her country.
"I have been shown," he says, "in the files of the War Department, a statement that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from your grief for a loss so overwhelming, but I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation which may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and the lost, the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."
I find howhere a better statement description of the man and of his attributes,than in Choate' address upon Abraham Lincoln before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution in November, 1902. He says, "The growth and development of Lincoln's mental power and moral force, of his intense and magnetic personality, after the vast responsibilities of Government were thrown upon him at the age of fifty-two, furnish a rare and striking illustration of the marvellous capacity and adaptability of the human intellect -- of the sound mind in the sound body.
"He came to the discharge of the great duties of hte Presidency with absolutely no expertise in the administration of Government, or of the vastly varied and complicated questions of foreign and domestic policy which immediately arose, and continued to press upon him during the rest of his life; but he mastered each as it came, apparently with the facility of a trained and experienced ruler. As Clarendon said of Cromwell, 'His parts seemed to be raised by the demands of great station.'
"His life through it all was one of intense labor, anxiety and distress without one hour of peaceful repose from first to last. And he rose to every occasion. He led public opinion, but did not march so far in advance of it as to fail of its effective support in every great emergency. He knew the heart and thought of the people, as no man not in constant and absolute sympathy with them could have known it, and so, holding their confidence, he triumphed through and with them.
"Not only was there this steady growth of intellect, but the infinite delicacy of his nature and its capacity for refinement developed also, as exhibited in the purity and perfection of his language and style of speech. The rough backwood man, he had never seen the inside of a University, became in the end, by self-training and the exercise of his own powers of mind, heart and soul, a master of style -- and some of his utterances will rank with the best, the most perfectly adapted to the occasion which produced them."
And in a terse summing up of his characteristics, the words of Emerson, "His occupying the Chair of State was 
a triumph of the good sense of mankind and of the public conscience. He grew according to the need: his mind mastered the problem of the day: and as the problem grew, so did his comprehension of it. In the war there is no place for holiday magistrate, nor fair weather sailor. The new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado.
"In four years -- four years of hostile days -- his endurance, his fertility of resource, his magnamity, were sorely tried, and never found wanting. There, by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the centre of a heroic epoch. He is the true history of the American people in his time, the true representative of this continent -- father of his country, the pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their mind articulated in his tongue."
And finally may it be said of him, "In his early days, he struck his roots deep down into the common soil of the earth, and in his later years, his head towered and shone among the stars."
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Maj-Gen John J. Peck, U.S. Army, Commander at New Berne:
General:- Your communication of the 11th of February is received. I have the honor to state in reply that the paragraph from a newspaper enclosed thierein is not only without foundation in fact, but so ridiculous that I should scarcely have supposed it worthy of consideration; but I would respectfully inform you that had I caught any negro who had killed officer, soldier, or citizen of the Confederate states, I should have caused him to be immediately executed.
To your threat expressed in the following extract form your communication, viz,: "Believing that this atrocity has been prepetrated without your knowledge, and that you will take prompt steps to disavow this violation of the usages of war and to bring the offenders to justice, I shall refrain from executing a rebel soldier unitl I learn your action in the premises." I have merely to say that I have in my hands and subject to my orders, captured in the recent operations in these departments, some 450 officers and men of the U.S. Aermy, and for every man you hang I will hang ten of the U.S. Army.
I am, Gerneral, very repsectfully, your obedient servant
G.E. Pickett, Major General Commanding.
Dang, was there any difference really between Konfederate and the SS? Not much apparently. Makes Lincoln look like a saint even if the worst allegations here against him were true.
On August 5, 1862, Colonel Turchin was appointed brigadier-general United States Volunteers.
COURT-MARTIAL OF COL. J.B. TURCHIN
OFFICIAL RECORDS: Series 1, vol. 16, Part 2
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No. 39.
In Camp, Huntsville, Ala., August 6, 1862.
I. By a general court-martial, which convened at Athens, Ala., on the 7th day of July, 1862, pursuant to Special Orders, No. 93, of July 5, 1862, and which was adjourned to Huntsville, Ala., by Special Orders, No. 108, of July 20, 1862, from the Headquarters Army of Ohio, and of which Brigadier General J. A. Garfield, U. S. Volunteers, of the Nineteenth Regiment Illinois Volunteers:
CHARGE 1. - Neglect of duty, to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.
Specification.- In this, that the said Colonel J. B. Turching, of the Nineteenth Regiment Illinois Volunteers, being in command of the Eighth Brigade, Army of the Ohio, did, on or about the 2nd day of May, 1862, march the said brigade into the town of Athens, State of Alabama, and having and the arms of the regiment stacked in the streets did allow his command to disperse, and in his presence or with his knowledge and that of his officers to plunder and pillage the inhabitants of said town and of the country adjacent thereto, without taking adequate steps to restrain them.
Among the incidents of said plundering and pillaging are the following:
A party entered the dwelling of Milly Ann Clayton and opened all the trunks, drawers, and boxes of every description, and taking out the contents thereof,consisting of wearing apparel and bed-clothes, destroyed, spoiled, or carried away the same. They also insulted the said Milly Ann Clayton and threatened to shoot her, and then proceeding
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to the kitchen they there attempted an indecent outrage on the person of her servant girl.
A squad of soldiers to the office of R. C. David and plundered it of about $1,000 in money and of much wearing apparel, and destroyed a stock of books, among which was a lot of fine Bibles and Testaments, which were torn, defaced,and kicked about the floor and trampled under foot.
A party of this command entered a house occupied by two females, M. E. Malone and S. B. Malone, and ransacked it throughout, carrying off the money which they found, and also the jewelry, plate, and female ornaments of value and interest to the owners, and destroying and spoiling the furniture of said house without cause.
For six or eight hours that day squads of soldiers visited the dwelling-house of Thomas S. Malone, breaking open is desk and carrying off or destroying valuable papers, notes of hand,and other property, to the value of about $4,500, more or less, acting rudely and violently toward the females of the family. This last was done chiefly by the men of Edgarton's battery. The plundering of saddles, bridles, blankets, &c., was by the Thirty-seventh Indiana Volunteers.
The same parties plundered the drug store of William D. Allen, destroying completely a set of surgical, obstetrical, and dental instruments, or carrying them away.
The store of Madison Thompson was broken open and plundered of a stock of goods worth about $3,000, and his stable was entered, and corn, oats, and fodder taken by different parties, who on his application for receipts replied "that they gave receipts at other places, but intended that this place should support them," or words to that effect.
The office of J. F. Lowell was broken open and a fine microscope and many geological specimens, together with many surgical instruments and books, carried off or destroyed.
Squads of soldiers, with force of arms, entered the private residence of John F. Malone and forced open all the locks of the doors, broke open all the drawers to the bureaus, the secretary, sideboard, wardrobes, and trunks in the house in the house, and rifled them of their contents, consisting of valuable clothing, silver-ware, silver-plate jewelry, a gold watch and chain, &c., and in the performing these outrages they used coarse, vulgar, and profane language to the females of the family. These squads came in large numbers and plundered the house thoroughly. They also broke open the law office of said Malone and destroyed his safe and damaged his books. A part of this bridge went to the plantation of the above-named Malone and quartered in the negro huts for weeks, debauching the females and roaming with the males over the surrounding country to plunder and pillage.
A mob of soldiers burst open the doors and windows of the business houses of Samuel Tanner, jr., and plundered them of their contents, consisting of sugar, coffee, boots and shoes, leather, and other merchandise.
Very soon after the command entered the town a party of soldiers broke into the silversmith shop and jewelry store toward by D. H. Friend, and plundered it of its contents and valuable to the amount of about $3,000.
A party of this command entered the house of R. S. Irwin and ordered his wife to cook dinner for them, and while she and her servant were so engaged they made the most indecent and beastly propositions to the latter in the presence of the whole family, and when the girl went away
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they followed her in the same manner, notwithstanding her efforts to avoid them.
Mrs. Hollinsworth's house was entered and plundered of clothing and other property by several parties, and some of the men fired into the house and threatened to burn it, and used violent and insulting language toward the said Mrs. Hollinsworth. The alarm and excitement occasional miscarriage and subsequently her death.
Several soldiers came to the house of Mrs. Charlotte Hine and committed rape on the person of a colored girl and then entered the house and plundered it of all the sugar, coffee, preserve, and the like which they could find. Before leaving they destroyed or carried off all the pictures and ornaments they could lay their hands on.
