144th ANNIVERSARY OF THE LINCOLN CONSPIRATOR HANGINGS (JULY 7, 1865)

July 7, 2009: Barry  Cauchon

Today marks the 144th anniversary of the executions by hanging of four of the Lincoln assassination conspirators. The sentences were carried out at the Washington Arsenal Penitentary at about 1:26pm. Mary Surratt, Lewis Payne (Powell), David Herold and George Atzerodt had all been found guilty of their involvement in the conspiracy.  This not only involved the assassination of President Lincoln and the plans to murder several other key members of Lincoln’s administration, but also included their failed plans to kidnap President Lincoln in March of 1865.

The day was very hot (over 100 degrees) when the prisoners were marched out to the scaffold just after 1:00pm. After seating the four condemned in chairs on the platform, General Hartranft read the five-page Order of Execution (sometimes called the Death Warrant) which is reproduced here.

War Department, Adjutant General’s Office, Washington, July 5, 1865.

To Major General W. S. Hancock, U.S. Volunteers, Commanding Middle Military Division, Washington D.C.

“Whereas, by the military commission appointed in paragraph A, Special Orders, No. 211, dated War Department, Adjutant General’s Office, Washington, May 6, 1865, and in paragraph 91, Special Order No 216, dated War Department, Adjutant General’s Office, Washington May 9, 1865, and of which Major General David Hunter, U.S. Volunteers is President, the following named persons were tried, and after mature consideration of the evidence adduced in their cases were found and sentenced as hereafter stated, as follows:

1st. David E. Herold

Finding –

“Of the specification. Guilty except combining, confederating and conspiring with Edward Spangler, as to which part, thereof, Not Guilty.” 

“Of the charge – Guilty, except the words of the charge that he combined, confederated and conspired with Edward Spangler; as to which part of said charge; Not Guilty.

Sentence.

“And the commission does therefore sentence him the said David E. Herold, to be hanged by the neck until he be dead, at such time and place as the President of the United States shall direct, two thirds of the members of the commission concurring therein.”

2d. George Atzerodt.

 

Finding.

“Of the specification Guilty, except combining, confederating and conspiring with Edward Spangler: of this Not Guilty.”Finding.

“Of the charge, Guilty, except combining, confederating and conspiring with Edward Spangler; of this not Guilty.”

Sentence.

“And the commission does therefore sentence him, the said George A. Atzerodt, to be hung by the neck until he be dead at such time and place as the President of the United States shall direct, two thirds of the members of the commission concurring therein.”

3d. Lewis Payne.

Finding.

“Of the specification, Guilty, except combining, confederating and conspiring with Edward Spangler: of this Not Guilty.”

“Of the charge Guilty, except combining, confederating and conspiring with Edward Spangler; of this Not Guilty.”

Sentence.

“And the commission does therefore sentence him, the said Lewis Payne, to be hung by the neck until he be dead at such time and place as the President of the United States shall direct, two thirds of the members of the commission concurring therein.”

 4th. Mary E. Surratt.

Finding.

“Of the specification, Guilty, except as to receiving, entertaining, harboring, and concealing Samuel Arnold, and Michael O’Laughlin, and except as to combining, confederating and conspiring with Edward Spangler: of this Not Guilty.”

“Of the charge Guilty, except combining, confederating and conspiring with Edward Spangler; of this Not Guilty.”

Sentence.

“And the commission does therefore sentence her the said Mary E. Surratt, to be hung by the neck until she be dead, at such time and place as the President of the United States shall direct, two thirds of the members of the commission concurring therein.”

And whereas, the President of the United States has approved the foregoing sentences in the following order, to wit:

“Executive Mansion, “July 5th, 1865. “The foregoing sentences in the cases of David E. Herold, G.A. Atzerodt, Lewis Payne, xx, xx, xx, Mary E. Surratt, xxx, are hereby approved, and it is ordered that the sentences in the cases of David E. Herold, G.A. Atzerodt, Lewis Payne, and Mary E. Surratt, be carried into execution by the proper military authority under the direction of the Secretary of War, on the seventh day of July 1865, between the hours of ten o’clock a.m. and two o’clock p.m. of that day. x x x x x x x ” Andrew Johnson, “Presd.”

Therefore, you are hereby commanded to cause the foregoing sentences in the cases of David E. Herold, G.A. Atzerodt, Lewis Payne, and Mary E. Surratt, to be duly executed in accordance with the President’s order.

By command of the President of the United States.

(signed) E.D. Townsend, Asst. Adjt. Genl.

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After the reading of the Order of Execution was concluded, the ministers were allowed to speak and pray on behalf of their charges. Dr. Gillette went first on behalf of Lewis Powell, then Dr. Olds spoke on behalf of David Herold and finally Dr. Butler prayed on behalf of George Atzerodt.

Photo courtesy of Betty Ownsbey

People often wonder why Mrs. Surratt’s two priests did not speak publically to the crowd. In the case of Father Walter, he was not allowed to.

Father Walter, who strongly believed in Mary Surratt’s innocence, became so outspoken over the military’s decision to hang Mrs. Surratt, that he was given an ultimatum from Secretary of War Stanton’s office. It gave him what we would call today “a gag order”, stating that if he wished to be on the scaffold with Mrs. Surratt, he would cease his verbal attacks and rabble rousing publicly. This included that he would not be allowed to speak on the scaffold. Swallowing his anger for the time being, he agreed to this and was present with her at her time of need. Neither Father Walter and Father Wiget spoke that day.

However, after the hangings, Father Walter went on the attack again, this time gaining valuable allies that would eventually help in forcing Secretary of War Stanton to resign during the political upheaval that involved impeachment proceedings against President Johnson.

Here are the three prayers that were spoken that day as recorded by the New York Times and published July 8, 1865.

Dr. Gillette’s prayer:
“The prisoner, Lewis Thornton Powell, known as Payne, requests me on this occasion, to say for him, that he thanks, publicly and sincerely thanks, General Hartranft, all the officers and soldiers who had charge of him, and all persons who have ministered to his wants, for their unwavering kindness to him in this trying hour. Not an unkind word nor an ill feeling act has been made toward him”.
“Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we pray to thee to permit us to commit this soul into they hands, not for any claim we have to make it in ourselves, but depending as we do upon the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, grant, O Heavenly Father, we beseech thee that the spirit may be accorded an easy passage out of the world, and, if consistent with thy purposes of mercy, and thou delightest in mercy, receive him. This we humbly ask, through Jesus Christ our Lord and our Redeemer. Amen”.

Rev. Dr. Olds’ prayer:
“David E. Herold, who is here about to undergo the extreme penalty of offended law, desires me to say that he hopes your prayers may be offered up to the Most High God for him; that he forgives all who may at any time have wronged him and asked of all forgiveness for all the wrong or supposed wrong he has done unto them, that he thanks the officers who have had charge of him during his confinement in prison for their deeds of kindness toward him, he hopes that he dies in charity with all the world, and is convinced that his soul is in the hands of God. Amen”.

Rev. Dr. Butler’s prayer:
“George A. Atzerodt requests me thus publicly to return his unfeigned thanks to General Hartranft and all associate with him in the prison, for their uniform courtesy and kindness during his imprisonment. And now, George A. Atzerodt, may God have mercy upon you. The way of the transgressor is hard. The wages of sin is death; but if we freely confess our sins, God will in mercy pardon them. Christ came into the world to save sinners—even the chief of sinners. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, cleanseth from all sin. You profess to have thus believed to have peace in your heart; and may God be with you in this hour of trial and suffering; and may you be enabled so to commend your soul to the Creator of it, that you may have peace in this last moment of life. The Lord God Almighty, Father of Mercy, have mercy upon you, and receive you into His heavenly keeping. Lord God, Redeemer of the world, have mercy upon this man. Lord God, Holy Spirit of the Father and the Son, have mercy upon him and grant him peace. Amen.”

After the prayers had ended, there was nothing left to do but carry out the sentences. The four prisoners were commanded to stand and moved onto the hinged platforms. Their bodies were tied with strips of canvas to secure their limbs. The nooses were adjusted around their necks and a white canvas hood was placed over their heads.

At this point the soldiers, ministers and other men on the scaffold stepped back and on a signal that probably came from executioner Captain Christian Rath, the two vertical posts holding up the traps were knock out by soldiers below the scaffold. This sprung the traps and the four condemned conspirators dropped. Mary Surratt and George Atzerodt are reported to have shown little to no movement and were presumed to be unconscious. However, David Herold and Lewis Powell did not lose consciousness and for the next few minutes painfully struggled in vain until mercifully, they too lost consciousness.

After about 20 minutes or so, doctors checked each body for signs of life and finding none, pronounced the prisoners dead. The bodies would remain hanging for a few minutes more before being ordered taken down. Once cut down, the bodies were laid on their pine coffins and checked by the doctors again to determine whether any of the prisoners had broken their necks and if there were any other signs of trauma. Once recorded, the bodies were placed in their coffins with their hoods still in place and then buried in the graves that had been dug just to the right of the scaffold.

All of this occurred 144 years ago today, on this very hot and early afternoon of Friday, July 7, 1865.

Best

Barry

THE WASHINGTON D.C. ARSENAL PENITENTIARY (Part 1 of 3)

July 2, 2009: Barry Cauchon

The Lincoln conspirators are prepared for execution at the Washington Arsenal Penitentiary on July 7, 1865.

July 7, 2009 will mark the 144th anniversary of the hangings of the Lincoln conspirators at the Washington D.C. Arsenal Penitentiary. Over the past few months, I’ve had the privelege to converse, exchange ideas and share research with my now good friend John Elliott from San Antonio, Texas. John has been working hard at pulling together a history of the Arsenal Penitentiary from before, during and after the period that the trial and executions occurred.

Today, the penitentiary no longer exists except for one structure, referred to as Building 20 (or Grant Hall) which is all that remains from the west end of the structure. It was on the third floor of this part of the penitentiary that the conspirators’ trial took place. 

The land that Building 20 now stands on is located at Fort Lesley McNair, a restricted military installation. Due to the events of 9/11 in 2001 and the security changes that resulted from that event, Fort McNair is no longer open to the public. However, John has gained access on two occasions (all legally I assure you) and not only photographed the site but conversed with several people involved in the current project to restore the building (inclusive of the trial room). It’s a fascinating project and I’ve really enjoyed hearing about the plans they have scheduled for the building.

Since most of us will not have an opportunity to see this historical site without military access to the Fort, let me share with you this three-part series that John has compiled starting with Part 1: The Pre-Trial Period (1831-1862). Enjoy.

Best

Barry

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THE WASHINGTON D.C. ARSENAL PENITENTIARY

A History of the Prison Where the Conspirators of the Lincoln Assassination Were Tried and Hanged

Part 1: The Pre-Trial Period (1831-1862)

 

On April 27th, 1865, after being examined and identified as the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, the body of John Wilkes Booth was transferred from the USS Montauk to the Washington Arsenal Penitentiary. Under orders of strict secrecy, his body was buried 10 feet deep in a storage room at the prison. The storage room was located behind an iron door just 5 to 6 feet away from the Warden’s quarters. Booth’s corpse would remain on the arsenal grounds for the next 4 years. Thus began the penitentiary’s storied history and its connection with the Lincoln assassination conspiracy.

Thirty four years earlier, the D.C. Penitentiary opened its cell doors for the first time when Thomas Williams began serving a one year prison sentence for stealing a $6.00 barrel of flour. Upon entering his prison cell, Williams was issued a Bible, two blankets and a coarse sheet. He was also given the following rules to abide:

1. You shall be industrious and labor diligently in silence.
2. You shall not attempt to escape.
3. You shall not quarrel, converse, laugh, dance, whistle, sing, jump, nor look at nor speak to visitors.
4. You shall not use tobacco.
5. You shall not write or receive letters.
6. You shall respect officers and be clean in person and dress.
7. You shall not destroy or impair property.

The D.C. Penitentiary was built during an era of prison reformation. In the early 1800s, society no longer felt that corporal punishment would reform criminals or provide an effective deterrent to crime. Instead, religion, productive work and discipline would be the tools used to accomplish rehabilitation while providing a means to offset the cost of confinement. As a result, Congress allocated funds to construct Washington D.C.’s third prison. Unlike the other two (Old Capital Prison and Alexandria Jailhouse) which were built as temporary holding cells until one could be brought to trial, the new penitentiary would focus on rehabilitating inmates into becoming productive citizens.

Dorothea Dix 

Dorothea Dix

One person who was committed to seeing the D.C. Penitentiary and all its reform initiatives succeed was the famous humanitarian Dorothea Dix. She donated $100.00 of her own money to the penitentiary library. This was the equivalent of about $2500.00 in today’s (2009) economy.

Charles Bulfinch 

Charles Bulfinch

Charles Bulfinch, the architect of the Capital building was selected by President John Quincy Adams to design the new penitentiary. Its location was ideally suited to transport prisoners and supplies by water rather than laboring through city streets. The D.C. Penitentiary was situated just north of the main arsenal buildings on a small peninsula known as Green Leaf Point. Total funds appropriated to build the penitentiary were set at $140,000.00.

D.C. Penitentiary Plan

 

In “Fort Lesley McNair and the Lincoln Conspirators”, Lincoln historian Michael Kauffman provides the following description of the D.C. Penitentiary:

The original penitentiary consisted of a twenty-foot wall enclosing a three-hundred foot yard and three buildings.  The largest of these buildings was a cellblock containing 160 cells.  It was flanked on the southwest and southeast corners by two identical buildings which were the administrative offices and the prison hospital, respectively.  These three buildings made up the entire prison until the growing number of inmates forced the expansion of facilities.

The central building measured 120 by 50 feet, and from outside it appeared to be a three-story building. But actually, the outer walls formed a shell that enclosed an inner cellblock structure.  The cells themselves were arranged in four tiers, and each was divided into two ranges of twenty cells each.

Charles Bulfinch's sketch of the penitentiary.

