The Tortuous Pursuit of Motive and Means in the Lincoln Assassination - Research Proposal Example

? A Research Project Proposal Submitted by Number Submitted I. Tentative I propose to this paper “Chaos Theory: TheTortuous Pursuit of Motive and Means in the Lincoln Assassination” II. Research Problem With the surrender of Lee’s army, a rising chorus of voices from inside and outside the Confederate government called for a radical change of tactics. Members of President Jefferson Davis’ cabinet and a core group of army officers proposed a guerilla campaign, to be based in the wilds of western Virginia. Others favored a direct strike at the heart of the federal government, a bold and destabilizing gesture aimed at bringing the Union to its knees in one bold stroke. To that end, the Confederate government conceived a plan to kidnap Abraham Lincoln in order to force the Union to free Confederate prisoners of war. While the kidnapping never came to fruition, questions remain as to whether the Confederate government was involved in Lincoln’s assassination.1 It is fairly evident that Davis and key members of his government had conceived of, and funded, some initiative aimed at striking the Union beyond the battlefield. The Confederacy established an espionage department in 1864, which conducted covert operations from its base in Canada, helping plan and carry out the raid on St. Albans, Vermont.2 Many claims have been made about the independent nature of the conspiracy that orchestrated the Lincoln assassination. Skeptics insist that such a conspiracy likely began as a kidnapping plot involving the Confederate secret service and prominent members of the Confederate government. My hypothesis is that an intricately planned conspiracy involving Confederate agents in the U.S. and Canada, which ended in the assassination of the president, was carried out with the knowledge and involvement of Confederate officials. It is possible that the assassination itself was simply an unplanned outcome of a kidnapping plot that had gone undetected by federal officials. Either Booth, secret service officers or the Confederate high command (or all three) at some point decided that the only remaining viable, practicable option was assassination. As Lincoln himself told journalist Noah Brooks in 1863, “I long ago made up my mind that if anybody wants to kill me, he will do it. If I wore a shirt of mail and kept myself surrounded by a bodyguard, it would be all the same. There are a thousand ways of getting at a man if it is desirable that he should be killed.”3 My research will address the origins of the kidnapping plan; the extent to which the Confederate government was responsible; and the exact nature of the decision to alter the plan from a kidnapping to assassination. III. Definition of Terms “Chaos Theory: The Tortuous Pursuit of Motive and Means in the Lincoln Assassination.” Key terms/headings in this proposal include: No direct evidence - Lack of clear evidence linking Richmond to the conspiracy The Booth factor – The likely influence of Booth in altering the original plan Of like mind – Federal authorities convinced Davis, other high officials guilty Scapegoats…and more questions – Hysteria obscures true motive, investigations Fact over fiction – Preponderance of practical evidence points to Richmond IV. Background The conspiracy’s original goal had been to kidnap Lincoln and carry him to a secure location. The conspirators pursued that goal with a specific outcome in mind: attack the Federal government at its source, free the prisoners of war and enable the Confederacy to fight on.4 In his summary argument in the conspiracy trial, government Judge Advocate John Bingham claimed that a paper found in Booth’s possession contained a secret cipher, used by Davis himself, to communicate with his agents5 Bingham asked, “Of what use was it to (Booth) if he was not in confederation with Davis?”6 Bingham went on to conclude that “my own conviction is that Jefferson Davis is as clearly proven guilty of this conspiracy as John Wilkes Booth, by whose hand Jefferson Davis inflicted the mortal wound on Abraham Lincoln.”7 I propose to show that while the U.S. government identified no specific evidence, there is enough circumstantial and peripheral evidence to assert that Jefferson Davis, John C. Breckinridge, Judah Benjamin and possibly others had advance knowledge of these events. In Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln, William Tidwell argues that further corroboration of the Confederate government’s involvement in the kidnapping plot and, by extension, Lincoln’s murder, was represented by an unusually heavy concentration of Confederate troops stationed along what would have served as an escape route, along which Booth and the other conspirators had planned to spirit Lincoln away to Richmond.8 I propose to utilize Tidwell’s presentation of such facts as part of a coordinated, predetermined plan. V. No Direct Evidence The massive amount of paperwork reviewed by the specially appointed government commission revealed a strong sense of culpability in the development of a kidnapping scheme, but little that could be regarded as specifically incriminating, according to Francis Lieber, the committee’s archivist. “The documents proved particularly valuable as records of the operation of Confederate prisons, but they revealed nothing