Sarah, whatcha been up to?
In the world of spooks, great attention should be paid to the 20-something super hotties because they make effective spies, and this did not start with Mata Hari. In my attempts to untangle the plot that assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, Sarah Slater joins Sanford Conover on the dias of most under investigated suspicious people inside the center of the true conspiracy.
Someday a book will appear that focuses only on Slater, and it will be long over-due, and perhaps some documents will also surface that will purport to explain what happened to her and her brothers, although odds are these documents will be forgeries and the book filled with misdirections and disinfo, if the past is any guide to the future. That’s just the way things work when investigating deep political events that threaten to shake the populace’s faith in their primary institutions, which is why Lincoln, JFK and 9/11 have such blatant propaganda protection shields in place.
A few months before Lincoln was killed, a newspaper ad appeared in a Southern newspaper offering to assassinate Lincoln, Seward and Johnson for $1 million, and a post office box given as the return address. Strangely, no investigation was ever conducted concerning funds or messages that may have been sent to that box, even though Secretary of State Seward received a copy of the ad and asked Stanton to look into it.
Let’s suppose $1 million was on the table, supplied by a cartel of wealthy individuals with a stake in Lincoln’s removal. And consider this is much closer to $100 million in today’s money. It would be more than enough to set-up anyone for life in a new identity on a new continent.
Slater went by the name Kate Brown or Kate Thompson and was first identified by George Atzerodt, who indicated Louis Weichmann had further details on her. The picture above may be Slater. Little is known as immediately after the assassination, she dropped off the face of the earth.
I plan to keep researching Sarah, and fold whatever turns up into my book on the Lincoln assassination because she and Conover may be the keys to unveiling the real plot. Both stand accused of being Confederate spies, but I find it much more likely they were double agents working for a corrupt entity in New York City that was getting inside tips from the War Department. Great fortunes were made during the Civil War, and no one made a bigger one than Jay Gould, who seemed to have inside information on the outcome of battles before anyone else on Wall Street. Did you know that the man in charge of the War Department telegraph lines rose to become head of Western Union thanks to his friendship with Gould? These links are worthy of more investigation as well.
Slater should have been easily located for the military tribunal, and some reported she was taken to meet Stanton, but the official record indicates she could never be found and zero information ever located concerning her real identity. This is an obvious lie, but could have been told on the grounds of protecting national security if Slater was a double agent.
I find it fascinating that both her brothers were Confederate soldiers accused of fomenting desertion among the troops, a very serious crime. Yet, they managed to slip away, and like their beautiful sister would disappear off the pages of history forever. If you’re going to set-up a new identity on a new continent, it sure helps to have some family along to keep you company.
I hope I locate a trail to wherever Slater landed, although I’m sure whatever trail exists has already been salted by the machine protecting the Radical Republican cabal that orchestrated Lincoln’s murder and then celebrated it secretly as a “godsend.” Because that machine does exist.