Walkways ran lengthwise along both sides of each range and led to stairways at the east and west ends of the cellblock. Each cell measured 7′ by 3 ½′ by 7′ with solid masonry walls eighteen inches thick. Their iron doors opened alternately to the north and south to prevent the prisoners from communicating with each other.

Originally, the top tier of cells was to be used for the women inmates, but this plan was soon abandoned. Two ninety foot extensions were added to the east and west ends of the cellblock, and one half of the eastern extension became the new women’s ward. The other half became the deputy warden’s quarters.  

With the completion of the new extensions, the building measured 300 feet by 50 feet, with two 25 foot sections along the south wall, 120 feet apart. The extreme ends of the building could be entered from outside the penitentiary, and all of the sections were connected by a series of hallways and iron doors.

Inside view of Arsenal Penitentiary

 

 

The far west section was considered the main visitor’s entrance to the prison and this is where the warden had his office and living quarters. This section consisted of four rooms on each of its three floors. On the first floor, an iron door led to a large storeroom immediately to the east. This room was also part of the western extension and joined the main cellblock at its east wall. Directly above the storeroom was the prison chapel, and a new prison hospital was established on the third floor of this section.

Entering the cellblock’s south hallway from the storeroom, one could pass straight through to the eastern extension. Here another iron door led to the women’s cellblock. This section’s 64 cells were designed and arranged much the same as those of the men’s cellblock, but they were twice as large as the older cells.

Adjoining the women’s cellblock was the deputy warden’s quarters, a part of which was originally used for the prison laundry. This was the far eastern section of the penitentiary, and it also consisted of three floors. It differed from its western counterpart only in that it did not have four rooms on its third floor. A T-shaped hallway had been altered on this floor, which left the two northern rooms undivided. Thus, the northern half of the third floor consisted of one large room which measured about 40 feet by 27 feet.

Expansion of the prison was completed in the mid-1830s when a wash house and a shoe factory were built on the grounds to occupy the prisoner’s time.

  

For 31 years, the D.C. Penitentiary operated with mostly failed results. The shoe factory built to make the prison self sufficient never made a profit. According to the prison staff, inmates were seen as too lazy and incompetent to properly use the tools they were given. In addition, no continuity in the workshops could be achieved because of inmates being brought in and being released. The average prison sentence for 90 percent of the inmates was less than two years. In an effort to increase the prison population and improve the labor production, the penitentiary opened its doors to non-district prisoners in 1850. It would not be enough. The penitentiary, despite its noble efforts at prison reformation, was soon to be closed.

In 1862, citing a need for more storage space for the arsenal, Abraham Lincoln stated that the prison was “absolutely necessary” for military purposes. Lincoln ordered that the prison be turned over to the War Department and that the convicts be transferred to other prisons. Some inmates were sent to Albany, New York State Prison while others were transferred to the front lines. The Arsenal Penitentiary would never again serve as a prison until the spring of 1865.

End of Part 1

Sources:

Surratt Society: Laurie Verge and Joan Chaconas (Thanks for all the help!)
Michael Kauffman: Fort Lesley McNair and the Lincoln Conspirators
David K. Sullivan: Behind Prison Walls: The Operation of the District Penitentiary, 1831-1862
Phyllis I. McClellan: Silent Sentinel On The Potomac 

“An Awesometalk With” Nikaela Zimmerman, Kansas State Historical Society; owners of the Lincoln conspirators gallows crossbeam

July 9: UPDATE: The Kansas State Historical Society just announced that their popular exhibit “Lincoln in Kansas” has been extended and will now run until November 8, 2009 at the Kansas Museum of History.

Congratulations to everyone at the KSHS for their hard work.

Best

Barry

 

June 24, 2009: Barry Cauchon 

Nikaela Zimmerman, Assistant Registrar/Conservation Technician for the Kansas State Historical Society

Earlier this month, John Elliot, my friend and research partner on Fort McNair and the Washington Arsenal Penitentiary, sent me a photo of an artifact in the collection of the Kansas State Historical Society (KSHS). It is a portion of the gallows crossbeam that was used to hang the four Lincoln conspirators. I contacted Nikaela Zimmerman, Assistant Registrar / Conservation Technician at the KSHS and she graciously consented to an interview about the crossbeam, the exhibition it is currently displayed in and the Kansas State Historical Society’s role in preserving Kansas history.  Note: The photos of the Gallows Crossbeam and the Bloodstained Playbill from Ford’s Theatre are courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society.

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B. Hi Nikaela. It’s a pleasure to speak with you. The first thing I’d like to ask you concerns the Kansas State Historical Society. Can you tell us a little bit about the society and the role it plays in Kansas?

N.  The Kansas State Historical Society as a whole was founded in 1875. So we’ve been around almost as long as Kansas has been a state. Kansas became a state in 1861. We were founded by a group of Kansas editors and publishers. And we didn’t become a trustee of the state so we weren’t officially the state historical agency until 1879. We are the official repository and guardian of materials related to the history of the state of Kansas. 

B. Is the collection housed at the Kansas Museum of History?

N. It is! When the society first started out, it wasn’t broken down into divisions. It was all one umbrella. Now we’re broken into several different divisions. Within the Kansas State Historical Society the Kansas Museum of History is one of those divisions. The Library and Archives is another division. And we also have an Education division, a Cultural Resources division which includes Archaeology. And then we have sixteen historic sites throughout the state that are under another division. So we’re all part of one whole. We all serve the same purpose of preserving Kansas history. So we all do slightly different things.

B. Not knowing exactly how the system works, can you tell me how many museums are under the umbrella of the Kansas State Historical Society?

N. For the state of Kansas, we’re it. We are the official history museum. Basically, every county in the state has its own small historical society and they’re independent of us. Now, throughout the state, our historic sites are part of us and we manage them. We have a person there who works for the state who manages that site and the artifacts that are kept at that site. But for the most part, it’s us.

B. The reason I originally came across your website was because you have an exhibition on right now called Lincoln in Kansas which has a number of artifacts that relate to the blog that I write and am involved with. Would you tell us a little bit about that exhibit?

N. Sure. Since 2009 is the bi-centennial of Lincoln’s birth there are many museums in the United States that are doing exhibits related to him. It might sound a little odd that Kansas would have a Lincoln exhibit but Lincoln did visit Kansas in 1859. So the exhibit focuses on that and the other connections that Lincoln had with our state. At the time of his visit to Kansas, the territory was in the midst of a bloody battle to be entered into the Union as a free state. Lincoln was a rising political star. In the previous year he had just done the Lincoln-Douglas debates. The visit to Kansas was beneficial to both the territory and to Lincoln. People in Kansas thought that if they had Lincoln on the side of the Free-Staters it would increase their chances of getting into the Union as a slave-free state. And it benefited Lincoln because he was testing the political waters leading up to the 1860 Presidential elections. And it was a great opportunity for him to build some contacts in this part of the country and in a new area; not only for his campaign but for his law career. So while he was here he visited several cities in northeast Kansas like Atchison, Leavenworth, Troy and Elwood. In each city he gave a speech. He used that opportunity to practice and perfect a speech that he would deliver later at Cooper Union in New York. And many historians as you probably know cite that speech as one that turned around his presidential campaign. So that’s a large part of the exhibit, focusing on his visit to Kansas and what he did while he was here.

B. What artifacts are in the exhibit that relate to Lincoln’s visit?

N. There aren’t too many left. The sites where Lincoln spoke…most of them are gone now, so only pictures of them remain.

There’s a plaque which marks the building where Lincoln spoke in Leavenworth. It was the Planters House Hotel and there was a plaque on the building before it was razed. So we’ve got that.

Lincoln was possibly distantly related as a cousin to a man in Kansas named Mark Delahay who became a judge later on. So there are a few artifacts relating to the Delahay’s.

There is a pot (laughing)…this is crazy! There is a pot lid that may have belonged to Lincoln’s mother and then she gave it to another family member and it was passed down through the line and ended up in Kansas. So these are a collection of strange, random things in that section of the exhibit just because it’s a difficult period to collect from since the territorial period was 1) so long ago and 2) things that they had were so expendable.

B. In all the museums I’ve worked in and visited in my career, it’s those kinds of artifacts that I love most; the unique ones with the strange stories attached to them.

However, two of the artifacts that we spoke about earlier this week are not related to Lincoln’s visit to Kansas but rather to his assassination and the conspirators involved. And it was through connections in Kansas that these artifacts came to be in the KSHS’ historical collection. Can you tell us about these artifacts and how they ended up in Kansas?

N. The two artifacts you are talking about are; one is a gallows crossbeam and the other is a fragment of a playbill.

The gallows crossbeam came from the gallows on which the Lincoln conspirators were hanged in 1865. Again, it seems a little strange that such a piece would end up in the state of Kansas. What possible connection could there be?

A section of the gallows crossbeam taken from the scaffold used to hang the condemned Lincoln conspirators on July 7, 1865.

We’ve had the piece of the gallows in our collection since 1885. It’s one of our older artifacts. At the time it was collected our secretary was named Franklin G. Adams and he strongly believed that history should be collected while people who experienced it were still alive. So he was going out trying to find things, especially related to the Civil War, that could illustrate what happened. And he could still talk to the people that experienced it and have a good oral history, a good record of what those people experienced.

He found out from a colleague in Washington D.C. that the gallows used to hang the Lincoln conspirators was being stored in pieces at the Washington Barracks. And so he wasted no time in contacted a man named Lieutenant Sebree Smith who was at the Washington Quartermaster’s Office and asked him if might be willing to send a piece of the gallows to the historical society for the collections. And as luck would have it Lieutenant Smith had been stationed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for a period of time. He considered himself a Kansan and he happily agreed to send as much of the crossbeam as the historical society wanted. So at the time he shipped out the piece of the gallows that we have in our collection he also acquired a sworn statement from a man named George Tatsbaugh, who stated that he worked as a storekeeper at the Washington Arsenal from 1865 to 1881 and he witnessed the “top beam of the ‘Surratt Scaffold’ [as it’s sometimes called] was buried in 1865 under a large pile of timbers to secure it from curiosity seekers”. He went on to say that he did recognize the piece being sent to Kansas as the top beam from the gallows. And we’ve had it in our collection ever since.

B. One thing that I noticed when I read your brief on it was that the piece was made out of pine. And that surprised me. I didn’t know that about the scaffold. And my next question dealt with what part of the crossbeam did this section come from.

N. There was a little correspondence between Adams and Smith about which section of the crossbeam it was. Because when Smith sent the original letter to Adams saying “Yes, we have this” he indicated that the crossbeam had two mortise points in the middle. And Adams had looked at the pictures that Alexander Gardner had taken. He had also seen the drawings from Harper’s Weekly and he could not understand because in those depictions there was only one support beam in the center so why would there be two mortise holes? So he sent back a letter and Sebree Smith cleared it up by saying “Whoops, I was wrong. Looking at it again there was only one”! And if you look at the piece we have there’s one mortise.

B. But at this point you do not know if you have the center piece or one of the ends?

N. Right. It came from somewhere along the top crossbeam.

B. It can only be one of three locations by the looks of it (laughing).

That’s exciting. It’s a very interesting piece.

N. We are very excited to have it. It’s pretty cool.

B. It’s on display right now in the Lincoln in Kansas exhibit. Is this, and the other artifact that we are going to talk about in a minute, normally on display?

N. No. Unfortunately, they are not normally on display. They are kind of special things that we pull out for exhibits like this. And just for safekeeping they are usually kept in storage. At all times, 24/7, you can go onto our website and see images of them and read the provenance. Both of them can be found in the “Cool Things” section of our website.

B. If my readers have not been to your website, it’s definitely worth a visit. Go to www.kshs.org. To find Cool Things, click Collections and you will find the link there.

The second artifact is related directly to the assassination and it came from Ford’s Theatre. It’s a small corner of a playbill from the performance of Our American Cousin on April 14, 1865. It looks like a small tear or cut corner of the playbill. What are your thoughts on this Nikaela and the story behind the artifact?

A portion of a bloodstained playbill taken from Ford's Theatre on the night of Lincoln's assassination, April 14, 1865. The blood is Abraham Lincoln's.

N. It looks like the piece was cut. I have a feeling that the man who owned it cut it into pieces and maybe kept some of it and maybe divvied it up amongst other people who were interested because it’s a very clean cut.

The man who donated it was named Dr. Thomas D. Bancroft. And he was very active in Kansas during the territorial period. He was part of the Free State movement in Kansas. He fought with James Lane and John Brown against guerrilla fighters from Missouri which are two names that are heavily associated with the abolitionist movement. And he was also part of the frontier guard who protected the White House under the leadership of James Lane during the first days of the Civil War. So during that time the frontier guard was quartered in the east room. He may have met Lincoln during that period. He was also present at Lincoln’s 1^st Inaugural. So there’s a possibility that he somehow knew, or at least met, Lincoln. 

Most importantly though, Bancroft attended the play in Ford’s Theater the night Lincoln was shot.  He was among the men who stood at the head of the stairs to keep the crowd back as Lincoln was carried from the theater.  As Lincoln passed the men, drops of blood fell to the floor near where Bancroft was standing.  Once Lincoln was carried from the theater, Bancroft went back and he wiped up the spots with his program. And he kept it in his possession until donating it to the historical society in 1901.

So it’s also another, slightly disturbing, but very interesting artifact.

B. Absolutely. And again it’s good to hear the connection to Kansas because people would not normally think of the state of Kansas as being the keeper of artifacts from that period in our country’s history.

So I’m glad I came across you folks.

