One Minute Chronicle: More Global Warming Hoax

It has been a while since we have published a One Minute Chronicle, but we crossed some information worthy of publication - a chart showing the hoaxery of "Global Warming."

The argument is made that because some temperature fluctuates for a couple of years that a massive trend is under way to over heat or over cool the planet. Man is always at the center of the elitist complaints, so mass extermination is called for to correct the problem as Prince Phillip of the United Kingdom did when he implored that 90% of the world's population be destroyed because it is nothing but "eaters."

Global temperatures, if even such a concept is legitimate, point to regularly fluctuating temperatures with no material change. What goes up must come down. Yet no weather catastrophe of lasting significance, outside of  the ice age - when there were minimal humans - have been recorded over the past 2000 years as this chart attests. Where is the global warming or cooling?

And even if there were some global warming, no one has showed its harm. Yes lies and false data have been presented, but nothing amounting to scientific respectability as the referenced Breitbart article affirms.

In the northern hemisphere, temperatures have been warming, but I ask again, where is the catastrophe?

Reference

James Delingpole, DELINGPOLE: ‘Global Warming’ Is a Myth, Say 58 Scientific Papers in 2017, Bretibart, June 6, 2017, accessed: DELINGPOLE: 'Global Warming' Is a Myth, Say 58 Scientific Papers in 2017 (breitbart.com), 12/22/2020

Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Comprehending the Booth Bombshell

We had little time in our last Chronicle to absorb the implications of Booth's successful escape and the village it took to kill a president. It is time to reflect upon the seemingly irreconcilable juxtapositions implied by the assassination.

To be clear, John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's killer, escaped capture. The fairy tale told about Garret's Farm and barn was a deception to take the public's attention from the murder and to let it die a deserved death. The man killed at the farm was John Boyd. The body was disposed with the swiftest dispatch by men who were completely under Edwin Stanton's control, many of whom owed their careers and prominence to him. Many private and public persons expressed doubts about the identification of the corpse, but the very powerful Stanton and the Radical Republicans could easily ignore the screamers.

Thanks to Dr Arnold's research, we know that a military convoy was stationed outside the Navy Yard bridge which facilitated Booth's escape. Initial vectors of search were misdirected to the north and any which way but south. However, all of a sudden, a 25 man mounted infantry unit miraculously found "Booth", killed him, and moved on with the rest of the cover-up.

In Arnold's telling, the Garrett sons, Booth, and Stanton and his army were accomplices in the assassination of Lincoln. Booth, who was an intelligence officer in the Confederacy, implicates the Southern leadership although we have to take care where to assign the responsibility in that government - most notably Judah Benjamin who was a Rothschild agent.

It may seem odd that both Union and Confederate forces would be allied in the removal of Lincoln from office. On the one hand, Lincoln had spoken clearly about restoring the Confederate states to full statehood with alacrity. As such he would have been the South's best friend in contrast to the Radical Republicans who were hellbent on imposing a draconian brutal revenge from which the former Confederate states would never recover.

So why would the Confederates take the chance of removing Lincoln? Johnson had not made many pro South speeches or noises, and though from Tennessee himself, seemed much more aligned with the Radicals. I suspect that private assurances were made by Johnson to the Confederates that he would continue Lincoln's policies, thus assuring the Confederates that they could exact revenge for Lincoln's brutalities and not lose any of his lenient policies.

On the other hand, Stanton was a power mad psychopath who saw himself as the rightful president if not Caesar. He was the point man for the plutocratic industrialists who had put Lincoln into office to destroy the South because of its advocacy of low tariffs which were inimical to the protectionist policies they favored. Stanton was the operational director of the assassination. Northern powers saw him as the man to eliminate Lincoln's conciliatory policies. With Lincoln gone, they could continue to plunder and rape the South.

The man in the middle was the duplicitous Andrew Johnson who played both sides against the middle. Some historians have argued that Johnson had nothing to do with the assassination because of the hostility he endured from Stanton and Congress which was firmly under the control of radicals. But I dismiss this idea as bit too idealistic.

Johnson and Booth knew each other quite well and had a close relationship going back several years when the actor was in Tennessee. Booth's visit to Johnson at his his hotel indicates the closeness and was doubtless a signal regarding the assassination. Johnson was the only man who had contacts with Booth and could act as his handler, namely to launch the operation against Lincoln. As an insider in Lincoln's administration, he had contact with Seward and would be able to act as the liaison between Union and Confederate operatives.

Johnson's master plan was to remove Lincoln which assuaged the Confederates, and gratified Stanton and the plutocrats. Once the evidence of the murder was buried, and innocent men and women were murdered to serve as patsies and Oswald would later say, Johnson could consolidate power, and push Stanton aside, an action which nearly cost him the presidency.

Yet Johnson prevailed, rid himself of Stanton, and followed as much of Lincoln's policies as he could, though he was clearly stymied by the very powerful Radical Republicans. Congress overrode Johnson's vetoes with the ease of a hot knife through butter.

One of Stanton's cronies, the once all powerful Lafayette Baker, revealed the tryst in a  poem he wrote in the margins of an obscure British military journal. The encrypted message was decoded in the late 1950s or early 1960s which disclosed that a couple of dozen very powerful private and public persons were behind the assassination. Most telling was his exposure of Booth, Stanton, and Johnson as co-conspirators.

When Baker revealed the Booth diary two years after the assassination trials, Stanton took revenge by poisoning the former chief security officer, a fact also discovered in the 1960s.

Stanton himself, we believe, was murdered under the guise of suicide, a topic we have covered in an earlier Chronicle.

Lincoln's assassination was not the work of a lone nut. Removing a head of state is never so easy. There are way too many moving parts which have to be lubed and managed, and Lincoln's case was no different.

Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

First Impressions: The Conspiracy Between John Wilkes Booth and the Union Army to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln

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

Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

The True Origins of World War I

When World War I was taught in elementary schools, the usual explanation given for the war was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by - you guessed it - a lone nut. From there all of the alliances, ententes, and shenanigans of international political intrigue snapped to attention to ineluctably embroil the European continent in yet another war. But this explanation is as deceitful as the British aristocracy who planned the war as early as the 1890s.

The archduke explanation is indeed for elementary children incapable of fathoming the complexities of foreign entanglements which undergirded the inevitability of that war. But the various alliances were not the cause of the war either - they were merely frameworks for guaranteeing it.

There was a cabal of British aristocrats whose sole raison d'etre in life was to advance the British Empire, the vast expanse of territories and colonies upon which the sun to this day does not set. Expanding the British Empire was not the only aim of this group - conquering the entire world was its true end.

These and many other details are provided by Gerry Dooherty and Jim Macgregor in their fascinating book describing the etiology of World War I. The starting point for understanding how the war was ignited is identification of the men who formed the British Deep State. Dooherty and Macgregor insist upon calling the cabal the Secret Elite consisting of a group of 5 men, but this is somewhat misleading.

The authors in fact have uncovered a deep state accountable to no one. The group which they designate the Secret Elite consisted of 5 men: Cecil Rhodes, William Stead, Lord Esher, Nathaniel Rothschild, and Alfred Milner, the latter of whom was chairman, so to speak, of this privileged and imperious group.