A mob of soldiers filled the house of J. A. Cox, broke open his iron safe, destroyed and carried off papers of value, plundering the house thoroughly, carrying off the clothes of his wife and children.
Some soldiers broke into the brick store of P. Tanner & Sons, and destroyed or carried off nearly the entire stock of goods contained there, and broke open the safe and took about $2,000 in money and many valuable papers.
A party of soldiers, at the order of Captain Edgarton, broke into an office through the windows and doors and plundered it of its contents, consisting of bedding, furniture, and wearing apparel. Lieutenant Berwick was also with the party. This officer was on the ground.
The law office of William Richardson, which was in another part of the town, was rifled completely and many valuable papers, consisting of bonds, bills, and notes of hand, lost or destroyed.
The house of J. H. Jones was entered by Colonel Mihalotzy, of the Twenty-fourth Illinois Volunteers, who behaved rudely and coarsely to the ladies of the family. He then quartered two companies of infantry in the house. About one hour after Captain Edgarton quartered his artillery company in the parlors, and these companies plundered the house of all provisions and clothing they could lay their hands on, and spoiled the furniture and carpets maliciously and without a shadow of reason, spoiling the parlor carpets by cutting bacon on them,and the piano by chopping joints on it with an axe, the beds by sleeping in them with their muddy boots on. The library of the house was destroyed, and the locks of the bureaus, secretaries, wardrobes, and trunks were all forced and their contents pillaged. The family plate was carried off, but some of the pieces have been recovered.
The store of George R. Peck was entered by a large crowd of soldiers and stripped of its contents, and the iron safe broken open and its contents plundered, consisting of $940.90 and $4,000 worth of notes.
John Turrentine's store was broken into by a party of soldiers on that day, and an iron safe cut open belonging to the same and about $5,000 worth of notes of hand taken or destroyed. These men destroyed about $2,000 worth of books found in said store, consisting of law books, religious books, and reading books generally.
CHARGE 2. - Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.
Specification 1. - In this, that he, said Colonel J. B. Turchin, Nineteenth Regiment Illinois Volunteers, did remain one week, more or less, as a guest in a public house in the town of Athens, Ala., and did fail to pay his bill for board, and did fail to compensate in any way the landlord of said hotel, J. B. Davison, although applied to once or oftener by said landlord for payment for said board. This on or about the 7th day of May, 1862.
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Specification 2.-In this, that the, the said Colonel J. B. Turchin, Nineteenth Regiment Illinois Volunteers, commanding Eight Brigade, did permit of did fail to make any reasonable and proper effort to prevent the disgraceful behavior of the troops under his command, set forth in the specification to the first charge. This at Athens, Ala., on or about the 2nd day of May, 1862.
CHARGE 3. - Disobedience of orders.
Specification 1.-In this, that he, the said Colonel J. B. Turchin, Nineteenth Regiment Illinois Volunteers, in contravention of Orders, No. 13a, from the Headquarters of the Department of the Ohio, in the following terms, to wit, "Peaceful citizens are not be molested in their persons or property; any wrongs to either are to be promptly corrected, and the offenders brought to punishment," did, on or about the 2nd day of May, 1862, march his brigade into the town of Athens, in the State of Alabama, and having had the arms of the regiments stacked in the streets, did permit his men to disperse and leave the ranks and colors and molest peaceable citizens in their persons and property, as shown in the specification to charge 1, above, and did fail to correct these wrongs or bring the offenders to punishment.
Specification 2.-In this, that he, the said Colonel J. B. Turchin, Nineteenth Regiment Illinois Volunteers, commanding Eighth Brigade, Army of the Ohio, while occupying with said brigade the town of Athens, State of Alabama, in contravention of General Orders, No. 13a, from the Headquarters of the Department of the Ohio, in the following terms, to wit, "If the necessities of the public service should require the use of private property for public services fair compensation is to be allowed," did, on or about the 2nd day of May, 1862, permit the officers and soldiers of his command to take provisions, forage, and other private property from the citizens of said town and country around the same for public services, and did fail to have fair compensation allowed to the owners of said property,either by money or by official vouchers in due from.
