The entire story is too long to be told in this book, but it appeared from the testimony of Samuel K. Chester, an actor, that on the Friday previous to the assassination, he saw Booth in New York. Booth exclaimed to him, "What an excellent chance I had to kill the President, if I had wished, on Inauguration day!" Booth spoke of the plot to capture the President, not to assassinate him, and to take him to Richmond. The affair, he said, failed, owing to some parties backing out.It seems we have some dissent.The testimony clearly showed this fact.
Lawrence A. Gobright, Recollection of Men and Things at Washington, During The Third of a Century, Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffellfinger, 1869, p. 376
April 13 - 14 Friday the Ides
"Until to day nothing was ever thought of sacrificing to our country's wrongs. For six months we had worked to capture. But our cause being almost lost, something decisive & great must be done. ... I can never repent it, though we hated to kill: Our country owed all her troubles to him, and god simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what it was. This forced union is not what I have loved."
Friday 21
"After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gun boats till I was forced to return wet cold and starving, with every mans hand against me, I am here in despear. and why; For doing what Brutus was honored for, what made Tell a Hero. And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant they they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat. MY action was purer than either of theirs. One, hoped to be great himself. The other had not only his countrys but his own wrongs to avenge. I hoped for no gain. I new no private wrong. I struck for my country and that alone. A country groaned beneath this tyranny and prayed for this end."
Right or Wrong, God Judge Me, The Writings of John Wilkes Booth, Edited by John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper, p. 154.
"James Wood [Lewis Thornton Powell] sometimes called Mosby boarded with Mrs. Murry an Irish Woman on the corder of 9 & F St. in a three story house...
"Booth never said until last night (Friday) [nc: April 14, 1865] that he intended to kill the President....
"Herold came to the Kirkwood House, same evening for me to go see Booth. I went with herold & saw Booth. He then said he was going to kill the president and Wood, the Secy. Of State. I did not believe him. This occurred in the evening about 7 1/2 o clock."
From alleged statement of Geo. A. Atzerodt to Prov. Mar. McPhail in presence of John L. Smith on the night of May 1, 1865 aboard the monitor USS Montauk. Recorded by John L. Smith. Discovered in 1977 among personal papers of William E. Doster, Atzerodt's attorney. Appears in The Trial, The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators, as compiled and arranged in 1865 by Benn Pitman, Edited by Edward Steers, Jr., 2003, p. CIV-CV.
"The Reverend George Powell of Live Oak, Florida, uncertain whether the condemned "Payne" was his son, set out north, only to turn back sadly when convinced that he could not possibly reach Washington before the executions. Persistent doubts compelled the clergyman's family to send a daguerrotype of their soldier son to the War Department. No one there admitted to receiving it. But a photo of Lewis Powell, late of Mosby's Rangers and, before that, the 2nd Florida Infantry, lodged undisturbed in NDP files. It bore little resemblance to Lewis Payne."
Dark Union, Leonard F. Guttmore and Ray A. Neff, 2003, p. 186
It appears that Paine/Payne was not the real Lewis Thornton Powell either. Whomever Paine/Payne/Powell was, he was not Colonel Mosby who was most assuredly not dead.
Pitman, page 45, deals with testimony of Samuel Knapp Chester on May 12, 1865. The quote relates to a meeting in New York and reads:
For the Prosecution
"On Friday, one week previous to the assassination, I saw him [Booth] again in New York. We were in the 'House of Lords,' sitting at a table. He had not been there long before he exclaimed, striking the table, 'What an excellent chance I had to kill the President, if I had wished, on inauguration day!' He said he was as near the President that day as he was to me."
Cross-examination by Mr. Ewing
Booth spoke of the plot to capture the President, not to assassinate him, and to take him to Richmond."