July 8, 1865---Conspiracy Theories abound . . .

JULY 8, 1865:           

Americans have had a long love affair with conspiracy theories. The earliest conspiracy theory regarding a President’s death surrounded the sudden passing of President Zachary Taylor in July 1850 after he ingested iced milk and cold cherries on a hot summer’s day. It’s most likely the milk --- standing outdoors and unpasteurized, of course --- had gone bad and that the President died of then-untreatable food poisoning. But given his strong objections to Popular Sovereignty and the spread of slavery, the idea that he was poisoned just months into his Presidency cannot be fully discounted.

 

 

Until the death of John F. Kennedy in 1963 at the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald (born Robert E. Lee Harvey Oswald), the crown jewel of all American conspiracy theories was the Lincoln assassination. And with good reason. The Confederacy had many, many reasons to want the Union President dead, and there were certainly enough enemies of Lincoln and his various policies, to carry out a State-sanctioned murder. Lincoln had enemies in the North as well. Copperheads, Radical Republicans, frustrated patronage seekers, even members of his own Cabinet like Salmon P. Chase, positioned themselves in opposition to Lincoln, to the war, and to Emancipation at various times during his first Administration.

Vice-President Andrew Johnson was briefly investigated regarding Lincoln’s death when it was discovered that John Wilkes Booth had left a calling card for the Vice-President at the Kirkwood Hotel on the day of the assassination. George Atzerodt’s subsequent “refusal” to kill Johnson was seen by some as a smokescreen to elevate Johnson to the Presidency. As a Southerner, Johnson was suspect in many Northern eyes as a fifth columnist for the Confederacy, and Johnson’s “Restoration” policy, which put most of the power structure of the antebellum South back in place in 1865, did nothing but inflame these fears. 

Johnson, however, is a most unlikely plotter. The man was a blunt instrument without political acumen, without grace, and without the cunning inherent in the makeup of any conspirator of note.

Of somewhat more interest as a conspirator is Edwin M. Stanton, the irascible and inflexible Secretary of War. In 1937, Otto Eisenschmidt published Why Was Lincoln Murdered? his study on the assassination. He laid the blame for Lincoln’s death on Stanton, who, he claimed, knew of the John Wilkes Booth plot of April 14th but refused Lincoln’s request for a particular bodyguard --- Thomas T. Eckert --- that Friday night. Eisenschmitt also claimed that General Grant (who was supposed to have attended the theatre with the President) was encouraged to leave town by Stanton, thus denying Lincoln the protection of Grant’s protective detail. Eisenschmitt puts Stanton’s actions down to monomania, a hatred of Lincoln, and a thirst for power. Eisenschmitt underscores Stanton’s disdain of Lincoln in the 1850s and his notable lack of response to the first reports of trouble at Ford’s Theatre as evidence of his involvement.

This of course utterly ignores the fact that Stanton and the President were close friends and had been for years as of 1865. It also does not take into account that Stanton had been receiving reports of various disturbances all through the raucous, celebratory night of April 14^th.

Subsequent scholarship has exploded Eisenschmitt’s theory. Historians have determined that Thomas Eckert was not stationed in Washington City at that time. Logic further erodes Eisenschmitt’s arguments, for Lincoln sent his close friend and bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon away that weekend and had given his official White House bodyguard George Crook the night off. If Lincoln had really wanted a bodyguard, as Commander-in-Chief he could have issued orders for a man, several men, a Division, or the entire Army of The Potomac to guard him that night.  Or not gone to the theatre at all.

A second theory involving Stanton revolves around the Dahlgren Letters, the orders supposedly issued by Lincoln (or Stanton, with or without Lincoln’s knowledge) to capture or kill Jefferson Davis in 1864. The originals do not exist. When Richmond fell, Stanton had them seized from the Confederate archives and destroyed. It is entirely possible that Stanton issued the orders on his own, and thus he may be inadvertently responsible for the revenge shooting of the President.  

The Dahlgren Letters conspiracy theory advances the idea that Stanton undertook a particularly clumsy conspiracy to have Lincoln removed from power. In this theory, Stanton sent Captain Ulric Dahlgren to Richmond with the letters as part of a raiding party to seize Davis (this much is true), but the theory then posits that Stanton made certain that the letters fell into the right Confederate hands when Dahlgren was killed on the raid. How he did so is unknown.

