During his escape following his shooting of Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth kept a small diary recording his thoughts. (Author’s collection)
I have a greater desire and almost a mind to return to Washington and in a measure clear my name. Which I feel I can do.
—John Wilkes Booth
We have Booth’s diary, and he has recorded a lot in it. … It concerns you for we either stick together in this thing or we will all go down the river together.
—Edwin M. Stanton, allegedly quoted in George W. Julian’s diary
The epigraph by John Wilkes Booth that appears above can be found in Booth’s little diary or memorandum book, currently on display in the museum in Ford’s Theatre. Booth made the entry during his attempted escape while hiding in a pine thicket, waiting until it was safe to cross the Potomac River into Virginia following his murder of Abraham Lincoln. The entry has spurred conspiracy-minded individuals for more than 140 years in their quest to prove that Lincoln’s assassination was part of a grand conspiracy between members of his own administration and the Confederate government. Beginning in 1865, when Union prosecutors tried to prove that Jefferson Davis was behind Lincoln’s murder, to more modern times, when self-professed historians claim Edwin Stanton engineered the president’s death, reams of mysterious documents have surfaced which, if true, would force a rewriting of American history in shocking terms.1 It all began when the assassin’s diary was found on his body after he was killed at the farm of Richard Garrett near Bowling Green, Virginia, on Wednesday, April 26, 1865. What happened to that diary shortly after its discovery forms the basis of one of history’s more successful hoaxes, which included the forging of documents and the salting of archives in an effort to shock the public into believing a sensational crime had occurred involving treason at the highest levels of government.
During his escape following his shooting of Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth kept a small diary recording his thoughts. (Author’s collection)
Our story begins on April 25, eleven days after Booth fatally shot Lincoln and after he had safely crossed the Potomac River with his cohort Davy Herold, when three former Confederate soldiers took them to the farm of Richard Garrett, a Virginia tobacco farmer. Garrett, believing the two men were also Confederate soldiers on their way home, offered them food and rest. Booth and Herold bedded down in the Garretts’ tobacco barn, content that they were safe for the time being. Around three o’clock in the morning, however, they were suddenly awakened by the sound of horses and men shouting. Stirring from their sleep, the two men peered between the open slats of the tobacco barn. In the moonlight they could make out a troop of Union cavalry gathered in front of the Garrett farmhouse.
Abraham Lincoln. Photograph by Alexander Gardner, February 5, 1865. (Author’s collection)
After twelve days of hard searching, Union soldiers finally had caught up with Booth and Herold a hundred miles south of Washington, deep in Confederate Virginia. Based on a telegram received in the War Department telegraph office on Monday, April 24, Lafayette C. Baker, head of the National Detective Police, had sent two of his detectives and a troop from the 16th New York Cavalry to King George County, Virginia, in pursuit of the two fugitives. The detectives accompanying the squad of cavalry received a tip that one of the Confederate soldiers who aided the two men could be found in Bowling Green. Rousting the soldier from a dead sleep shortly after midnight, the detectives convinced him he should give up the two fugitives for his own safety. Realizing he had no choice, the soldier led the troopers to the Garrett farmhouse, where they learned that Booth and Herold were sleeping in the nearby tobacco barn.2
The Richard Garrett farmhouse where Booth died early on the morning of April 26, 1865, twelve days after he began his escape. (Author’s collection)
Surrounding the barn, the detectives began negotiating with Booth to surrender. After a bravado performance in which Booth tried to convince the soldiers to give him a fair chance to shoot it out with them, the barn was set on fire in an attempt to force Booth into surrendering. Herold had surrendered earlier without a struggle. As the fire raged through the barn, a shot rang out and Booth fell to the barn floor mortally wounded. The shot came from the pistol of Sergeant Boston Corbett, one of the troopers of the 16th New York. When questioned later, Corbett said he saw Booth raise his carbine as if he were going to shoot at the officers standing outside.3 Corbett’s act would eventually be used by conspiracy theorists, who claimed he violated orders not to shoot Booth, but to take him alive. Corbett, the theorists explain, was under secret orders from Secretary of War Stanton to make sure Booth was not taken alive, so as to prevent him from revealing that Stanton and others were behind Lincoln’s murder.4
An engraving depicting Booth’s final moments before dying on the porch of the Garrett farmhouse. (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 13, 1865)
The mortally wounded Booth was dragged from the burning barn and carried to the porch of the Garrett house, where he was laid out on a small mattress. The bullet had passed through his neck, severed part of his spinal cord, and left him paralyzed from the neck down. As Booth lay dying, Lieutenant Colonel Everton Conger, head of the search party, noticed his lips moving as if he were trying to speak. Leaning over and placing his ear close to the dying man’s mouth, he heard Booth say in a halting whisper, “Tell … my … Mother … I … die … for … my country.”5
It was a few minutes past seven o’clock on the morning of April 26, 1865, when Booth died. Before his body was shipped back to Washington, Conger carefully went through the contents of Booth’s pockets, making a written inventory of each item. He found a small stickpin inscribed, “Dan Bryant to J.W.B.,” a small boxed compass, a file with a cork stuck on the sharp end (for protection), a small pipe, a large handful of shavings (to use as a fire starter), a spur, a bank draft made on the Ontario Bank of Canada for 61 pounds, 12 shillings, and 10 pence (the equivalent of $300 in gold or $660 in U.S. currency—greenbacks), and the small memorandum book, which Booth used as a diary during his flight.6 Inside the diary were five photographs of women he had known—four actresses and his fiancée, Lucy Hale.
The triumvirate that resulted in Booth’s capture and the recovery of his diary. From left: Lieutenant Luther B. Baker, Colonel Lafayette C. Baker (head of the National Detective Police), and Lieutenant Colonel Everton Conger. (Author’s collection)
The items were carried back to Washington and turned over to Stanton in his office in the War Department. The bank draft, compass, carbine, Bowie knife, and brace of pistols taken from Booth and Herold were introduced at the conspirators’ trial by the prosecution as exhibits.7 The small memorandum book, or diary, however, was never produced and remained in Stanton’s safe, seemingly forgotten at the time of the trial. The diary surfaced two years later when it was introduced as evidence during the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson in the House of Representatives. Although the diary was known to have existed at the time of the Lincoln conspiracy trial, neither the prosecution nor the defense nor the nine military officers serving as judge and jury questioned its absence. Not even the press raised questions about the diary or why it was not introduced at the trial.