N. It’s interesting when you go through the exhibit to see how many connections there were between Lincoln himself or Lincoln and the assassination that appear in Kansas. Like John Wilkes Booth once performed Hamlet at the Union Theatre in Leavenworth which is ironic because then, Lincoln spoke there. Boston Corbett, who was the man responsible for shooting John Wilkes Booth in the manhunt afterwards. He became the Sergeant at Arms in the Kansas House of Representatives and was later sent to Topeka State Hospital after pulling his gun and threatening to use it in the Kansas House. He escaped from the State Hospital and then disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to him. The woman who wrote to Lincoln as a child and told him he should grow a beard later move to Kansas, to Delphos, Kansas and she’s buried there. And another woman named Vinnie Ream was a young sculptress from Kansas. As a teenager she moved to Washington DC and sculpted a bust of the President when she was sixteen. And then when she was eighteen she received a commission for a Lincoln statue that went into the US Capital. And Lincoln’s last sitting with her in her studio was April 14, 1865. And he left from there to go to Ford’s Theatre. So there are a lot of interesting connections.

B. Amazing stuff! 

N. Yeah. It’s so much fun.  

B. It sounds like you are a fan of that period. 

N. I am. I think Lincoln is very interesting. It’s fun that we have this exhibit up and it’s fun that we get to study a little more in depth about his connections to Kansas.

B. The exhibit is at the Kansas Museum of History in Topeka, Kansas. How long does the exhibit run until?

N. The Lincoln exhibit will be open until July 26, 2009.

As well, we are also in the process of raising funds to try to preserve some of our Lincoln artifacts. We have a banner that was used at one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. We have a silk umbrella that was used to shield Lincoln from a snow storm in Utica, New York. And we have a dress that was worn at Lincoln’s 2^nd Inaugural ball. Those things are all in need of conservation and treatment. But it’s so expensive to do that, we have to have a grant and we have to have matching funds. So we are having a “Lincolns for Lincoln” campaign and if anyone would like to donate to help us get those artifacts preserved they can do so on our website.

B. If anyone is interested in donating to help this worthy cause, I’ve posted the information below.

Nikaela, this has been great. Let me ask you one last question before we end our conversation. Do you have any other things planned for the Kansas History Museum in the future?

N. Right now we are working on our permanent gallery. We’ve been in our building for 25 years and it’s kind of time for an update. So we’ve been taking it kind of a piece at a time and this summer we are working on a section about Explorers. But we’ve also recently upgraded our Trails section and a section on Bleeding Kansas, the period leading up to statehood and the Civil War. So, they are very interesting and much prettier to look at now than they were before. And we have an exhibit about the importance of the automobile in Kansas that should be opening with any luck after the first of next year.

B. Do you have anything opening for the latter part of the summer after Lincoln in Kansas ends?

N. Unfortunately when Lincoln goes down we are going to take a bit of a break because of the economy. So our main thing this summer is that we do a film festival each summer that’s outside on the lawn and we project up onto the wall of the building. This year we are exploring the Hollywood version of history and museum work. It’s always a lot of fun and people get a kick out of sitting outside to watch a movie even when it’s 110 in Kansas in July.

B. Nikaela. Thank you very much. It’s been wonderful talking to you and I look forward to catching up with you and the Kansas State Historical Society in the near future.

N. Thank you.

DONATIONS: If people wish to donate to the “Lincolns for Lincoln” fund they can go to the following URL: http://store.kshs.org/store//product.php?productid=17705&cat=413&page=1.  There is a drop down menu where they can designate where they wish their money to go, and they should select “preservation of collections”.  Since the exhibit went up at the end of January, we’ve raised over $1000 towards the conservation of the Lincoln artifacts.  Most of that has been through coins in a donation box.  People love Lincoln!

END 

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

KING TUT TOURS ON THE MOVE AGAIN

June 17, 2009: Barry Cauchon

Hi all: In 2004-2005, I was the Sr. Project Manager for the current King Tut exhibit (which I affectionately call Tut 1). And although I am no longer working on that project, I do keep up with the folks involved and see how things are going from time to time. So I thought I’d give you an update on what is happening. The two King Tut tours are on the move once again.

Tut 1 called Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs will open on June 27, 2009 in San Francisco at the de Young Museum. The exhibit  is currently scheduled to run until March 28, 2010.  The city is abuzz with excitement about having the exhibit back in town. The de Young Museum was one of seven museums in the United States that hosted the original King Tut exhibit back in the 1970s. 

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs first opened in Basel, Switzerland in 2004, followed by a run in Bonn, Germany. The tour was then taken over by a group from the United States (Arts and Exhibitions International, AEG Live and the National Geographic Society) and opened its first show n Los Angeles in June, 2005. The following cities have hosted the exhibit:

• Los Angeles, CA
• Fort Lauderdale, FL
• Chicago, IL
• Philadelphia, PA
• London, England
• Dallas, TX
• and now is headed to San Francisco

Tut 2 called Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohswill open on June 27, 2009 in Indianapolis, Indiana at the Childrens’ Museum of Indianapolis. It is currently scheduled to run until October 25, 2009. From there, the tour will continue to Toronto, Ontario, Canada and run from November 24, 2009 to April 18, 2010.

This tour began in Vienna, Austria at the Volkerkunde Museum Vienna and was on display from March 9, 2008 to September 28, 2008. It was exhibited under the name Tutankhamun and the World of the Pharaohs. After that, the show traveled to the United States and now is named Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs. The exhibit has, or will visit the following cities:

• Vienna, Austria (ended)
• Atlanta, GA (ended)
• Indianapolis, IN (opening June 27, 2009)
• Toronto, ON, Canada (opening November 24, 2009).

Both Tut 1 and Tut 2 each have over 130 objects from a variety of Egyptian sites including 50 of which come from Tutankhamun’s tomb.

What these exhibits ARE NOT displaying

Two of the biggest misconceptions about these two exhibits are that the following artifacts are included and on display:

• King Tut’s mummy
• Golden Mask

This is absolutely not the case. Regrettably, neither of these artifacts are included in the current tours. In fact, Tutankhamun’s mummy has never even left its tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt since its discovery in 1922. And although thousands of people visit the tomb annually, the mummy was never on public display there until November of 2007. It was then that King Tut’s mummy was put in a special climate-controlled display case inside the tomb where visitors are now able to view it.

Zahi Hawass, Egypt's Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) stands over the mummy of Tutankhamun now on display in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt.

The Golden Mask is also not on tour with these two exhibits. It remains on display at The Egyptian Museum in Cairo. However the mask was part of the original exhibit Treasures of Tutankhamun that toured in the 1970s. Many people remember that blockbuster exhibit because of the Golden Mask and they assumed that it would tour again with these new shows. Unfortunately the Egyptian government stated that it would never again allow the mask to leave Egypt as it is considered a national treasure and must remain safely in Egypt.

The icon often used in the current advertisements for these new exhibits confused many people because it looks like the Golden Mask but in fact is a “golden canopic coffinette”. The coffinettes (4 in total) were used to hold one of Tutankhamun’s internal organs after the embalming process was completed. They are amazing in detail to see in person. They have similar features to the Golden Mask but are tiny in comparison. The head and shoulders of the Golden Mask is 54cm high (21-1/4″)  while the height of an entire canopic coffinette only measures 39cm high (15-3/8″). Each exhibit has one of these coffinettes on display.

King Tut's Golden Mask is not on tour and remains in The Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Canopic coffinette. Each touring exhibit features one of these wonderfully intricate artifacts which are only 15-3/8" tall.

To buy tickets to the exhibits, go to www.kingtut.org.

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

INSTANT REPLAY – LINCOLN ASSASSINATION ARTIFACTS (where to find them)

June 15, 2009: Barry Cauchon

Instant Replay is a feature which posts previously run articles for those who may not have read them in the past. Please enjoy this Instant Replay of LINCOLN ASSASSINATION ARTIFACTS (where to find them) originally posted on August 3, 2008. To date, it is the #1 posting with over twice as many hits as the next closest article. Recently added is a portion of the gallows crossbeam which the Lincoln conspirators were hanged from (Kansas State Historical Society). Quite an amazing artifact.

Enjoy the story.

http://awesometalks.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/lincoln-assassination-artifacts-where-to-find-them/

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

ANTHONY ROBBINS HAS ME FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS

June 10, 2009: Barry Cauchon

Hi all: I will be away from my computer over the next 5 days as I am working at a large Anthony Robbins event in Toronto for the Power Within. It’s the same one I worked at last year. For those who know the event (UPW), yes I will once again be walking on red hot, 1200 degree coals in the infamous Fire Walk! Trust me, it’s a cool thing to do. If you can walk on fire, you can pretty well do anything…and that’s the point.

Anthony Robbins and crew from the 2008 UPW event in Toronto. I can be found in the last row, second from your right.

When I worked at Tony Robbins’ event last year, I was in the mindset of making sure that the ‘paying guests’ were well taken care of and that I, and my teammates, did everything we could to make the event as successful as possible.

But even as a volunteer you can’t help but soak in much of the content that Tony shares with his participants. And that got me thinking. Did my life change in the past year since the last time I did this event? The answer is a resounding YES!

Here are some of the highlights that have occurred for me in the last year.

1. I started this blog “A Little Touch of History” in May, 2008. But it really didn’t take off until August, 2008  just after I did Tony’s event.

2. I wrote about 100 articles and the contents for a book which I am currently in the process of producing. Neither of these things were on my ‘to do list’ last year.

3. I made some great new friends and colleagues this year. Something that I truly cherish in my life. You gals and guys know who you are.

4. I gave up coffee (and have only had 3 cups since last July, 2008). The desire is no longer there. Prior to that I was doing 3-4 cups a day.

5. I was welcomed into the Lincoln research community which blew me away. I had always been in awe of the great work that these fine folks have done and to be treated with great respect and kindness by them was humbling. Thank you to you all. I’m proud to rub elbows with you all.

6. I met and spoke with President Bill Clinton, former World Chess Champion Gary Kasparov and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus. I never thought that would ever happen!

7. I started doing public speaking presentations at schools and even at a conference. It is one of my real passions.

…and the list goes on.

Perhaps it was just ’MY YEAR’ for these things to happen.  Or can they be attributed to Tony’s influence? Honestly, other than giving up the coffee (which is directly related to the event) I can’t say for sure. But I believe things happen for a reason and I will continue to read the signs that have been placed in front of me to act upon.

I can’t wait to see what the next year brings but I’ve got a pretty good idea that this train will continue to roll down the tracks and gather more and more steam. Whatever happens, I’m really looking forward to the experience.

I’ll speak to you upon my return next week. If you have stories like this that you’d like to share, please feel free to drop me a line here and I’ll be happy to post them.

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

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NOTE: If you are interested in joining my mailing list for updates on the progress of my book, The Lincoln Conspirators Execution Photos: A Study in Detail please send me your email at the outreach@awesometalks.com and I will be happy to add you to the list.

INSTANT REPLAY – THE FAME OF MAJOR GENERAL LEW WALLACE

June 5, 2009: Barry Cauchon

Instant Replay is a feature which posts previously run articles for those who may not have read them in the past. Please enjoy this Instant Replay of The Fame of Major General Lew Wallace originally posted on September 1, 2008. It was one of my favorites.

Best. Barry

—————————————–

THE FAME OF MAJOR GENERAL LEW WALLACE

Civil War Union army officer, Major General Lewis “Lew’ Wallace is well known to historians for his involvement in many high profile events. But the one that he is most famous for will come as a surprise to you.

For much of the Civil War, Wallace acted as division commander under Ulysses S. Grant. He commanded troops in several battles, the most high profile being the Battle of Shiloh. Regrettably, due to a communication mix up between Grant and Wallace, he led his troops away from the fighting and did not get back until the battle was almost over. Grant blamed Wallace for the mix up. For the rest of his life, Wallace would try to clear his name with the Union military commanders (including Grant) but with little success. 

UPDATE: February 11, 2009: I received a comment from Bernie O’Bryan who professionally portrays General Wallace at events and he advises me that Wallace and his troops only missed part of the battle rather than when it was almost over. Bernie stated the following, “Well, actually almost over for the first day, but the Battle of Shiloh was a two day battle, Wallace’s troops arrived in the later part of the first day, but opened the battle the next day and saw more than their share of fighting on that day”. Thank you Bernie for the clarification. I really appreciate it.

But by the end of the war, Lew Wallace began to become a visible public figure in other arenas.

Event #1: In 1865, after President Lincoln had been assassinated, eight conspirators were arrested and put on trial in a military court. Wallace was chosen as one of twelve men to sit on the military commission responsible for trying the one female and seven male defendants.

After a two month trial, they would find all eight conspirators guilty of various offenses. Four would be sentenced to hang, three would be given life sentences and one would receive a 6-year sentence.

 

Four conspirators in the Lincoln assassination are prepared for hanging on July 7, 1865.

 

Event #2:Then in late July, 1865, Wallace would again sit on another military commission. This one for the war crimes trial and court-martial of Confederate Henry Wirz, the commandant of the notorious Andersonville Prison Camp.

With over 12,000 prisoners dying while under his watch in 1864, Wirz was held responsible for the deaths and put on trial for war crimes. Although Wirz’s culpability was highly controversial, he was still found guilty and sentenced to hang in Washington DC on November 10, 1865.

 

Wallace resigned from the army on November 30, 1865 and entered politics, holding several positions over the next 20 years.

Event #3:From 1878 to 1881, Wallace served as governor of the New Mexico Territories. On March 17, 1879, Governor Wallace met with, and attempted to offer amnesty to, the notorious outlaw, Henry McCarty a.k.a. William H. Bonney a.k.a. Billy the Kid for his involvement in the Lincoln County War. Unfortunately, Billy the Kid did not follow through with his part of the deal, and Wallace withdrew his offer. Billy the Kid would be shot and killed on July 14, 1881 by Sheriff Pat Garrett. 

Event #4: In contrast to his military and political careers, Lew Wallace was also a gifted writer. He would write and publish three novels during his lifetime. However, it was his second novel that would bring him untold fame. On November 12, 1880, Wallace released Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ”.

The novel became a tremendous best-seller. It soon out sold Harriet Beecher-Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the best selling American novel. It would remain the top selling American novel for over fifty years until 1936 when it was finally overtaken by Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind.

One stage play and two films were made of Ben-Hur. The most memorable film being the academy award winning movie from 1959 starring Charlton Heston.