Specification 3. - In this, that he, the said Colonel J.B. Turchin, Nineteenth Regiment Illinois Volunteers, commanding Eighth Brigade, Army of the Ohio, while occupying the town of Athens, Ala., with said brigade, in contravention of the spirit of General Orders, No. 13a, from the Headquarters Department of the Ohio, did, on or about the 2nd day of May, 1862, without adequate necessity, cause to be taken from the inhabitants of the town of Athens, Ala., and the surrounding country provisions, forage and draught animals.
Specification 4.-In this, that, he said Colonel J. B. Turching, Nineteenth Regiment Illinois Volunteers, commanding Eight Brigade, Army of the Ohio, in contravention of General Orders, No. 4, from the Headquarters of the Department of the Ohio, in the following terms, to wit, "No woman, whether wives of officers or soldiers, will be permitted to remain in camp or accompany the troops in the field," did, on or about the 10th day of May, 1862, permit his own wife to be with him in the town of Athens, Ala., and to accompany him to and from the same, while serving with the troops of said brigade in the field.
To which the accused pleaded as follows:
To the specification to the FIRST CHARGE, Not guilty.
To the FIRST CHARGE, Not guilty.
To the first specification to the SECOND CHARGE, Not guilty.
To the second specification to the SECOND CHARGE, Not guilty.
To the SECOND CHARGE, Not guilty.
To the first specification to the THIRD CHARGE, Not guilty.
To the second specification to the THIRD CHARGE, Not guilty
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To the third specification to the THIRD CHARGE, Not guilty.
To the fourth specification to the THIRD CHARGE, Guilty.
To the THIRD CHARGE, Not guilty.
FINDING AND SENTENCE.
The court finds the accused as follows:
Of the specification to the FIRST CHARGE, Guilty.
Of the FIRST CHARGES, Guilty.
Of the first specification to the SECOND CHARGE, Not guilty.
Of the second specification to the SECOND CHARGE, Guilty.
Of the SECOND CHARGE.-The court being of the opinion that the defendant is guilty of conduct unbecoming "an officer," but being unprepared to say that his conduct is unbecoming "a gentleman," find him Not guilty of the charge as laid, but find him Guilty of conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline.
Of the first specification to the THIRD CHARGE, Guilty.
Of the second specification to the THIRD CHARGE, Guilty.
Of the third specification to the THIRD CHARGE, Not guilty.
Of the fourth specification to the THIRD CHARGE, Confirms his plea and finds him Guilty.
Of the THIRD CHARGE, Guilty.
And does therefore sentence him, Colonel J. B. Turchin, Nineteenth Regiment Illinois Volunteers, to be dismissed the service of the United States.
II. The proceeding of the court are approved, and in pursuance of its sentence Colonel J. B. Turchin, of the Nineteenth Illinois Regiment, ceases to be in the service of the United States.*
Six members of the court have recommended the prisoner to clemency, on the ground that "the offense was committed under exciting circumstances, and was one rather of omission than of commission." The general commanding has left constrained nevertheless to carry the sentence into effect.
Colonel Turchin was tried for the disorderly conduct of his command at and in the vicinity of Athens, and the sentence of the court rests on that matter alone, but on the question of clemency it is proper to look beyond the record of the court. It is fact of sufficient notoriety that similar disorders, though not to the same extent, have marked the course of Colonel Turchin's command wherever it has gone. The question is not whether private property may be used for the public service, for that is proper whenever the public interest demand it. It should then be done by authority and in an orderly way. The wanton and lawless indulgence of individuals in acts of plunder and outrage is a different matter, tending to the demoralization of the troops and the destruction of their efficiency. Such conduct does not mean vigorous warfare; it meas disgrace and disaster, and is punished with the disorders were committed were precisely those which demanded the strictest observance of discipline. The command was supposed to be in the presence of an enemy that might take advantage of any confusion in its ranks. Every man should have been at his post instead of roaming over the town and country to load himself with useless plunder. In point of fact the criminality is not so much that good order was violated
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on the particular occasion as that by the habitual neglect of discipline the orders of the commander were unavailing at a time when the observance of it might be of vital importance.
Colonel Turchin had been in command of the Eight Brigade for five months, and is fairly responsible for a state of discipline which has done injustice to the four fine regiments of which it was composed. The general inspected those regiments more than once about the time of the organization of the brigade. There were none in the army from which he expected better service, and he still has confidence that they will realize those expectations.
By command of Major-General Buell:
JAMES B. FRY,
Colonel and Chief of Staff.
EPILOGUE
Col. Turchin accepted his appointment as Brigadier General on September 1, 1862, and remained in service till October 4, 1864.
At least as sober as a bottle or two of brandy per day could leave him.
The southern states were in rebellion.
According to historian Leonard Guttridge and Dr. Ray A. Neff, Dark Union, page 220, the gentleman in this photograph is James W. Boyd. He is asserted by some to have been the man actually killed at Garrett's farm.
http://www.clanboyd.info/state/Maryland/civil/
From the Clan Boyd website:
CONFEDERATE ARMYBoyd, James William, of Maryland, Capt. Sixth Reg. Tenn. Vol., head of Secret Service in Western Tennessee. Confederate Prisoner of war captured in August, 1863 by the NDP. Two others captured with him, Harry D'Arcy and James E. Watson and were executed as spies. Boyd worked as a double agent for the Union and was killed at Garretts Farm in place of John Wilkes Booth according to the book "The Lincoln Conspiracy" David Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier, Jr., Schick Sunn Classic Books, 1977, Chaper 7 pages 82 and 83.
However, William Hanchett, The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies, page 231 states:
So carelessly were they prepared, they even had Boyd's middle name wrong: It was Ward, not William. In reality, Boyd did not look in the least like Booth and could not have been mistaken for him by the friends and acquaintances who identified the body. Boyd's oath of allegiance on file in the National Archives describes him as gray-haired, blue-eyed, six feet two inches tall, and forty-two years of age. A picture in the Lincoln Conspiracy identified as Boyd does look like Booth; but the man does not fit the official description of Boyd and was wearing a Union private's uniform. Boyd family documents and a Tennessee newspaper, furthermore, prove conclusively that Boyd died on January 1, 1866, seven months after he was supposed to have been shot at the Garrett farm.
[nc note] It is a stretch to say the people who identified the body of the deceased were Booth's family and friends.
These folks always have an echo about them, and H. Donald Winkler, Lincoln and Booth, states at page 201:
Historian William Hanchett noted in The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies that James W. boyd was a Confederate officer released in February 1865 from the Old Capitol Prison by an order from Stanton. He had the same initials as Booth, and they were tatooed on one of his hands, but he looked nothing like Booth. He was taller, older (forty-two), and gray-haired, and he died in Tennessee on January 1, 1866, seven months after he was supposedly killed at the Garrett farm.
According to Neff and Gutteridge at page 190:
Captain James Boyd's children never saw their father again. They were told -- unofficially, as far as can be discovered -- that he was among the almost two thousand Union veterans who perished when the steamboat Sultana sank ten days after Lincoln's murder.
According to Neff and Gutteridge at page 80:
Another of the military men was Captain James William Boyd, 6th Tennessee Infantry. A Kentucky miller's son orphaned in infancy, he was one of the three rebels captured by Union troops at Jackson, Tennessee, in the smmmer of 1863. This was the trio that included R.D. Watson's brother James and a fellow courier names Harry D'Arcy....James Watson and D'Arcy were hanged. The third prisoner, Boyd, was too valuable to his captors. He was an ace Confederate spy and a scout, a battle-hardened veteran who before the war had been a deputy sheriff, a telegrapher, and a railraod detective....
Weary of scouting and espionage, he was genuinely disposed to change sides, but only in return for an unconditional parole that would allow him to return hom and provide for the [seven] children he feared would soon be motherless [his wife was dying of consumption]. "You and the kids come first," he wrote from prison to his wife, Caroline, showing a pathetic concern for his family that would trap the tall Confederate captaiin, aging adventurer, and ill-starred war spy into the plot against Abraham Lincoln.
Stanton ordered prisoner-of-war Boyd transferred to Washington, for questioning on what he knew about the alleged treachery of Union officers two years earlier at Holly springs, Mississippi, which had resulted in a humiliating defeat for the North. Boyd's arrival in Washington under tight guard was duly noted in The Evening Star, October 31, 1864, which also reported that he was lodged in solitary confinement at the Old Capitol Prison.
Such newspaper announcements were not a usual press feature. This one was for public consumption.
Per historian Leonard F. Guttridge and Dr. Ray A. Neff, Dark Union, page 201, this is a remarkable gentleman.
One day in 1873 he stepped into Groom's Carte de Visite and Photograph Gallery on Second Street, Philadelphia (a business that began after the date when "Booth" was shot at Garett's farm), and had his picture taken: Negative No. 1292. In 1971, Doctor Lawrence Angell, the Smithsonian Institution's curator of physical anthropology and renowned in his field, compared this picture with known photographs of John Wilkes Booth. His verdict: The likenesses are "sufficiently similar ... to allow the possibility that they are all pictures of one man, taken at difference times of his life ... details of ear formation (strong antihelix), of the right eyebrow, and of the chin, appear very similar."
This remarkable man was known as John B. Wilkes. According to Neff and Gutteridge, Andrew "Potter was summoned to Crawfordsville, where Lew Wallace asked him to find out if John B. Wilkes, reported to have died in India three years earlier, might have been Lincoln's assassin.... Other material Wallace displayed included a summary from the brokerage firm of Grant and Ward, listing assets of no less than $800,000 as belonging to John B. Wilkes in banks in the United States and Canada.... in San Francisco at the office of the British consulate, he learned that a John Wilkes had applied for and received permission to enter Ceylon in 1866. But, as the consular ledger showed, this Wilkes claimed to be a British subject, born in Sheffield, England, December 15, 1822, to Samuel and Olivia Wilkes. And there was nothing faked about that data; it checked with records in London.... The information presented in 1866 by "John Wilkes" to gain entry into Ceylon, then India, is identical with that still on record for Professor Parsons's father-in-law, the English-born John Wilkes who spent his entire adult life in Terre Haute, Indiana, and died there in August 1916, aged ninety.... Lew Wallace, demonstrably active in all this commotion over the death of a presumed Englishman in a far-off land, had the will probated thorugh a state court in the United States.... he was instrumental in securing sworn statements that established the authenticity of the will.... And the will itself? We found a legally certified copy ... dated September 12, 1883... bids disbursement of a total exceeding $160,000. Other than Elizabeth Burnly Wilkes, his "beloved wife and mistress," all named as principal legatees include Izola, Booth's first and perhaps only legal wife, and their daughter, Ogarita; Kate Scott of Brookville, Pennsylvania, and her daughter, Sarah Katherine."
At page 176, Neff and Gutteridge relate:
Doctor Edward Curtis ran the photomicrographic department [in the Army Medical Museum], which, in the museum's two years of existence, already housed thousands pf photographs of human tissue salvaged from hospitals and battlefields. Five pictures of women found in booth's diary were taken to the museum, where Curtis's job was to have his hospital stewards make prints of them for mounting on cardboard. A sixth picture, a tintype, vanished.The three-inch by four-inch glass negatives were soon in NDP possession. Each was marked NDP E.C. 4-24-65. "E.C." were the doctor's initials. The date: April 24, 1865. These plates still exist, with two of the pictures wrongly identified by a visitor at the War Department, and the error perpetuated ever since. The women are Kate Scott and Izola Booth.
On page 208, Neff and Gutteridge relate:
And the Wallace connection, as well as that of Grant and Ward, is firmly established in the correspondence of Robert Burns Steward, a respected Midwest circuit court judge who died in 1970.... In 1930 Steward, then a youthful attorney, tried to sort things out for a daughter of the terre Haute Wilkes. A man had indeed fled the United States in 1866 and entered Ceylon. "He was using your father's vital information to circumvent entry requirements." He died in India and left an estate that was "originally handled by the banking firm of [Ulysses S.] Grant and Ward of New York, who enlisted General Lew Wallace to handle matters in Indiana.
No pen can quite describe his personality. Each historian gives certain leading attributes to the man. I met him only two or three times...
What, exactly, was it that Lincoln, the man with mighty potency and significance to his utterances, considered a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself?
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 2, page 130
Abraham Lincoln
July 6, 1852
HONORS TO HENRY CLAY
Having been led to allude to domestic slavery so frequently already, I am unwilling to close without referring more particularly to Mr. Clay's views and conduct in regard to it. He ever was, on principle and in feeling, opposed to slavery. The very earliest, and one of the latest public efforts of his life, separated by a period of more than fifty years, were both made in favor of gradual emancipation of the slaves in Kentucky. He did not perceive, that on a question of human right, the negroes were to be excepted from the human race. And yet Mr. Clay was the owner of slaves. Cast into life where slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, how it could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself.
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