John Wilkes Booth’s little memorandum book, often referred to as his diary. It was found on his body after his death by Lieutenant Colonel Everton Conger and Lieutenant Luther B. Baker and turned over to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. (National Park Service)
When the diary was finally examined, it was found to have several dozen pages missing. Lafayette C. Baker was called as a witness at Johnson’s impeachment trial in 1867 and engaged in the following exchange:
Q. You are still of the opinion that the book [Booth’s diary] is not now in the condition it was when you first saw it?
A. That is my opinion.
Q. Did you see the Secretary of War count the leaves at the time you and [Lieutenant Colonel Everton] Conger were together at his house?
A. No, I think not.
Q. Did you count the absent leaves or stubs?
A. No sir; I never saw any stubs until I saw them here.
Q. Do you mean to say that at the time you gave the book to the Secretary of War there were no leaves gone?
A. I do.
Q. That is still your opinion?
A. That is still my opinion.8
Conger also appeared as a witness. His testimony went somewhat differently:
Q. To whom did you deliver them [articles taken from Booth’s body at the Garrett farm]?
A. To Mr. Stanton.
Q. Did he retain possession of the diary?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Do you know who has it now?
A. Judge Holt [Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt].
Q. Do you know when he received it?
A. I do not.
Q. Who was present when you delivered the diary to Mr. Stanton?
A. Colonel L. C. Baker.
Q. Have you seen that diary since?
A. Yes, sir; I saw it today.
Q. State whether it is in the same condition as when you delivered it to Mr. Stanton.
A. I think it is.
Q. Have you examined it closely?
A. I have.
Q. Are there any leaves cut or torn out?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Were they torn out when you first had possession of it?
A. There were some out and I think the same.9
The conflict between Baker’s and Conger’s testimony was never resolved. It should be noted that Baker was not present at Booth’s capture, and that it was Conger who removed the diary from Booth’s body and examined it. What we do know for a fact is that dozens of pages were missing from Booth’s diary at the time of his capture, and that at least two of the pages were removed by Booth to use for writing notes intended for Dr. Richard Stuart when Booth and Herold stopped at the Stuarts’ house. This occurred on Monday, April 24, while Booth and Herold were at a cabin preparing to leave for Port Conway on the Rappahannock River. Booth was miffed at Stuart’s failure to allow him to spend the night in his house and wrote him a note expressing his disapproval of Stuart’s behavior. The “missing” pages became one of the first of many controversial questions to come out of the Lincoln assassination. Conspiracy theorists became convinced they contained the key to who really was behind Lincoln’s assassination. The very notion that pages were missing suggested a cover-up.
Jumping forward to the year 1937, Otto Eisenschiml, a chemist turned historian, published his infamous book, Why Was Lincoln Murdered? The book caused a seismic upheaval among history buffs and the public in general.10 Eisenschiml, through clever innuendo and manipulation of facts, framed a series of questions that pointed an incriminating finger at Lincoln’s secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, accusing him of masterminding Lincoln’s assassination. Up to this point, there was never any suggestion that Stanton or anyone else in Lincoln’s administration had anything to do with his death.
One of the entries Booth made in his diary was a statement that caught Eisenschiml’s attention: “To night I will once more try the river [Potomac] with the intent to cross; I have a greater desire and almost a mind to return to Washington and in a measure clear my name. Which I feel I can do” (emphasis added). How could Booth possibly clear his name? What did he mean when he wrote those words? Eisenschiml seized on Booth’s remark as a launching pad for his bizarre theory that Stanton, along with other powerful figures in the North, wanted Lincoln out of the way so they could deal with a defeated South without his interference. To accomplish this, Stanton turned to Booth as the instrument to remove Lincoln by capture or assassination. Never once did Eisenschiml consider that Booth was acting on behalf of the Confederate government, and therefore serving a different cause. Underlying Eisenschiml’s theory of Stanton’s involvement was his belief that Stanton had been informed that a plot was afloat and did nothing to stop it from taking place.11
Some conspiracists believe Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton deliberately withheld Booth’s diary because its content implicated him and other prominent people in Lincoln’s murder. (Author’s collection)
Eisenschiml also claimed that Lincoln was refused protection at the same time he wrote that the president’s bodyguard was derelict in his duty, thereby allowing Booth easy access to Lincoln. Both claims are false. Lincoln never requested protection, and his bodyguard that night, John F. Parker, accompanied him to the theater. Once inside, Parker’s job was done until it was time for the president to leave. Lincoln’s valet and personal messenger, Charles Forbes, sat outside the box and screened visitors who wished to see the president. He allowed at least three people to enter at different times during the evening. Unfortunately, Booth was one of the three.
Eisenschiml further claimed that if General Grant had accompanied Lincoln to the theater as originally planned, Booth would never have been able to pass Grant’s military guards, thus protecting Lincoln as well as preventing his own assassination. Eisenschiml claimed that Stanton ordered Grant not to go to the theater with Lincoln, and Grant dutifully complied. Apparently Eisenschiml believed Stanton was senior in command to the commander in chief. Another false claim. Grant was free to attend the theater with the Lincolns that night but chose to travel with his wife to New Jersey to see their children. Like Lincoln, Grant often moved about Washington unaccompanied by military guards or aides, including those occasions when he attended the theater. Just two months earlier, on February 10, Grant accompanied Lincoln to Ford’s Theatre to see Booth’s brother-in-law, John Sleeper Clarke, in a comedy entitled Love in Livery. No military guards were posted at the president’s box, and several people freely entered the box with messages for Lincoln. The event was described in the Washington Evening Star the next day.12
While Eisenschiml went to ridiculous extremes in attempting to implicate Stanton in Booth’s plot, he did not claim that Stanton withheld the diary to cover up his role in Lincoln’s murder. Rather, he believed that Stanton withheld the diary because its contents would have benefited some of the defendants on trial for Lincoln’s murder. “Booth’s notebook,” Eisenschiml wrote, “showed plainly that, up to the last day, kidnapping and not murder had been the goal of the conspirators.”13 While Booth initially plotted to kidnap Lincoln, he changed his plan to murder days before April 14. Here again, Eisenschiml overreached. Did Eisenschiml really believe Booth and his cohorts could kidnap the president of the United States and transport him 120 miles through enemy-occupied territory without someone getting killed? If Booth and his cohorts had no intention of killing anyone, why were they carrying guns during their aborted kidnap plot on March 17, 1865?
While Eisenschiml raised several questions about the assassination, he never questioned the missing pages. That was left to later conspiracy advocates, who, although lacking Eisenschiml’s reputation as a historian, equaled his audacity in attempting to rewrite history.
In November 1975, thirty-eight years after Eisenschiml first accused Stanton of involvement in Lincoln’s murder, a rumor spread that the long-sought missing pages had at last been discovered in the possession of a Stanton descendant, and that they were filled with incriminating evidence not only resurrecting Otto Eisenschiml’s theory of Stanton’s role in Lincoln’s murder, but naming dozens of other high-ranking politicians and prominent people as accomplices. Two students of the case, James O. Hall and Richard Sloan, were particularly interested in pursuing the claims. Hall was the acknowledged scholar on the subject and spent countless hours investigating the various conspiracy theories associated with Lincoln’s murder. Sloan was the editor and publisher of a popular Lincoln newsletter, The Lincoln Log, which devoted much of its space to the assassination. If the rumor about the missing pages was true, their exposure could result in the rewriting of American history. Sloan doggedly pursued the rumors and was able to make contact with a man who claimed to have access to the missing pages.
At first, Sloan’s informant insisted on anonymity, referring to himself only as “Mr. X.”14 Eventually Sloan gained Mr. X’s confidence, and he revealed himself to be Joseph Lynch, a dealer in rare books and Americana living in Worthington, Massachusetts. Lynch told Sloan that he discovered the missing pages in 1974 in the possession of one of Stanton’s great-granddaughters. She had contacted him for an appraisal of some artifacts. (She also insisted on anonymity, Lynch claimed). Hall had many questions for Lynch, but he was sure that if he pressed for an interview Lynch might be scared away. So Hall fed some of his questions through Sloan, who reported back to him. The whole affair had an air of mystery and intrigue. Lynch never gave Sloan his personal telephone number, always using a pay phone when contacting Sloan.15 It was reminiscent of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s adventures with “Deep Throat” in their investigation of the Watergate cover-up. Sloan kept his newsletter readers informed of the latest news as it became available to him.16 Readers of the Lincoln Log could not wait for the next issue with its tale of the missing pages.
The dean of Lincoln assassination scholars, James O. Hall spent several years demolishing the numerous unfounded myths associated with Lincoln’s murder, including the missing pages from Booth’s diary. (Kieran McAuliffe)
As word of the discovery of the missing pages spread, a motion picture studio in Salt Lake City, Sunn Classic Pictures, expressed an interest in obtaining the rights to them for use in a major motion picture about the Lincoln assassination. The pages were the stuff great movies were made of. Lynch, claiming to act as the Stanton heir’s intermediary, negotiated with David Balsiger and his partner, Charles Sellier, of Sunn Classic Pictures for the use of the missing pages along with other related documents that Lynch claimed were in her possession. Balsiger allegedly paid $39,000 for the right to read the material and take notes.17 They soon acquired a full transcript of the missing pages, again through Lynch’s efforts. Balsiger and Sellier wanted to see the original pages, but Lynch claimed the Stanton heir would not permit anyone but him to see them, claiming they were kept in a bank safe-deposit box. In October 1977, Sunn Classics, without ever having seen the original pages, released the movie and a paperback book under the title The Lincoln Conspiracy.18
Lacking the necessary expertise to evaluate the transcripts, Balsiger and Sellier had hired Ray A. Neff as a consultant. Neff, a professor of health sciences at Indiana State University, was well known in assassination circles for his bizarre theory that Booth escaped capture from the Garrett farm, eventually making his way to Guwahati, India, where he died in 1883. Similar to the plot outlined in the missing pages, Neff claimed that Stanton and his cronies were behind Lincoln’s murder. Neff had amassed a vast collection of documents that supported his theory. The documents, all typescript copies, spelled out in detail the who and why of Lincoln’s murder. None of the original documents existed; only typed copies were in Neff’s possession. Neff’s collection neatly dovetailed with the missing pages.
In 1961, sixteen years before the release of the movie, Neff had convinced Robert Fowler, the editor of Civil War Times Illustrated, that his unorthodox claims fingering Stanton for Lincoln’s murder were true. In 1961, the centennial year of the start of the Civil War, Fowler ran a sensational article in his magazine titled “Was Stanton behind Lincoln’s Murder?”19 The article was based on the “new discoveries” by Neff that he made available to Fowler. Neff’s most sensational claim involved the man behind Booth’s capture, Lafayette C. Baker, head of the National Detective Police. Neff claimed to have discovered cipher messages written in the margins of a book originally owned by Baker. Neff also claimed to have found the book in a used bookstore in Philadelphia. According to Neff, Baker, privy to Stanton’s treasonous plans, came to fear for his life because of what he knew. After several scrapes with near death, Baker allegedly succumbed to arsenic poisoning in 1868, murdered to keep him from exposing the other plotters. According to the ciphers Neff discovered in Baker’s book, Stanton headed a group of over fifty prominent people in the North who sought to remove Lincoln once the war was won. It was an astonishing claim.
Neff’s treasure trove included: secret service files pilfered from Baker’s agency by one of his top agents, Andrew Potter; an unpublished diary of a congressman, George Julian; old letters, book manuscripts, deathbed confessions, secret cipher-coded messages, dozens of rare photographs, and secret correspondence intercepted by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.20 The documents literally ran into the thousands of pages. The discovery of such a wealth of previously unknown material was unprecedented in the annals of historical research. It was this “gold mine” of incriminating documents that consultant Neff brought to Balsiger and Sellier and which, together with the missing pages from Booth’s diary, were used as the basis for their movie and book.
There was a problem, however. In the years following the 1961 article in Civil War Times, several historians presented evidence that Neff’s claims were based on faulty research and fabricated documents (one historian referred to them as “ingenuine”).21 They were found to contain wrong names, wrong dates, wrong places, and wrong relationships, which seriously challenged their authenticity. Most disturbing of all, every one of Neff’s documents was a typescript copy of an original that no longer existed.22 Not a single original document survived.