This cabal gathered around them like minded men, some of whom came willingly, others who were bribed and compromised such as David Lloyd George. Names like Balfour, Asquith, Haldane, Haig, Robertson, Churchill, and on and on formed the close inner orbit around this group. One name which cannot be overlooked is Edward VII who was exceedingly involved in the machinations of this deep state, snaring into his web of death France and Russia.

Another tool in their arsenal was the entire British press, none of which spoke independently of the Secret Elite, whether it was the Times, Observer, Mail, Herald or any other - they all wrote in accord with the will the Elite. The Red Scare owes its origins to these yellow journalists who printed without question the most preposterous stories about the impending invasion of Britain by the Germans.

With this massive propaganda machine, the British government was able to whip its dim-witted citizens into a frenzy of fear and hate for all perceived enemies, whether it was the Boers or the Germans.

One of the pre-requisites for conquering the world was the destruction of the Boers in South Africa since they stood in the way of the great gold and diamond wealth thought to be needed to fund covert operations around the world.

The Elite had paranoid hatred of the Germans, one reason of which was that it was seen as the only credible threat to British hegemony over the world. The fact that the Germans had no such ambitions to make war against the British was of no moment. Part of the resentment stemmed from German successes commercially and technologically. As a parvenu Continental power, Germany was despised for its threat to British domination in areas it had taken for granted for a century. Rather than keep up with the times, its industrial classes sat on laurels.

Milner's grand scheme for destroying Germany was strategic envelopment - surrounding it with enemies who would be British allies. Thus after the Boer War, Milner pursued maniacally to reconfigure alliances and foreign entanglements favorable to this scheme. Without resorting to formal treaties, he directed his government apparatchiks to create agreements or ententes with France and Russia, both of which had been traditional British enemies or combatants for control of various parts of the world.

Two key players, one Russian and the other French, who lead these realignments were Alexander Isvolsky, and Theophile Delcasse. The former was a bought and paid for political whore of the Elite, while the latter was brought to heal by appealing to his Revanchist ideas of reclaiming Alsace-Lorraine lost to the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war.

French president Raymond Poincare was another sock puppet who worked with Isvolsky and others to bribe French politicians and newspapers to beat the drums of war. Without Poincare, there may have been no World War.

Military planning for World War I began no later than 1907 which required a significant reorganization of the British army and navy necessitated by the abysmal performance of the British army in the Boer War. On top of the massive increase in military expenditures, one of the chief innovations in the reforms was the creation of the British Expeditionary Force which was an elite army of soldiers who could be dispatched to the continent in roughly 2 weeks upon mobilization.

Lying to Parliament and the British Cabinet, Milner's team began joint military planning with the French and later the Russians for the invasion of Germany. They reconnoitered in great detail the Belgian countryside to identify all terrain details. Nothing was left to chance.

Although the British nearly succeeded in 1911 in starting the war, it wasn't until 1914 that the psychopathic British government was able to incite an event which led to gunfire. That of course was the assassination of the Archduke of Serbia.

Hidden History draws upon the work of Carroll Quigley and Barbara Tuchman, both of whom, in their own ways, narrated how the plans for World War I antedated by far the events of August 14, 1914.

Reference
Gerry Dooherty, Jim Macgregor, Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War, Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh, 2013, 461pp

Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

It Wasn't About Slavery - Really

With dumbed down education, and fraudulent historians, it is easy to sell the fake story of the American Civil War as being first and foremost about slavery. While slavery was the fermentation of the zeitgeist, it was not the cup of trembling itself. We will bring you a perspective you haven't heard before. but which is quite obvious if you know one of the leading causes of the first War of Independence.

If you think about to the Revolutionary War, you may recall the tea tax, the Stamp Act, and other impositions which the British placed upon the colonists. And if you think about the events, you will notice that taxes were the burning issues prompting the colonists to rebel against King George III.

It was much the same leading to Fort Sumter when southerners clamored for a more equitable distribution and benefit of taxes, namely in the form of tariffs, a topic which had been most nettlesome for most of the 19th century leading up to the secession of southern states from the union.

Various compromises and see-saw politics managed to keep the pot from boiling over, but the Nullification Crisis of 1828-33 set the stage for the eventual fruition of the Confederacy.

In short, the agricultural and slave powered South depended upon imports, whether northern or European, for its goods, whereas the industrial North sought to protect its fledgling industries from cheap imports. Ultimately no one could craft a compromise, and with Lincoln's anti-conciliatory stance to the South, particularly along the lines of tariffs, there was no pressure escape valve left to ameliorate the frictions between the two sections of the union.

Lincoln was a Whig-Republican who was the puppet of northern industrialists who were intent upon establishing high tariffs to protect their economic interests and empire. Few people know that Lincoln's rise out of the lawyerly slums owed to his work for railroad tycoons in downstate Illinois. This work, plus his political aspirations, finally brought him to the attention of the power brokers at the Chicago Republican convention of 1860 as a compromise candidate who would do their bidding.

Lincoln did not disappoint. Using the pretext of "preserving the union," Lincoln issued a series of blustery statements which gave southerners no doubt about his sentiments on taxes and where his loyalty lay. Without any congressional support, he immediately issued a flurry of unconstitutional orders declaring war on the South, raising initially a 75,000 man army which would grow to over 1 million, and shredding constitutional liberties as though the document was, as George Bush famously said, nothing but a goddamned piece of paper.

But wasn't Lincoln elected to free the slaves? Absolutely not. Many northern states had Black Codes which forbad blacks from residing in their states, owning property, and other activities which we take for granted today.

Lincoln made it very clear during his inaugural address that he would take no actions against the "peculiar institution" of the south, and that he had no constitutional basis for doing so. Even during the war, he fired General Fremont for issuing a statewide emancipation in Missouri - but first he rescinded the order.

But everyone says that the Civil War was about slavery - you are out of your mind. Slavery was the race card par excellence of the 19th C. The abolitionists were an extremist group with not a terribly broad following. However, they made a lot of noise, and were funded by foreigners, giving them a voice outsized to their ranks.

Northerners used the religion of abolition to rouse support for their cause of "preserving the union" while southerners used the religion of slavery to rouse support for their cause of secession. In fact northerners were quite willing to let the south go for a while - until it realized the tax revenues it would lose, and the crumbling prospect of Manifest Destiny.

Yes heated editorials were written both for and against slavery, the southerners usually falling back to states' rights as the basis to repel northern interference, a position with which Lincoln largely agreed. But as Charles Adams noted in his grand book, the more dispassionate Europeans generally reviewed the conflict between north and south as one over tax policy - not about slavery.

The curious exception was John Stuart Mill, but Adams notes his uninformed understanding of the situation in America, and Mill never came to terms with the prospect of freeing 4 million people who did not have the education or standing to make their own ways in the world if freed overnight. Lincoln's solution was to ship the slaves back to Africa. But there is nothing like singing a few choruses of the Battle Hymn of the Republic to rile up a lot emotional blather and calls for war - and the slavery issue fit the bill for a get-down camp meeting full of fulsome self-righteousness.

Adams demonstrated that the critical issue, as expressed in contemporary editorials and political action, all centered around dominating and controlling the south for its tax revenues to both fund the government and to protect northern industries.

The brutality Lincoln used in demolishing the south made him a war criminal of the worst sort - the Adolf Hitler of the 19th century. In fact Hitler borrowed Lincoln's phrase, the final solution, in addressing the concerns brought about by Jews in Germany.