Critical thinking explodes this theory. First of all, if Stanton wanted the Letters leaked he could have just as easily had them published in the Richmond Press, or simply sent them down the well-known smugglers’ route that ran through Surrattsville, Maryland. Secondly, if he wanted to silence a co-conspirator, why select Captain Ulric Dahlgren as the fall guy? Dahlgren was a popular, politically and militarily well-connected officer (his father was Admiral John Dahlgren the inventor of the Dahlgren Gun) whose death would draw extra attention to itself. Third, how could Stanton be certain that Dahlgren would die? And fourth, how could Stanton be certain that the Letters would survive the encounter or reach the Confederate upper echelons?

The idea that Stanton planned the death of Lincoln via the leakage of the Dahlgren Letters is as absurd as arguing that Robert E. Lee planned the defeat of the Confederacy by “losing” a copy of his Battle Orders prior to Antietam so that George McClellan would find them.   

The Papacy has come in for examination as a possible source of conspiracy:

According to one idea, Lincoln’s death was repayment for the outcome of a legal case back in 1856, when Lincoln’s client prevailed in a slander suit over a Catholic Bishop in Illinois, and the Church had to pay a significant sum in damages. This seems too petty a matter to attract the attention of the Vatican.

According to a second idea, the Church sanctioned the assassination due to Emancipation which placed free blacks into direct economic competition with poor white Catholic immigrants in the United States. This rationale for murder seems too amorphous to contemplate seriously.

A third idea, that Pope Pius IX had Lincoln killed for offering Italian patriot and unifier Guiseppe Garibaldi a commission in the Union Army during the war makes little sense. The Papacy was in fact fighting to hold on to the Papal States and was opposed to Garibaldi, but had Garibaldi taken Lincoln’s offer and left Italy his absence would have aided, not harmed, the Church.  

Proponents of all these theories point to the fact that John Surratt was made a Papal Zouave after the assassination. A Papal Zouave was a minor honor, and was conferred to place Surratt (who claimed to be innocent) under the protection of his Church at a time when he almost certainly would have been hanged for his part in the John Wilkes Booth conspiracy.  In his later trial, Surratt was effectively exonerated.

Not surprisingly, some pseudo-historians argue that the Jews (or the Rothschilds, or “powerful international bankers” unnamed, depending on the source) had a hand in killing President Lincoln. 

According to one theory, Lincoln was killed because the Confederacy had borrowed millions of unrecoupable dollars from the Rothschild interests; another theory posits that the end of the war was going to throw the cotton market into turmoil leading to massive financial losses for moneyed interests. Exactly how killing Lincoln was going to fix any of this goes unexplained. 

A third theory, that Lincoln was murdered on the orders of the B’nai Brith for espousing anti-Semitism and undercutting the “international Jewish cabal”, is laughable. Lincoln was no anti-Semite. He was a noted Judeophile, and was alternately praised by some and damned by others for his inclusive positions.  As for the “cabal,” it belongs in the dark corners of raving minds.

Other, even crazier, theories argue that Mary Lincoln wanted her husband killed, that the Freemasons were involved, and that Major Henry Rathbone was a Booth conspirator.

Lincoln's ghost hovers protectively over Mary in this early "proof" of supernatural manifestation

Returning to the realm of sanity, more thoughtful conspiracy theorists argue that the President’s death may have been a Copperhead plot, a Knights of The Golden Circle Plot, or a lower-level Confederate plot directed from Canada. It is known that John Wilkes Booth visited the Confederate spymaster, Jacob Thompson, in Canada. But if Booth was planning on fleeing to Canada, as some speculate, why did he head south? Where, in fact, was he going when he fled Ford’s Theatre?

It is also known that John Surratt made a very quick trip to Liverpool, possibly for funds. Did James Dunwoody Bulloch, the Confederate spymaster extraordinaire fund the assassination of the President his nephew Theodore Roosevelt so admired?

Was this plot approved by Richmond or was it merely thrown together by field operatives? Did it even exist, or are we chasing shadows?

Lewis Powell advised his interrogators that they had barely scratched the surface of the assassination. Was he making an admission or just being dramatic?

Given the passage of time and the loss of so much evidence it is likely we may never know.