Review on The Conspirator

[Roger Norton]

Thanks, Mark, Betty, and Laurie. The LOC honor came as a total shock. There must be some Lincoln fans who work there.

For someone who missed helping kids after retirement the web project has been a real savior for me. I have been able to continue to work with students and schools without physically being in the classroom. I feel blessed.

[nybronc]

Roger,Let's face it,you are the "go to" guy.You can look far and wide in most school ditricts and be lucky enough to find 1 teacher with your knowledge and skills.I hope you don't mind,but I did give the NYState Ed Dept your web-site! Roger, if I was fortunate enough to have taught with you I would not have retired when I did!

[Roger Norton]

Thank you, Herb. I am humbled by your kind thoughts.

[Mark]

I was thinking exactly the same thought, Laurie.

"The Lady doth protest too much."

The slave girl said she had to thread Mary's needles because Mary's eyesight was too poor.  But she says that Mary was sewing. It takes some eyesight to sew. No, she recognized him and I bet her pulse jumped.

Isn't it true that if Powell had waited a bit longer, Mary and all the occupants would have been taken away? Wouldn't this activity be seen from the street? Powell must have been hurting pretty bad not to notice the activity, I think.

[Randal]

I agree, he was pretty much resigned by then, especially when Wermerskirsh slammed the door behind him, and Major Smith or Richard Morgan (I forget which one) drew their pistol on him. The JIG was up!

[Kate Larson]

Or maybe, being a little *off* because of lack of sleep, being cold, and very hungry, Powell could not control that innate and sometimes uncontrollable urge to want to know what is going on? It is not like Powell was a seasoned, brilliant military commander who could assess a situation quickly and act accordingly. For those of us who have had 21 year old sons, or those of you men out there who can remember those days, how self centered do you think Powell was, and how disordered do you think his thinking was was at that time? He was under the impression that he actually killed Seward.  He may have thought he was untouchable, and that Mary was also untouchable - because she was older, seasoned, in control - maybe he was such a young risk-taker, so confident in his abilities, that he daringly and purposefully stepped right up to that door knowing he would come face to face with detectives.  What do you all think?!

[Thomas Thorne]

        Please call me Tom
       By the night of 4/17,Lewis Powell was so exhausted, cold and hungry ,he was beyond bravado,resignation or even chivalry towards the ladies. 

[McAvoyFan]

On the night of April 17,  her flat-out denial of recognizing a boy who had eaten at her table, boarded in her home and whom she had earlier visited in his hotel room is what really hanged her.  Not Powell's entrance.  She knew the boy's voice, I'm sure!  She knew his face.

One of the things I thought was incriminating was something I read in Kate Larson's book -- and you'll have to help me here because I returned the book to the library so don't have it in front of me. As I recall, in Mary's interrogation she slipped up at one point by calling Payne/Powell "Wood," the alias he used when he first came to Washington in February and registered as a guest at the boarding house. How did she know that if she didn't recognize him? I didn't get the impression that the interrogators used that name in questioning her about Payne, and I don't know if they even knew at that time it was an alias he had used. Anyone? Anyway, I took from that slip that, despite her vehement denials, she demonstrated that she did, in fact, recognize him. Of course, what she knew of him--except that he was the Rev. Wood who had stayed there earlier--isn't spelled out. But that begs the question: If she did know him as Rev. Wood who had once been a guest but had no knowledge of his role in the conspiracy, why not acknowledge it instead of insisting she had never laid eyes on him before?

Thanks for the referral to the Atzerodt confession on Roger Norton's great site and for the other info. BTW I did come across Mr. Norton's site when I was doing research for the Countdown to The Conspirator timeline that I did for our fan forum. One reason I wanted to read his statement is something I believe Michael Kaufmann (?) said: that Atzerodt basically 'sang like a canary'--hoping to get a deal like Lloyd and Weichmann got and become a witness for the government's case, thereby avoiding prosecution. As such, I was interested in reading what he said about Mary's involvement in the conspiracy.

One question: Which of Ed Steers' books has the transcripts referred to: Blood on the Moon or The Trial?

Again, thanks for all the references! 

[Randal]

"The Trial", and both of Atzerodt's  "confessions", are in "The Evidence"

[Roger Norton]

Here's a positive review today from Down Under.

[nybronc]

While I was still teaching high school history and being the district director[4 high schools] of social studies I made sure that a unit on the civil war was taught.The outcry was,will this be on the New York Regents exam?Since I was one of many directors chosen to go Albany to help write the Regents exam.I always made sure that there were enough questions about the civil war on the Regents exam.Now that I have been retired 11yrs now,I am sure things have been altered.We have to teach History not social studies.Remember,You have to hook them-before you pull them.

[Roger Norton]

If I ever heard of this book, I have certainly forgotten about it.  It was released first in 1961, while I was in high school.  The author (now deceased) is David Stacton, and the title is The Judges of the Secret Court.  The new paperback release from New York Review Books is selling for $15.95 in stores.

Here's the cover: