CONSPIRACY THEORY #5 CONSTITUTION-January 27, 1915 MR. BELL - TopicsExpress



          

CONSPIRACY THEORY #5 CONSTITUTION-January 27, 1915 MR. BELL CLOSES BOOTH ARTICLE In this issue Hon. H.C. Bell closes his series of articles of the killing, or supposed killing of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln. To us, the evidence submitted by Mr. Bell proves that Booth was not killed as he was generally believed to have been, but that he lived to die years afterwards by his own hand. Many of our readers who have commented on the subject have expressed a like view. These articles have created an extraordinary interest among our readers and have had a wide circulation, having been called for in several distant states where information of them had spread. By kindness of Mr. Bell we have in our possession two photographs of Booth taken from the pictures mentioned by Mr. Booth in his articles. The similarity of the pictures is remarkable. We will retain them for a few days before returning them to Mr. Bell and any who may desire can see them. WAS JOHN WILKES BOOTH KILLED IN GARRETTS BARN? Hon. H.C. Bell, After s Resume of all Evidence Positively Says NO! We have seen that Booth, in company with Herold, and another man, whose name was St. Helen told Bates he understood was Ruddy or Roby (tho this is by no means certain, for men aiding Booth to escape in those days were not swift to give their real names), reached the north bank of the Rappahannock river at Port Conway at about two oclock, p.m. of April 24, 1865; that they were put over the river by Rollins, where, at Port Royal, they met Captain Jett, Major Ruggles and Lt. Bainbridge, of Mosbys troops; that here St. Helen gave the man Ruddy his check or draft on a Canadian bank for about $300 for his services to himself and Herold; that this check or draft was afterwards found in the pocket of the man killed in Garretts barn; that when St. Helen reached the south bank of the Rappahannock, he there missed from his pocket his diary and a picture of his sister , and thinking that, they had been lost when Herold and Ruddy pulled him out of the wagon bed at Port Conway, he asked Ruddy to go back over the river and see if he could find them, and if so, to bring them to him at the Garrett farm when he and Herold should return from Bowling Green, where they were to go with Jett, while he was to go with Ruggles and Bainbridge to the Garrett farm, and there await their return; that the diary and picture were also found in the pockets of the man killed in Garretts barn, and that, from the time he left Herold and Ruddy at Port Royal, he never saw them again. He also told Bates that, from the the fact that this check, and these other things were, as he afterwards understood, found in the possession of the man killed at the barn, and seeing that he himself was Booth, and was not killed there, it followed, as a necessary conclusion, that the man he knew as Ruddy or Roby, was the man killed in that barn. We have seen, too, that Bainbridge and Ruggles took Booth to Garretts farm, and that they arrived there (this was about three miles from Port Royal) at about the hour of 3 oclock p. m. April 24, 1865; that Booth stayed at the Garrett home that night, and that it was the next morning, April 25, that Rev. Dr. Garrett, then a boy of twelve, noticed Booths long, silky mustache, as he lay in bed asleep; that at about the hour of three that afternoon, and while Booth was lying out under a tree in the yard, Ruggles and Bainbridge rode hastily up and told Booth that the United States troops had just crossed the Rappahannock, hot on his trail, and advised him to flee to the woods back of the Garrett home, and to stay there until they came for him; that, after getting his belt and pistols, Booth limped off on his lame foot, and alone, aided only by a stick or a cane, went into woods, and was never, by anybody, seen to come back to the house; that in about an hour Bainbridge and Ruggles came to him in the woods, bringing an extra horse, which he at once mounted and they rode away rapidly towards the west, and were at least 25 miles from Garretts barn when the man, whom he believes, and whom Bates and I also believe, was Ruddy, or at least the man whom Jett, at the insistence of Gouldman, ordered to take Herold back to the Garrett farm, where the man was killed the morning of April 6, 1865. This statement is strongly corroborated, in fact verified, by the United States officers, themselves, who were in pursuit of Booth and Herold, for they have said that when they crossed the Rappahannock at Port Royal, they saw two men on horseback gazing at them from a distant hill, over in the direction of the Garrett farm; that they signaled them for a parley, but they turned and fled in the direction of the Garrett home; that they chased them for some distance, but then lost them in the woods, when they returned to Port Royal, and from there went on down towards Bowling Green, where Rollins had told them they would probably find Jett, with Booth and Herold. They were then unaware of the fact, that at the very moment Booth was at Garretts farm house, where he had just been warned by Ruggles and Bainbridge (for it was them they had just chased) to get into the timber to await their coming. Now, it was that same evening that my friend Jesse Gouldman was meeting Herold and Jett and the man Ruddy (Ruddy and Herold both on one horse) and causing Jett to make the man on the horse with Herold turn around and take him back to Garretts farm, where Booth had been left by Ruggles and Bainbridge the day before. And it was undoubtedly Herold and Ruddy, and not Herold and Ruggles, as thought by the 12 year old Garrett boy, that reached the Garrett premises after dark that night, where they expected to meet Booth, and it was undoubtedly Ruddy, and not Booth, whom no one had seen come back from the woods, and who, unless he was a mad man, bent on self destruction, which he was not, never did come back, that, at some time that night, crept into the old barn, or corn-crib, with Herold, and where he was killed the next morning by Boston Corbett. And moreover, I have just been told by Mr. C. F. Jones, the Superintendent of the Pension Bureau, and who is from down in that part of Virginia, and whose father was in the Confederate service, and in the same regiment with one of the older Garrett boys, that he had often, when a boy, heard this Garrett, and whom the evidence shows was at home the night that Booth was there, say that John Wilkes booth never was killed in their barn. And remember, too, that St. Helen told Bates, and the evidence shows it, that neither Ruddy nor Herold had a horse at Port Royal and both were to proceed with Jett to Bowling Green on foot and that it would take Green, and return to Garretts farm, and that the next afternoon, when Gouldman met them a few miles from Bowling Green, they were both riding one horse, having picked up their single mount some where between there and Port Royal, which they left on foot the day before. Another significant thing at that barn was this: Not a single man there at the time of the killing, except Rollins, and the Garretts had ever seen Booth. The Garretts had seen him, and so had Rollins. Rollins saw him when he came to Port Conway, with Herold and the man Ruddy, the afternoon of April 24, 1865, and when Col. Baker showed him the picture of Booth he recognized him as one of the men he had put over the river, as he did, also, that of Herold, which Baker also showed him. And Rollins was present at the killing, but neither he nor any of the Garretts were permitted to examine at close range the body of the man killed. Herold was there, and he, who had contended from the beginning that the man killed in the barn was not John Wilkes Booth, and who could easily have identified the body as that of Booth, if it was really his, but Herold they kept tied to a tree, and he was not permitted to view the body at close range: nor were any of the Garretts, or Rollins, or Herold permitted to see the body in Washington. Why? And as soon as the man died, his body was at once sewed up in an old blanket, taken to Washington, and never really identified as the body of John Wilkes Booth by anybody who knew him. Though thousands who knew Booth flocked around the boat when it landed at the Navy Yard in Washington and begged and struggled to get a chance to view the body, not one of them was permitted to do so, Why? It was charged at the time that Rollins received a large sum of money for his part in the detection, pursuit and killing of Booth, and this report well nigh ruined the Rollins family in the estimation of their neighbors and friends. But Rollins never got a dollar from the government for his involuntary pursuit of Booth, and the killing of the man in the barn. It is not likely that he ever received a dollar from any source, and if he did, it came, in all probability, from those who were dangerously and vitally interested in having the world believe that it was in fact Booth that was killed in that barn. I think I could name men, then high up in the government counsels, that would, if Rollins knew that Booth was not killed, as I believe he did know, have paid him handsomely, under theses circumstances, for his silence. And now let us go back to the barn, and examine carefully the facts and circumstances surrounding the actual killing there. To me it appears well nigh certain, from the evidence already given, that it was not John Wilkes Booth, and could have not been he, that was killed; and the evidence points unerringly to the conclusion that it was the man Ruddy, as St. Helen called him, that was so killed. We have seen that it was this man, whatever his name might have been, as certified to by the Gouldmans, that Jett, at the insistence of Jesse Gouldman, was made to take Herold back to that barn, and that he could not have arrived there with him, seeing the time he left Gouldman and Jett with Herold, and seeing the distance they had to travel, on the one horse, before eight or nine oclock the night of April 25, 1865. We have seen that Booth had limped, leaning on a stick or cane, into the woods back of the Garrett home, when warned to do so by Ruggles and Bainbridge, and that no man ever saw him come back; though some of the Garretts appear to have thought, when they heard that there was a man with Herold in the barn-- (NOTE: As it has been in every part of this story, some of the microfilm was very difficult to read causing me to type instead of using a copy of the original-this part is the very worse. I shall use an x for each letter that cant be deciphered.) that the man was Booth come back xxxx the woods after it had xxxxx xxxx.(grown dark?) But all the evidence and xx xxx xxxx conclusions show that it was not Booth but Ruddy xxx xxxxxxx started with Herold to the xxxxx xxx four oclock that xxx journey from Bowling Green that was in the barn with Herold and xxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxclared, both while in the barn with him and after the man was killed, was not John Wilkes Booth, and that he did not know him at all. And I think, too, that Booth must have been anxious to get rid of Herold, and I feel sure that Jett, Ruggles and Bainbridge must have seen the imperative necessity of this, and that the plan to send Herold down towards Bowling Green with Jett and Ruddy, while Ruggles and Bainbridge took care of Booth, was done advisedly, and for the purpose of facilitating the escape of both, for Herold, as before stated, was simply a foolish, babbling, boasting boy, and all along the way from Surratville, where they first stopped after Lincoln was killed, even right down to Port Royal, where he met Rollins, Jett, Ruggles and Bainbridge, he was constantly endangering the escape of both Booth and himself by telling everybody he met that they were the assassinators of the President. He was hanging like the Old Man of the Sea, on the back of Sinbad, the Sailor, on the back of John Wilkes Booth, and there is little doubt that he was anxious as Jett, Ruggles and Bainbridge were, to get rid of him, and it is safe to say that had not Jett, with Herold and Ruddy, met Gouldman, who made Jett order Herold taken by Ruddy back to the Garrett farm, he would not have been either killed or captured in that barn, but seeing his babbling, boasting, mouthing, foolish nature and instincts, he would sooner or later, have been either killed or taken to die on the gallows, as he did do, for a foolish fellow like Herold would never have done, before submitting to capture. At the trial of Herold there were a number of witnesses, his sister Emma among them, that swore that Herold was just that kind of fellow, and although he was about twenty years of age when he was hanged, yet Dr. A.H. McKim, who lived for seven years on the same block here in Washington with me, and whom, I knew as well as I do Drs. Prewett and Bradley of Marshall, or Drs. Firebaugh and Meserve, of Robinson, swore as follows at the Herold trial: I have known Herold for the last six years. I consider him a very light, trivial, unreliable boy, and in mind about 11 years of age. In view of all these facts, as well as the well known indiscretions and mouthings of Herold, it is safe to say that men like Booth, Jett, Ruggles and Bainbridge, were anxious to get him away from Booth, as he was manifestly endangering the escape of them both. Booth became acquainted with Herold by buying cosmetics of him for his stage make-ups while he was clerking in a drug store in Washington, and on account of the fact that he it was that brought about the acquaintance between John Surratt and Booth. Surratt was useful to Booth in his scheme to kidnap Lincoln, because he had many trips, as a spy, over the Underground Railroad between Washington and Richmond, and Herold became useful for the reason that he was crazy on hunting, and liked nothing better than to get out in Prince Georges county, Maryland, adjoining the District of Columbia, and alone for days together with his gun and dogs and roam all over that country, and so his knowledge of all the roads and by-ways in Prince George county was of the very best. In all other respects he was a burden to Booth, and especially so after Lincoln had been assassinated. And now, as we have seen, the evidence presented, as well as the cold logic of the situation, has inevitably driven Herold and Ruddy, not Herold and Booth, or Herold and Ruggles, some time during the night of April 25, 1865, into that old barn or corn crib, on the Garrett farm, three miles from Port Royal, Caroline county, Va., and which barn was surrounded at about 3:30 oclock p.m. of April 26, 1865, where the thought to be greatest tragedy of the New World was to be enacted half an hour later; and when, without orders, and against the most earnest desires of the officers in charge of the expedition, Boston Corbett fired the bullet through the neck of the man thought at the time to be John Wilkes Booth, but which shot, in my opinion, left the assassination of Abraham Lincoln unavenged for more than 37 years, or until, with his own hand, in the Grand Avenue hotel, at Enid, Garland county, Oklahoma, on January 14, 1903, at the hour of 6:30 a.m. John Wilkes Booth, himself, with his own hand avenged it. Boston Corbett was at the time a rattle-brained crank, and later on went stark crazy and killed himself in a mad house in the state of Kansas. Even here in Washington, people tell me that they have often seen Corbett, after he killed the man in the barn, going to Waugh Chapel, a Methodist church, situated on the corner of A and Third streets N.E. in Washington, D.C., with two heavy Colts Navy revolvers strapped on his hips. And now Herold and Ruddy having reached the Garrett farm, where they expected to meet Booth, not knowing that they as they were starting for that farm, he was fleeing to the woods to escape the United States soldiers and detxxxxxxx xxx captured Jett at the Gouldman hotel, at Bowling Green xxx xxxxx twelve oclock and who xxxxx xxxxxx that barn, into which they xxx xxxx xxxx safety and rest some xxxx xxxxxxx at 3:30 oclock a.m. xx xxxx of April 26, 1865 and who xxx xxxx them was to surrender xxxx xxxxx xx be shot by Boston Corbett xxxxx xxxx at four oclock the next morning, as I will show, starting to give himself peaceably into the hands of the officers and men of the United States government who surrounded him, and whose hiding place they had set on fire. And while the man in the barn doubtless thought John Wilkes Booth was hiding some place on the Garrett premises, he was, in fact, as I have shown, then desperately riding towards the west, to suffering, to privation, to endless remorse and apprehension, to fifteen grains of strychnine, and to a horrible ignominious death. Now let us approach that old barn, around which there was then thought to cluster, and around which there has ever since thought to cluster, the culminating incidents and horrors of one of the greatest and cruelest tragedies the world has ever seen, since the dagger of Brutus found the heart, and stilled the body of Julius Caesar in the Senate Chamber of mighty Rome. I say that the very incidents and circumstances and doings during the 30 minutes minutes after the barn was surrounded, and before the man was killed, bears unimpeachable evidence that the man killed in there by Boston Corbett, was not, in fact, John Wilkes Booth, no matter who it may have been. Let us see what the man in there said, and what he did before he was mistakenly killed by Corbett, and see if these very things themselves do not show that the man who said these things was not, and could not have been John Wilkes Booth. Remember, that it is the universal testimony of every man or woman that ever knew John Wilkes Booth, that he was as handsome as a Greek god, as proud as Lucifer, himself, as described by John Milton, in Paradise Lost, and that he was a man of the coolest and most desperate bravery and courage. Now, let us see what the man in the barn said, and how he acted, and what he did, during the half hour between his being surrounded and summoned to surrender and his death, and see if he talked and acted as John Wilkes Booth would have done, had it been he, and not the man sent there with Herold, from Bowling Green, at four oclock the afternoon before. Boston Corbett testified at the Herold trial, that he did not hear the man in the barn speak a word after he was shot, except a cry or shout as he fell. He was shot through the neck just below the ears, and as Corbett and other witnesses at the tragedy say, did not, and could not, speak a word after they got him out of the barn. In fact he could not, as he was paralyzed from the neck down, and up too, for that matter. So all this talk of Ray Stannard Baker, written up from hearsay, thirty years after the tragedy, such as Tell my mother I died for my country, and I thought I did for best, etc. etc., never in fact took place. Corbett also testified that the name of Booth was not mentioned by anybody before he was shot in the barn, and this is attested by others that were present. In fact they scrupulously refrained from using the words Booth, for fear the man would kill himself, and they were all desperately desirous of taking him alive, so that they might take him alive to Washington, and where a public spectacle could be made of him, as was done in the case of Herold. Mrs. Surratt, Payne and Atzerodt. And this they all well knew Booth, if it was he in the barn, with his courage, and pride of person and family, never would let them do, if he found out, as they thought. who they were and who they thought he was. So they kept still as to the name of the man they thought he was, as they jollied him along in the hope that he would consent to surrender to them alive. And so, repeatedly, during that momentous half an hour, the loud and defiant voice of the man rang out on the early morning air Who do you think I am? Who do you take me for? I may be taken by my friends, who do you think I am? Draw off your men a hundred and fifty yards, and line them up, and I will come out and fight you all. Draw off your men fifty yards and I will come out and fight you. Give me a chance for my life. etc. etc., and to all this they replied We do not want to fight you. We did not come here to fight you. We want you to surrender. We want to take you prisoner, etc. etc., and they say the man in the barn cried out Well, my brave boys, bring on your stretcher. And he finally said, all the time in a loud voice that rang through the night, and was heard by all the Garretts, huddled, tumbling with fear, over in their home. Captain, you are a brave man. I could have killed you many times tonight. In fact I have my carbine trained on you now; but I do not want to kill you. I want you to give me a chance for my life. And this was refused, time and again, as the war of the words went on. Finally Conger, the government detective with the party, and