Lewis Payne/Powell was huge; his task was to assassinate Secretary of State Seward, prob. the best to ever occupy that position, at the same time as Lincoln. He barged into the Seward home, bashed his son on the head with a pistol, pointed the pistol at him and it jammed. He then went into Seward’s bedroom and stabbed at him repeatedly, Seward being protected by a wire contraption around his head but severe injuries to his face. Seward’s other son and a wounded Army orderly came in, smashed Payne down and saved Seward’s life. On the way out, Payne beat down Seward’s 20 year old daughter who died of fright a year later. Seward sent a servant to get the Army from a house a few hundred feet away and they policed the Seward home for the rest of the evening.
THAT’S THE KIND OF STUFF THEY NEVER TEACH IN HIGHSCHOOL HISTORY CLASSES! ...............But they should!.............
https://www.iment.com/maida/familytree/burnett/lincoln.htm#seward
Description of Powell and his attack on Seward.
Great grandfather was called to D.C. to run the investigation for Stanton, was a Special Judge Advocate during the trial, and put together the Library of Congress records, which are in his handwriting. Husband had gotten me a HUGE microfilm reader to scan into the computer when I spent the year reading 18th century NY newspaper poetry sent by NY State Archives, and I bought most of the Lincoln microfilm as a souvenir. Fun research.
That was horrible.