There is no doubt that slavery was a hot topic leading up to and during the war, but it was ultimately a dead end as an issue. The Confederate Constitution outlawed it, and required the states to pass enabling legislation to support it. The South was well on its way to ending slavery although it may have taken some generations to accomplish it.

On the other hand, the Soviet Lincoln would not wait to collect his tax revenues, and so launched the most brutal war in human history by terrorizing combatants as well as civilians - something which his owners required.

Reference

Charles Adams, When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, Rowman and Littlefield, [city], 2000, 257pp

Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Did John Wilkes Booth Escape Justice?

In some respects, the demise of John Wilkes Booth makes a great Halloween story, having enough discrepancies for a spooky tale from the crypt. But these ambiguities also create enough doubts to make his death at Garrett's farm an article of faith - a religious dogma - no matter to which sect one subscribes.

Establishment historians will roll their eyes and move on at the idea that Booth's body was misidentified, or that he escaped. But we are not so dismissive of the evidence and its dearth surrounding the alleged death of Wilkes Booth on April 26, 1865. We believe that reasonable arguments can be made for either case - that he died or escaped - that it is a true postmodern moment.

Perhaps the best summary of the situation was made over a century ago by an army officer writing on the subject

In the early 1900s, John Shumaker, the army’s General Counsel to the Department of the Army wrote: “The evidence put forth by the government to support the conclusion that the body was that of John Wilkes Booth was so insubstantial that it would not stand up in a court of law.”

And yet, one would not bet the farm that Booth did not die at Garrett's farm. There are powerful currents on both sides of the debate supporting either conclusion.

We will enumerate some of the issues which we believe the army's General Counsel might have had in mind when he made his intriguing statement.

Identification

One of the more baffling aspects of Booth's alleged death is that the ordinary means used to identify deceased persons was not employed in the case of the famous actor. Booth's family, both through blood and profession, was quite broad and deep. These people were near by - even on the Montauk. If Booth were indeed involved in a conspiracy with all of the prisoners held on the ship, why not ask them to identify? If they were not trusted, then why not call in people from Ford's theater or his next of kin? Was that too risky? 

Why else would Stanton refuse to allow the normal course of events to seek their ends? Would not that have proven more persuasive and squashed any doubts?

Instead of next of kin and close friends, Stanton sent a cadre of military officers - colonels and generals - to identify the body, many of the former of whom who would be judges of the military tribunal trying the case of Lincoln's assassins. This tactic smacks of jury tampering - but then again the judgments of the tribunal were a foregone conclusion.

The piece of evidence which could have laid to rest any doubts about the corpse was either hidden or destroyed by Stanton, namely the picture taken by Alexander Gardner at the autopsy which was the one and only picture taken of the body on the Montauk.

The bottom line is that no evidence of probative value was produced from this affair which could satisfy the legal doubts which the army's General Counsel raised during the early 20th century.

Mis-Identification

There were contradictory identifications made of the body. Certainly Stanton's generals gave the secretary what he wanted, but others were not quite so compliant. Nearly everyone is familiar with Dr May's non-denial denial of the body. Although he affirmed that it was Booth, he said that it looked nothing like him, nor did the surgical scar he left on Booth a couple of years earlier look like the one he made. Though he initial denied the identity of Booth, he subsequently changed his mind - perhaps with "friendly persuasion."

On the other hand, Booth's dentist confirmed that the corpse was that of Booth's which could be persuasive except for the fact that we now know, and the US Congress investigating the matter in 1867 confirmed, that piles and piles of perjured and paid testimony were used in the crooked trial.

Many witnesses were threatened with death if they did not provide the desired testimony.

Several witnesses claimed that the body had reddish hair, yet nearly everyone affirms that Booth had jet black hair with a tendency to curl. How does one explain it? Did booth use hair coloring at Dr Mudd's house as he shaved his mustache? If so, could anyone corroborate that hypothesis?

The Un-missing Boot

When President Johnson allowed the return of the hanged bodies to their respective families in 1869, Booth's was brought to a funeral home for examination. Oddly enough, he had on two boots, whereas the Surgeon General Barnes reported that one of his legs was in splints. Did the two Bakers go to the trouble to get the missing boot from the War Department's evidence cache to put on Booth's missing boot when it buried him on April 27 even though it was also somehow used at trial to show that Dr Mudd set the fractured bone?

Wouldn't the makeshift splint have been splendid evidence against Mudd? Or would it have been good evidence for the defense?

One person present at the funeral parlor pulled off one of Booth's boots from his foot only to find that the foot and leg remained in the boot. But that is not the odd part. Did the court, which had no compunction about hanging an innocent woman, have concern that that Booth's dead body was without a boot, and that it should be returned to him? Did Booth, having the most difficulty getting enough food and water on the run, stumble upon a spare boot to put on his broken leg or foot? As you do when you have a broken leg in a splint.

And speaking of broken limbs, why are there varying testimonies concerning which limb was injured? Surgeon General Barnes reported the left ankle having the fracture, while doctors Mudd and May averred that it was the right leg. Why should something so cut and dry have such contradictions?

Carbines

Judge Bingham made much of the fact that two carbines alleged to have been hidden at the Surratt tavern in Surrattsville, but picked up by Booth and Herold, were a match. It seems unlikely to me that Booth, with a broken leg, would have had the strength or balance to manage a carbine. Even more significantly, he didn't need the added weight to hinder his escape. In other words, speed was of the essence - not fighting his way out of a barn to hell.

Nevertheless, Bingham made much of the fact that the carbine recovered at Garrett's farm was indeed a match with one found at the tavern. Yet there are many explanations, including planted evidence of which there was much.

Modern Science

While all legal measures have been smashed to exhume the body for DNA analysis, another bit of modern technology has been used to identify Booth against an alleged photograph of him taken years after the assassination while allegedly using the pseudonym of David George.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, covering this development using facial recognition software, reported of the lead investigator

“I was absolutely shocked,” said Romany, host of the segment scheduled to air on the Discovery Channel at 10 p.m. Wednesday. “It changed my perspective on American history. For the first time, I thought this could be true. John Wilkes Booth could have gotten away."

While the test is not definitive, the match between the two men exceeded the minimum threshold used by the New York City Police Department to consider someone a credible identified.

The puzzle of Booth's demise will be settled conclusively, but the government authorities did not cooperate in leaving us evidence encumbered with dearth and chain of custody issues. What was Stanton and his Military Tribunal hiding?

Post Script: I came across a very interesting newspaper clipping published by the Globe-Democrat, apparently the Saint Louis newspaper, circa 1910 with a dateline from Caldwell, Texas, telling the story of Booth's demise. The interviewee, William Henry Garrett was the son of Richard Henry Garrett, the former of whom stated that Booth died as he held the actor's head on his knee. His aunt Lucinda Holloway cut a lock of hair from Booth's head which a few years later sparked an interesting relationship with Edwin Booth and William's brother Richard Baynham Garrett. The Shakespearean actor was a generous benefactor to Baynham as he studied for the ministry, giving him a lavish 500 dollar book collection, among other gifts of support.

The sum and substance of William's story seems genuine, and might conclusively settle the case of Booth's death - if not for the problem of the facial recognition software mentioned above. But given that the software is not 100% definitive, there is room for error favoring Garrett's story.

