After reading several books this year concerning the War of Northern Aggression and the Lincoln assassination, I can finally say that the case and mysteries surrounding the final disposition of John Booth have been settled.
We published a recent Chronicle in which we sat on a fence concerning the capture and death of John Booth, conceding that it was not an open and shut case whether or not he got away with murder. With the help of Dr. Robert Arnold, I am no longer reticent about Booth's demise. The famous (or infamous) actor escaped one of the most intense manhunts in history, and lived to tell about it, a habit which led ultimately to his demise in 1903.
Like some of the other authors I have read, Arnold, a retired US Naval surgeon, lays out the case for a conspiracy to murder Lincoln, one which centered on the Union Army and Edwin Stanton. While the other books elaborate the conspiracy more fully, and include more people, such as Andrew Johnson, Arnold focuses on the lower level of the action - ie rehearsing the details at the crime scene, the manhunt for Booth, the medical situation of Booth, the trial, and others at Stanton's level and below.
Most importantly, Arnold exhumed records from the National Archives which shed new light - even after 150 years - on the crime of the 19th century. For example, we find out that there was an army caravan of around 10 wagons each hitched to teams of 4 horses lining the road leading from the Navy Yard Bridge, a fact which was never disclosed to the public, but whose presence most assuredly ensured Booth's safety in the same way that Silas Cobb's disobedience to orders prohibiting exits after 9p enabled Booth to escape.
We also find out that it was most improbable that David Harold accompanied Lewis Powell to Seward's residence in an attempted murder. Harold had more than likely left Washington, DC before the gates closed anticipating to rendezvous with Booth after he completed his job at Ford's Theatre.
The old fable that Major Rowan O'Beirne sent the telegram to Stanton which reported Booth and Harold crossing the Potomac is laid to rest. The telegram miraculously survived the decades and clearly has no information about the fugitives crossing the river into Virginia - or anywhere else for that matter. This was a ruse to provide a plausible explanation about how Booth and company were finally found - the point being that Stanton knew full well that a fake Booth would die at Garrett's farm.
Captain Willie Jett, a Confederate veteran, very briefly with Mosby's Rangers, was not captured at the Star Hotel but at the Gouldman residence, the home of his future wife. Jett was placed under a staged arrest to give him cover as he assisted Lt Colonel Everton Conger and Lt Luther Baker in their capture of "Booth."
But this brings us to one of the most important facets of the book - namely that John Wilkes Booth was not the man captured at Garrett's farm. Arnold explains that the two Garret sons, William and John, were Confederate soldiers who were given leave from service in order to assist in the staging of the capture and killing of Booth.
As it turns out, Booth was swapped with a man named James Boyd who was a hapless victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He suffered a war injury which required use of cane, which plausibly mimicked Booth's fracture ankle, but he was the scape goat in the charade which allowed Booth to escape.
He was allowed to stay for a couple of days in Garret's home, but Richard, the father of John and William, decided that he was no longer welcome. However, he and Boyd were allowed one last night in the barn which the two sons locked for safe keeping. The argument advanced by one author was that they were locked in so that they would not steal any horses or other property. However, the real reason was that they were being kept for the slaughter to occur within a few hours upon Lt Doherty's arrival with his 25 man mounted squadron from the New York 16th Infantry. The horses had been removed from the barn in anticipation of its burning in the early morning hours.
John and William kept guard in the corn crib to make sure that the two men did not escape, and to make contact with Conger and Baker as they planned the final actions resulting in the death of Boyd.
The scheme was to find someone with enough resemblance to Booth who, when burned, could plausibly be passed off as Booth. The plan failed due to Doherty's interferences, so Conger scrambled at the last minute to kill Boyd after Harold surrendered. Boston Corbett was not the man who shot Boyd as Arnold shows from the ballistics of the wound. Under no circumstances could Boyd be taken alive.
Boyd died within minutes of shooting, his body packed up to be carried along with Jett and Baker, Conger having left for Washington to deliver the property of Booth to Stanton. The personal articles partly provided the plausible identification of the victim. Since Boyd was wearing a Confederate uniform, he was taken by Baker and Doherty to be dressed in black clothing in order to simulate what Booth wore to the assassination. This explains the long absence between Doherty's unit and Baker and Jett.
The autopsy on the Montauk was another farce, the central feature being that the only possibly credible witness was Dr John May who initially claimed that the body could not be that Booth, but finally relented under pressure to make the identification on the flimsy evidence of the scar on Booth's and Boyd's necks. Contrary to our previous belief, there is no evidence that Booth's dentist identified the corpse, nor is he listed in the index of witnesses in the National Archive records.
The corpse was brought aboard the Montauk in the middle of the night, and just as mysteriously taken away the following day to be buried in the old penitentiary in Washington in a cell to which only Stanton held the key.
Arnold reduces a mass of information and contradictions into an easily understandable conspiracy involving both the Union army and elements of the Confederacy who collaborated as strange bedfellows to murder Lincoln, each party having its own reasons for doing so.
Ultimately the South got the bad end of the bargain for it suffered under the Radical Republicans' reign of terror, something which Johnson fought unsuccessfully. However, he was able to pardon all Confederate soldiers and politicians, as well as the surviving victims of General Joseph Holt's kangaroo court which murdered innocent victims such as Mary Surrat - all under direction from Stanton.
The Conspiracy contains much more fascinating details surrounding the planning and execution of the assassination, but it makes clear that it was not the work of a lone gunman who suddenly at the last minute decided on one last mad act.
The time has come to rewrite the history books and tell the truth. Unfortunately that will never happen any time soon. The government, even today, has too much to risk in such a confession.
Reference
Dr Robert E Arnold, The Conspiracy Between John Wilkes Booth and the Union Army to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln, Windsaloft Publishing, Lexington, KY, 2016, 396pp, illustrated