new about Jefferson Davis. The Committee, nevertheless, reported to Congress that there was ‘probable cause’ to link Davis indirectly to the assassination.”9 In his account of the assassination conspiracy, Roy Chamlee contends that the Confederate government did not order the assassination of Lincoln and attempted murders of William Seward and Andrew Johnson. However, he does recognize their probably involvement in a plan to kidnap the president. “Confederate leaders indignantly denied they had anything to do with the assassination, but they did not deny they had known of the proposed kidnapping.”10 VI. The Booth factor When, in his second inaugural speech, Lincoln proposed citizenship for the freed slaves, John Wilkes Booth’s outrage supposedly led him to decide that the president had to be stopped at all costs.11 There is no strong evidence showing that this was anything but a personal decision, or that Booth received encouragement, advice or other direct aid in choosing this course of action. But the paper trail followed by the government’s investigators led them to conclude that Booth had almost certainly acted as a Confederate agent in some capacity in 1864 and 1865. After Booth was cornered and shot in April 1865, authorities found in his possession a bill drawn on the Montreal bank in which Jacob Thompson had deposited funds shortly after Richmond fell.12 It seemed clear that even if John Wilkes Booth had taken it upon himself to kill Lincoln, he had in all likelihood been part of the plan intended to kidnap the president. As hopes for the kidnapping plot dimmed, Booth’s passionate pro-Southern and anti- abolition sentiments were inflamed. After Lincoln’s reelection, Booth became increasingly vehement in his denunciation of the president, often launching into hysterical rants.13 Perhaps emboldened by his celebrity and personal popularity, the actor came to see himself as a crusading liberator, a redeemer of the South’s all-but-dead hopes for survival. In his diary, he wrote, “our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done…I can never repent it, though we hated to kill: Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment.”14 Thus, the conspiracy’s grand kidnapping-and-ransom strategy had given way, either to orders from Richmond or to Booth’s rising anger over Lincoln’s plans to enfranchise the freed slaves. An entry in Booth’s journal, made during his flight from Washington after Lincoln’s murder, indicated that his decision to assassinate the president was actually “a last-minute contingency.”15 VII. Of like mind Journal or no, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was convinced that the conspirators had acted with the full knowledge and backing of Jefferson Davis and the Confederate high command. As a firm supporter of subversive tactics, Stanton was certainly apt to favor such theories. In a meeting with a Union cavalry commander planning a raid on the Confederate capital, Stanton appears to have accepted assassination as a viable option. “In all likelihood, it was during (this) meeting with Secretary Stanton that Davis became a definite target. Stanton had earlier demonstrated his contempt for traditional ‘usages of war’…To intrigue and conspire was second nature to Edwin Stanton.”16 At Stanton’s insistence, Davis, Breckinridge and other Confederate authorities were pursued vigorously after the war in an attempt to prove that Booth and his accomplices had acted on direct orders from Richmond as full-fledged members of the Confederate secret service. Yet hard evidence eluded Stanton. “Eventually, it became obvious to most investigators that if Davis and his staff had been involved in the conspiracy, they had successfully destroyed any and all documents linking them to it. Further, no material witnesses could or were willing to substantiate those claims.”17 VIII. Scapegoats…and more questions Booth’s true motives, possible supporters and any the existence of revelatory documents became matters of intense interest after the war. An angry public sought scapegoats, and many insisted that Lincoln’s vice president, Tennessean Andrew Johnson, was behind the plot.18 In the impeachment proceedings brought against Johnson, Congressman Benjamin Butler insisted that Booth’s journal would reveal the identity of the person, or persons, who had convinced Booth to kill the president. Unfortunately, further examination of the diary showed that pages had been removed. Butler speculated that the missing pages would uncover “who it was that could profit by assassination (and) who it was expected by Booth to succeed to Lincoln if the knife made a vacancy.”19 Such thinly veiled accusations greatly inflamed public outrage in a country desperate to assign blame and have its revenge on the guilty. The impeachment trial, certainly, was an outgrowth of hysteria, grief, anger and political infighting. But questions over the missing information in Booth’s journal, and the possible identity of concealed conspirators, remained unresolved. IX. Fact over fiction Fanciful theories are inevitable in times of chaos and crisis. Some have put forth the notion that Edwin Stanton himself orchestrated the assassination of Lincoln; that he was in the best position to control the investigations though such theories have generally failed to establish a convincing motive, other than a desire to overturn