who knew more about dealing with desperate criminals than all those present, says that he went around back of the barn, pulled some wisps of hay out of the cracks in the barn and, setting them on fire, applied them to the hay sticking out through the cracks, and in a moment he turned around and came over within five feet of where he was, and looked at the blazing hay, as if he would try to put it out, but, apparently, realizing the futility of the attempt, he dropped his arm, relaxed his muscles, turned around, and started towards the door, manifestly, as I think, intending to peaceably surrender. And so, evidently, thought Conger, for he says he at once ran around the barn to meet the man as he emerged from the barn through the door, and that when about half way around the barn he heard the report of a pistol, and ran on to the door, and into the barn, where he found one of the Bakers bending over the body of the man that had been shot. He says nothing about a lame and shoeless foot, as Booth carried, and nothing about about any cane or crutch, and none of them do. He says he thought the man had committed suicide, and so he would have done had it been John Wilkes Booth, and the very fact that he dropped his arm, relaxed his muscles, turned around and started to the door, as if to give himself up, to my mind, showed beyond all doubt, that it was not Booth, for he would have perished in the flames, or shot himself, rather than be taken alive, to die, amid the execrations of mankind, on the gallows, as, if he it was who was in that barn, knew only too well that would come to pass if he allowed himself to be taken alive. But the conduct of the man in the barn was entirely consistent with what any man guilty of no great crime, like himself, if it was Ruddy, or the man Jett sent to that barn, as I believe he was, and no other. And John P. Simonton, of the War Department, suggested to me that if the man in there was not Booth, and he does not believe it was Booth, that all of his loud and defiant shouts and cries were doubtless made to give the alarm to Booth, whom he thought might be hidden somewhere on the premises, and thus warn him to make good his escape; and that as soon as he had accomplished his purpose of warning Booth, and kept the attention of all the soldiers and government detectives glued to that barn, where they supposed Booth to be, he dropped his arm, relaxed his muscles, turned around and started to the door, and that it was manifestly his purpose to surrender at the very moment when Boston Corbett shot and killed him, as Booth never would have done, as every man having any knowledge of the actions of desperate men, under the circumstances as those of John Wilkes Booth, had it been indeed he in that barn at that time, well does know John Wilkes Booth, in my opinion, never would have indulged in all that barnstorming, grandstand play before the fatal shot was fired, and he would never have dropped his arm, relaxed his muscles, turned around and started towards the door of that barn, as Conger says the man in there did do; but a man like Ruddy, paid to assist Booth to escape, and knowing he had committed no crime that would, at the worst, more than land him in prison, or even that, for Jett was never convicted for his part in the escape of Booth, and it is not likely that the man in the barn would have been had he been allowed to surrender, rather that to die at the hands of a murderous pistol, for it was, under the circumstances murder, as well as a violation of a positive order repeatedly given to all, of Boston Corbett to kill him. And so my long, but I trust not uninteresting story ends. And now, what say you, gentlemen of the jury, of Clark and Crawford counties, having read the evidence, as well as the arguments presented, what say you, Was, or was not, John Wilkes Booth killed in Garretts barn, by Boston Corbett, April 26, 1865? With feelings of friendship and goodwill towards all my friends in Clark and Crawford counties, and thanking the editors of the Marshall Herald and Robinson Constitution for the kindness they have shown me, and the valuable space they have given up to me, I am, Faithfully yours H.C. BELL I think I should add to the above, the statement, that Mr. Bates presented the small original tin-type picture of St. Helen, taken at Glenrose Mills, Texas, as we have before seen, as well as a photograph made from it, to B.B. Brown, the clerk, and S.S. Dumont, the proprietor of the Grand Avenue Hotel, in Enid, Oklahoma, where David E. George (John Wilkes Booth) died January 14, 1903, and they made a joint affidavit, before Guy S. Mandott, Notary Public, of Garfield county, Oklahoma, datedOctober 22, 1906, in which they swore that these pictures were shown to them by Finis L. Bates, of Memphis, Tennessee, and that the small tin-type picture and photograph are the same perfect pictures or likenesses in each and every feature of the said David E. George, the only difference being that George, or whomever he was, was older at the time of his death than when the pictures were taken. There will be one more short posting. JOHN WILKES BOOTH
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 21:03:40 +0000

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