Blood on the Moon
Page 44
29. Archer H. Shaw, The Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York: Macmillan, 1950), p. 18.
30. Lamon, Recollections, p. 270.
31. Ibid, p. 267.
32. Ibid, p. 268.
33. Ibid, p. 272.
34. Walker Taylor was one of four brothers who fought in the Civil War: two served in the Union army and two served in the Confederate army.
35. Henry T. Louthan, “A Proposed Abduction of Lincoln,” Confederate Vet-eran, June 1908, p. 157.
36. Ibid, p. 158.
37. Tidwell, Hall, and Gaddy, Come Retribution, pp. 235–36, 281–86.
38. Shaw, Lincoln Encyclopedia, p. 17.
39. John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper, eds., “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me”: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), p. 83.
40. Rhodehamel and Taper, eds., Right or Wrong, p. 78.
41. Ibid.
3. All the World’s a Stage
1. For a discussion of this view see Rick G. Mundy, “Theatrical Pariah: John Wilkes Booth and the Literature of the Theatre,” Ph.D. diss. University of Kansas, 1999, p. 2.
2. Stanley Kimmel, The Mad Booths of Maryland (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1940), p. 59.
3. Ibid, p. 45.
4. Apocryphal stories of Booth’s having married and fathered children can be found in Izola Forrester, This One Mad Act (Boston: Hale, Cushman and Flint, 1939), and Theodore J. Nottingham, The Curse of Cain: The Untold Story of John Wilkes Booth (Nicholasville, Ky.: Appaloosa Press, 1997).
5. Although Junius Brutus Booth came to admire John Wilkes, he does not appear to have named his son for him. The name can be found among the Booth ancestors who predate the English republican.
6. Kimmel, Mad Booths, p. 17.
7. Mundy, “Theatrical Pariah,” p. 5. Gene Smith, American Gothic: The Story of America’s Legendary Theatrical Family—Junius, Edwin, and John Wilkes Booth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 25.
8. Kimmel, Mad Booths, p. 21.
9. Ibid., p. 32.
10. The property was leased to him for 1,000 years at a total cost of $733 by Richard W. Hall, the owner of the property. Booth paid Hall ground rent of one cent per year. The property consisted of approximately 180 acres. See Kimmel, Mad Booths, p. 37, and n. 12.
11. Kimmel, Mad Booths, pp. 63–64.
12. Four of the ten children of Junius and Mary Ann died in infancy: Frederick, Elizabeth, and Mary Ann in 1833 and Henry Byron in 1836.
13. Terry Alford, ed, John Wilkes Booth: A Sister’s Memoir by Asia Booth Clarke, (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996), p. 10. Hereafter referred to as Alford, ed, A Sister’s Memoir.
14. Photographic copies of the baptismal record in the author’s files. The original register is maintained at St. Timothy’s Hall in Catonsville, Maryland.
15. Rhodehamel and Taper, eds., Right or Wrong, p. 54.
16. While there is no evidence to prove Booth had attended the rally, his writing indicates he was fully aware of the speeches given there. He could also have read them in the Philadelphia papers the next day.
17. Rhodehamel and Taper, eds., Right or Wrong, p. 58.
18. Ibid, p. 62.
19. For contemporary arguments for and against the Christian defense of slavery see Albert Taylor Bledsoe, Liberty and Slavery (1856; reprint, Wiggins, Miss.: Crown Rights Book Company, 1989), and Albert Barnes, An Inquiry into the Scriptural Views of Slavery (Philadelphia: Perkins and Purves, 1846).
20. Rhodehamel and Taper, eds., Right or Wrong, p. 57.
21. Ibid., p. 64.
22. Ibid., p. 62.
23. Thomas P. Slaughter, Bloody Dawn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
24. The complete trial transcript is available in James J. Robbins, ed., Report of the Trial of Castner Hanway for Treason in the Resistance of the Execution of the Fugitive Slave Law of September, 1850 (1852; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Negro Universities Press, 1970).
25. Today, in the little village of Christiana a large granite obelisk stands on the front lawn of a private home. On the side facing north are the words: “Castner Hanway. He suffered for freedom.” On the side facing south are the words: “Killed: Edward Gorsuch. He died for law.” It reflects the community’s reconciliation to both sides.
26. John Deery, quoted in Richard J.S. Gutman and Kellie O. Gutman, John Wilkes Booth Himself (Dover, Mass.: Hired Hand Press, 1979), p. 13.