Many believe that much of Ben-Hur was a semi-autobiographical account of Lew Wallace’s life.

Lew Wallace died February 15, 1905 at age 77.

END

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING THE LINCOLN CONSPIRATORS EXECUTION PHOTOS: A STUDY IN DETAIL

June 1, 2009: Barry Cauchon

I wanted to let everyone who has been following my blog for the past year know that it has been a very successful venture. One of the most successful postings I produced was the 15-chapter series called The Lincoln Conspirators Execution Photos: A Study in Detail.

I have been working on formatting this study into a book version for several months and am glad to report that I have reached the point where I must regrettably remove the content from this blog and begin finalizing the document for print. The final version of this will grow from 15 chapters to about 20-25 chapters as I have lots of other tidbits that I want to add.

But to not cut people off entirely from the study, you still have access to Chapters 1 to 5 on line here so you can get a feel for how the overall project was produced. I’m sorry if it is like reading a story and then having to stop right when it’s getting good but regrettably, it is a necessary step I’ve had to take.

When appropriate I will report on how you can obtain a copy of this book if you wish. If you want to write to me and get on my mailing list, I’ll be happy to give you updates as I have them available. outreach@awesometalks.com

In the meantime, I am working in conjunction with Mr. John Elliott to bring you a new series on Fort Lesley McNair and the Old Arsenal Penitentiary. John is from San Antonio, Texas and we have been working on some research concerning the Fort and the buildings that are directly connected with the historic hangings which took place in 1865.  We’ll report on the anticipated restoration of the 3rd floor room in Building 20 that originally held the trial of the Lincoln conspirators. And perhaps even tell you the story of the mysterious Lady in Black that has appeared in the building for years.

US Arsenal in Washington DC with the Old Arsenal Penitentiary (the location of the Lincoln conspirators trial and executions). Map circa 1861.

 

Thank you all for your interest in my blog. I hope this series is as interesting to you as the last one was.

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

JUNE BIRTHDAYS FOR LINCOLN’S FRIENDS AND FOES

The following friends and foes of Abraham Lincoln celebrate birthdays in June.

Happy Birthday!!!

  Jefferson Davis - President of Confederate States of America. Born June 3, 1808. Age 201.

  William Henry Seward, Jr. – Son of Secretary of State William Seward Sr. Jr. was attacked by Lewis Powell on April 14, 1865 during the assassination attempt on his father. Born June 18, 1839. Age 170.

  David E. Herold - Lincoln conspirator. Born June 16, 1842. Age 167.

  George Atzerodt - Lincoln conspirator. Born June 12 , 1835. Age 174.

  Michael O’Laughlen - Lincoln conspirator. Born in June, 1840. Age 169.

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

BUSH-CLINTON “A CONVERSATION WITH PRESIDENTS” EVENT IN TORONTO

May 30, 2009: Barry Cauchon

May 29, 2009 - President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton in Toronto during the moderated section of "A Conversation with Presidents" event. Courtesy of Reuters

Yesterday the city of Toronto, Canada was host to a unique and first time event. President George W. Bush (43rd) and President William Jefferson Clinton (42nd) met publicly for the first time since President Bush left office in January, 2009. They were in Toronto to have a ‘moderated conversation’ in front of an estimated audience of about 5500 people. 

I am a senior volunteer for the Power Within (co-producer of the event) and a real fan of sharing what goes on ‘behind the scenes’, I’ll fill you in on how the day went and a little bit about how events like this come together. For the record, I have been volunteering for the Power Within since 2007 and have enjoyed working  their events and interacting with the audiences they attract. 

As a brief introduction to the public speaking event industry, the producer of the event is responsible for pulling the show together. They may come up with the concept themselves or coordinate it on behalf of other parties. Don’t be fooled. This is not a simple task. This is show business. And what it takes to ‘put on the show’ is a massive coordinated effort. Hopefully in the end, the audience sees a seamless and enjoyable presentation. In the case of yesterday’s program, two ex-Presidents of the United States shared the same stage together and talked for about two hours on 21st century world issues. On the surface, that is what the audience came to see. What went on behind the scenes prior to the event is what this article is about. 

For any event, once the program is defined and the talent (in this case the Presidents) contractually confirmed, then the show itself has to be pulled together. A venue is selected, the solicitation of sponsors begins, PR & marketing kick into gear and the early stages of logistics ramp up. Once the basics are in place (the who, what, where and when), ticket sales are started. I’m making it all sound simpler than it is. In reality it is a highly coordinated effort with many disciplines interacting with each other. As many of you know, I was the Sr. Project Manager for the King Tut exhibit that started touring the United States in June of 2005.  The process for that, and most other well-coordinated shows, is almost identical to this. You will notice that when I mentioned the ‘who, what, where and when’, I left out the ‘how’. Well, that’s what ‘logistics’ is all about.

Logistics involves thousands of details being planned and executed. To name just a few of the basics, you need to deal with transportation, lighting, audio-visual requirements, staging, staffing, venue coordination, food and beverage, washrooms, tickets, seating, VIP considerations, speakers and their staffs’ needs,  sponsors and their needs, medical and EMS requirements, fire and safety, and of course security.

With regards to security, you can imagine that to protect not one, but two Presidents of the United States in one location is a logistical nightmare. President Clinton and President Bush each have their own Secret Service details. Then there is the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police who protect all government officials and visiting dignateries to Canada), local police and venue security staff. All parties work hand-in-hand to protect the Presidents and make the event secure for the people attending. 

Please let me state that in no way am I personally involved with any of the arrangements mentioned above for the Power Within or any of the security forces mentioned. As a volunteer I have my own ‘job to do’. I just wanted to make you aware of what goes on in setting up such an event like this.

Now let’s get to yesterday’s event.

The event had about 5500 paid attendees ranging from about C$200 to C$2500 per ticket. Now before your jaw drops about the higher priced ticket, this was for people who desired to attend a private luncheon and photo session with the Presidents before the event. 

The location of the event was the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The doors opened to the public at around1:00 pm with the event scheduled to begin at 3:30 pm. A volunteer orientation meeting was held the night before where 70+ recruited volunteers attended. The purpose of the meeting was to go over the logistics of the event and visit the room where the event will take place. They volunteers learn what their job will be the next day (doing everything from working as a ‘greeter’ in the lobby to assisting at the photo op with the Presidents and their special guests. I’ve worked all these positions at one time or another and frankly love them all. Yesterday, my job was to coordinate with two other Senior Veterans and manage about 40 volunteers assigned as “IN ROOM USHERS”. IN ROOM is the term we use for the actual room where the event takes place. Our job was to get all 5500 people seated and ready for the show and deal with any problems that may arise. Seating 5500 people is no easy task. Events of this type attract dignitaries, celebrities, CEOs, Presidents, sponsors and groups, the general public and people from all over the world. There are different ticket prices and you need to be sensitive to everyone’s needs and requirements. In the end, you have to have everyone seated and ready to go when the event begins. Yesterday went fairly well. Typical problems usually involved people sneaking into sections they were not supposed to be, people saving seats for others, impatient attendees wondering when the event would start, etc, etc, etc. No big deal. In general, this audience was really great and once everyone was seated and the lights turned down, the show began and everyone forgot any issues they may have had earlier in the day.

The event:  I won’t get into all the nitty gritty of the actual content of the event as news stories have been run in all the major publications, news services, MSNBC, CNN, television and radio news, and has been fodder for Jay Leno and David Letterman.  But here are my impressions.

The stage was set up with one podium on the left side of the stage. To the right of this were three big comfy green leather chairs with tables between each holding water bottles and hand microphones.

After being introduced, President Clinton was first to come out and spoke briefly in his usual easy going, confident and charming way. I have seen the President speak five times now and his natural charisma just captures and holds an audience’s attention. He joked and spoke about what he is currently doing as an ‘ex-President’. He humorously bemoaned the fact that of all the things he has missed since leaving office was that during personal appearances they no longer play ’the song’ (Hail to the Chief). He really misses that. The crowd ate it up. After his short 10 – 15 minutes talk, he took a seat in one of the chairs on stage.

Next President Bush was introduced. Where President Clinton has been a consistent visitor to Toronto and a good friend to Canada, people were apprehensive about how the audience would respond the Mr. Bush in his first public appearance in Toronto. As expected, protesters were camped outside of the venue with signs and chants showing their disapproval of President Bush’s policies and involvement in the war. Also, there was the perception that the President might struggle with his public speaking. Well, all those fears were dispelled very quickly as he stepped onto the stage looking relaxed, stress-free and confident, and then launched into a series of ‘one liners’ that had the crowd laughing and quickly on his side. His jokes were often self-deprecating and genuinely funny. He mentioned that like most A-type people he needs to stay active. Now that he is out of office he is writing a book, which was a surprise to many, because they figured he has never even read one! This also got a great laugh from the crowd. Whether well-coached or genuinely looking and feeling relaxed, President Bush came off as enjoying himself and thoroughly having fun with this event. I felt that the audience really enjoyed it too.

The next phase of the event was where Frank McKenna, former Canadian Ambassador to the United States in 2005, moderated a series of questions as they all sat in those big green comfy leather chairs. Early on, both Presidents joked that the audience had come to see the event in hopes of witnessing fireworks between the two of them. For the most part, although the questions were moderate in nature, very few differences of opinion came from either gentleman. In fact, both President Clinton and President Bush backed each other when a policy issue or international event was discussed. 

When President Clinton took personal responsibility for not reacting fast enough to the genocide in Rwanda (800,000 were killed in 9 days), saying that in hindsight he should have sent troops into Rwanda to stop the carnage and perhaps save 300,000 to 400,000 lives. He was defended strongly by President Bush saying that it’s not easy being President. You just can’t send 20,000 troops into action. There is a process that is required. Approval from various levels of  the US government, other governments and the UN. Then there are the sheer logistics of mobilizing 20,000 troops and their equipment and weapons, transportation, food, etc. It just can’t happen in a short period of time.

All in all, I believe the audience had an enjoyable and entertaining time hearing these two former world leaders speak. Regardless of everyone’s politics, the presence of these two men had everyone hanging on their every word. 

From a personal point of view, I really enjoyed this event. But what I liked best of all was the fact that several audience members I met had brought their teenage kids with them to see these two world leaders. So few proud Americans, let alone their kids, will ever get the chance to see a President speak live. As a kid, I was lucky enough to see a speech by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the late ’60s that my father took me to. I was with the Cub Scouts at the time and I’ll always remember how amazing it was to see the President of the United States speak in person. I carry that same feeling to this day. And I’m glad that these parents were able to find a way to bring their kids to this event. I truly think it will stay with them for the rest of their lives as it did with me.

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

PRESIDENTS BILL CLINTON AND GEORGE W. BUSH TO MEET MAY 29, 2009 IN TORONTO, CANADA

May 26, 2009: Barry Cauchon

  

On Friday, May 29, 2009, President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush will meet face-to-face for the first time since President Barack Obama’s Inauguration on January 20, 2009. The event will take place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in downtown Toronto, Canada in front of an estimated crowd of 6000 people. The two Presidents will discuss the challenges facing the world in the 21st century .

In the last two years, I have volunteered for events like these…and so I will be there again. Previously I’ve worked at four speaking events with President Clinton and actually met him at the last one. It was an exciting and proud moment for me. Although I do not expect to meet either gentleman at this event, I am thrilled to be a part of it once again and help out the folks who produce these shows.

To be clear, it is not my intention to report on the content of the meeting (that would be inappropriate as I am not there as a reporter) but I will comment on how the day went and if there were any highlights.

I like seeing our Presidents. Whether they are Democrats or Republicans, loved or hated or even if they were considered as good or bad politicians, these men held the top position in the country. They were the Presidents of the United States and history was made by them. And you know I’m fascinated with history.

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

HAPPY 1ST ANNIVERSARY FOR ‘A LITTLE TOUCH OF HISTORY’

May 22, 2009: Barry Cauchon

It's a celebration. A Little Touch of History is 1 year old.

On Friday, May 22 my blog “A Little Touch of History: An Awesometalks Program” celebrated its 1 year anniversary. And what an amazing year it has been for me. What started out as a simple outlet for me to share my varying interests in history with others, blossomed into something that I never expected. Not only was I able to share these interests with everyone, but in due course, I learned an incredible amount as well. Researchers (amateurs and professionals), experts , hobbyists and students were approaching me and offering ‘private’ history lessons that sped up my learning curve immensely. And where appropriate, I shared that information with you in hopes that you would benefit from it in the same way as I did. I cannot even begin to express how wonderful an experience this has been for me.

In the past year I have found myself quietly being accepted and nutured by members of the Lincoln research community and treated like a peer. That fact still astounds me. For years I put many of these ‘giants’ on pedestals because I truly respected the work they did and presented to the world. Yet, every one of them have been kind to me and have always willingly shared their time and information openly. To each of you I say, “Thank you”.

This year also brought me new friends and aquaintances. For me, that was one of the best benefits of all. I truly cherish those that have written, chatted, exchanged ideas and even corrected my historical mistakes (you know I hate inaccurate history and can’t stand promoting it myself). Best of all, I made a few really close friends and hope to have them in my life for years to come. So again, thank you all.

Finally, I’ve had some pretty big highlights this year. Not all were related to this blog but I truly believe in serendipity so they are connected in some way. For this reason, all the planets must have aligned and things have just been “happening”.  For instance, I met President Clinton last November. That was a proud moment for me. I’ve interviewed some awesome people who either work with history, discovered history or amazingly even lived history. And yesterday, on the eve of this one year anniversary, I finally met my friend, the mysterious Mr. P. (you’ll have to find his name in my blog if you want to know more about him). In my opinion, Mr. P. is really the person who helped put this blog on the map and kick start it into the direction it currently follows. He is a unique person and one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. He’s now a good friend and someone who I spiritually connect with. I believe things happen for a reason. It isn’t coincidence that both our schedules fell into place at the same time, that I would be in his hometown on business and then end up meeting with him exactly one year after the blog began. Eerie but inevitable. Anyway Mr. P…..here’s to you my friend. Thanks for helping me to move this train down the track and keeping me laughing constantly!  