Between 1977 and 1981, the revamped Civil War Times, under its new editor, William C. “Jack” Davis, ran a series of editorials retracting the 1961 article.23 Davis wrote, “Rarely does a magazine print a retraction or refutation of one of its own articles, but this is precisely what we do now. It is a debt we owe to the cause of history.”24 Davis wrote that if they are not “outright forgeries, [they] are so highly suspect as to make them inadmissible as evidence in any serious investigation.”25
Davis, however, was referring only to the documents in Neff’s collection, not the missing pages of Booth’s diary. What about these pages? Unlike the Neff material, the originals of the missing pages allegedly still existed, although they were unavailable for historians to examine. When pressed to produce the original pages, Lynch claimed the owner was reluctant to release them because of her concern the documents might legally belong to the federal government, and she did not want to become embroiled in a messy legal battle.26 This argument fails, however. A person’s private diary or journal, even if used as evidence in a murder trial, remains the property of the individual. Whatever the real reason, the alleged original pages remained hidden away from scholarly examination.
One of the caveats that raised doubts over the authenticity of the missing pages was Lynch’s claim that they had faint blue lines printed on them while the diary displayed in Ford’s Theatre was believed to contain pages without blue lines. Hence, the missing pages were not from the Booth diary. Lynch received permission from Michael Harman, custodian of the relics in the Ford’s Theatre collection, to examine the diary firsthand. To his delight, he found that the diary had the same faint blue lines as the missing pages. They had not been noticed before. Lynch further reported that he found “suspicious erasures … and evidence of invisible ink that was beginning to show up” on several of the pages. But his most shocking conclusion was that the writing in the diary was forged!27 It wasn’t, Lynch said, Booth’s handwriting.
The forgery claim made no sense at all. When Balsiger learned of Lynch’s “findings,” he sent Ray Neff, now working for Balsiger, to Washington in hopes of having him examine the diary and photograph the pages using ultraviolet and infrared illumination in an effort to confirm Lynch’s claims. As incredible as it sounds, Harman granted Neff permission to examine the diary!
James O. Hall, on learning that Neff had photographed the diary on behalf of a commercial movie studio, became concerned that the pictures would become the property of Neff and Balsiger and that other researchers would not have access to them. Any claims made about secret writing or evidence of tampering or forgery could not be independently verified. Hall was concerned because of Neff’s involvement in the earlier controversy about Lafayette Baker’s alleged secret cipher markings that William Davis had termed “ingenuine.”28 Hall’s concern was that Neff was working as a consultant for a private, profit-making company whose financial interests would be seriously jeopardized if the documents in question proved fraudulent. The National Park Service had no way of protecting itself should a controversy later arise. Hall suggested that the FBI be requested to carry out a thorough analysis of the diary, including Booth’s handwriting. He had recently uncovered two important letters written by Booth shortly before the assassination that had been misfiled in the National Archives. Their provenance was solid. They could be considered authentic samples of Booth’s handwriting in determining the legitimacy of the handwriting in the diary.
To everyone’s surprise, the Park Service rejected Hall’s suggestion. The principal reason they gave was that the diary was fragile, and any further handling might damage it. But the damage had already been done when the Park Service granted a private citizen exclusive access to the diary. Faced with the Park Service’s decision to deny further access to the diary, Hall sought the help of influential friends, who contacted several political leaders, including Vice President Walter Mondale and Senator Hubert Humphrey. The Park Service, under political pressure, suddenly had a change of heart and announced they would turn the diary over to the FBI’s forensic laboratory for analysis. Hall, in writing to FBI Director Clarence Kelly, said, “It is our hope that you will use the most sophisticated means to photograph each and every page of this diary, to bring up whatever is there or to demonstrate that nothing is there.”29 Hall went on to point out that a claim had been made that the writing in the diary was not that of John Wilkes Booth and that the forgery was committed to aid in a massive government cover-up. The analysis of the handwriting by FBI experts would settle the question once and for all.
The FBI’s report stated that “no invisible writing, unusual obliterations or alterations or any characteristics of a questionable nature were found” and that “the handwriting in the diary was prepared by the writer of the specimens furnished by the National Archives30 known to be in the handwriting of John Wilkes Booth.”31 No invisible writing, no secret (encoded) writing, no altered writing, and no erasures were found. Several of the stubs left behind when pages were removed showed signs of handwriting. There were faint blue lines printed on each of the dated pages, just as Lynch claimed. Hall’s fears were put to rest. In all, the FBI report noted that a total of forty-three sheets (eighty-six pages) were missing from the diary.32
Now that the FBI had answered any questions concerning the diary’s condition, attention turned to what was written on those alleged missing pages that Joseph Lynch claimed he had uncovered. Richard Sloan suggested Lynch meet with Hall. He pointed out that sooner or later Lynch or Sunn Classic Pictures would have to produce proof that the pages existed and were real. Hall, after all, was the leading authority on the assassination, and if anyone could authenticate the missing pages it was him. Lynch appeared nervous at Sloan’s suggestion. He told Sloan he didn’t trust historians. Lynch felt they would take advantage of him or misquote him.33 After considerable cajoling and prodding by Sloan, Lynch agreed to meet with both men, in a hotel room in White Plains, New York. Once the two men met, Lynch overcame his distrust of Hall and gave him a copy of the full typescript of the pages. In return, he asked Hall for his evaluation of their authenticity. Hall agreed. From Lynch’s perspective, Hall’s approval would blunt any criticism.
Following are excerpts taken from the typescript provided to Hall:
I [Booth] have finally decided to take the step which I hoped would not be necessary. Sent a message by a friend to Jefferson Davis and await summons from him.
I received instructions to proceed to Montreal and wait upon Clement Clay and Jacob Thompson. I am to proceed at once.34
Clement C. Clay and Jacob Thompson, two Confederate emissaries of Jefferson Davis, were sent to Montreal in April 1864 to establish a secret service operation working out of neutral Canada. Davis authorized $1 million in gold to finance a series of attacks against the North in an effort to demoralize its citizens, resulting in Lincoln’s defeat in the fall elections.
Clay and Thompson finally arrive and inform me if I were willing to undertake a mission for the Confederacy, they could use my services.
I ran into John Surratt the other day and by a conversation, he told me that he was now serving the Confederacy as a courier between Washington, Richmond, and Canada.
John Surratt, Mary Surratt’s son and a cohort of Booth, worked as an agent for the Confederate State Department, reporting directly to Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederate secretary of state.
He comes tonight bringing with him four trusted friends he swears by. We are to meet at Ella Washington’s boarding house in Washington.
