BOOTH KILLED: Full Account of the Pursuit and its Result; He is Traced into St. Mary’s County, Maryland (4/28/1865)

J. WILKES BOOTH and HARROLD were chased from the swamp in St. Mary's County, Maryland, to Garrett's farm, near Port Royal, on the Rappahannock, by Col. BAKER'S force.

BOOTH, in making his escape, was shot through the head and killed, lingering about three hours, and HARROLD was captured. BOOTH's body and HARROLD are now here. EDWIN M. STANTON,

About 8 o'clock last evening we received the intelligence of the capture of J. WILKES BOOTH, the assassin of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, and one of his accomplices in the murder, DAVID C. HARROLD. The following are such of the particulars as we were enabled to gather, which, with the exception of the precise locality where the occurrence took place, we give as being reliable and correct. It having been pretty clearly ascertained that BOOTH and his accomplice had crossed the Potomac River at or near Aquia Creek, our cavalry scouts in that vicinity have been in consequence unusually active in their endeavors to get on their trail. Early yesterday morning a squad of about twelve men, belonging to the Sixteenth New-York Cavalry, under command of a Lieutenant, whose name we did not learn, succeeded in discovering the fugitives in a barn on the road leading from Port Royal to Bowling Green in Caroline County, Va. As soon as they were discovered, the place was surrounded and the assassins ordered to surrender. This they both refused to do, BOOTH declaring that he would not be taken alive, and offering to fight the whole squad if he would be permitted to place himself twenty yards distant from them.

Free Republic University, Department of History presents U.S. History, 1861-1865: Seminar and Discussion Forum
The American Civil War, as seen through news reports of the time and later historical accounts

First session: November 21, 2015. Last date to add: May 25, 2025.
Reading: Self-assigned. Recommendations made and welcomed.

Posting history, in reverse order

https://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:homerjsimpson/index?tab=articles

To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by reply or freepmail.

Link to previous New York Times thread

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4313573/posts

Booth Killed: Full Account of the Pursuit and its Result – 2-5
Rebel Venom on the Assassination of Lincoln – 5
The Lincoln Memorial Fund – 5
Carpenter’s Sketch of President Lincoln – 5
The Funeral Cortege: Its Movements After Leaving Albany – 5-7
Our Armies: Official from Secretary Stanton – 7
From the Southwest: The Rebels Burn 95,000 Bales of Cotton – 7
Stoneman’s Command: Recent Operations of His Forces – 7
From Richmond: Renewal of Agricultural Operations – 7
From Fortress Monroe: Arrival of Gen. Pickett – 7
Drummed Out – 7
News from Washington – 8
The Seward Family – 8
Editorial: Retrenchment – The Duty of the Hour – 8
Editorial: The End of the Assassin – The Further Progress of Justice – 8
Editorial: The Armies and Their Work – 8-9
The Rebel Agents in Trouble – 9
Editorial: The Rebel Loan in England – 9
A Secessionist Roughly Handled: A Committee of Philadelphians Request Mr. Ingersoll to Apologize for a Secession Speech – 9
Naval Exploit – 9
Burning of the Steamer New-England – 9

Strict9: "Lincoln had a plan to move a certain group to Liberia but Mr. Booth ended that.
You have to wonder how different things would be had Booth never been born.
Just a thought experiment."

Yeah, well... not quite...

According to Union Major General Benjamin F. Butler's 1892 memoir, on April 11, 1865, just days before Lincoln's assassination, Butler met with Lincoln to discuss "colonizing" 150,000 black Union soldiers to Panama.
They would be hired to dig a canal and could be joined by their families.

According to Butler, Lincoln saw such a plan as accomplishing at least three goals:

Building the Panama Canal 1904-1914:

Providing employment for former Union Colored Troops.
Building a canal across Panama which Lincoln saw as strategically important.
Reducing potential racial tensions between now freed former Union Colored soldiers and whites.

Butler is the only source for such a report, and I think its fanciful because, among other reasons, immediately after meeting with Butler, Lincoln gave his final speech calling for full citizenship for freed slaves, the speech John Wilkes Booth claimed inspired his assassination of Lincoln.

Finally, I've seen no evidence to suggest that, in fact, former Union Colored Troops suffered more than other former slaves after the war.
Indeed, they may well have enjoyed better lives after the war than their non-serving black neighbors.

By the way, when the US built the Panama Canal -- 1904-1914 -- it took 56,000 employees, 2/3 of whom were black West Indians, 1/4 were local Hispanic Panamanians, and the balance American & European white technicians & supervisors.
Could Americans have built the canal in the late 1860s and 1870s?
Well, they did have rail mounted steam shovels then, so the real problem would have been diseases, which nobody in the 1860s understood.

For example, when the French tried to build the Panama Canal during the 1880s, they lost about half the 40,000 workers hired to build it, to diseases like malaria and yellow fever.
So, if Lincoln had sent 150,000 former Union Colored troops to Panama and half died from disease, that would still leave them with more workers than either the French or Americans used 20 & 40 years later.

Building the Suez Canal during the 1860s:

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