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The Lincoln assassination rabbit holes

Rabbit Hole #1: Jefferson Davis did it. Did you know Jefferson Davis was convicted of orchestrating Lincoln’s murder, with Mary Surratt and John W. Booth as his primary agents in that endeavor? That was the finding of the military tribunal that took 5,000 pages of testimony and then hanged four people the next day, indicating not a single officer on the tribunal bothered to read the transcript before rendering a decision. Even today, this theory is periodically trotted out and dusted off. Only problem is less than two years later, a Congressman named Rogers exposed the trial had been a sham and witnesses had been coached and paid for their false testimony. This inconvenient truth was brushed under the rug, but created enough of a public outcry that Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, who presided over the trial, went into a phase of “intense personal excitement” as he was worried he was becoming the fall-guy for the sham trial.

Rabbit Hole #2: Andrew Johnson did it. President Andrew Johnson was next in the patsy line. The Radicals began building a case against Johnson the moment he attempted to remove Edwin M. Stanton from his perch running the War Department, the military, the newspapers and the telegraph lines. Johnson survived the impeachment trial by one vote, despite the long list of dirty tricks, bribes and threats brought to play against him. Once the smoke cleared, Johnson knew the tribunal had been a complete sham and regretted allowing Mary Surratt to swing from the gallows and would soon pardon the convicted-but-not-hanged conspirators languishing in jail.

Rabbit Hole #3: The Pope was responsible. In order to shift suspicion off himself and the Radical Republicans who orchestrated the sham trial, Holt wrote a manifesto claiming the Catholics conspired to kill Lincoln based mostly on Mary Surratt being a Catholic, and Catholics at that time were a minority despised by many Protestants. Some really absurd evidence was brought to bear by Holt and this balloon did not fly with the public.

Rabbit Hole #4: The Rothschilds did it. This has become the standard canard for shielding the oligarchy that really runs the banking system. Because some powerful banking families of Jewish heritage happen to control a large percentage of the banking system does not mean they own all the money or even most of it, or that they are pulling evil strings on every event in history. I’d imagine Simon Wolf had a relationship with the Rothschilds, and did meet with Booth that day. However, it seems far more likely a New York element was closely involved, and not a London or European element. The key suspects beyond Booth and his inner circle should be the Radical Republicans working with Jay Gould and/or Fernando Wood as the “New York crowd.”

Rabbit Hole #5: Booth was insane and acting on his own. This is the meme that has come down through history, and ignores Booth’s command of spy craft and his devious methods for concealing operations. Sam Arnold, one of the primary conspirators in the kidnap plot remarked how closed-lipped Booth was on all matters and how Booth shared little information concerning the source of his funding, but Booth did buy a carriage, horses, four pistols, four knives, two rifles and a rowboat for the kidnapping scheme, indicating deep pockets were behind the plot.

The most suspicious thing about the trial, other than the perjuries committed, were the dozen conspirators who aided Booth that were never investigated or brought to testify. George Atzerodt ran down all the key players in his first confession, but that document was destroyed and never admitted into evidence. Why wasn’t the beautiful Kate Brown brought before the tribunal? She was reportedly taken to Stanton’s office and then disappeared forever. But then there were many others, and strong suspicion exists today these conspirators were hidden to protect their identities as double agents. Stanton undoubtedly had many doubles pretending to be loyal Confederate agents. This would have been standard procedure. And if so, the reason these doubles couldn’t be brought forth is because that would have indicated Stanton knew about the plot in advance, and had purposefully left Lincoln unguarded.

The day after Lincoln died, the Radicals met for a crucial strategy session and Thaddeus Stevens remarked on how the assassination had been “a godsend,” as Lincoln had been planning forgiveness for the South. That callous statement is an indication of the Radicals true feelings toward Lincoln, who had just returned from a visit to Richmond, where he’d walked the streets unguarded, and spoken freely with the inhabitants. If the Confederate secret service and Jefferson Davis had wanted Lincoln murdered in revenge for losing the war, he could have been cut down in the streets of  Richmond just a few days before his death in the heart of  Washington DC.

Of course the rabbit holes don’t stop there and every year some new piece of forged documentation will appear to send researchers on a goose egg hunt to nowhere, usually in support of one or more of the fake theories already listed. But it’s incredibly suspicious how so much evidence has emerged over the years to support the thesis of an inside job, and how none of that evidence seems to make it into the media or onto Wikipedia.

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Andrew Rogers is a key to the Lincoln assassination conspiracy

An “honest” man in Washington D.C. is one who stays bought after being bought once, but now and then an anomaly slips through, threatening to blow the lid off the systemic corruption. Such an anomaly was Andrew Jackson Rogers, self-taught lawyer and Democratic Party member who served Congress representing New Jersey’s 4th district during the Civil War.

On January 10, 1866, the House passed a resolution requesting “grounds, facts, or accusations upon which Jefferson Davis, Clement C. Clay, Jr.,…[and others] are held in confinement.”