Surratt brought to me this morning Thomas Jones, Dr. Mudd, and Col. Cox.
Jones said that he had a brother-in-law who could also be enlisted [Thomas Harbin] but that the brother-in-law had to support his family and would require $100 a month. When I go South, he will introduce me to him.
Thomas Jones served during the war as the Confederate Signal Service’s chief agent in Charles County, Maryland. Early in the war Jones lived in a house on a high bluff overlooking the Potomac River with a clear view of the Confederate signal camp on the Virginia side. Following Lincoln’s assassination, Jones hid Booth and Herold in a pine thicket for five days, caring for them before putting them safely across the Potomac River. Jones’s brother-in-law was Thomas Harbin, also a Confederate agent. Harbin had served as postmaster in Charles County before the war. Several years after the war Harbin was interviewed by George Alfred Townsend, a highly respected newspaper reporter and author. Harbin told Townsend that Dr. Mudd introduced him to Booth at a prearranged meeting at the Bryantown Tavern on December 18, 1864. As a result of the meeting Harbin agreed to join Booth’s kidnap plot. Once Booth and Herold crossed the Potomac River following Lincoln’s murder, Harbin arranged for them to be taken to the summer home of Dr. Richard Stuart, where they hoped to receive food and rest. Stuart refused Booth lodging and sent him to the cabin of William Lucas, a free black, where the two fugitives spent the night.
In Richmond, I saw Judah Benjamin first. He brought me to Vice-President Stevens and the two of them and I went to see Jefferson Davis.
I received instructions in all detail and an order for $70,000 drawn on a friendly bank.
In Philadelphia today I met with Jay Cooke. After waiting for an hour and a half, he entered the room with great apology citing as his reason for the delay—press of business.
Cooke was a prominent banker and financier who used his own bank and influence with other bankers to raise large sums of money for the government by selling government bonds. By January 1864, Cooke had raised over $600 million to help Lincoln finance the war and keep it going.
The discussions that we had concerning the project he was very concerned with being compromised, but said that he would arrange for me to meet a number of people who have interests in the plans, in New York on Friday next at the Astor House.
Cooke brought his brother Henry—greeted me warmly and said he thought most highly of Judah Benjamin and anyone who that wily fox, Benjamin, would send would be the best man available.
Henry Cooke was a journalist who in 1856 used his paper, the Ohio State Journal, to get Salmon P. Chase elected governor of Ohio. In 1861 he became head of his brother’s bank in Washington, and in 1862 he became president of his brother’s street railway system that ran between Washington and Georgetown.
We had lunch, then went to a room where the people present were a number of speculators in cotton and gold.
Present were Thurlow Weed, a person by the name of Noble, a man by the name of Chandler, a Mr. Bell—who said he was a friend of John Conness.
Weed was the political “boss” of the Whig and, later, Republican parties in New York. He supported William Seward for the Republican nomination for president in 1860. Isaac Bell was a cotton merchant. Zachariah Chandler was a Radical Republican senator from Michigan (1857–1875) and a constant thorn in Lincoln’s side. He was also a business associate of John Conness, senator from California.
Answering a knock on my door this morning, I found Lafayette Baker on my doorstep. I thought the end had come.
Baker was head of the War Department’s National Detective Police (NDP), which after the war became the Secret Service. Baker had a shady reputation for bending the law in carrying out his investigations, but he was very effective at dealing with corrupt government and military individuals.
But instead, he handed me letters from Jefferson Davis, and Judah Benjamin, and from Clement Clay. I gave him the money and sent a message to Richmond. I don’t trust him. I wait for answer. I receive reply, my orders—trust him! I do not!
Davis was president of the Confederate States. Benjamin was the Confederate secretary of state at the time of Lincoln’s assassination, and Clay was a Confederate diplomat who became one of two commissioners Davis sent to Canada to carry out undercover actions against the North.
He [Senator John Conness] also said Montgomery Blair was with us, but that Blair had to be careful. He was watched constantly.
Montgomery Blair served as Lincoln’s postmaster general. He resigned in 1864, forced out of Lincoln’s cabinet by the Radical Republicans.
Baker comes and brings with him Col. Conger. I told Baker to have him leave because I did not know him and talking to too many people can be dangerous.
Lieutenant Colonel Everton J. Conger was a detective in Lafayette Baker’s NDP. He was the ranking officer in charge of the troop of cavalry that captured Booth and Herold at the Garrett farm. Conger removed the diary from Booth’s body and turned it over to Stanton. One conspiracy theory has Conger shooting Booth under orders from Stanton to prevent Booth from implicating Stanton and others should he be taken alive.
[Judah] Benjamin says that the Jacobeans [word missing] received their promises and their money.
Jacobean was a social club of the Republican Party.
I purchased a carbine entirely covered in leather. I darken it with lamp black.
Booth purchased a Jenks carbine on March 20.
I took Paine and Surratt with me and we waited on the road near the garden. In the late hours of the morning we heard a horse approaching. It was him. It was dark and I waited until he was 25 or 30 yards from me. I fired! I saw his hat fall.
Paine fired twice. He stayed in the saddle and galloped away. Within minutes they pursued us. Within two miles, we eluded them. Another failure!
Paine was an alias used by Lewis Powell. This excerpt apparently refers to the incident in which Lincoln had his hat shot off of his head while approaching the main gate to the Soldiers’ Home, where Lincoln and his family stayed during the summer months. Lincoln later made light of the incident, saying it was an accidental stray shot. Ward Hill Lamon, Washington marshal and a close friend of Lincoln, believed it was an assassination attempt. Lincoln’s hat was later recovered by a sentry, who said it had a bullet hole through it.
I met Conger at the Herndon House. He was in mufti and warned no new attempts until we have a new plan.
The Herndon House was a boarding house located one block from Ford’s Theatre. Booth paid for a room for Lewis Powell. Booth, Powell, George Atzerodt, and David Herold met in Powell’s room around seven o’clock on the evening of April 14 to go over Booth’s assassination plans.
If I try again without orders they will find me in the Potomac along with my friends.
Paine said he would kill the tin soldier if I wished. I told him not to.
The “tin soldier” presumably refers to Lafayette Baker.
A new plan—other arrangements to be made. I am to have charge.
The “new plan” was presumably an assassination plan.