And thank you to everyone who has been a part of A Little Touch of History’s success, whether as a contributor or visitor. All were, and are, very important to me. I can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

MISTAKEN IDENTITY: THE ARLINGTON MEMORIAL AMPHITHEATER

May 22, 2009: Barry Cauchon

I received a comment from “Nick” about an article I posted here called The Lincoln Memorial: Construction & Dedication Photographs. He noticed that one of the photos included did not seem correct and wanted to verify whether the image in the photo was, in fact, the Lincoln Memorial. Well, thanks to Nick’s persistence, he convinced me to take a closer look at the photograph. Sure enough, it was NOT the Lincoln Memorial but rather a photograph of the early construction of the Arlington Memorial Amphitheater which is part of the Tomb of the Unknowns (originally called the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier).

As this is the Memorial Day weekend and a very important time to remember our fallen troops and soldiers, I wanted to post this photo as well as post the Visitor Information about the Arlington Memorial Amphitheater found on the Arlington National Cemetery web site.

It is important to remember our fallen heroes. On this Memorial Day weekend, take a moment to think about them and their families and what they’ve given for their country.

Thank you.

Barry

A photograph of the early stages of construction of the Arlington Memorial Amphitheater located at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

 

Memorial Day ceremonies at the Arlington Memorial Amphitheater in May, 1943.

 

Visitor Information The Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery

The Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., was dedicated on May 15, 1920. While many ceremonies are conducted throughout the country, many consider the services at Arlington’s Memorial Amphitheater to be the nation’s official ceremonies to honor all American service members who serve to keep the United States free. About 5,000 visitors attend each of the three major annual memorial services in the Amphitheater. They take place Easter, Memorial Day and Veterans Day and are sponsored by the U.S. Army Military District of Washington. The Easter Sunrise Service begins at 6 a.m. Memorial Day and Veterans Day services always begin at 11 a.m. Many military organizations also conduct annual memorial services in the amphitheater. The Memorial Amphitheater was the dream of Judge Ivory G. Kimball, who wished to have a place to assemble and honor the American defenders. Because of Kimball’s campaign, Congress authorized its construction March 4, 1913. Judge Kimball participated in the ground-breaking ceremony March 1, 1915, but did not live to see his dream completed. Ivory Kimball died May 15, 1916, and was buried in Section 3 of the cemetery, near the Memorial Amphitheater he campaigned to build. President Woodrow Wilson placed its cornerstone Oct. 15, 1915.  One copy of the following items is sealed inside the box placed in the cornerstone that day: The Bible The Declaration of Independence The U.S. Constitution U.S. Flag (1915) Designs and plans for the amphitheater L’Enfant’s map design of the city of Washington, D.C. Autograph of the amphitheater commission One of each U.S. coin in use in 1915 One of each U.S. postage stamp in use in 1915 1914 map of Washington, D.C. The Congressional Directory Boyd’s City Directory for the District of Columbia Autographed photo of President Woodrow Wilson The cornerstone dedication program The Evening Star newspaper account of the ceremonies, and the campaign to build the Amphitheater  The Amphitheater is constructed mainly of Vermont-quarried Danby marble. The marble in the Memorial Display Room is imported Botticino, a stone mined in Italy. The Memorial Display Room, between the amphitheater and the Tomb of the Unknowns, houses plaques and other tributes presented in honor of the four service members interred at the Tomb of the Unknowns (first known as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier). A small chapel is beneath the Amphitheater stage. The names of 44 U.S. battles from the American Revolution through the Spanish-American War are inscribed around the frieze above the colonnade. The names of 14 U.S. Army generals and 14 U.S. Navy admirals prior to World War I are inscribed on each side of the amphitheater stage.  ”When we assumed the soldier we did not lay aside the citizen,” from then-Gen. George Washington’s June 26, 1775, letter to the Provincial Congress is inscribed inside the apse. “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain,” from President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is inscribed above the stage. “DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI,”a quote from Horace’s Ode III, 2, 13 is etched above the west entrance of the Memorial Amphitheater. Translated from the Latin: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/visitor_information/amphitheater.html

END

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

Mini Posting #2: William Coxshall’s Missing Digit

May 11, 2009: Barry Cauchon

For those of you who follow this blog, you’ll know that I have focused much of my research on the events and people involved in the executions of the four condemned Lincoln assassination conspirators. One of the four men who stood below the scaffold to help spring the traps on July 7, 1865 was a soldier named William Coxshall.

Alexander Gardner's photograph "Arrival at Scaffold" with William Coxshall standing beneath the gallows on the front left side.

Did you know that Coxshall served with Company K, 37th Volunteer Infantry, Wisconsin and during the Battle of Petersburg was wounded, losing part of his left index finger?

It’s true. After recuperating from his injury, he was transferred to Company F, 14th Regiment Veterans Corp and  assigned to the Old Arsenal Penitentiary in Washington DC. Coxshall was one of four soldiers assigned to spring the traps of the gallows. Alexander Gardner’s photo “Arrival at Scaffold” captured Coxshall’s injury.  

Coxshall beneath the scaffold.

William Coxshall and his missing digit

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

TITANIC: Did J. Bruce Ismay Order Captain Smith to Speed Up?

May 8, 2009: Barry Cauchon

J. Bruce Ismay was the chairman and managing director of the White Star Line on the night of April 15, 1912 when the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic ocean. Ismay was also a passenger on board.

Joseph Bruce Ismay, the White Star Line Chairman and Managing Director

Yesterday I received a query from Ladybugge about J. Bruce Ismay’s rumored interference in the ship’s operation during its final and fatal voyage. Here is Ladybugge’s question.

“I think  that in the era [of the Titanic] there was a lot of arrogance! Could you tell me why Ismay demanded more speed? Besides what the movie said, [did he order] more speed so he could give the newspapers something to write about”?

Excellent question Ladybugge!

The scene from the movie TITANIC referred to by Ladybugge features an exchange between Bruce Ismay and Captain Smith which takes place a short time after the Titanic had sailed.

Ismay: So you’ve not yet lit the last four boilers?
Smith: No, I don’t see the need. We are making excellent time.
Ismay: The press knows the size of Titanic. Now I want them to marvel at her speed. We must give them something new to print! This maiden voyage of Titanic must make headlines!
Smith:Mr. Ismay, I would prefer not to push the engines until they’ve been properly run in.
Ismay: Of course, I’m just a passenger. I leave it to your good officers to decide what’s best. But what a glorious end to your final crossing if we were to get to New York on Tuesday night and surprise them all! Make the morning papers. Retire with a bang, eh E.J.?
Ismay: Good man.

[Transcription courtesy of The Internet Movie Database].

As wonderful as the movie Titanic was, and I personally loved it, James Cameron still had a ‘fictional’ story to tell. Cameron used as many factual elements in the film as was possible and weaved his romantic fictional story within that framework. For the most part, much of the factual structure of the story was based on eyewitness accounts, historical documents and some unsubstantiated rumors and half truths. There was no Rose DeWitt Bukater or Jack Lawson on the passenger list and this particular exchange between Ismay and the Captain was based much more on conjecture rather than actual evidence. But the scene is still in the film because it certainly could have happened, and very well may have. If it did happen, why would this issue have been of such importance? Ladybugge mentions that arrogance and newspaper headlines could have been valid reasons for this occurring. Both are excellent points. However, let me give you a short historical explanation from both sides of the debate and you can make your own judgement on whether you think Ismay did, or did not, try to persuade Captain Smith to light the additional boilers and break the speed record for crossing the North Atlantic.

The Blue Riband (or Ribband)

For over a century and a half, ships had battled for the coveted and high-profile Blue Riband (or Ribband), the prize awarded to the fastest ship on the North Atlantic. And although no physical prize or trophy actually existed called the Blue Riband, the recognition of being the fastest ship on the North Atlantic brought real rewards to the ship’s owners. These being in the form of lucrative contracts for mail, passenger and specialty services. At the time of Titantic’s maiden voyage, the Blue Riband was held by the Mauretania, a ship owned by the Cunard line, which won it in September, 1909. The Mauretania would dominate and hold the Blue Riband for an incredible twenty years after that. The Cunard Line was a direct British competitor with the White Star Line and the fight for passengers and mail service was intense.

So in April, 1912, White Star introduced their latest ship, the RMS Titanic which set off on its first North Atlantic crossing. Logically, it makes sense why the White Star Line would want to go after the speed record. It had the newest and most powerful ship ever built. And with the rewards for holding the Blue Riband being so great, they would have financially benefited greatly from winning it. 

Recently, a book called “The White Star Line: An Illustrated History 1869 – 1934″ by Paul Louden-Brown was re-released and comments on the Ismay debate above and gives a fascinating historical summary of the events from the time. I own the original version which came out in 1990 but this new one is totally revamped. It should be a great read for Titanic enthusiasts. The Titanic Historical Society website has published an excerpt from Mr. Lauden-Brown’s book (which I have included below). I urge you to take a look at their website as it’s a great place for learning so much more about the RMS Titanic.

————————————————————————–

ISMAY AND THE TITANIC by Paul Louden-Brown. Excerpted from The White Star Line: An Illustrated History 1869-1934″

J. Bruce Ismay at the time of the disaster, as chairman and managing director of the White Star Line, was held to blame for the loss of the Titanic by the American press; especially those controlled by William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper magnate and one of the richest and most powerful men in America. Ismay had met Hearst years before, when he was White Star’s agent in New York. The two men disliked each other intensely and Ismay’s refusal to cooperate with the press infuriated the newspaperman storing up problems for the future. Almost twenty years after their first meeting it was the Hearst syndicated press who prosecuted a vicious campaign against him, a full-page cartoon depicting Ismay in a lifeboat watching the sinking Titanic and captioned, “This is J. Brute Ismay” and “We respectfully suggest that the emblem of the White Star be changed to that of a yellow liver.” The Denver Post, another member of his syndicated press, published the following prose on 19 April 1912:

“In the middle of the North Atlantic a giant iceberg lifts its white cliffs 500 feet in air. It towers like a mighty marble monument above the graves of 1,500 heroes who died that the women and children might be saved.

“Soon this monument will dissolve and disappear, as sooner or later in the lapse of years all monuments disintegrate and disappear. But the memory of the noble deed of these brave and self-sacrificing men should live forever.

“Swept without need, without heed, without reckoning or reason into disaster which meant inevitable death, these heroes thought not of their own safety, not of their own lives, but only of the lives and safety of the weak women and little children confided to their care. Husbands embraced their wives, fathers kissed their children good-by, and men who were leaving wives and children desolate far away at home labored to save the children of companions of misfortune.

“Then when the dear ones, the dependent ones, had been sent to safety in the lifeboats and had drifted away into the dark night, these true men, calm and courageous, stood alone upon the deck of the doomed ship and went down to death and to glory. Who would not choose so glorious a death?

“Who would not rather die a hero than live a coward?

“These men have died as men should die. They performed their duty to their fellow men, their obligation to their God.

“So may God reward them and men remember them. And may the memory of them remain forever a noble record of past heroism for humanity, a splendid inspiration to future deeds of duty and devotion.” …WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST.

Hearst’s idea of what constituted a “man” or what a “glorious” death might be was a rather two-dimensional view of life and death but nevertheless one his readers, hungry for information about the disaster and eager to find someone to blame, were only to happy to accept. Countless wire stories asserted Ismay’s guilt at manipulating the Titanic’s master into driving his ship faster than he wanted; of cowardice in taking the place of a passenger in one of the lifeboats; and of resigning from the company after the disaster rather than face the public. None of these allegations were true, but despite the facts, the image created by Hearst survives to this day.

The most serious assertion concerned Ismay’s alleged interference with the navigation of the Titanic. Various books and a recent film about the disaster have enlarged upon the Hearst stories. What we now see is the stereotype of a businessman, only interested in power and money; a man determined to get his own way. If this was the case one would expect him to have taken every maiden voyage he possibly could, but during his entire business life, and as chairman and managing director of White Star, he took only three; Adriatic in May 1907, Olympic in June 1911 and Titanic in April 1912. Hardly a record for someone in his position, but reflecting the fact that Ismay had more important matters to deal with then worrying about maiden arrivals and what the papers might say.

J. Bruce Ismay did not order or put pressure on the commander or chief engineer to make a record passage to New York for the Titanic’s maiden voyage. On the North Atlantic there were defined lanes or tracks which all passenger and cargo liners followed. The northern track, taken during the months of August to December, was approximately 200 miles shorter than the southern, used between January to July. The Titanic was sailing on the southern track, as her sister had done in June 1911. The Titanic, in common with her sister, adopted White Star’s policy of vessels of huge size and moderate speed, affording great comfort to their passengers. All thoughts of Atlantic speed records had been given up decades before, and far from the imagination of a few deluded passengers, speed records in ships not designed for high speed, was a costly venture both in fuel and potential engine damage. Several of the Titanic’s boilers had not been lit and because of the problem of fuel supply connected with the coal strike in Britain, economy was the watchword for this particular voyage. It was, and always had been, impractical for anyone to order the master of a transatlantic liner to arrive at a port ahead of schedule. The time for docking the vessel, supplying coal, water, fresh food and not least the arrangements made for hotel bookings and railway connections by her passengers, would all be upset. Some years ago an interesting collection of letters was discovered written between J. Bruce Ismay and various directors of the IMMC [International Mercantile Marine Company], which reveal that the directors of IMMC in New York wanted the Olympic to arrive ahead of her scheduled date, rather than Ismay, who rejected these moves; proving that White Star’s chairman wished to pursue company policy by keeping the transatlantic service running to its established timetable.

Extract from a letter from J. Bruce Ismay to P. A. S. Franklin dated 27 July 1911: Your strong recommendation that the Olympic, on her next voyage, should be allowed to dock on Tuesday evening, will receive consideration, and I note you say that she could have done this easily on her last voyage. I do not quite gather whether your recommendation goes so far as to advocate our always attempting to land passengers on Tuesday; perhaps you will let me hear from you on this.