On the other hand, Edwin's keen interest in the lock of hair and other details surrounding his brother's death suggest that Booth indeed died at Garrett's farm. For what other reason would Edwin show so much interest?

Reference

Edward Colimore,  Did John Wilkes Booth get away with murdering President Abraham Lincoln?, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 15, 2019, (accessed: https://www.inquirer.com/news/john-wilkes-booth-lincoln-conspiracy-photo-recognition-20190415.html, 10/24/2020)

tmh10, The Lincoln Assassination New Information-New Meaning (reader comments), Civil War Talk, January 7, 2013, (accessed: https://civilwartalk.com/threads/the-lincoln-assassination-new-information-new-meaning.77607/page-2, 10/24/2020)

Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Booth on the Montauk

Stories about John Wilkes Booth's assassination and whereabouts thereafter have considerable variety, but an astounding recent find puts some stability and details around the arrival of Booth's corpse aboard the USS Montauk.

Booth was allegedly captured and killed on April 26, 1865 at Garrett's farm in Northern Virginia. His body was carried away in sewn blankets eventually landing on the Montauk. However, the diaries of Henry Washington Landes provide rare details not provided in the history books.

Landes was originally a soldier in the 129th Pennsylvania Infantry, Company C who later became a marine stationed aboard the Montauk where he served as guard for the accused assassins of Abraham Lincoln. His kept a regular diary which contains many fascinating entries, especially during the aftermath of the assassination in late April.

The marine records in his diary on April 27

27 - I was on post from twelve to two. Booth and his partner came on the boat at 1/4 before two [AM], dead. Arrived on the steamboat Burnside. No inspection. Stood guard over him from 6 to 8. Over the partner from 12 to 2. At 2 they took Booth's head off...

We find that early in the morning of April 27, at 1:45 AM, Booth and his partner, David Herold, are brought aboard the Montauk having been couriered by the steamboat Burnside. At 2 PM, later that same day, the autopsy is performed which results in the decapitation of Booth.

Booth's corpse was not to remain long on the Montauk. Landes continues:

Full of visitors, officers and citizens. Warm day and full of excitement. Took him away at two o'clock. His partner picture taken in the afternoon

After the 2 PM autopsy, Herold's picture is taken, no doubt a reference to Alexander Gardner's glamour shots of the prisoners. However, based upon the sequence of events Landes mentions, Booth was immediately removed from the ship, at 2 PM on April 28, but Landes does not tell us his destination.

There is room for interpretive doubt concerning the time of day when Booth was carried away - ie, was it 2 AM or 2 PM? After all, how could one behead Booth while at the same time removing him from the ship? Therefore, wouldn't there have to be a lapse of time to keep chronological concordance with these vents? My view is that Landes was compressing time and action, viewing the autopsy and Booth's removal as a singularity - ie beginning at 2 PM he was beheaded and then removed from the ship immediately thereafter.

This actually makes more sense than interpreting 2 o'clock as 2 AM since one would not want to keep a decapitated composing corpse on board with a ship crew and prisoners, risking the many health hazards which that scenario holds. At that point, Booth had been dead since around 6-7 AM April 26. Thus approximately 20 hours after dying, Booth is on the Montauk.

At 32 hours past death, Booth is offloaded from the Montauk, and sent to parts unknown.

We conclude, then, that Booth was on the Montauk for approximately 12-13 hours - from 1:45 AM to some time after 2 PM on April 27.

In a letter to his sister on the 28th, Landes writes

He had his leg broken, I seen it. He had paste board around it. No beard and his forehead shaved.

The broken leg strongly, though not definitively, supports the contention that the corpse in custody was John Wilkes Booth. 

However, we have no idea that Landes actually knew what Booth looked like. Although photography was fast developing in 1865, pictures of people were still not common place. Reviewing a couple of the prominent newspapers of the time, such as the New York Herald, and Washington newspaper, there isn't a picture in sight. In other words, public recognition of famous and infamous people is not what it is today.

In any event, this powerful testimony will help keep in check any speculative conjecture about Booth's brief stay on the USS Montauk.

Reference

ed., [Diary of Henry Landes], Nate D Sanders, 1865, (accessed: https://natedsanders.com/lot-57563.aspx, 10/14/2020)

Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

The Lady of the Montauk

Many popular stories retelling the assassination and identification of John Wilkes Booth in April 1865 include a vignette of a mysterious woman boarding the ship holding the assassin's body in order weep over and grieve the actor's death. We place this incident in the doubtful things folder.

Usually the story has a veiled woman dressed in black boarding the USS Montauk accompanied by prominent dignitaries. When seeing the body of Booth, she throws herself upon him to weep her loss. She unsuccessfully attempts to snip a lock of Booth's jet black hair as the officers aboard the ship have strict orders to prevent any molestation of the body.

An example of this genre comes from Steven Hager

Before Hale departed for Spain, however, Booth’s body was brought back to Washington. A mysterious veiled woman came to view the corpse, threw herself upon it in tears, and snipped a lock of hair as a keepsake. (Apparently, this was popular at the time as Mary Todd Lincoln did the same thing after Lincoln died.) The lock was confiscated and destroyed as Stanton had strict orders against releasing any body parts. It’s now assumed that woman with the scissors was [Lucy] Hale.

Unfortunately, Hager, like most others, fails to cite any references for this incident. It might be true, and then again it might not be. There is a paucity of evidence to corroborate it.

For evidence, rigorous historians like contemporary first hand witnesses, which for many events is quite rare. Fortunately in this instance, we can trace a version of this story to Lafayette Baker who wrote of it in his memoirs, History of the United States Secret Service, published in 1867.

Baker wrote as follows on pages 507-8

I had not had my clothes off for nearly two weeks, and was granted leave of absence from the vessel, on whose deck was lying the corpse of the assassin, covered with two blankets sewed together like a sack, completely concealing it. Upon my return, I was greatly surprised and indignant, to find persons of high position, and some of secession proclivities, around the dead body, the coarse shroud parted at the seam, and a lady at that moment cutting off a lock of the black, curled, and beautiful hair. I seized the fair hands, and, after a refusal to give me the relic, forcibly took it and then cleared the deck, to the amazement and displeasure of some of the party. 

There are a number of points to observe concerning this narrative. I don't really believe that he had not had a change of clothes in two weeks, nor do I believe that the brigadier general required the granting of a leave of absence, but these are minor points which I shall let pass.

What is more interesting is that no date or time is provided for this incident, something I would expect of a "history." Even more arresting is that this heavily guarded ship would have allowed just anyone to access the body, even persons of "high position," especially considering that among them were those favorable to the secessionists who were the object of Lincoln's and Stanton's vengeance for four bloody years.

After all, it was Stanton's stated goal to prevent the body from becoming an icon or rallying point for Southerners. Note that it required his and the Secretary of Navy Gideon Welles' authorizations to view the body, as we quote from the Navy Medicine article referenced below:

'You will permit Surgeon General Barnes and his assistant, accompanied by Judge Advocate Genl Holt, Hon Jolin A. Bingham,· Special Judge Advocate, Major Eckert, Wm G. Moore, clerk of the War Department, Col. L.C. Baker, Lieut. Baker, Lieut. Col. Conger, Chase Dawson, J.L. Smithh, Gardiner [sic) (photographer) + assistant, to go on board the Montauk, and see the body of John Wilkes Booth.'