Lincoln’s plans for reconstruction of the South.20 However, the strongest motive lay with those who espoused the Confederate cause. These were the individuals who received funding from the Confederate treasury (Surratt and Booth), who were involved in the original plot to kidnap Lincoln (Booth and Confederate officials) and who turned to murder when the kidnapping plot failed.21 Based on fact, circumstance and available first-hand accounts, one must conclude that the Confederate government had knowledge of and involvement in the conspirators’ plan to kidnap Lincoln – the determination of whether this means they shared guilt for the assassination is a largely legal point that is beyond the scope of this research proposal. X. Research Methods My research methods will consist of comparing and assessing the strength of primary and secondary sources. I will use as my primary sources, William A. Tidwell’s April '65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War, and Thomas Goodrich’s The Darkest Dawn: Lincoln, Booth, and the Great American Tragedy. I will draw on government sources, including records from trials held subsequent to the assassination, including prosecution and defense evidence, as well as news accounts from the era and other peripheral sources. XI. Research Limitations Limitations of this research are based in the lack of available direct evidence linking the Confederate cabinet and high command to the assassination. As previously stated, however, there is plentiful secondary/circumstantial evidence supporting the assertion that the Confederate government had involvement in the kidnapping plot. My research will focus on this evidence in pointing to the link between the conspirators and the Richmond government vis a vis the original kidnapping plans. XII. Working Bibliography Andrew, Christopher and Christopher M. Andrew. For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush. New York: Harper Collins, 1995. British historian Andrew assesses the extent to which U.S. secret intelligence has been influenced by the personalities and policies of our presidents. Although George Washington and Woodrow Wilson made good use of secret intelligence, the author shows there was no official American intelligence community until WWII, when Franklin D. Roosevelt relied more attentively on intelligence collection and analysis than any previous president. Bakeless, John E. Spies of the Confederacy. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1970. This is a collection of stories of Confederate spies in Union territory and at some of the largest battles between North and South. Whether it’s the cause of the war or which side had the better leaders, there’s widespread disagreement about virtually everything related to the Civil War. Bakeless' book is no different and there’s plenty of room to disagree with his assertions and conclusions. Chamlee, Roy Z. Lincoln’s Assassins: A Complete Account of Their Capture, Trial and Punishment. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 1990. Chamlee’s book examines the background of all the known principal conspirators, as well as detailing the events described in the title (their capture, trial, and punishment). Chamlee argues fairly convincingly that each member found guilty was done so justly and based on hard evidence and not on the results of a kangaroo court. Unlike what many other authors have done, Chamlee shows absolutely no sympathy for Mary Surratt, who many have declared an unknowing conspirator. Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Schuster, 1995. Donald's profile of the 16th president focuses entirely on Lincoln, seldom straying from the subject. It looks primarily at what Lincoln "knew, when he knew it, and why he made his decisions." Donald's Lincoln emerges as ambitious, often defeated, tormented by his married life, but with a remarkable capacity for growth?and the nation's greatest president. What really stands out in a lively narrative are Lincoln's abilities to hold together a nation of vastly diverse regional interests during the turmoil and tragedy of the Civil War. Goodrich, Thomas. The Darkest Dawn: Lincoln, Booth and the Great American Tragedy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005. Thomas Goodrich’s book is a superb account of events from the fall of Richmond on April 3, 1865 to Booth’s assassination of President Lincoln on the 14th, to the assassination’s epilogue - Robert Lincoln’s efforts to commit his mother Mary Todd to an asylum in May of 1875. The book is a terrifically-researched account and reads more like a novel than the typical historical work. . Goodrich tells the story of Booth murdering Lincoln, as well as the U.S. Army’s subsequent chase, capture, and shooting of John Wilkes Booth. Goodrich also explores the reaction of people from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to those of ordinary people. Hanchett, William. The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986. Like almost any crime in which the alleged perpetrator escapes a trial or, if convicted, escapes appropriate punishment, the assassination of President Lincoln is rife with controversy and conspiracy theories. William Hanchett examines the conspiracy theories in order to try to uncover whether or not the Vatican, the Confederate Government, or Lincoln’s own cabinet were complicit in John Wilkes