I at once admit that docking on Tuesday evening would help you in turning the ship round, and give those on board a better chance of getting the ship in good shape for the Saturday sailing, and further, that if we could make it a practice to do this, it would please the passengers, but as I have repeatedly stated, I feel very strongly that passengers would be far more satisfied to know, when they left here, that they would not land until Wednesday morning, rather than be in a state of uncertainty in regard to this for the whole of the trip. I do not think you can have ever experienced the miseries of a night landing in New York; had you done so, I think your views might be altered.

Extract from a letter from J. Bruce Ismay to P. A. S. Franklin dated 31 July 1911: I am in receipt of your letter of the 20th. instant, confirming the cables which have passed between us in regard to the Olympic’s speed…

I am afraid, if you keep on writing me much more in regard to the Olympic docking in New York on Tuesday evening, I shall have to reply to you in the same manner as you did to Mr. Curry when he kept finding fault with the stamp of firemen you are supplying to the American Line steamers at New York.

As you are aware, I am not favourably disposed to trying to land passengers on Tuesday afternoon, but if, after talking the matter over with Lord Pirrie, Captain Smith and Mr. Bell the consensus of opinion is in favour of this being done, you may rest assured I will not allow my individual feeling to stand in the way.

Extract from a letter from P. A. S. Franklin (signed in his absence) to J. Bruce Ismay dated 4 August 1911: Mr. Franklin’s letter of July 20th which crossed yours under acknowledgment will have made it clear to you that his suggestion for a Tuesday evening arrival here applied generally and was not confined only to the steamer’s next voyage. We shall be very interested to hear the result of your deliberations with Lord Pirrie to-day on this subject and meanwhile, we are,

Yours faithfully, For P. A. S. Franklin F. T.

Letter from the White Star Line in Liverpool to Captain E. J. Smith dated 11 August 1911:

White Star Line
Steamship Department.
August 11th 1911.

Captain E. J. Smith,
R.M.S. Olympic,
White Star Line.
New York.

Per Mauretania
Dear Sir,
We confirm the verbal instructions given to you at Southampton last week that it will be right for you to go full speed when on the short track, subject to your considering it prudent and in the interests of safe navigation to do so. This instruction applies to both eastbound and westbound voyages when on the short track.

Yours faithfully,
(Signed) For Ismay, Imrie & Co:
H. A. S.
H. C.

Extract from a letter from Frederick Toppin to J. Bruce Ismay dated 18 August 1911: Olympic speed. We just learn from your mail advices of your decision to allow the steamer to come out full speed while on the short track, and this will insure her arriving here almost regularly on Tuesday afternoon, which will certainly add materially to her attractiveness and popularity on this side. It will also enable us to more satisfactorily handle her coaling here, as our experience is this voyage that if we can only get started coaling on Wednesday afternoon, we cannot get her finished in time on Friday to allow the ship’s people reasonable opportunity for cleaning her down that day, and having her in thoroughly satisfactorily shape for sailing about noon on Saturday.

Extract from a letter from P. A. S. Franklin to J. Bruce Ismay dated 19 August 1911: I was sorry the Olympic did not dock on Tuesday, but am pleased with her Eastbound bookings.

Ismay’s reply to Franklin, dated 5 September 1911, is full of sarcasm but nevertheless exactly described the situation he predicted would happen: Your sorrow that the Olympic did not dock on Tuesday night last voyage will, I hope, be mitigated by her docking on Tuesday this voyage, as we have just received a cable that at 9 o’clock last night she was 271 miles east of Nantucket, which we calculate would make her due at Ambrose Channel at 6 o’clock to-night, and I presume she will get up to the dock at about 10 o’clock, which will make an extremely comfortable (!!!) landing for her passengers, and I am sure they will much prefer this to dawdling away time and landing on Wednesday morning, to say nothing of their having had the pleasant uncertainty, from the time they left here, as to whether they would land on Tuesday evening, or not.

Because of the route the Titanic took on her maiden voyage, her date and time of arrival was set for Wednesday morning 17 April 1912, the company giving passengers notice that “should the steamer arrive at the New York Wharf after 8 p.m., passengers may land if they wish to do so and have their baggage passed by the Customs authorities immediately on arrival, but those who prefer to remain on board may do so, and have the whole of their baggage passed the following morning not earlier than 7 o’clock.” Passengers, with a long onward journey from New York, were further reassured that breakfast would be served to those that decided to remain on board overnight.

Far from the whim of an arrogant shipowner we read of business decisions taken only after advice was sought from all interested parties and before an instruction was given to the master. These instructions were made in writing and then cautioned with the words “subject to your considering it prudent and in the interests of safe navigation to do so.” Ismay always denied that he brought pressure to bear on Captain Smith to increase the Titanic’s speed or indeed that he had any knowledge of extra boilers being lit. Despite these denials, three passengers made statements contradicting Ismay. Most of this material came to light, not at the American or British inquiries, but at a United States District Court case which began in June 1913 regarding the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company’s attempt to limit its liability as owner of the Titanic in the United States. Because of the nature of the action, and considering the amount of money involved, witnesses were sought in the hope of providing strong evidence that Ismay had ordered Smith to “make a record,” thus, indirectly causing the loss of the Titanic. The evidence provided, at best circumstantial, at worst pure invention, an example of which is Mrs. Emily Ryerson’s answers given under cross examination concerning her conversation with Ismay on board the Titanic:

Q. He (Ismay) didn’t say anything to you about speeding the ship up to get out of the ice?
A. No, that was merely the impression that was left on my mind.

Q. My question is not whether he spoke about their putting on more boilers and going faster; but I am confining my question to whether he said, or suggested to you, anything that indicated that they were going to increase their speed in order to get out of the ice?
A. As I say, that was merely the impression left on my mind.

Q. Nothing was said?
A. No, not in so many words — that was the impression left on my mind.

Q. You don’t wish to be understood the Titanic was trying to make a speed record across the Atlantic?
A. I should say my impression was they were going to show — surprise us all by what she could do, on that voyage.

Q. As a matter of fact, was it discussed whether she should get in on Tuesday night, or Wednesday morning?
A. Yes.

Q. Among passengers?
A. Yes, and in this conversation with Mr. Ismay also, there was some question about it, because I discussed it with my husband after I got down to the cabin.

Q. You wouldn’t say Mr. Ismay said they were going to make a record?
A. No, I wouldn’t say he said those words — his attitude, or his language, we assumed that that was — that we were trying to make a record. I wouldn’t say he used those words.

There is no evidence to suggest that Ismay put pressure upon Captain Smith to increase speed or that he told passengers that the Titanic was out to “make a record.” This, along with other half-remembered conversations by passengers were no doubt improved upon in light of the vicious attacks made on Ismay in the American press. If Smith or Ismay were out to “make a record” why leave it until the voyage was almost over before lighting extra boilers? More importantly, none of the Titanic’s surviving officers, in constant communication with the captain and the engineers, gave evidence in support of these allegations.

Very little first-hand evidence survives of Ismay’s involvement or otherwise with the day-to-day running of a ship at sea. Several references to his attitude towards officers that did not obey the company’s rules are detailed in Oldham’s “The Ismay Line,” but these are letters sent by Ismay and the only surviving evidence of his behaviour towards officers comes from Captain William Marshall. Marshall, later to become commodore of the White Star Line, wrote several hundred letters to his wife during his time with the company. Hardly the romantic type, Marshall kept his letters very businesslike and, today provide us with a fascinating insight into how the company was run through the eyes of a serving officer at sea. He sailed with Ismay on a number of occasions and in one particular letter referred to him as “the Big White Chief.” Like all servicemen Marshall complained about the strict discipline the company, and particularly Ismay, demanded from employees, but there is never any mention of interference with the navigation of his, or anyone else’s, ship.

The newspapers, particularly in the United States, expected Ismay to sacrifice his own life in the sinking. The story of a cowardly shipowner jumping into the first available lifeboat to save his own skin while passengers lost their lives is, from a journalistic viewpoint, an irresistible story to relate to the gullible reader, but like so much of Titanic history is just another myth. True, Ismay did escape in a lifeboat, but only after he had helped with the loading and lowering of several others and only when he was sure that no women were in the vicinity of the starboard Englehardt collapsible did he get in; acquitting himself far better than many other passengers and crew members.

On 23 April 1912 the London Times published Ismay’s personal statement cabled from New York: …Captain Smith gave the order to clear the boats. I helped in this work for nearly two hours as far as I can judge. I worked at the starboard boats, helping women and children into the boats and lowering them over the side. I did nothing with regard to the boats on the port side. By that time every wooden lifeboat on the starboard side had been lowered away, and I found that they were engaged in getting out the forward collapsible boat on the starboard side. I assisted in this work, and all the women that were on this deck were helped into the boat. They were all, I think third-class passengers.

As the boat was going over the side Mr. Carter, a passenger, and myself got in. At that time there was not a woman on the boat deck, nor any passenger of any class, so far as we could see or hear. The boat had between 35 and 40 in it; I should think most of them women. There were perhaps, four or five men, and it was afterwards discovered that there were four Chinamen concealed under the thwarts in the bottom of the boat. The distance that the boat had to lower was, I should estimate, about 20 ft. Mr. Carter and I did not get into the boat until after they had begun to lower it away.

When the boat reached the water I helped to row it, pushing the oar from me as I sat. This is the explanation of the fact that my back was to the sinking steamer. The boat would have accommodated certainly six or more passengers in addition, if there had been any on the boat deck to go.

These facts can be substantiated by Mr. W. E. Carter, of Philadelphia, who got in at the time that I did, and was rowing the boat with me. I hope I need say that neither Mr. Carter nor myself would, for one moment, have thought of getting into the boat if there had been any women there to go in it. Nor should I have done so if I had thought that by remaining on the ship I could have been of the slightest further assistance. It is impossible for me to answer every false statement, rumour, or invention that has appeared in the newspapers.

The Times published the following corroborating Ismay’s statement: MR. CARTER’S STATEMENT (From our own correspondent.) Washington, April 22.

Mr. William E. Carter, a well-known Philadelphian, gives the following story of his departure and that of Mr. Ismay from the Titanic. After seeing his wife and children into the boats on the port side of the vessel he went to the starboard side and there found Mr. Ismay with several officers filling boats with women. As the last boat was being filled they looked around for more women. The women in the boat were mostly steerage passengers.

Mr. Ismay and myself and several officers walked up and down the deck crying “Are there any more women here?” We called for several minutes and got no answer. One of the officers then said that if we wanted to, we could get into the boat if we took the place of seamen. He gave us preference because we were among the first-class passengers. Mr. Ismay called again, and after we had no reply we got into the lifeboat. We took oars and rowed with two seamen.

These statements were further corroborated by Augustus H. Weikman, the Titanic’s chief ship’s barber, who provided the following affidavit to the United States Senate Committee on Commerce inquiry chaired by Senator William Alden Smith:

I helped to launch the boats, and there seemed to be a shortage of women. When I was on E deck I met the Captain returning from G deck, who had been there with Mr. Andrews, and the Captain was on the bridge at that time. I did not think there was any danger. What happened after the orders were given? Instructions were given to get the passengers into lifebelts and get on deck from all the staterooms. Did you see Mr. Ismay? Yes. I saw Mr. Ismay helping to load the boats. Did you see him get into a boat? Yes; he got in along with Mr. Carter, because there were no women in the vicinity of that boat. This boat was the last to leave, to the best of my knowledge. He was ordered into the boat by the officer in charge, I think Mr. Ismay was justified in leaving in that boat at that time.

In the British Inquiry report Lord Mersey defended Ismay writing: As to the attack on Mr. Bruce Ismay, it resolved itself into the suggestion that, occupying the position of Managing Director of the Steamship Company, some moral duty was imposed upon him to wait on board until the vessel had foundered. I do not agree. Mr. Ismay, after rendering assistance to many passengers, found “C” collapsible, the last boat on the starboard side, actually being lowered. No other people were there at the time. There was room for him and he jumped in. Had he not jumped in he would simply have added one more life, namely his own, to the number of those lost.

In June 1913, Ismay retired from the presidency of the IMMC. He had made the announcement of his impending retirement in January 1912 as he wanted to allow his old friend Harold Sanderson, the opportunity of holding the most senior position within the company before he too, retired.

The following statement was published in the Tenth Annual Report of the IMMC:
New York, June 2, 1913

It is with very great regret that the Board of Directors, in accordance with Mr. Ismay’s wish expressed in January, 1912, accepted on January 2, 1913, the resignation of Mr. J. Bruce Ismay as President of the Company, effective June 30th, instant.

The Board takes this opportunity to express its high appreciation of the value of the services rendered the Company by Mr. Ismay since its inception, and to acknowledge with gratitude his unvarying devotion to its best interests.

By order of the Board,
Emerson E. Parvin,
Secretary.

Privately, Ismay’s request, following the loss of the Titanic, to remain as a director of the White Star Line was rejected by the board of IMMC, due no doubt to the treatment meted out to their former president in the press. He did remain a director of the IMMC and a member of its British Committee, but without the prospect of re election to the board of OSNC, he resigned from these positions in June 1916, severing, after 47 years, the Ismay family connection with the White Star Line.