Even more astounding is that Stanton authorized Baker's boarding of the ship. Please note that these men were very high ranking officers who still required the Secretary of War and Secretary of Navy to enter the ship to see the cadaver. How then would others, of their own accord, board the ship at their wills and leisures?

So if Baker required authorization, how was anyone else going to board?

Baker does not identify the "persons of high position" which is something he would have surely known, for we are dealing with the first J Edgar Hoover. Baker was the spy par excellence, keeping vast files on people high and low. Stanton had a very sophisticated spy network operating North and South. There is no way that Baker would not have known the identity of these men and woman.

For now, I only feel comfortable assuming that the aforementioned men boarded the ship - without female accompaniment. And yet there is a loophole to his assumption as we note below.

More tellingly, Baker fails to identify the star of the gathering, the woman. He does not describe her adorned in black or a veil as others do; nor does he mention her sobbing or throwing herself on Booth's body. Of course he may have missed all of that drama, having walked in on the last act - on the open deck where the body was guarded.

Prior to the excerpt we quote, Baker describes Stanton's strict orders concerning the care and guarding of the body. No one, even of high rank, would dare to board the floating prison, unannounced, for a viewing of the body of Booth. With Stanton's mindset, they would have been arrested. This story is the height of absurdity, which is why I reject it as nothing more than Baker's vivid imagination.

That takes us to the point of Baker's character. He was not known as someone who indulged in the truth. Don Thomas wrote of the disgraced spy thusly:

Lafayette Baker was a man without scruples, a notorious liar, and had no loyalty to anything other than money and himself. 

Then there is this gem from the House Minority written in 1867 about Baker

 “Although examined on oath, time and again, and on various occasions, it is doubtful whether he [Baker] has in any one thing told the truth even by accident,”

It is foolhardy to put any stock in anything Baker wrote in his memoirs. As such, I find it difficult to believe that this incident happened at all, especially given the dearth of any other accounts to corroborate it. Should they materialize, I might modify my opinion.

We now arrive at the timelines to see if Baker's story makes sense. From a previous Chronicle, we discovered that Booth's body arrived on the Montauk at 1:45 AM April 27, 1865. You may recall that US Marine Henry Landes documented it in his diary, and stood guard over the body:

No inspection. Stood guard over him [Booth] from 6 to 8. Over the partner [David Herold] from 12 to 2.

There is no other entry describing a cadre of secessionist sympathizers though he later notes a gaggle of visitors as "Full of visitors, officers and citizens." A female visitor would surely have caught his attention.

The window of opportunity to see Booth's corpse prior to the autopsy and decapitation was quite small. The Surgeon General begins his autopsy before noon. Quoting from the same Navy Medicine article

Shortly before noon, Joseph K. Barnes, Surgeon General of the Army, had come on board -and without informing any officers who he was, or seeming to pay the slightest respect to Military etiquette ... walks up to the corpse and commences to cut adrift the wrappings.

So the only window of opportunity for Baker's alleged event was after sunrise and before noon. That means that an impromptu embassy of people would have had to assemble in record time, including the woman, because someone woke them in the wee dark hours of the morning, before telephones, to tell them that Booth's corpse had arrived, and rush over to the Montauk to view Booth's body. In other words, state secrets were shared with southern sympathizers.

Landes also records that Booth's decapitated body was removed from the ship after the autopsy at 2 PM. This means that it was on the Montauk for about 12 hours.

This incident reported by Baker did not happen.

Now why is this story important? It is used to affirm that Booth was indeed dead; that he did not escape from Garrett's farm. Lucy Hale, his fiancé, came to the boat to weep, thus confirming that Booth died. Unfortunately, it sounds more like a  Dickensian melodrama than fictional history. Shadowy, unnamed characters are the stuff of fiction.

Until substantive material emerges from credible sources, this story has to be relegated to the doubtful things of Washington.

References

L. C. Baker, History of the United States Secret Service, 1867, Philadelphia, L. C. Baker, 704pp, (accessed: https://books.google.com/books?id=ZxpCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA524&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Don Thomas, The Cover-Up of Booth's Diary Confession, The Lincoln Conspiracy Cover-Up, nd, 11pp (accessed: https://reasonlincoln.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Website__History-or-Hype.pdf)

Steven Hager, Lucy Hale is a key to the Lincoln assassination [sic], The Tin Whistle, September 29, 2014, (accessed: https://stevenhager.net/2014/09/29/lucy-hale-is-a-key-to-the-lincoln-assassination/, 10/13/2020)

Leonard F Guttridge, Identification and Autopsy of John Wilkes Booth: Reexamining the Evidence, January-February 1993, Navy Medicine, pp 17-26, (accessed: https://library.indstate.edu/rbsc/neff/PDFs/guttridge_identification.pdf, 10/16/2020)

Dave McGowan, WHY EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT THE LINCOLN ASSASSINATION IS WRONG, PART XII, Center for an Informed America, March 13, 2015, (accessed: http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/why-everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-lincoln-assassination-is-wrong-part-xii/, 10/16/2020)

Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Lafayette Baker's Secret Confession

The old saying, the truth will out, is so apropos in the case of Lafayette Baker (1828-1868) who left a coded message which, when deciphered, revealed the ring leaders of the conspiracy to murder Abraham Lincoln.

Ray Neff was an amateur historian whose day job was a professor at Indiana Status University. In the 1960s he uncovered a coded message from Baker who was at one point during the Civil War head of the National Police Detective Bureau. Much of Baker's prominence during the Civil War and later owed to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814-1869) with whom he had a love-hate relationship.

Neff decoded the message whose version we publish from Ersjdamoo's Blog:

In new Rome there walked three men, a Judas, a Brutus and a spy.

Each planned that he should be the king when Abraham should die.

One trusted not the other but they went on for that day,

waiting for that final moment when, with pistol in his hand,

one of the sons of Brutus could sneak behind that cursed man

and put a bullet in his brain and lay his clumsey [sic] corpse away.

As the fallen man lay dying, Judas came and paid respects to one he hated,

and when at last he saw him die,

he said, “Now the ages have him and the nation now have I.”

But, alas, fate would have it Judas slowly fell from grace,

and with him went Brutus down to their proper place.

But lest one is left to wonder what happened to the spy,

I can safely tell you this, it was I. (Lafayette C. Baker)

The confession is extraordinary on two counts. In the first, it is breathtaking that he would confess to being a participant to a murder of the president. One must assume that he thought that his encrypted message would never be decrypted.

On the second count, it puts to death the notion that Booth was a lone nut acting alone to murder the president. It clearly shows the vast, deep river of hatred many felt toward Lincoln.

But let's add a bonus count. This interpretation fits well with long standing suspicions of Stanton which historian Don Thomas describes so well in his book The Reason Lincoln Had to Die, in which he accuses Stanton as one of Lincoln's assassins.

The interpretation of the poem is obvious, though some have stumbled over it. Baker identifies 3 primary players, Judas, a Brutus, and a Spy. Without any more knowledge than we have provided, one could deduce Baker as the spy, and if that were too difficult, he admits to it in the concluding line.

Judas is very easy to discern as well, the give away clue being an allusion to Stanton's gnothic acclamation, "Now he belongs to the ages" (though alternative readings have been provided.) Thus Judas is unquestionably Stanton.