Booth’s murder of President Lincoln and the attempted murders of others in the Lincoln Administration. Harris, Thomas M. Assassination of Lincoln: A History of the Great Conspiracy. (Boston: American Citizen Company, 1892). Hartranft, John F., Edward Steers and Harold Holzer. The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2009). The legal and moral issues surrounding the conspirators' trial--the extraordinary use of military rather than civil justice, the treatment of the accused while incarcerated, the fine line between swift and precipitous justice--remain volatile, unsettled issues today. Hartranft's keen observations, ably analyzed by historians Steers and Holzer, will add a riveting new chapter to the story of Lincoln's assassination. Hearn, Chester. The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2007. Motivated by the unsuccessful impeachment proceedings initiated against President Clinton, Civil War historian Hearn decided to organize his extensive research on the public life of Andrew Johnson into book form. Although he touches briefly on Johnson's formative years, his primary purpose is to analyze the political turmoil responsible for creating a climate favorable to the possibility of removing a sitting president from office. Although no evidence was ever presented that Johnson was guilty of committing any high crimes or misdemeanors, a coalition of radical Republicans determined to punish the South and prohibit any Democratic encroachment into Congress was able to capitalize on the increasing tension between the executive and legislative branches of government. Herold, David E., et al. The Trial of the Alleged Assassins and Conspirators at Washington City, D.C. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson and Brothers, 1865. This is an extensive report of the testimony of all the witnesses examined in the trial, with the argument on the jurisdiction of the commission, and all of the arguments of counsel on both sides. With closing arguments of John Bingham, special judge advocate. Irons, Peter H. A People’s History of the Supreme Court. New York: Penguin Books, 1999. Irons takes a representative (if not comprehensive) accounting of the Supreme Court's most significant decisions, and puts a cultural and political context--and a human face--to the parties involved. He paints an absorbing and involving picture of landmark cases that readers are likely to recall but not fully understand. Kauffman, Michael W. American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies. New York: Random House, 2004. Abraham Lincoln’s murder at his moment of triumph at the end of the Civil War is probably the greatest “tragedy within a tragedy” the United States has ever experienced. Kauffman’s book is and exhaustive, and in some ways exhausting, account of that tragic evening at Ford’s Theater and the days leading up to it. Kauffman has written a superb account of the murder conspiracy and the execution of the plot, with John Wilkes Booth directing and starring in the performance of his lifetime. Besides a fine actor, Booth was also a ruthless manipulator who so beguiled people that for some it was probably after they learned of Lincoln’s death that they also realized their own complicity in the crime. Larson, Kate C. The Assassin’s Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. Philadelphia: Perseus Books, 2008. Larson freshly tackles these questions in this spirited narrative, mining just about every shred of evidence. While having started out believing in her subject's innocence, she ends up convinced that Surratt was guilty of joining John Wilkes Booth's plot to kill the president. Less sure, however, that Surratt should have swung from the gallows, Larson leaves this deeply freighted moral question open, as it should be. The tale itself could not be better told, nor could the cast of characters be brought more to life. Linder, Doug. Trial of the Lincoln Assassination Conspirators. 2009. Web. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/lincolnconspiracy/lincolnaccount.html. Linder offers an extensive, chronological account of the events leading up to the trial of the conspirators, and its aftermath. With links to accounts from the era, including letters, witness transcripts, testimonies, etc. Martin, Iain. The Quotable American Civil War. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2008. The Quotable American Civil War captures the words of a wide cast of voices from the Civil War era - the presidents and leaders, the generals and enlisted soldiers, the wives and daughters, the spies, slaves, and great writers of the day - offering the reader a glimpse back in time. It highlights our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, and the challenges he faced to prevent the country from breaking apart. Oates, Stephen B. Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths. New York: Harper Collins, 1984. Stephen Oates does not seek to diminish the man but rather to clarify him, separating the mythos from the mortal. And it is not an undaunting task, it seems, for soon after Lincoln's tragic end the mills began to churn. Lincoln was, Oates, reminds us, one of the most unpopular living presidents of our history. Sears, Stephen W. Controversies and Commanders: Dispatches from the Army of the Potomac. New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1999. Ten essays by an eminent Civil War historian profile the Army of the Potomac and its feisty generals, enmeshed in passionate criticisms of one another during a depressing period of successive defeats at the hands of wily Robert E. Lee. Sears (Chancellorsville, 1996, etc.) spins an accessible narrative as he draws close-up portraits of the succession of less-than- perfect generals who led the Union Army until the coming of Grant. Steers, Edward. Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2001. This well-argued, often exciting account of an organized Confederate plot behind John Wilkes Booth's murder of the president both finely synthesizes traditional Lincoln assassination scholarship and proposes new proof and twists on already acknowledged possibilities. Steers, an avocational historian who has written several other books on Lincoln and the assassination, has a sharp ear for historical discordance and a novelist's eye for illuminating detail. Stern, Phillip Van Doren. The Man Who Killed Lincoln. Garden City, NY: Dolphin, 1955. An engrossing examination of the man and the motives behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Stern’s practiced historian’s eye has a knack for finding the telling details in one of the watershed moments in American history. Swanson, James L. Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer. New York: William Morrow, 2006. In Manhunt, Swanson attempts to get into the minds of Booth and his co-conspirators to analyze their motives and emotions. Booth uses his skill as an actor to work his way south toward freedom, though slowed considerably by his broken leg. Davey Herold, one of Booth's accomplices in the assassination plot, accompanied Booth on his journey South, while Secretary of War Edwin Stanton dispatched Union Army units to hunt down the President’s assassin. Stanton uses every means available to him, both legal and extra-legal, to track down Booth and Herold. Swanson, James L. and Daniel Weinberg. Lincoln’s Assassins: Their Trial and Execution. New York: William Morrow, 2006. Whether it’s the Manson family, Lyle and Erik Menendez, or Charles Starkweather, Americans seem to have a morbid curiosity in murder trials and the justice dealt out afterward. While we seem to think of that as a Twentieth Century phenomenon, the trial of Preisdent Lincoln's assassins would suggest that it’s nothing new. Swanson and Weinberg’s pictorial history of the trial and execution of the Lincoln conspirators certainly makes a strong case that Americans’ fascination with high-profile criminals, especially murders, and the punishment inflicted on the murderers has been prevalent at least since 1865. Although Swanson and Weinberg really don’t present any new scholarship on either the conspiracy or the murder itself, what they provide is a fairly comprehensive examination of how the media presented the events of the assassination, trial, and execution. Tidwell, William A. April ’65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1995. This is the book that started the ball rolling for me. In this book, his sequel Come Retribution, Tidwell makes a compelling, though largely circumstantial, case that John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators were actually the “pointy-end of a spear” for a larger conspiracy reaching to the highest levels of the Confederate government. Tidwell, the former Army intelligence officer, exposes long-neglected records and lays them out in such a way as to build this compelling case. The book examines Confederate espionage activity in the North, Canada, and Europe and outlines the links to Confederate financial records, establishing a strong probability that the Lincoln Assassination was part of a Confederate Grand Conspiracy under Davis’ command rather than a much smaller conspiracy under Booth’s command. Tidwell, William, et al. Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 1988. Most Americans grew up believing John Wilkes Booth acted as the ringleader of a small group determined to kill President Lincoln, Secretary of State William Seward, and Vice President Andrew Johnson. Few took seriously the notion of a Confederate government-led grand conspiracy. Tidwell, Hall, and Gaddy however document Booth’s connections the Confederate secret service and operatives and outline how those agents supported Booth’s band of conspirators in the plot to kidnap Lincoln. Wert, Jeffry D. Mosby’s Rangers. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. John Singleton Mosby was the leader of a partisan unit which gained fame and seemed to maintain their honor, unlike some of his compatriots - Quantrill, Anderson and Ferguson to name a few. Mosby fought those who fought him and only rarely succumbed to the dirty tactic of retaliatory killings. Jeffry Wert presents a balanced look of the man who did much in the Civil War to inspire today's Special Forces. Winks, Robin W. The Civil War Years: Canada and the United States. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998. Robin Winks's classic study is a dramatic examination of the impact of the American Civil War on Canada, especially on the movement toward Confederation. A comprehensive review of the relations between the two countries from the War of 1812 down to the Civil War and the cloak-and-dagger activities that transpired on both sides of the border. Read More