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COMMENT: In the Tuesday, 9/28/2021 Western Edition of The New York Times, there is an op-ed column by biographer Allen C. Gueizo about the dilemmas facing someone undertaking to write about historical figures who have been villainous in their conduct. (He is dealing with that in conjunction with writing about General Robert E. Lee.)
One of the institutional difficulties facing any would-be chronicler of the contemporary political landscape and its antecedents is the paramount reality of institutionalized lying about events–what the Seagraves called “History Laundering,” which leads to “Historical Amnesia.”
In FTR#691, we set forth the Confederate Secret Service’s central role in the successful plot to assassinate President Lincoln.
Two Confederate Generals–one of Lee’s cousins and one of his sons–appear to have been involved in the plot:
. . . . On 23 September 1864, Colonel Edwin Gray Lee, a cousin of General Robert E. Lee, was promoted to brigadier general. Lee had been involved in clandestine operations earlier in the war, and in December 1864 he was sent to Canada to take over some of the Confederate undercover work from Jacob Thompson and Clement C. Clay, the commissioners who had been operating there since the spring of that year. One cannot eliminate the suspicion that his promotion may have been related to decisions made at the presumed meeting of 12–15 September in Richmond.
On 20 October 1864, Brigadier General G. W. C. “Custis” Lee, General Robert E. Lee’s oldest son, was promoted to major general. Custis had been one of the leaders of the abortive Point Lookout raid in July. Now he was given command of another ad hoc task force, a ‘synthetic’ division, made up of various reserve units in Richmond and some troops in a quiet part of the defensive line east of Richmond. Some of these troops appear to have been used later to provide security for the escape route that Booth was planning to use. One suspects that Custis Lee’s promotion was related to the planning for the Lincoln operation. . . .
An Episcopal minister who was related by marriage to Lee also may have been in on the Lincoln assassination conspiracy.
Much of the planning for the Lincoln operation was based in Montreal, a subject that is covered at greater length later in the program.
. . . . John Wilkes Booth began in September to recruit a team to help him capture Lincoln. In mid-October he went to Montreal, Canada, where he met Confederate agents who may have played some role in the direction of the action part of the plan against Lincoln. In November, Booth returned to Washington. There is no indication that he and Conrad met, but they were in Washington simultaneously for several days before Conrad left to report his findings to Richmond.
In late September, an Episcopal minister, the Reverend Doctor Kensey Johns Stewart, made a trip from Canada into the Confederacy. Stewart was related by marriage to the Lee family. He had served as a chaplain under General Winder, who managed one of the Confederate organizations involved in clandestine operations. In 1863, Stewart had gone to England and later to Canada. His correspondence and other documents reveal that he was involved in some secret activity with President Jefferson Davis and other Confederate agents in Canada. In October 1864, he left Canada and went to Baltimore, traveled through southern Maryland, and crossed the Potomac in a makeshift boat at the spot that Booth later planned to use as the crossing with a captive Lincoln. He went to Cawood’s Signal Corps camp, where he wrote to General Lee. He later went to Richmond, conferred with Davis, visited Lee, and returned to Canada after having been allocated $20,000 in Secret Service funds by Davis. Because of Stewart’s past association with some of the critical geography involved in Booth’s planned escape route, and because of his high-level contacts, it is possible that he may have been involved in planning part of the Lincoln operation. . . .
The difficulty of accurately presenting history would certainly be reduced by telling the truth about key events. How many people are aware of the Confederate Secret Service’s successful plot to murder Lincoln?
Discussion
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