27. Francis Wilson, quoted in Gutman and Gutman, John Wilkes Booth Himself, p. 13.
28. Kimmel, Mad Booths, p. 153.
29. Asia Booth Clarke, The Unlocked Book: A Memoir of John Wilkes Booth by His Sister (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938).
30. Alford, ed, A Sister’s Memoir, p. 9.
31. Ibid., p. 45. These marks became important in the identification of Booth’s body at the time of his death.
32. Ibid, p. 48.
33. Mundy, “Theatrical Pariah,” p. 17.
34. Rhodehamel and Taper, eds., Right or Wrong, p. 46 n. 6. Mary Ann Booth in writing to her eldest son, Junius Jr., on October 3, 1858, states that John Wilkes is earning $11 a week.
35. Alford, ed, A Sister’s Memoir, pp. 48–49.
36. Ibid, p. 88.
37. Ibid.
38. Rhodehamel and Taper, eds., Right or Wrong, p. 69.
39. John Wilkes Booth, letter, “To Whom It May Concern,” 1864. Quoted in Turner, Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, p. 85.
40. Kimmel, Mad Booths, pp. 180–81. See also Mundy, “Theatrical Pariah,” pp. 83–84.
41. Rhodehamel and Taper, eds., Right or Wrong, p. 94.
42. Ibid, p. 96.
43. Ibid, pp. 93–96. 97 n. 5. See also Arthur F. Loux, John Wilkes Booth, Day by Day (privately published, 1990), p. 369. Copy in Surratt Museum Library, Clinton, Maryland.
44. Ibid, p. 57.
45. David E. Long, ‘“I Say We Can Control That Election’: Confederate Policy towards the 1864 U.S. Presidential Election.” Lincoln Herald 99, no. 3 (fall 1997): 111.
46. Ibid.
47. Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (Charlottesville, Va.: Univ. Press of Virginia, 2001), p. 54.
48. Ibid, p. 89.
4. The Black Flag Is Raised
1. Basler, ed. Collected Works, 5:144–46.
2. For an excellent treatise on the importance of Kentucky to Lincoln and the Union see Lowell H. Harrison, Lincoln of Kentucky (Lexington: University of Press of Kentucky, 2000).
3. Basler, ed., Collected Works, 4:532.
4. Ibid, 5:317–18.
5. Ibid, 5:324–25.
6. Ibid, 5:319.
7. Ibid, 5:153.
8. Ibid, 5:434.
9. The United States Navy was already integrated. Estimates place the number of Black sailors serving between 1861 and 1865 at 18,000. See Joseph P. Reidy, “Black Civil War Sailors Project Nearing Completion of Phase I,” Columbiad,3 no. 2 (summer 1999): 17–20. In September of 1861, five months into the war, Flag Officer Silas Stringham was instructed to use wherever needed Blacks who had escaped to the Federal blockading squadron. By December 1862 Blacks were accepted as enlistees in the navy to serve alongside Whites. In contrast to the army, the navy gave Blacks pay equal to that of White sailors. Blacks enlisted as landsmen and were allowed to advance to the rank of seaman. At least eight Black sailors were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. See William A. Gladstone, Men of Color (Gettysburg, Pa.: Thomas Publications, 1993), pp. 148–49; and Donald L. Canney, Lincoln’s Navy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998), pp. 138–39.
10. Dunbar Rowland, ed., Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1923), 5:409–11.
11. Ibid.
12. Rowland, ed, Jefferson Davis, 5:409.
13. Prior to the formation of the United States Colored Troops (USCT) five regiments of Black soldiers had existed as state militia in Federal service
: The First South Carolina; the First, Second, and Third Louisiana Native Guard; and the First Kansas Colored Infantry. These five regiments were amalgamated into the USCT Gladstone, Men of Color, p. 1.
14. Ted Alexander, “Retreat from Gettysburg: Ten Days in July,” North and South 2, no. 6 (June 1999): 13.
15. U.S. Congress, House, Report on the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, 39th Cong., 1st sess., July 1866 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1866), p. 2. This report is commonly referred to as “The Boutwell Report.”
16. Ibid.
17. Basler, ed., Collected Works, 6:357.
18. U.S. Congress, House, Report on the Treatment of Prisoners of War by the Rebel Authorities, 40th Cong., 3d sess., December 1868 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1869), p. 862. See also William H. Townsend, Lincoln and the Bluegrass (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1955), pp. 317–18.
19. George, “Black Flag Warfare,” pp. 292–93.
20. Basler, ed., Collected Works, 6:203.
21. George, “Black Flag Warfare,” p. 301.
22. John W. White to Horace Greeley, February 9, 1864, quoted in George, “Black Flag Warfare,” pp. 303–4.
23. Ibid, p. 301.
24. Ibid.
25. James O. Hall, “The Dahlgren Papers: A Yankee Plot to Kill President Jefferson Davis,” Civil War Times Illustrated, November 1983, p. 33.