Months had passed since a military tribunal run by Judge Advocate Joseph Holt had pronounced Davis and his top aides guilty of plotting President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Yet Davis and others were still being held incommunicado in Virginia, and not being forced to come to Washington to undergo the punishment meted out to their alleged operatives who’d been hanged for supposedly following their orders.

The files on the conspiracy trial had been immediately sealed and not available for review by anyone in the interest of national security. A glaring problem, however, was the star witness in the tribunal, Sanford Conover (real name Charles Dunham) had since been exposed as a serial perjurer whose testimony on just about anything was probably available for the right fee. Now the House of Representatives was demanding to see the evidence used to convict Davis and hang four people.

Rather than play along with the government’s cover story and rubber stamp a committee report, Representative Rogers, the sole Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, decided to subject the witnesses to serious cross examination. Rogers probably did not realize behind the scenes, at least one witness was already getting cold feet, as revealed in a letter sent to Conover by “M.”

“That villain Campbell has divulged the whole arrangement to Davis’ friends and will, if possible be pushed before the committee. I have spent on to assist you in getting him sweet again, so that he will stand by his story, or else keep out of the way. It must be done at any cost. I am prepared with the needful. Old 279 and nr 8 were at headquarters the day before yesterday and are furious. We shall be rewarded if we save their bacon. It must be done …”.

Since the Washington addresses of Senators Thaddeus Stevens and Ben Wade correspond to those number codes, they should have been implicated in the plot the day this letter was uncovered. It was undoubtedly written by Richard Montgomery, another of the tribunal’s key witnesses and an admitted Confederate spy/Union double agent. Along with Edwin Stanton and Salmon Chase, Stevens and Wade represented the controlling core of the Radical Republican cabal running Washington during the Civil War.

The “villain Campbell” was William A. Campbell (real name either Joseph A. Hoare or Hoome) and attempts were made by Holt to either “get him in the traces again” or at least to make sure he was not called before the committee. Apparently Holt possessed information that would land Campbell in prison for ten years if made public. Campbell was quickly taken into “protective custody” and held some private conferences with Holt, in which he promised to stick to the official story, which is why he ended up testifying on May 8, 1866.

The best summary of Campbell’s testimony I’ve discovered was written by James W. Thompson for the CHAB, a revisionist non-profit historical society located in Belgium of all places: [Campbell] proceeded to admit that the testimony in his deposition was false, that Conover had prepared his testimony, and that he had memorized it and had repeated it to Holt. He admitted that he was guilty of perjury, and told the committee that he had been paid $500 by Holt, $100 by Conover, and had been given another $300 for traveling expenses. Both the committee and Holt’s entire apparatus of perjurers were thrown into consternation.

Campbell was the first to fold, but not the last. A shady physician named Dr. Merritt admitted receiving the biggest bribe: $6,000 for his testimony. Mr. Snevel initially claimed he’d gotten a mere $375, although a newspaper reporter would discover Snevel had gotten an additional $1,000. Rogers established that five witnesses had used false names, including Conover, his wife and his sister-in-law.

Instead of arresting Conover as ringleader of this scam, however, he was mysteriously sent back to New York City accompanied by a sergeant-at-arms of the committee for the purpose of finding more witnesses. Immediately after arrival, he eluded the guard and disappeared.

Stanton’s good friend Representative George S. Boutwell wrote the majority report, ignoring the exposed perjuries and bribes of the witnesses who’d melted under Rogers’ cross-examination. Boutwell’s foregone conclusion was that Davis had been privy to the plot and Confederate documents would reveal this in time, although he admitted no hard evidence had yet emerged. Meanwhile, Rogers was given less than 48 hours to digest the court transcripts, depositions and documents in order to compose a blistering dissenting opinion.

Boutwell had done everything possible to conceal these incriminating documents and wanted them burned, and Rogers’ report carried no weight, but it did help catapult Judge Advocate Holt into a state of “intense personal excitement” such that Holt began demanding a court of inquiry to clear his name, a demand ignored by Stanton since it would have just opened up more wormholes in their flimsy and entirely imaginary case.

But too much damage had been done by the Rogers report because President Andrew Johnson finally was made aware that the majority of officers who’d sat on the tribunal remained unconvinced of Mary Surratt’s guilt and had all signed a petition requesting presidential clemency, a petition never shown to Johnson until long after Surratt swung from the gallows. Johnson was so infuriated he demanded Stanton’s resignation and Stanton responded by barricading himself in his office and launching an impeachment case against Johnson, a case built partially on the premise Johnson was the true instigator of the Lincoln assassination. It was an epic battle Stanton would lose by one vote, and that finally signaled the end of his once powerful and incredibly corrupt political career.

Only a handful of scholars have shown any interest in this Congressional investigation, which sheds so much light on the plot, and the Lincoln assassination is clouded by faithful allegiance to the official story, despite the fact military tribunals for civilians would soon be declared fraudulent and illegal by the U.S. courts. Unfortunately, that was 17 months after civilian Surratt was hanged by one.

“The cool turpitude of the whole crew sickened me with shame,” wrote Rogers in his dissenting statement, “and made me sorrow over the fact that such people could claim the name American.”

Coda: In closing his penetrating analysis of this incident, James W. Thompson wrote: “I might add that it still galls me to this day when I reflect that it was this vicious scoundrel Stanton who is the man responsible for the slogan which appears on all our American coins and paper money—In God We Trust. If there was ever a worse hypocrite, I don’t know his name!”

(Excerpted from Killing Lincoln: The Real Story)

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A nest of spooks controlled the Lincoln investigation

Meet Joseph Holt, a lawyer educated in Bardstown, Kentucky, who moved into the upper echelons of power under President James Buchanan, along with fellow Democrat, Edwin Stanton.
Holt was Secretary of War under Buchanan, a position Stanton would hold under Lincoln. War, it should be noted, is the greatest profit producer known to man, and Secretary of War is the key man deciding who profits most.

Recently, I watched Robert Redford’s The Conspirator, a film that reveals how Mary Surratt was railroaded onto the gallows by a kangaroo court after Lincoln’s assassination. The film encouraged me to peer deeper into the case, and I’ve been astounded by what I’ve uncovered in one week assembling primary documents available free online. Thanks to hundreds of citizen researchers, this case is probably the most heavily documented murder trial in history. In the late 1930s, a professor in Chicago published a book suggesting Stanton was involved in the assassination, and marshaled considerable evidence to support this claim, some of which has been disputed. But after watching Redford’s film, I became sympathetic to this theory, because it certainly was a kangaroo court.

Little known today is the fact public sentiment turned against Stanton and his tribunal after its key witness, Sandford Conover, was unveiled as a chronic perjurer. In fact, much of the eyewitness testimony at the trial appears manufactured and the chief investigator, Lafayette Baker, was notorious for manufacturing evidence and accepting bribes, while his boss Stanton had become quite expert at arranging convictions.
Conover was eventually unmasked as Charles Durham, a New York lawyer and double or possible triple agent who had been posted inside the Confederate War Department briefly and had posed as a journalist writing simultaneously for both sides. Historians are still trying to unravel all the various identities he created during the war.
Forgotten today is the fact Jefferson Davis and the heads of the Confederate Secret Service were proclaimed guilty of fomenting the assassination by President Andrew Johnson before the trial commenced. In response, they accused Johnson as being the instigator, as Johnson seems to have benefited most, and Booth had left his calling card at Johnson’s hotel before the assassination, a detail that convinced Mary Todd Lincoln of Johnson’s guilt. That theory conflicts with the allegation Johnson was slated for assassination along with Secretary of State Seward that night. Although the military tribunal sold that story to the nation, there remains zero evidence anyone ever intended to assassinate the Vice President.

Check out the trial transcript and I think you’ll be amazed at the obvious manipulations. The first third of the trial involved crimes fomented by Davis and the Confederate Secret Service located in Canada, and had nothing to do with the people on trial. Those poor saps were all fringe characters who had the misfortune of knowing John Wilkes Booth and being Southern sympathizers. Booth was dead, so there was little hope of moving up the chain to discover who financed the complex operation, and Booth was discovered with a large amount of cash. And Booth’s acquaintances were held in solitary confinement with hoods permanently placed over the heads so anything they might have known wasn’t going to leak out.

But once Conover was unmasked as a serial liar, the credibility of Holt’s military tribunal was put in doubt, and the fact neither Jefferson nor any Confederate officials were put on trial only supported the conclusion the trial had been rigged to hang patsies so real criminals could walk free.

Secret societies were very popular during the Civil War. Some, like the Knights of the Golden Circle, were masonic spin-offs possibly created by high-ranking masons who wanted to launch operations without casting shadows on their primary lodges. Albert Pike was the most powerful mason in America at the time, and although he was from Boston, Pike became a Confederate General and organized Indian raids on civilians during the war.

One powerful secret society was located in New York City, the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, created to protest the arrival of Irish, Italian and German immigrants into North America, especially Catholics. This movement become national and launched the powerful “Know Nothing” political party, so named because of the response members were instructed to give when questioned about the society. Thaddeus Stevens became an important member of that society.

Many conspiracy theories were floated right after the assassination, possibly by Stanton himself as he controlled the press in Washington. The official story was that Jefferson Davis had masterminded the plot in revenge for losing the war, but many were led to believe it was a Catholic conspiracy based on John Surratt and his mother being Catholic. Many intelligent Americans, however, probably suspected Stanton, since he was cited as the most unpopular man in the country by some newspapers. This theory would not re-emerge until the late 1930s.

After the hanging of Mary Surratt, the country was left with a sour taste since she was the first woman executed in American history and now it looked like she was set-up and innocent of all charges.

Holt became so dishonored by public sentiment he eventually published a pamphlet to clear his name in which he accused Jefferson Davis of fomenting a campaign to destroy his credibility by planting the spy Conover in his case. That document is available here:

https://archive.org/details/vindicationofju3693holt
Later on, Holt would write another book about the assassination, but this one accused the Vatican of fomenting the plot.