I believe that Baker and Eckert and the Secretary are controlling our activities and this frightens me.
Thomas T. Eckert was the U.S. assistant secretary of war and head of the war department’s telegraph office.
I have found the additional men needed. The routes are arranged. It is too late to withdraw.
By the almighty God, I swear that I shall lay the body of this tyrant upon the altar of Mars. And if by this act I am slain, they too shall be cast into Hell for I have given information to a friend who will have the nation know who the traitors are.
Pax Vale35
Mars is a reference to Secretary of War Stanton. Pax Vale means “Peace and Farewell.”
So here are a series of diary entries that clearly indict Stanton and several of those around him in Booth’s plot to assassinate Lincoln. In analyzing the transcript, there are several things to consider. First is the alleged “Stanton heir,” who Lynch claimed owned the missing pages. When Hall contacted the known descendants of Edwin Stanton, none of them were aware of the missing pages or of any other documents relating to Lincoln’s assassination. When confronted with this finding, Lynch claimed the great-granddaughter was descended from an illegitimate child of one of Stanton’s sons. This claim, however, is difficult to believe without some sort of documentary proof. Lynch was unable to produce any evidence to support his claim other than his own word. Why such an important document as pages from Booth’s diary would descend through an illegitimate child is equally puzzling.
The second consideration is the internal evidence of the transcript. Even the best of fabricators make mistakes. One need only read the first two sentences to see that the transcript is problematic. The entry reads: “They say that Jubal Early has attack[ed] Rockville and even though one can see the flames and hear the gunfire, no one knows how the battle goes. At lunch someone said that Lincoln and Stanton had almost been killed when a shell burst within five feet of them on the parapet of Fort Stevens.” This entry clearly places Booth in Washington at the time of Confederate Jubal Early’s attack. In early July 1864, Early marched out of the Shenandoah Valley with orders to attack Washington and sack parts of the city. The objective was to force Grant to send part of his army facing Lee around Richmond and Petersburg to Washington, thus relieving pressure on Lee. On July 9, Early pushed aside a delaying force under Union major general Lew Wallace near Frederick, Maryland, and marched south toward the capital. Early’s forces reached the outlying environs of Washington near Silver Spring on July 11, where his troops were stopped at Fort Stevens. A Federal force from the 6th Army Corps arrived just in time to repel the Confederate attack.
Fort Stevens was located a short distance from Soldiers’ Home, where Lincoln was staying with his family at the time of Early’s attack. On July 12, Lincoln visited the fort and climbed atop the parapet to watch the action. His recognizable form drew Confederate fire, and an army surgeon standing next to Lincoln was shot in the hip, knocking him from the parapet.
While the entry in the alleged diary indicates Booth was in Washington at the time of Early’s raid, he was, in fact, several hundred miles away in Franklin, Pennsylvania, tending to his oil investments. On June 7, 1864, Booth wrote to Isabel Sumner, a sixteen-year-old girl he was courting at the time, “I start tomorrow for the mountains of Penn. Where I remain about three weeks.”36 The correspondence continued through the end of August. On July 14, Booth wrote to Isabel from New York City, “I have just returned from the mountains of Penn—God bless you.”37 Booth’s trip to Pennsylvania is corroborated by his brother Junius, who wrote in his diary for June 9, “John & Joe Simonds left for Oil City [Pennsylvania].”38 Clearly, whoever fabricated the missing pages was unaware of these letters in the possession of a descendant of Isabel Sumner.
The next questionable entry reads, “At a party given by Eva’s parents, I met Senator John Conness. Conness says Eddie and he are friends from the days in California in ’55 and ’56.”
Conness was a senator from California (from March 3, 1863, to March 3, 1869) who switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in 1864. The transcript supplied with the Sunn Classic Pictures promotional material identifies “Eddie” as John Wilkes Booth’s older brother, Edwin Booth. Of the known letters written by Booth, three mention his brother Edwin by name. The first is a letter to Edwin with the salutation “Dear Ted.”39 The remaining two letters are to friends, in which Booth calls his brother “Ned” (“I am glad Ned is doing well,”40 and “When did you see Ned?”).41 The name “Eddie” is absent from any known writing of Booth or, for that matter, any of the other members of the Booth family.
The fifth entry in the diary reads: “John Morgan is dead. Another brave spirit has paid the ultimate price for his patriotism. I met him years ago at a soiree in New Orleans. He was a gentleman and we will miss him.”
John Hunt Morgan was a brigadier general in the Confederate army who mostly operated behind enemy lines as a guerilla raider. Morgan was engaged in several small operations that gained him fame as a dashing cavalier. He was killed on September 4, 1864, in Greeneville, Tennessee, while attempting to escape from Union cavalry that had surrounded his headquarters. The only time that Booth was in New Orleans was the period from March 6 through April 3, 1864, five months prior to Morgan’s death. Booth was fulfilling an acting engagement at the time while Morgan was carrying out raids in Kentucky, including Mt. Sterling (March 22) and Danville (March 24). At the time of Booth’s engagement, New Orleans was occupied by Union troops, making it doubtful if not impossible for Morgan to attend a soiree where he allegedly met Booth.
The next entry notes that Grant has advanced to within seven miles of Richmond. This occurred on September 28, 1864. It reads: “I have finally decided to take the step which I hoped would not be necessary. Sent a message to Jefferson Davis and await summons from him.” The timing is off in this entry. We know that Booth made his decision to kidnap Lincoln in late July, not October. During the first week of August, Booth summoned two old friends from his Baltimore boyhood days, Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen, to meet with him in his room at Barnum’s City Hotel in Baltimore. It was during this meeting that Booth told Arnold and O’Laughlen of his plan to capture Lincoln and turn him over to authorities in Richmond.
The next troublesome entry claims that Booth, along with Lewis Paine (Powell) and John Surratt, lay in wait for Lincoln near his summer residence at Soldiers’ Home. As he approached Booth fired once and Paine fired twice. Booth writes, “I saw his hat fall.” In the companion book version of The Lincoln Conspiracy movie, the date taken from the missing pages for this failed attempt on Lincoln’s life is March 22. Apparently the person who wrote the diary was unaware that Booth was in New York City on March 22 and Lincoln was not staying at the Soldiers’ Home. The records of the National Hotel, where Booth stayed when in Washington, show he checked out on March 21 and took the 7:30 p.m. train to New York. There is a record of Booth sending a telegram from the St. Nicholas Hotel in New York to Louis Weichmann at the Surratt boarding house on March 23. Booth did not return to the National Hotel until the evening of March 25. The “hat incident” occurred in August 1864—not in March, according to those people close to Lincoln who were aware of it.