26. Hall, “The Dahlgren Papers,” p. 33.
27. Lee, under a flag of truce, sent Meade photographic copies of the papers found on Dahlgren’s body along with an inquiry whether the action was authorized by the United States government or by Dahlgren’s superior officers. See George, “Black Flag Warfare,” pp. 309–10.
28. OR, ser. 1, vol. 33, p. 180.
29. Richmond Whig, March 7, 1864, p. 2, quoted in George, “Black Flag Warfare,” p. 317.
30. The authenticity of the Dahlgren papers has been established beyond any reasonable doubt. See Hall, “The Dahlgren Papers”; and Stephen W Sears, “The Dahlgren Papers Revisited,” Columbiad 3 (summer 1999): 63–87.
31. The one million dollars came from a special fund appropriated by the Confederate Congress (February 15, 1864) designated “Secret Service.” A request dated April 25, 1864, issued to Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin with the notation “Thompson,” was signed by Jefferson Davis. One dollar in gold was equal to 2.2 dollars in greenbacks, the equivalent of approximately 23 million dollars in current dollars. See William A. Tidwell, April ‘65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1995), p. 129.
32. Wilfrid Bovy, “Confederate Agents in Canada during the American Civil War,” Canadian Historical Review 2 (11 March 1921): p. 47. See also Albert Hemingway, “Neutral Border Violated,” America’s Civil War (May 1988): p. 43.
33. New York Times, May 30, 1865.
34. Hyams’s verbatim testimony appears in Ben: Perley Poore, The Conspiracy Trial for the Murder of the President, 4 vols. (1865; reprint New York: Arno Press, 1972), 2:409–19.
35. Roscoe, The Web of Conspiracy, and Tidwell, Hall, and Gaddy, Come Retribution, are the only modern treatises on Lincoln’s assassination that mention Luke Blackburn in connection with a germ warfare.
36. Nancy Disher Baird, Luke Pryor Blackburn: Physician, Governor, Reformer (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1979), 34.
37. OR, ser. 4, vol. 3, p. 1117, and OR, ser. 4, vol. 2, p. 889.
38. New York Weekly Tribune, May 23, 1865.
39. New York Times, May 26, 1865.
40. Ibid.
41. Montreal Gazette, May 27, 1865.
42. Article quoted in the Bermuda Royal Gazette, June 13, 1865.
43. Stewart also produced a geography textbook titled, A Geography for Beginners (Richmond: J.W. Randolph, 1864).
44. Judah P. Benjamin to J.A. Seddon, October 25, 1864, NARA, RG 109, M-437, reel 121, frames 669–70.
45. Judah P. Benjamin to Jacob Thompson, Richmond, November 29, 1864, in the William N. Pendleton Papers, 1466, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill.
46. Twenty thousand dollars in 1864 had the purchasing power of $210,000 in current dollars.
47. Kensey Johns Stewart to Jefferson Davis, December 12, 1864, NARA, RG 109, chap. 7, vol. 24, pp. 64–65. Historian James O. Hall discovered this letter.
48. Jefferson Davis, of course, did not see all of the letters addressed to him. However, in light of his having dispatched Stewart to Canada as a possible successor to Thompson, it is inconceivable that he was not shown Stewart’s letter concerning Blackburn’s plot to spread contagion among civilian populations.
49. Thomas Nelson Conrad, A Confederate Spy (New York: J.S. Ogilvie, 1892), p. 56.
50. Conrad had lived in Washington for “five or more years” and was thoroughly familiar “with the entrances and exits” of the city. See Thomas Nelson Conrad, The Rebel Scout (Washington, D.C.: National Publishing Company, 1904), pp. 118–19.
51. Conrad, Rebel Scout, pp. 22–23.
52. Conrad, Confederate Spy, p. 72.
53. Conrad, Rebel Scout, pp. 94–95.
54. Ibid, p. 119.
55. Tidwell, Hall, and Gaddy, Come Retribution, p. 283.
56. Conrad, Rebel Scout, p. 31.
57. Percy E. Martin, “John ‘Bull’ Frizzell,” in In Pursuit of. . . Continuing Research in the Field of the Lincoln Assassination, ed., Laurie Verge (Clinton, Md.: Surratt Society, 1990), p. 91.
58. Conrad, Rebel Scout, p. 33.
59. Booth began recruiting cohorts for his capture plan during the first week of August 1864 approximately the same time that Conrad began putting together his plan.