The final character, Brutus, might be the most difficult. At first we considered John Booth to be Brutus since it was Brutus who assassinated Caesar. Also, John was the son of Edward Brutus Booth, and as such fits well the description "...one of the sons of Brutus could sneak behind that cursed man and put a bullet in his brain..."

But clearly Booth could have had no expectation to be king, unless the brains of the conspiracy had promised him a royal prize for his actions - something which might have appealed to his delusions of grandeur. However, it is hard to imagine Booth thinking that he would be king "when Abraham should die" or that "...But, alas, fate would have it Judas slowly fell from grace, and with him went Brutus down to their proper place..." After all, the wide spread belief was and is that Booth died at Garret's farm, coming to a rather abrupt end. So how could he go with Judas (Stanton) "slowly" down to his place?

One could say that Booth's descent may have been his fall from a leading star, c. 1863, to his alleged demise in 1865, but Baker seems to imply a parity between Judas and Brutus.

The key to the puzzle is in the first line where Baker speaks of "a Brutus." Clearly Booth was "a Brutus," for he fits well the descriptions of the assassin. But he was not the only Brutus. We believe, with no adamancy or pontification, that Baker refers to more than one Brutus in his poem. Booth clearly fulfills the role of a Brutus, but we need another "a Brutus."

We believe that Andrew Johnson fulfills the role of the other Brutus. Johnson was certainly well placed to "be the king", having the most to gain from Lincoln's murder. In fact there was no way that Johnson could have gained the presidency in his own right. He had so many personal defects that it is a wonder that he even got on the 1864 ticket as vice president.

If Johnson is "a Brutus," then he was the leading catalyst for recruiting Stanton and other Radical Republicans into his orbit. As such, he is the one who commissioned Booth to "...put a bullet in his [Lincoln's] brain..." While Booth was the trigger man, Johnson was the puppet master pulling the strings.

There is much weight against this theory of Johnson being part of the plot. The royal battles which Johnson and Stanton fought against each other suggests that Johnson was the innocent bystander and victim of Stanton's egomaniacal drive for supremacy . How could Johnson be involved with someone who nearly caused his conviction from impeachment?

Perhaps the answer lies here, "...Each planned that he should be the king when Abraham should die. One trusted not the other..." Events clearly showed that each man did not trust the other. In fact Johnson caught Baker red handed spying on him at the White House, a fact which Baker admitted in his biography, but which he said was done under Stanton's orders.

Each man fulfilled "But, alas, fate would have it Judas slowly fell from grace, and with him went Brutus down to their proper place." Stanton became victim of Johnson's determination to dismiss him, and Johnson in his turn barely survived his presidency, and failed abysmally in his attempt for his party's nomination in 1868. Thus the two came to their "proper place."

Stanton died in 1869 possibly by suicide as we reported in a previous Chronicle. Johnson died in 1875 apparently from afflictions of old age. But Baker's demise is more mysterious. There are some theories that he faked his own death, fearing - we believe - that Stanton was intent on rubbing him out. 

The poem assures us that Baker, in fact, faked his death, because he tells of the fall of both Stanton and Johnson. Baker "died" in 1868, the year Johnson was acquitted, and the year before Stanton was finally evicted from office. The two scorpions in a bottle battled it to the bitter end - they "...slowly fell from grace..."

The world owes Dr Neff a great debt of gratitude for giving us the Rosetta Stone of the Lincoln conspiracy.

Reference

ed., Escape of Lafayette Baker, Ersjdamoo's Blog, July 18, 2015, (accessed: https://ersjdamoo.wordpress.com/2015/07/18/escape-of-lafayette-baker/ , 10/9/2020)

Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Did Edwin Stanton Commit Suicide?

Lincoln's Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was a force with which to reckon - assuming that one had the standing to even approach the imperious man - but these forces may have overwhelmed him in death with suicide.

An interesting article published in the Cambridge Chronicle on December 5, 1874 plainly tells the story of Stanton committing suicide. A quick check with CIA's Wikipedia reports that Stanton was in failing health, and succumbed to various pains and asthma attack which lead quickly to his death on December 24, 1869, just days after Congress confirmed his appointment to the Supreme Court.

Both accounts document the incipient event occurring on December 23, and both accounts give the time of death as 3a the following morning. In between is considerable difference.

The Cambridge Chronicle - no relation to this Chronicle - stated the secret of Stanton's death as limited to a mere handful of people. Why it decided to break the news at that late date is a bit of a mystery, but the paper provided a reasonably thorough account, stating that Stanton was normally shaved by his "colored" valet at the former's mansion. After the barber went to the wash basin for water while performing his task, he found Stanton bleeding across his neck when he turned around, having slit himself with the nearby razor.

It is possible that with Stanton's wife's death in 1873, the newspaper felt freed from the shackles of propriety.

The valet sent for a doctor, family, and clergy, but it was all in vain as Stanton failed to recover, ending the life of the man whom the writer thought was a broken man, having fallen from the pinnacle of power, to the lowly position of associate of the Supreme Court.

But we have to ask, Does a supreme court justice, or anyone for that matter, commit suicide in the presence of another, especially before his valet? The story reeks a bit, but not because it is totally without merit.

The article recounts Stanton's war time service, doing its best to paint an even handed picture of his tenure and personality, but gives the impression of the former Secretary being a tyrannical man of justice with no mercy. It cites two examples of his malice, the first of which involved Annie Surratt who attempted to see President Johnson to plead clemency for her condemned mother. Stanton made certain that no one would circumvent the outcomes of the trial he so forcefully guaranteed, preventing the daughter the petition through his intermediary Preston King.

King however, did not live to a ripe old age unless 59 is such an age. In an hilarious moment on Wikipedia, its contributors note

Despairing of success, King committed suicide by tying a bag of bullets around his neck and leaping from a ferryboat in New York Harbor on November 13, 1865.

As you do.

In another example, it recounted Stanton's wars with Johnson, particularly the latter's attempts to implement Lincoln's lenient policies of reconciliation, which led to the president's impeachment when he tried to fire Stanton.

So now we have both Stanton and a key politician, connected to Stanton by the Cambridge article, committing suicide. But does this really make sense? Only a stark raving mad Coincidence Theorist would gloss over the two suicides as though nothing connects the two.

It is our opinion that the two men were killed, and justifiably so. The Cambridge Chronicle does not, try as it might, paint a flattering picture of Stanton. Nor does Dave McGowan

Elsewhere in Stanton’s biography, we find that at various times in his life he personally ordered the exhumation of at least two bodies, one of them being his daughter Lucy, who was dug up circa 1842. According to reports, Stanton kept his daughter’s decomposing corpse in a special container in his home for at least a year. Nothing there that would cause anyone to question his fitness to serve as Secretary of War.

Although it is not the purpose of this Chronicle to delve into the reasons for Stanton's demise, it is most likely for one of two reasons, one of which may have been his treason during the Civil War at the non-battle of Petersburg whose prosecution could have ended the war months sooner than it ended, but for reasons known to Stanton and us, the War Secretary made certain it did not happen. The other reason could have been Stanton's lead in the murder of Lincoln, and its cover-up.

Perhaps the years of inhaling his daughters decaying remains caused Stanton's breathing problems, and maybe his asthma was a contributor to his death, but our suspicion is that someone killed him. And no, it wasn't the valet.