Another part of the Titanic myth concerns Ismay’s life, post-Titanic, which has always been shrouded in mystery, most writers stating that he left public life in disgrace and lived the rest of his life as a recluse on his estate in Ireland. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ismay was certainly a private person, yet from the date of his early retirement from IMMC, virtually to the day he died, he was involved with the chairman and directorships of several important companies in Liverpool and London. Surprisingly one of these companies dealt with the huge number of insurance claims resulting from the disaster, Ismay reliving the disaster at virtually every meeting of the directors. The Liverpool & London Steamship Protection & Indemnity Association Limited had been set up in 1881 by his late father and some of his business friends as a private insurance company or “club” for shipowners; one of the Liverpool & London’s largest and most important customers was White Star. Hundreds of thousands of pounds were paid out in insurance claims to the relatives of the Titanic’s victims; the misery created by the disaster and its aftermath dealt with by Ismay and his directors with great fortitude, this, despite the fact that he could easily have shirked his responsibilities and resigned from the board. He stuck with the difficult task and during his twenty-five year chairmanship hardly a page of the company’s minutes does not contain some mention of the Titanic disaster. J. Bruce Ismay’s coat of arms carried the motto “Be Mindful,” which in light of the Titanic appears horribly ironic, but one he attempted to live up to throughout the rest of his life.

END

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Here is the link to this article on the Titanic Historical Society website.

http://www.titanichistoricalsociety.org/articles/ismay.asp

Ladybugge, I hope this information helped to answer your question.

I invite everyone to comment on your thoughts (Pros or Cons) as to whether you believe Mr. Ismay urged Captain Smith to ’speed up’ or not. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

MAY BIRTHDAYS FOR “LINCOLN” & HIS FRIENDS & FOES

Here are some May birthdays for Lincoln’s friends and foes. And perhaps a few who lived before, during or just after his time.

  Mary Surratt – Lincoln conspirator. Born in May (or June), 1823. Age 186.

  Julia  Gardiner Tyler, 2nd wife of President John Tyler and 1st lady of the United States (1844-45). Born May 4, 1820. Age 189.

  Karl Marx,  Communist philosopher. Born May 5, 1818. Age 191.

  Julia Ward Howe, writer of ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ which was first published 1862. Born May 27, 1819. Age 190.

  Peter Il’yich Tchaikovsky, Russian Composer. Born May 7, 1840. Age 169.

  John Brown, abolitionist who led attack on Harper’s Ferry. Born May, 9, 1800. Age 209.

  John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. Born May 10, 1838. Age 171.

  Florence Nightingale, Italian nurse. May 12, 1820. Age 189.

   William Henry Seward, Secretary of State (1861-69). Born May 16, 1801. Age 208.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, US writer. Born May 25, 1803. Age 206.

  James Butler ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok, American cowboy and scout. Born May 27, 1837. Age 172.

  Walt Whitman, US Poet. Born May 31, 1819. Age 190.

Happy birthday ladies and gentlemen.

Also, I want to wish my daughter Madeleine a very Happy Birthday. Born May 15, 1992. Age 17. Love you kiddo!

Best

Barry 

outreach@awesometalks.com

NOTE: If you notice any errors (or mistakes in the age calculations) blame me, laugh, and then feel free to comment with the correct information.

“An Awesometalk With” Andrew Jampoler, author of “The Last Lincoln Conspirator: John Surratt’s Flight from the Gallows”

April 24, 2009: Barry Cauchon

Author Andrew Jampoler

Andrew C. A. Jampoler is a retired US Navy Captain who, amongst his many achievements, served in Vietnam, worked at the Pentagon, commanded a land-based maritime patrol aircraft squadron and a naval air station. He also flew Lockheed P-3 airplanes in search of Soviet submarines during the 1970s and 80s. After retiring from the Navy, he worked in the international aerospace industry and then moved on to become a full-time writer.

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with Andy, the author of three books: The Last Lincoln Conspirator: John Surratt’s Flight from the Gallows (2008); Sailors in the Holy Land: The 1848 American Expedition to the Dead Sea and the Search for Sodom and Gomorrah (2005) and the award-winning Adak: The Rescue of Alfa Foxtrot 586 (2003). The latter was voted “Book of the Year” by the US Naval Institute Press in 2003.

Andy is a true storyteller, walking me through each of his three books as well as his current project Horrible Shipwreck (working title) which tells the tale of the wreck of the female convict ship Amphitrite in 1833.

He is a fascinating man with fascinating stories to share. I am very happy to bring you my interview with Andy Jampoler and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

——————————————————-

B. It’s nice to speak with you Andy. I wanted to tell you that I’ve enjoyed our emails back and forth this week. Please let me welcome you to A Little Touch of History.

A. Hello Barry. It’s good to be here.
I was really dazzled by your site. It fascinated me. If you get a chance to read “The Last Lincoln Conspirator” you’ll see that one of the Gardner photographs is one of the illustrations in the book. Because they are such high quality, I zoomed in on the gallows. And I remember when I saw those at the Library of Congress I was just horrified by them. So when I saw your study it fascinated me. You’ve gone very far with those extraordinary photographs and I was very interested in what you’ve done.

B. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. It was a labor of love. I was very curious. After you’ve looked at the same photographs for hundreds of times, you want to look beyond the main images. And it was very interesting what I started to find within those pictures. I’m still studying the Rooftop View which I find to be the most intriguing of all the photographs because it has so much to see, especially beyond the prison rooftop overlooking the Washington DC cityscape of 1865.
You can clearly see the incomplete Washington Monument and the Smithsonian Institute. So now I’ve started to get my bearings because I’ve just discovered the US Treasury Building and, if I’m seeing it right, I think I can identify the White House as well. It’s been a lot of fun going through this process.

A. Well if that’s true you will have seen half of the principal buildings in the city of Washington. There weren’t that many and you’ve just mentioned about half of them.

B. The Library of Congress and the National Archives are terrific repositories for photographs, maps, documents and the like. Do you use both of those resources when writing your books?

A. I do…and I draw on them very heavily and they are enormously cooperative. The people at the National Archives are very welcoming and the material they have is extraordinary. If you have to use microfilm that is a little hard on the eyes frankly!

B. (laughing)

A. But they are very helpful. Their resources are stunning. And they, and the Library of Congress, compete to be cooperative. I’ve marveled at how helpful they are systematically.

All they get in exchange for their wonderful help is honorable mention in the front of the book. And what I’ve done in the last two books is… they have a speakers program at both places. In exchange for their cooperation I’ve participated in giving talks at both the National Archives and Library of Congress in compensation for their assistance. It gives me the opportunity to tell people how grateful I am for their help. I think both are great national treasures and it surprises me how helpful they can be.

B. You’ve written three books to date and are currently working on your fourth one right now. How is that going?

A. I’m approaching half way. It’s due at the publisher next summer which is to say, something like 15 months. I’ll be on time. Things are pretty much on schedule. I have a trip this summer to do some research that I cannot do here.

B. What is the subject of this book?

A. The working title is Horrible Shipwreck and it’s the story of a female convict ship in 1833. For the moment, it’s my consuming passion.

In late August, 1833 the convict transport Amphitrite sailed from Woolwich just east of London heading for New South Wales, heading for the convict colony in Australia. I begin the story by explaining the story to American readers the reason there was a convict colony in Australia. It goes back to the American Revolution. Until the Revolution convicted felons from Britain were shipped to the American colonies. As children, we learned that the colonies were full of what were called indentured servants. In fact for the most part these people were felons who were sent to the United States, pardoned as part of the process, but then sold into indentured service by the ship masters who had delivered them here. So it was an ideal solution for the British justice system. They got rid of their felons at no expense. They had no requirement to build a prison system which was something they weren’t interested in doing. There was no requirement even to pay for transportation. Well, when the Revolutionary War started, that outlet closed up. And suddenly Great Britain had no place to send their convicted criminals. And these people were convicted of all sorts of things. Small things, large things…mostly theft and robbery. But there was a desperate moment there in the late 1770’s when people tried to figure out “Well, what are we going to do with this tide of felons that are going to wash over society and overwhelm us if we can’t get rid of them anymore?” There was a great hunt started for a suitable convict colony. A number of efforts were made to find such places, for instance the West African coast and elsewhere. Quite rightly, and quickly, they concluded that that would be nothing but a death sentence. There was no place in West Africa where these people would survive.

B. Okay.

A. Then somebody remembered Cook’s expedition to Australia. And very quickly, without any further research, the decision was made in 1778 to launch the first fleet carrying about 1100 male and female convicts to start a new prison colony in Australia, in New South Wales at the time.

B. Andy, I’ve heard the stories of the criminal beginnings in Australia. At the time that this convict fleet sailed was Australia already colonized?

A. No. This is how it began. The program continued for many decades. Ultimately some 160,000 convicts from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales were shipped to Australia of which 20% to 25% were women. All along there was the intention that this would become a self-sustaining colony. Once again, Great Britain didn’t want to pay for this. In the case of Australia they had to pay for transportation. They had substantial upfront costs because there was no settled community into which these convicts could be integrated. So it began that way.

B. I see.

A. Well by 1833 they had been sending convicts to Australia for nearly 50 years and there had been no shipwreck. Not until the Amphitrite sails has any vessel been lost, although there have been a number of deaths from disease and other causes. There has been no vessel lost and no substantial loss of life other than some horrific fatalities aboard the second fleet due to maltreatment and things of that sort.

But Amphitrite sails from Woolrich and less than a week later she’s caught in a terrific channel storm along with hundreds of other vessels and is run aground outside the city of Boulogne-sur-Mer, the French channel coast. And in the course of roughly the next ten hours the ship is caught on the sands, she’s run aground deliberately but she’s caught on the sands and beaten to pieces by the storm surge, in plain sight of the city. Several efforts are made to alert the crew to what’s going to happen to them if they stay there and don’t leave the ship. Depending on what source you believe for a variety of reasons, the captain, the crew and his convicts are not permitted to leave and all but three die, all but three drown Saturday night, August 31, 1833. And when Sunday comes, the good citizens of Boulogne, about 6,000 of who are British expatriates, discover to their horror that bodies are washing up on the beach in dozens.

My book is the story of the ship, the shipwreck, the public outcry after the investigation the admiralty conducts, and what happened and why. And of course the fact that it’s women and children who were the largest numbers among the dead I think just kind of makes it more poignant and frankly a more marketable story for an American audience.

B. Absolutely. When you first mentioned it to me, I felt it was a story that will be quite appealing.

A. The early vessels that went to the convict colonies had both men and women aboard. That very quickly turned out to be impossible and unworkable. And consequently early on what happens is that all-female transports become the model. There is some financial advantage. They don’t have to put guards on them. The male transports are carrying security detachments because everybody’s afraid of mutiny. The female transports, the people conclude quite rightly, that there isn’t the threat of the ship being taken over by these women, so they are able to put more convicts aboard any given size vessel. So that continues until 1833 when the first of them, Amphitrite goes down in this horrific, highly public accident. All of this happens in clear sight of the beach front of the city of Boulogne right in front of the principal hotel in the city, which happens to be owned by a Brit.

Anyway, that story is due to the publisher next summer and I think it’s an interesting one.

B. Were there good resources available to you considering it was such a public tragedy?

A. The resources are quite good in some areas and I’m still exploring other areas. All the legal documents that resulted in the convictions of these women at trial are very complete. The court system in England, Ireland and Scotland ran much as it does today, on paper. And all of those papers are available so it’s possible to understand in great detail what these individual women were accused off, what they were convicted of, what they were sentenced to, and where and when. So the records there are quite good. The records about the ship are quite good too. There are several principal characters. The captain of the ship, there are some good records about him. I found his will for example which tells me about his family and his property and one thing or another. The surgeon superintendant aboard, the man who is actually in charge of the convicts, he is turning out to be the most difficult to research. And it’s one reason why I’m going to go to Edinburgh because he was a Scot and I think I’m going to have to press harder on some things there. I have an acquaintance in Scotland doing some research for me but I need more on a Dr. James Forrester and his wife. She was accused of being the reason why no boat was launched from the ship to take people ashore, because it is alleged that she refused to ride with common prostitutes in a boat.

The admiralty investigation was conducted by a Navy Captain named Henry Chads, about whom the documentation is very complete. His investigation is very well documented. And there was a woman on the beach, a Brit, Sarah Taylor Austin who played a very important role in the efforts to save the lives of these people. She’s an enormously colorful figure married to a well known failed British lawyer living in France at the time. And the biographical data on her is both fascinating and very good. And there were two Frenchmen who tried very hard to alert the crew to what was happening and to make sure they understood their danger. But the biographical information on them is adequate.

The newspaper coverage in English language papers and French language papers is very good. And especially the coverage stimulated by a British reporter named John Wilks Jr. who is the guy who essentially stirred up the public excitement by his reporting in the Times of London and in the London Standard. He’s an enormously colorful character. He was living in France because he had been ridden out of England as a result of a whole bunch of stock frauds that he traded.

B. (laughing).

A. And all that is very well documented too. So the answer is…the source material is certainly available to do a good job. And it’s my job to take that source material and do the best job that it’s possible to do.

B. I may have missed it but did the accident occur at night?

A. It occurred in late afternoon. During the course of the afternoon the captain found himself….in aviation you say, kind of “out of altitude and ideas and air speed all at the same time”. He had the same problem. He’s being driven on the French coast by a wind out of the northeast. His ship will not go into the wind such that he cannot get away from shore. So he makes the deliberate decision about mid-afternoon to drive her up onto a sandbar to anchor there. He then assumes that the tide will come in, the storm will abate, it will lift him up and he will be able to continue his voyage. What he doesn’t understand, and what the French fisherman at the port do understand, is that as the tide comes in, it will bring with it all the sand that washes around. And that he will be fixed on that bar as the water rises around him. And that the narrow channel that he’s in, he’s in the Pas de Calais, the Dover Strait, that focuses the wind, it focuses the waves and that essentially once he is on that bar his ship will be beaten apart as the tide comes in. They try to alert him to this. For whatever reason he discounts it and it’s exactly what happens. Over the course of the evening, let’s say between 10:00 pm and 2:00 am, Amphitrite is beaten apart and that is when the bodies start washing in.

B. So the captain initially beached his ship!

A. Yes. Exactly! He deliberately took her ashore and that’s not unheard of in those days.

B. So with was his knowledge base at the time, it was the thing to do?

A. Yeah, well he didn’t have any alternatives. He was being pushed ashore and the question was, was he going to manage it or was he just going to be driven sideways somewhere and broach and rollover and that would be the end of it.