60. The troop of cavalry were members of the Union Light Guard (Ohio) that had been assigned to guard Lincoln in September 1863 when he traveled by carriage or on horseback.
61. Conrad, Rebel Scout, p. 124.
62. Ibid, pp. 127–28.
63. Ibid, p. 128.
64. Tidwell, Hall, and Gaddy, Come Retribution, p. 286.
65. Ibid, p. 323, and Tidwell, April ’65, p. 18.
66. The alleged plot by Harney to blow up the White House has been pieced together from several independent sources and described in Tidwell, Hall, and Gaddy, Come Retribution, pp. 418–21.
67. Tidwell, Hall, and Gaddy, Come Retribution, p. 261.
5. The South Wants Justice
1. Basler, ed., Collected Works, 8:514.
2. Cordial Crane to Edwin M. Stanton, July 26, 1865, NARA, M-599, reel 3, frame 0153.
3. Tidwell, Hall, and Gaddy, Come Retribution, p. 263.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Rhodehamel and Taper, eds., Right or Wrong, pp. 106–17.
7. Ibid, p. 116.
8. Samuel Bland Arnold, Memoirs of a Lincoln Conspirator, ed., Michael W. Kaufftman (Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1995), pp. 133–37.
9. Ibid, p. 134.
10. Asia Booth Clarke to Jean Anderson Sherwood, August 15, 1864, Peale Museum, Baltimore, Maryland.
11. Diary of Junius Brutus Booth Jr., Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.
12. Arnold, Memoirs, p. 22.
13. Ibid.
14. Quoted in Ernest C. Miller, John Wilkes Booth in the Pennsylvania Oil Region, (Meadville, Pa.: Crawford County Historical Society, 1987), p. 35.
15. Diary of Junius Brutus Booth Jr., August 28, 1864. See also Loux, Day by Day, pp. 401–2; and Clarke, The Unlocked Book, pp. 118–19.
16. Arnold, Memoirs, p. 42.
17. Arnold, Memoirs, p. 43.
18. Port Tobacco Times and Charles County Advertiser, November 22, 1860, p. 2, col. 4. Hereafter referred to as Port Tobacco Times.
19. Port Tobacco Times, December 27, 1861, p. 2, col. 2.
20. Thomas A. Jones, J. Wilkes Booth (Chicago: Laird and Lee, 1893), p. 13.
21. Jones was again arrested in Charles County, Maryland, on April 23, 1865, suspected of aiding Booth, and wa
s imprisoned in the Old Capitol on April 25. The Federal authorities could not quite pin down Jones’s role, and he was released on parole, May 29. Old Capitol Prison records, supplied by James O. Hall in private communication.
22. Mark E. Neely Jr. The Fate of Liberty (Chicago: Oxford University Press, 1991).
23. U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. 2,128 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), 2:868.
24. Mark E. Neely Jr., “Some New Light on Thomas A. Jones and a Mysterious Man Named Mudd,” Lincoln Lore, no. 1721 (July 1981): 4.
25. Sylvester Mudd was the brother of Dr. George D. Mudd of Bryantown. Sylvester lived on the original Mudd family homestead located a short distance from Samuel Mudd’s farm. See Richard D. Mudd. The Mudd Family of the United States, 2 vols. (Saganaw, Mich.: published by the author, 1951), 1:423.
26. Roberta J. Wearmouth, Abstracts from the “Port Tobacco News and Charles County Advertiser,” vol. 2, 1855–1869 (Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1991), p. 110.
27. Mudd, Mudd Family, 1:525–26.
28. Neely, Fate of Liberty.
29. Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Two or More Civilians, NARA, RG 109, M-416, file 6083.
30. Henry Simms was a slave owned by Henry Lowe Mudd, Samuel Mudd’s father, and Richard Washington was a slave owned by Samuel Mudd.
31. Elvey Eagleon (Elzey Eglent), John Henry Eagleon (Eglent), and John Sylvester Egleon (Eglent).
32. Samuel Cox was a member of the Confederate underground in Charles County operating a “mail line” that ran from Richmond to Washington. At the time Booth and Herold were making their escape from the military authorities, the two fugitives were directed to a hiding place in a pine thicket by Samuel Cox. Cox turned the pair over to Thomas A. Jones instructing Jones to get them over the river and into Virginia as soon as possible.
33. Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Two or More Civilians, NARA, RG 109, M-416, file 6083.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
6. The Key Connection
1. Alford, ed., A Sister’s Memoir, p. 84.
2. Ibid.