Reference
Wikipedia contributors. (2020, July 20). Preston King (politician). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 01:14, October 5, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Preston_King_(politician)&oldid=968626689

Dave McGowan, WHY EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT THE LINCOLN ASSASSINATION IS WRONG: PART I, Center For an Informed America, January 24, 2014, (accessed: http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/anatomy-of-a-presidential-assassination-part-i/ 10/4/2020)

[unknown], Cambridge Chronicle, Volume XXIX, Number 49, 5 December 1874, Cambridge, MA (accessed: https://cambridge.dlconsulting.com/cgi-bin/cambridge?a=d&d=Chronicle18741205-01.2.51&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- )

Don Thomas, How Stanton Covered  Up Lincoln's Murder Plot, Reason Lincoln, nd, (accessed: https://reasonlincoln.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/How-Stanton-Covered-Up-Lincolns-Murder-Plot.pdf, 10/4/2020 )

Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

The Three Faces of Jesse

Jesse James is a man who charges the imagination and lights up the past in a way few outlaws do. The man, the legend, and the myth is truly larger than life, and who proves time and again that the truth is stranger than fiction. To understand James, you have to understand his personas.

Conventional history declares that Jesse James was an American outlaw who was murdered by Robert Ford on April 3, 1882 in St Joseph, Missouri. The main problem with this assertion is that it is inconsistent with known facts about the case, and is upheld with the flimsiest of evidence - mainly that someone died.

But having a corpse is not the same as having its identity, a fact which Ron Pastore has established beyond reasonable doubt, whose research culminated in a presentation to the 2004 Annual Conference of the American Academy of Forensic Science, as well as extremely well received History documentary.

In this presentation, Pastore examined all kinds evidence indicating that James lived well beyond 1882, such evidence including material, eye witness, DNA, photographic, and other forms to create a complete picture of the man and his life. Some of the more sophisticated procedures rely on the most current sciences such as DNA and facial recognition software which establishes beyond reasonable doubt that the death of James was greatly exaggerated. Of course it was a faked death.

If James did not die, then who did? The answer to this question begins the twisted path to unwinding James' identity. Pastore concludes that the man who was killed in 1882 was Jesse's cousin Jeremiah M James. Jesse Woodson James then assumed the identity of Jere Miah James - J M James, and eventually settled in Neodesha, Kansas, dying in 1935.

Another cousin, Jesse R James, went by the alias J Frank Dalton, dying in Texas in 1951 at the ripe old age of 104. So there were two Jesse James floating around, and one Jeremiah James rotting in a grave.

So why did Jesse murder his cousin? It fundamentally solved two problems. Jesse W James was a wanted man, having been a terror in the west as a member of the James gang since the end of the Civil War. When Jesse and his brother attempted to surrender under the white flag of truce at the end of the war, the Union army would have none of it; so it fired upon the men, nearly killing Jesse.

After recovering, he vowed revenge, and to never surrender to the North. Thus he began a long crime spree which got the attention of law men far and wide.

At the same time, his cousin Jeremiah made a deal with Pinkerton to capture Jesse, word of which reached the James gang who vowed to take care of the problem by killing him. With Jeremiah dead, Jesse could assume his identity and lead a life with less publicity, something which he did by settling in Kansas and living a respectable life and raising a family.

Pastore reports that when Jesse's wife died around Christmas of 1934, it so broke James that he died shortly thereafter in 1935. Thus ended one of the most flamboyant careers in American history.

The history books will not correct the record because the establishment, like the pope, has declared itself infallible and beyond reproach. It will never admit to its lies, misinformation, and deceit. That old saying however, comes to mind - the truth will out.

While this summary of James' life does not touch on its many crazy aspects, it at least points earnest students of history in a new direction in search of the truth.

Reference
Ron Pastore, The Jesse James Photo Album, 2017, (accessed: http://jessejamesphotoalbum.com/, 10/3/2020)

Ron Pastore, Forensic Investigation: Into the 1882 Death of Jesse James, academia.edu, (accessed: https://www.academia.edu/21278067/Jesse_W_James_Forensic_Analysis, 10/3/2020)


Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

A Little Known Fact About John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth is the man anyone with an 8th grade American education could identify as the assassin of Abraham Lincoln - at least this was true of 8th graders back in the day. If he cites his profession, it is invariably actor, but this answer is incomplete, and possibly misleading.

It is true that Booth, descending from a line of aristocratic English actors entered the stage in 1855 at the age of 17 to become an actor of renown in his own right, but there is more. According to Dave McGowan, he was engaged to New Hampshire Senator John Hale's daughter Lucy. While this is not the little known fact we wish to disclose shortly, it is nonetheless not commonly known, and strikes one as a surprise given the constant claim that Booth was a "Southern sympathizer."

From our point of view, a southern sympathizer would not be engaged to a Yankee, especially when Hale was a strong abolitionist who worked closely with Lincoln's Secretary of State William Seward. It seems outlandish that Hale would countenance such an arrangement, or that Booth, if truly a "Southern sympathizer" would stomach the friction such antithetical political contrasts would nurture. Or perhaps it is the case that Booth was not really a confederate compatriot after all.

Some have gone so far as to say that Booth was a double agent working for the Union under the guise of a Confederate supporter. However, that is not something which we wish to explore at the moment.

So far, we see that Booth comes from an aristocratic family, is a successful and famous actor, has ties to Northern political parties, and might be an intelligence for the Union army - though we have by no means established the latter point.

So what is the little known fact about Booth? We implied that he was wealthy. The National Republican newspaper (1860-1883), reporting on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, estimated Booth's worth at 350,000 USD. While that may seem rather modest by today's standard, it might help to compare that money to a couple of standards to get a sense of his fortune.

For one, US GDP in 1865 has been estimated at 10 billion USD. Today it hovers around 21 trillion USD. So even today, for many Americans, 350,000 dollars would be an impressive amount of money, but the share of wealth of 350,000 USD was so much greater in 1865 as the two GDP numbers attest.

Another way to put Booth's wealth in perspective is to note that an ounce of gold was in the neighborhood of 20 dollars in 1865, whereas today, it has recently been in the neighborhood of 1900 USD. Or yet a final way to assess the wealth, we could look at a farm laborer wage. By sheer serendipity, we found a report to the legislature of New Hampshire, quite apropos under the occasion, published in 1872:

A farmer, in 1864, hired a man to work in haying for two dollars per day, and board.

Assuming a 6 day work week, which is being quite conservative, our laborer made 12 dollars per week or roughly 600 per year. He would have to work over 500 years to save the kind of money Booth had.

So we finally get to the main point that Booth had business interests outside of acting, the most curious one to us being the oil business. The Daily National Republican wrote the following in its April 15th edition as the ordeal of the assassination was unfolding:

It is said Booth is worth 350,000, which he made in the oil business; but it is supposed this is part of the sum paid him to murder President Lincoln.

Booth has been actor, and on several occasions has appeared at Ford's Theatre; this made him very acquainted with the various entrances and exits.

...

Booth had often represented himself to be in the oil business. The clerk at the hotel said to him, "Booth, have you made a thousand dollars to-day?" Booth replied, "No, but I have worked hard enough for it."

Besides disclosing Booth's business interests, the curious aspect of this report is that it was published in the newspaper edited by Simon P Hanscom who was the man who took a message to Lincoln while he was attending Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. Whatever could be so important that it required the editor of this newspaper to serve as courier?