These errors, Booth’s presence in Washington at the time of Early’s attack, the use of the name “Eddie” when referring to Edwin Booth, the alleged meeting between Booth and Morgan in New Orleans, the timing of Booth’s decision to kidnap Lincoln, and his attempt to shoot Lincoln on March 22, 1864, when he was actually in New York City are careless mistakes that point to the missing pages as being fabrications. The disposition of the real missing pages is unclear. We know Booth used two of the sheets (four pages) to write notes to Dr. Stuart. The other forty-one sheets (eighty-two pages) were more than likely also used by Booth as note paper. One thing seems clear, however: they were not used by Booth to record the bogus writings that appear in the typescript Lynch claimed came from Booth’s diary and which David Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier Jr. relied on.
There are other documents that Sunn Classic Pictures and David Balsiger relied on that also appear to be fabricated. The principal one is a supposedly unpublished entry from the journal of George Washington Julian, a Radical Republican congressman from Indiana. Sunn Pictures accepted the passage as proof the pages were authentic. The alleged entry in Julian’s journal shows that Booth’s diary was intact when it was turned over to Stanton, just as Lafayette Baker and those who believed in Stanton’s complicity in Lincoln’s murder had claimed. The entry describes how the diary turned up in Stanton’s office on April 24, two days before Booth was cornered and killed at the Garrett farm. Just how the diary turned up in Stanton’s office before Booth’s capture is an amazing story that The Lincoln Conspiracy writers try to explain.
According to Balsiger’s scenario, Booth’s diary was not found on his body on April 26 as most history books claim. It was found by one of Lafayette Baker’s alleged Indian scouts, Whippet Nalgai, lying in the tall grass along the banks of a creek where Booth left it by mistake during his attempted escape.42 Working separately from the Union search party that eventually cornered Booth, Nalgai found the diary with several other items belonging to Booth at the spot where Booth and Herold landed early Monday morning after crossing the Potomac River on the night of April 23–24. Booth had rested along the bank of the creek while Herold sought the help of Mrs. Elizabeth Quesenberry, a Confederate agent who lived nearby. Thomas Jones had told Booth to seek out Mrs. Quesenberry, who he was certain would help the two men. After listening to Herold’s story, Quesenberry sent for Thomas Harbin, the agent Booth had enlisted in December 1864 with the aid of Dr. Samuel Mudd. Harbin arranged for horses and a guide to take Booth and Herold to the summer home of Richard Stuart in King George County, Virginia. According to The Lincoln Conspiracy, Booth mistakenly left the diary and several other items in the tall grass while waiting for Herold to return from Quesenberry’s house. Later that same day, while searching for Booth, Whippet Nalgai discovered the diary. Nalgai rushed the diary back to Washington and delivered it personally to Lafayette Baker, who gave it to Stanton on Monday, April 24.43 After examining the diary, Stanton summoned to his office the three Radical Republicans involved in his plot to kill Lincoln: George Julian, Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, and Senator John Conness of California.
Julian describes the scene in Stanton’s office in the April 24 entry of his journal. Julian wrote that on entering Stanton’s office he “sensed something was amiss.” Stanton told him, “We have Booth’s diary, and he has recorded a lot in it.” Senator Conness, who was scanning the pages when Julian arrived, was “moaning repeatedly, ‘Oh, my God. I am ruined if this ever gets out.”44 Stanton took the diary from Conness and asked Julian to look at it. Julian demurred. “I was better off not reading it,” he later wrote in his journal. Stanton pressed him in threatening language: “It concerns you for we either stick together in this thing or we will all go down the river together.” Stanton gave the diary to Thomas Eckert, his assistant, and told him to secure it in his iron safe, warning those in the room, “We cannot let it out.”45 The excerpt is sensational to say the least, and it confirms the claims made in the missing pages.46
Following his death in 1899, Julian’s journals containing the alleged passage passed to his daughter, Grace Julian Clarke. In 1926 she loaned them to Indiana historian Claude Bowers, who was working on his anti-Radical book, The Tragic Era.47 According to an explanatory statement in the Neff-Guttridge Collection at Indiana State University written by Neff,48 Bowers “photographed the journal pages without Grace Clarke’s knowledge.”49 Neff claimed that Bowers transcribed the photographic copies in the presence of an Indianapolis businessman by the name of Hugh Smith. Smith then took the transcribed copies and had them notarized. According to Neff, Bowers for some strange reason then destroyed the photographs, leaving only the transcribed copies. Smith, thinking ahead, “took one [of Bowers’s transcribed copies] back to Indianapolis to have proof of the journal entries should Bowers ever need support in the future.”50 Why do you suppose Bowers destroyed the photographs? Why would he need to substantiate his writings? And why did he rely on Hugh Smith to provide that support? Why didn’t he simply keep the photographic copies in his own files? Bowers never made any claims or statements in his writings that referred to the alleged Julian excerpts that implicated Stanton and the three Republicans in Lincoln’s murder. None of Bowers’s writings refer to Booth’s diary or to missing pages. None of Neff’s claims makes any sense.
In 1974, Neff claims, he met with Smith in Muncie, Indiana. Using the third person, Neff wrote in a memo for the record: “During our interview with Hugh Smith he showed us the Photostats and said he had decided to destroy them. He did, however, permit us to have them transcribed in the presence of a notary public.”51 Smith, emulating Bowers before him, then destroyed his copies, leaving Neff with the only surviving copy of Julian’s “unpublished” excerpt. Neff’s “copy” of the “excerpt,” now part of the Neff-Guttridge Collection at ISU, is the sole evidence for the strange meeting that Neff and Balsiger claim took place in Stanton’s office.
But once again, the devil is in the details. Unbeknownst to Neff and the authors of The Lincoln Conspiracy at the time of publication, authentic excerpts from Julian’s diary had appeared in a 1915 issue of the Indiana Magazine of History. Even more fortuitous, the key entry for April 24, the very date on which Neff claims Stanton allegedly revealed the contents of the missing pages to Conness and Julian, is among the published entries. It reads:
Monday, [April] 24th
On Saturday last we had General Rosecrans before our committee, and his account of the campaign of Western Virginia makes McClellan look meaner than ever. On last Friday went with Indianans to call on President [Andrew] Johnson. Governor Morton transgressed the proprieties by reading a carefully prepared essay on the subject of reconstruction. Johnson entered upon the same theme, indulging in bad grammar, bad pronunciation and much incoherency of thought. In common with many I was mortified.52
This represents the entire entry for April 24, 1865. There is no mention of a meeting in Stanton’s office, of Booth’s diary, or of Stanton’s warning that everybody will go down the river together if they don’t stick together. Did the editor of the Indiana Magazine of History decide to delete such an important part of the entry, leaving out the incredible story of what took place in Stanton’s office? It seems unreasonable. If the editor had such sensational material proving treason within Lincoln’s own cabinet, why would he withhold it from the public? Even more puzzling, why would Claude Bowers, a historian so strongly anti-Radical Republican, withhold such anti-Radical information from his book? The whole thesis of Bowers’s book was to condemn the Radical Republicans. He could have driven a stake through the very heart of the Radical Republicans by exposing this treasonous plot involving Stanton.53
In an attempt to locate the alleged “unpublished” portion of Julian’s journal, historian Hall sought the help of curators at the Indiana State Library, where Julian’s papers reside, and at the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana, where the Claude Bowers papers are housed. Their efforts came up empty. There were no “unpublished” portions of the journal, no correspondence pertaining to the “unpublished” version, no notes by Bowers or anyone else, no photographs, photostats, or photocopies, and no typescripts. There was nothing in the Claude Bowers papers to indicate that he made copies before returning Julian’s journals to Grace Clarke.54
Once again, fortune smiled on the seekers of truth. It turns out that Bowers was not the only historian Grace Clarke allowed to use the journals for research. Mabel Engstrom, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, was allowed to use them in researching her master’s thesis on George Julian (which she submitted in 1929). In 1977, Mabel Engstrom, now Mabel Herbert, wrote to the managing editor of Civil War Times Illustrated, who was investigating the question of Booth’s diary and the alleged missing pages. Engstrom wrote: “I just cannot remember reading anything in the journal which stated that Julian was aware of any plot relating to the assassination of Lincoln. Of course, it has been fifty years or so since I read the journal. However, I think I would have remembered such an important statement if it had been in the journal.”55 It is highly unreasonable to believe that Mrs. Herbert, a graduate student preparing her thesis, would not remember such a dramatic entry. Her recollections only cast further doubt on the authenticity of the “unpublished excerpt” from the journal.
It appears no one in Stanton’s office that day bothered to ask how Booth’s diary turned up in Stanton’s office while he was still at-large. It is an important point because all of the evidence places the diary on his body at the time of his death. Indeed, at least four eyewitnesses reported seeing Booth and his diary south of the Potomac River after the date that the diary was allegedly found in the tall grass where Booth rested.
The first of these witnesses was Dr. Richard Stuart. On the night of April 23, Booth and Herold arrived at his summer home in King George County, Virginia, ten miles south of the Potomac River. After crossing the river, Thomas Harbin had arranged to have the men taken to Stuart’s house. The doctor allowed the two men into his home long enough to eat, but he refused them shelter. Instead, he sent them a short distance away to the cabin of William Lucas, where they spent the night. The next morning Lucas’s son, Charlie, took Booth and Herold to the Rappahannock River crossing at Port Conway, where they ran into three Confederate soldiers.
While at the Lucas cabin, Booth, angered by Stuart’s lack of hospitality in refusing shelter to him, decided to insult Stuart by offering to pay for the small amount of food they received. Booth tore a leaf from his diary and used it to write a note offering Stuart $5.00. Deciding that was too much, Booth slipped the note back in his diary, tore a second page from it, and wrote a second note offering $2.50. In his sworn statement to authorities, Stuart described the note as “a leaf from a memorandum book rolled around and the money rolled up in it.”56 Booth sent the note to Stuart via Lucas on the very day Julian’s purported journal entry said the diary was in Stanton’s possession. The first note, offering $5.00, was found by detectives tucked in Booth’s diary when it was recovered.57
The second witness to Booth’s having the diary in his possession after April 24 was William Garrett, the oldest son of Richard Garrett. Booth and Herold arrived at the Garrett farm on the evening of Monday, April 24. William Garrett later told detectives that on April 25 he saw Booth seated on the porch, where “he had a small memorandum book in his hand and was writing in it” (emphasis added).58
The third and fourth witnesses are the two detectives that cornered Booth at the Garrett farm, Everton Conger and Luther B. Baker. Both testified to removing Booth’s diary from his body on April 26. During the conspirators’ trial in 1865, Luther Baker gave the following testimony: “We took all the papers from his pocket—as soon as we removed him from the barn, and delivered them to Colonel Conger. … They were a diary, three drafts or checks, and forty-five dollars in greenbacks” (emphasis added).59
At the 1868 impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, Baker testified a second time and was asked: “Who took the memorandum book from his [Booth’s] pocket?” Baker replied, “Colonel Conger. He looked at it and handed it to me. I looked at it, and then we put it in a handkerchief with other things.”60
There can be no doubt that Booth had the diary on him when he was killed. The missing pages and the excerpt from Julian’s journal are pure fabrications in support of the myth that Stanton engineered Lincoln’s assassination. Clearly, the fabricator of the pages was not a Stanton descendant. Hall and Sloan were never absolutely sure that it was Lynch. If it was not Lynch and not a “Stanton descendant,” then there must have been another party working through Lynch. The producers at Sunn Classic Pictures were careful to refer to them as the “purported missing pages,” leaving doubt as to their authenticity, thereby having their cake and eating it too. Like the numerous other myths associated with Abraham Lincoln, the myth of the missing pages and Stanton’s complicity in Lincoln’s death will continue to live on, finding new believers in future generations. As Lincoln once said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”—or did he?61
Steers, Edward, Jr., ed. “Missing Pages, John Wilkes Booth’s Diary.” The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 375–376.
———. “The Missing Pages From Booth’s Diary.” Lincoln Legends. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2007. 177–202.
Verge, Laurie. “Those Missing Pages From the ‘Diary’ of John Wilkes Booth.” The Lincoln Assassination, vol. 1. Clinton, Md.: Surratt Society Publication, 2000. Section IV, pages 13–22.