Before closing, we should note gratuitously as other little known facts that two Booth family descendants were Claire Booth(e) Luce, and Theresa Cara Booth, the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

In any event, our purpose for this Chronicle was to broaden our dear reader's perspective on the infamous Booth who was more than merely an actor, and who might possibly have worked for Federal intelligence. There is more to be said about John Wilkes Booth.

Reference
Dave McGowan, WHY EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT THE LINCOLN ASSASSINATION IS WRONG: PART V, Center for an Informed America (website:http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/why-everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-lincoln-assassination-is-wrong-part-v/), April 19, 2014, accessed 9/27/2020

unknown, US Gross Domestic Product 1865-1939, Stuck on Stupid (website: http://www.usstuckonstupid.com/sos_downchart.php?year=1865_1939&units=b&chart=gdp&bar=1&stack=0&size=l&title=&color=c#copypaste), nd, accessed 9/27/20020

unknown, The Awful Murder., National Republican, April 15, 1865, accessed 9/27/2020 on https://archive.org/details/dailynationalrep1518hans/page/n1/mode/2up

Samual Flint, et. al., Report of Commissioners on Bureau of Labor Statistics to the Legislature, June
Session 1872, Manchester, 1872, 114 pp, accessed: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.096205135&view=1up&seq=114 9/27/2020

Justin Taylor, The Day Lincoln Was Shot: A Visual FAQ, The Gospel Coalition  (website), April 13, 2015, (website accessed 9/27/2020: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/the-day-lincoln-was-shot-a-visual-faq/ )

Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Did Laura Keene Nurse the Assassinated Lincoln?

One of  the secondary threads of the Lincoln assassination story describes how actress Laura Keene left the stage of Ford's Theatre to nurse the dying Lincoln by holding his head on her lap while doctors administered life saving measures. The story has been derided by some, but enough new evidence has emerged to give it a new lease on life.

The Lincoln literature is a vast hall of mirrors, where ambiguous and secondary evidence has morphed into holy writ - not to be doubted or questioned. The story of Keene's involvement in the assassination aftermath is not quite to that level, but is generally related as a matter of fact.

The background for this story is that Keene, a prominent British actress appearing in a production of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC, rushed for the presidential box when she realized what had happened to the president.

When she arrived, she is alleged to have asked the attending physician, Charles Leale, to hold Lincoln's head. As Leale reports in 1909,

While we were waiting for Mr. Lincoln to gain strength Laura Keene, who had been taking part in the play, appealed to me to allow her to hold the President's head. I granted this request and she sat on the floor of the box and held his head on her lap.

If that were not enough, there are supposedly patches taken from her costume retaining blood stains from Lincoln's wound. The National Museum of American History holds one of these relics.

Yet historian Norman Gasbarro expressed skepticism about this story, noting the logistical improbabilities of gaining access to the president's room in the pandemonium reigning at Ford's Theater immediately after the shooting of the president.

Writing on his fine Civil War Blog website, Gasbarro states:

Other eyewitness accounts are given, some stating that Keene was in the state box and some stating that she was not. Harbin does state rather emphatically that no one who made any of these statements ever testified at the trail of the conspirators, and that the statements were actually made many years later – Seaton Munroe (31 years),  Dr. Charles Leale (44 years), Jeannie Gourlay (58 years) and William Ferguson (65 years).  Harbin concludes by stating that it all comes down to deciding “which eyewitnesses… you believe” and that it is doubtful whether any conclusive proof will ever come forward.

Gasbarro rightly objects to the absence of contemporary accounts corroborated by first hand witnesses. Had these witnesses been deposed under oath, this matter would probably be settled. And why weren't they called to the witness stand? First hand witnesses are quite valuable to court cases. But alas, this matter is secondary to a murder case.

But witnesses, especially decades after the fact, can be troublesome, especially when other first hand witnesses contradict them. In this case, Clara Harris, whom Mary Lincoln had invited to accompany her and her husband to the play, claimed adamantly that Laura Keene was never in the president's box. Gasbarro concludes as follows:

Even more deceptive, is that after relying almost completely on Reck as a source, Steers fails to state the two important points in Reck’s conclusion:  (1) that Clara Harris, who was the Lincoln’s guest in the state box that night, vehemently denied that Laura Keene was ever at any time in the state box (Reck, p. 123), and (2) “No statement from Miss Keene about the alleged occurrence has ever been seen (Reck, p. 123).”

Nonetheless, Gasbarro leaves open the possibility that new evidence might confirm or contradict the legend of Laura Keene. Interestingly, such evidence emerged after he wrote his articles in 2012.

In the audience of the Ford Theater that evening was W. Martin Jones who described his location in a letter to Captain Bowen, dated April 24, 1865:

The theatre was well filled, and the play opened soon after eight oclock [sic]. I occupied a front seat in the first section from the private box fitted up for the Presidential company, which was on the right hand side of the audience.

In his mellifluous and hagiographic letter concerning Lincoln, he later describes the moments immediately after the shot of gunfire is heard:

Laura Keene stepped forward and endeavored to restore quiet, but suddenly, was seized with a new thought, she rushed to the President's box, and taking the head of the murdered man in her lap, did what she could to bring back the life that was fast passing away. Thus in the public theater of Washington the life blood of the illustrious Chief Magistrate of the Nation stained the robe of an Actress [sic]. 

So a very contemporary witness, writing 10 days after his visit to Ford's Theater, avers that Laura Keene indeed held the dying president's head in her lap. Reading this passage from a contemporaneous letter of the event, one could say, Case closed, and be done with it.

However, it is not so simple as that. On the one hand, this story is not a late invention. It is part of the earliest days of the assassination's history and legend. Even though others told this story in later years, it appeared much earlier - from the very beginning from someone who was a witness to the events at the theater.

There is one small problem. Jones' letter is a conflation of events he personally witnessed and read. He describes aspects of the funeral, visitation, and mourning of Washington, some of which he did not personally attend. In other words, his account contains a mixture of first and second hand accounts. Thus we ask, Did Jones actually see Keene in the state box of Ford' Theater - let alone hold the president's head?

His extremely valuable contribution was describing Laura Keene's actions in the very moments after the assassin left the stage. However, there is not enough evidence contained in his witness to suggest that Keene succeeded in her attempt to reach Lincoln. Jones notes that the theater was quickly cleared, so it seems doubtful that he had enough time to actually witness Keene enter the presidential box. They would have been moving in opposite directions, so it seems likely that our correspondent would have noted her in passing, yet says nothing of such an encounter.

Our conclusion is that Keene did not attend to the president. She attempted to do so, but failed. However, if firm DNA evidence from the alleged swatches from her dress confirm that the blood is Lincoln's, we would readily concede the point.

The morals of the story are that eye witnesses can produce conflicting testimony, and they are not the last word.

Reference
Norman Gasbarro, Laura Keene and the Bloody Dress, Civil War Blog, January 22, 2012, accessed 9/26/2020, http://civilwar.gratzpa.org/2012/01/laura-keene-and-the-bloody-dress/

W Martin Jones, Letter to Captain Bowen, April 24, 1865, original facsimile published January 22, 2015 by MailOnline.

Charles A. Leale, MD, Lincoln's Last Hours, February 1909, as reproduced by gutenberg.org, The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lincoln's Last Hours

Copyright 2020 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.