B. I see. But the locals who knew the area knew that that was not the place to do it.

A. Two of them, one in a boat and one, incredibly, swimming, went out to his ship to tell him exactly what was happening. And depending on whose story you believe he rejected the advice, or ignored it or had such confidence in what he was doing that he just figured that he would ride it out.

B. How incredible…

A. In fact what they told him is exactly what happened. The next morning his ship was in 10 or 12 great big pieces washed up on the beach. As I recall sixty-three bodies were found, his was not among them. They never found his body.

B. Did anyone survive?

A. Three of the crew members were the only survivors. The bosun and a couple of the youngsters on the crew were the only survivors. Everybody else, 133 drowned in the storm.

B. Were the women chained or in cells?

A. No, they were not restrained. Originally, as the scenario unfolded, they were put below in the prison space in the hold. But during the course of the storm, either the deck split, the poop broke up or the hatches burst because at the end, the women were out on the deck and washed over the side and drowned.

B. This is going to be a great book. It’s a story that, as I hear you tell it to me, I’m quite fascinated by. I know you said you have a deadline next year but what is the release date?

A. Well, it’s the same publisher and they typically take between ten and twelve months to go from when you deliver the manuscript to when the bound book comes out of the printer. And they really move pretty fast. That’s good time for the process that the manuscript goes through. My guess is that it will be in spring 2011; maybe late spring 2011; early summer…something like that. It often depends on the publisher. They publish about 70 to 80 books a year. It kind of depends on where in their schedule they’re going to put it.

B. That is one book I really look forward to reading Andy. Let’s move on to your most recent release, your third book which came out just last October 2008.

 

A. That’s the one we met over, so to speak, and is called “The Last Lincoln Conspirator: John Surratt’s Flight from the Gallows”. When I was researching my second book “Sailors in the Holy Land” I read in the biography of the American consul in Malta that in 1866 he attempted to arrest one of Lincoln’s conspirators passing through Valletta.

B. Really! (laughing).

A. And I said to myself “Now that’s crazy. How could that possibly happen?”
And I put that idea aside until I finished “Sailors in the Holy Land’. Then I came back to it to try to find out who was this Lincoln conspirator passing through Valletta in 1866. And it turns out it was true. It was young John Surratt, son of Mary Surratt, the woman who you know better than most, who was hanged for her part in the conspiracy. John’s story is the story of the last Lincoln conspirator. The title focuses on the fact that he was the last to be arrested, the last to be tried and last, by many decades, to die. He lived until 1916. He died in the arms of his family, his wife Mary Victorine Hunter, the second cousin to Francis Scott Key, the man who wrote the words to the American national anthem, and his children.
So it’s the story of Surratt’s flight through Canada, through England, across France to Italy where he joined the Papal Zouaves, the army of Pope Pius IX where he hid out for eleven months. He was discovered there and arrested. He escaped arrest, that’s the story anyway. The reality is he was freed by his jailors. Fled overland to Naples and got on a ship. Passed through Malta and here’s where William Winthrop tried to arrest him and got all the way to Alexandria, Egypt before he was caught.
In Alexandria, he was caught, jailed and a navy vessel was sent to pick him up. On November 26, 1866 United States Ship Swatara sails for Washington with Surratt in chains in the corner of the Captain’s cabin. He will spend six weeks chained while being brought back for trial. The book takes him through his trial, through the subsequent legal proceedings in ‘67 and ‘68. He is quite astonishingly freed in 1868 and after unsuccessful careers successively as a teacher and public speaker; he ends up being an auditor for a steam ship line in Baltimore called the Old Bay Line operating steam vessels from Baltimore to Richmond and Baltimore to Norfolk. He will spend more than 50 years as the auditor for that company dying just a few years before WWI begins.

It’s another one of these odd things that not many people know about and when they hear about it they tend to be disbelieving…the idea that he did all these things all by himself in his 20s. He spent a year in the Pope’s army. He was arrested in Egypt of all places.

B. Andy, Who actually arrested John Surratt? During those days, I’m not quite sure what the protocol was and whether or not they issued an international warrant for him.

A. Well, it’s better than that. Surratt as he traveled through Canada and Britain and Malta was under the protection of British law. And it was very unlikely that he would have been arrested and extradited by the Brits. But when he arrived in Egypt he no longer had that protection. Egypt was a part of the Ottoman Empire. And the Ottoman Empire and the United States, several decades before, signed a treaty that provided that American citizens in the Ottoman Empire were subject to American law as executed by American diplomatic officials in the country. So when he stepped off the ship in Alexandria, he was met by the American Consul in Alexandria, Charles Hale, who simply arrested him. Hale asked that the Egyptians jail him until he could be extradited; he could be shipped back to Washington. He put him in an Egyptian jail for three weeks which must have been a real experience in 1866. And then when Swatara showed up the day after Christmas ’66 they loaded him on board and shipped him out. So he had unwittingly exposed himself to American law.

B. Now I have read one of Surratt’s published speeches from when he was doing his public speaking tour discussing his version of the events that transpired around the time of the Lincoln kidnapping plot and subsequent assassination. He must have been a good speaker because he comes off as being very ‘believable’ regarding what he told his audience about his involvement, which he claimed was fairly minimal. And yet what I find interesting is that historians generally believe that John Surratt was John Wilkes Booth right-hand man. What are your thoughts on this?

A. Well this is a complicated question. The prosecution at his trial tried to make the case that he was in Washington on Easter weekend, 1865 and participated directly in the assassination of the President. Surratt’s defense was the he was in Elmira, New York that weekend casing the Union prison holding Confederate prisoners of war in preparation for a possible prison break. And during the course of the trial, there were witnesses swearing to both sides of that. But the jury who heard that voted 8 to 4 to acquit him. The prosecution did a very bad job presenting their case. The defense did a good job presenting their case. And the New York Times finally concluded that regardless of where the members of the jury came from, and there were seven Southerners and five from the North on the jury, regardless of where you came from you could not have concluded that the prosecution had made a persuasive case. And in fact they didn’t. I personally, for what that’s worth, don’t think Surratt was in Washington. He clearly was Booth’s right hand man. He was his chief recruiter. But he was not in Washington, not in Maryland after the last day of March. I think that Booth’s decision making coalesced, came together, during the first two weeks of April. Remember they had that failed kidnapping plot in the middle of March.

B. Yes.

A. At the end of March Surratt goes to Richmond as a courier and he will spend all of April on a courier mission. And he will not be in Washington when the assassination of the President happens, when the assault on the Secretary of State happens, when the bungled plot to kill the Vice President happens and when the planned attempt on General Grant’s life never transpires because Grant takes a train out of town that day. And he’s nowhere to be seen.

I think in that fact Surratt was deeply involved with Booth’s plotting with respect to the kidnapping. I think the case has never been proven that he was aware of Booth’s assassination intentions. And I think it is more probable than not, that he was, in fact, in Elmira, NY when the assassination happened. I would even go farther than that. I would probably say that he was in fact there. I found that witnesses that identified him as being there very persuasive and at least half the prosecution witnesses that said he was in Washington were clearly lying for whatever reason.

B. Was there a reason why the prosecution decided to take that approach?

A. Poor judgment!

B. I guess (laughing)!

A. I think the prosecutor Carrington, the District Attorney, was just not a very smart man. He had the assistance of three other attorneys. The principal one was as civilian, Edwards Pierrepont, a New York attorney. And I think Pierrepont was a grandstanding, publicity hungry, a status conscious sort of guy who did just a very bad job putting the case together. Despite that fact, the judge George Fischer clearly believed in Surratt’s guilt and conducted the trial in such a way to make the prosecution’s case easier to present. He was so biased that even the newspapers were commenting on it. His charge to the jury for instance, at the end of that first trial, was outrageous.

 

 

 

Prosecutor Edwards Pierrepont

B. I guess that’s a good point. Were there not two trials of John Surratt?

A. No. There was one trial. The subsequent legal proceeding never went to trial. There were three indictments altogether. The first one went to trial. The second one the grand jury signed and sent forward. The third one the grand jury refused to sign. But there were a year’s worth of legal proceedings that did not rise to the level of a trial under a new judge, Andrew Wiley. And it was the last of those proceedings at which Wiley dismissed the proceeding and set Surratt free.
And that’s the story of the last Lincoln conspirator. Kind of a neat story, I guess as much as anything, because people have never focused on young John Surratt and his epic escape. There’s a mid-western newspaper at the time that said “Compared to Surratt’s escape, John Wilkes Booth’s twelve days was just a highway man’s ride”!

B. (laughing)

A. Well, I mean that’s silly because Booth was just the giant figure of all this. But in fact, he was only on the road for twelve days and Surratt almost for two years (chuckling).

B. What was your second book about Andy?

A. The second book was called “Sailors in the Holy Land”. And it is the true story of the American Expedition to the Dead Sea in 1848. Another one of these odd bits of history when you say to yourself “Well why would the US Navy have any interest at all in the Dead Sea in the middle of the 19th century”?

B. It is a question mark (chuckling).

A. When I first heard about it I didn’t believe that. So drawing on my navy experience I said “Of all the salt water on the earth that is the least likely place for the US Navy to operate” but I was wrong! In fact, the spring and early summer of 1848 there were sailors in uniform under the American flag, under arms exploring the River Jordan and the Dead Sea and quite unexpectedly all but one of them returned alive. It was a great success. It ended up answering some interesting scientific questions about the peculiar body of water. Everybody knew there were some odd things about the Dead Sea they just weren’t quite sure why and it was all caught up in Old Testament and religious imagery and everything else. But that book came out of a lot of reading I did and when I came across Mark Kurlanski’s book called ‘Salt’ a paragraph that said something about the navy’s expedition in the Dead Sea. I said to myself “Well, when I get time I’m going to look into that ‘because I don’t believe it”.

B. It’s funny how just one word, or phrase, will trigger you to start looking into something.

A. That’s not the story of the first book. “Adak”, the story of the ditching Alfa Foxtrot 586” off the Siberian coast in 1978, that’s a story I kind of grew up with. None of us who flew that airplane believed that you could survive putting it down in open water under the conditions that Jerry Grigsby did and live through it.

B. I guess we should give a quick summary of what your history was which related to this flight. You were a flyer in the US Navy?

A. I was. I got in the Navy right out of school in 1962. I started flight training immediately. Got my wings the day President Kennedy was assassinated in ’63. On that same day, he was in Dallas shot by Oswald, I was at Corpus Christi listening to all that on the radio at the Navy Exchange at Naval Air Station, Corpus Christi, Texas.

B. No kidding. Wow. You heard that live!

A. Oh yeah.I went to my first squadron. It was a P-3 squadron of Lockheed Turbo Props that the Navy used and was just buying. They were brand new airplanes for ocean surveillance, maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare. I flew that airplane in three squadrons, on the East coast, the West coast and most places where there is salt water. There are places in the South Pacific and South Atlantic I didn’t get because the Soviets didn’t send their submarines there.

Lockheed P-3 often called the Orion

B. Was there a reason it had to be salt water?

A. Well we were looking for submarines.

B. Oh I see.

A. Anywhere there was salt water that the Soviet Navy operated submarines in, the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic, the North Pacific, the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean. All those places we spent a fair amount of time working over making sure we knew where they were and what they were up to.

B. That was a pretty volatile time right around then too!

A. Well, it was an exciting time. The Soviets were building what was demonstrably the world’s biggest submarine fleet. Certainly the most threatening aspect of their naval force was that fleet. And we were working very hard, along with the Royal Navy and other friends and allies, to understand what they were doing, where they were doing it and how well they were doing what they tried to do.

I was fortunate that the ‘70s and ‘80s, we were very, very good at what we did. It was the golden age of air anti-sub warfare and I had a lot of fun with it. My last squadron was one which I commanded from California in Moffett Field in ’76 to ’78 and then returned to Moffett Field to command the air station in the early 1980s. In ’86 I retired. I tell people that I spent the next 15 years learning to be a capitalist. And it’s true. In the naval service you’re not dealing with making the payroll or selling the product or any of that. So for the next something years I did. And that worked out well enough that about ten years ago it became possible for me to write full time.

B. I understand that you worked in the Pentagon as well. When did that occur?

A. I worked in the Pentagon a number of times. It got to the point that I was going back and forth from the squadron to the Pentagon. At first I was on the staff of Chief of Naval Operations, both on his staff and personal staff. I next ended up on the staff of the Secretary of Defense, on his personal staff. And the last job was, again on the Navy staff in the Plans, Policy and Operations Office of the Navy Staff in the mid ‘80s. I may be one of the few people who enjoyed every assignment I had in the Pentagon. It’s traditional that people complain about it. I found it enormously interesting. I thought that the people I worked with were smart, dedicated and trying to do a good job and I thought it was a useful thing to do.

B. I want to get back to your first book, but mentioning the Pentagon, 9/11 comes to mind and I want to know what your feelings are on that and if you knew some folks in there.

A. No, that was far enough away from me. I’d worked in those offices. I knew the geography. I have a pretty good idea what it would have been like inside of that building at the time. By the time that happened, the people who were inside were a generation behind me. My sympathy, my horror and my unhappiness was generic rather than specific.

B. What years were you in the Pentagon?

A. The first Pentagon assignment was ’70 to about ’74 doing different jobs. I was back there during most of the Carter administration through the late ‘70s, early 80’s working for Secretary Brown. I was back there again ’85 and ’86 on the Navy Staff. Altogether about nine years or so! Seems like a long time in one building. But there were four different jobs, very different people and all of them I thought were worth doing.
Beyond that, I spent a year in Vietnam and a bunch of time flying airplanes. I did some time at school and some graduate work for a couple of years.

B. Were you in Washington in ’83 or had you already gone to California at that time?

A. No, I think I was already in California. I was at Moffett Field then for Moffett Field’s 50th Anniversary. The air station was built as a WPA project during the depression and its 50th anniversary we celebrated in ’83 with a spectacular 3-day weekend and air show and carried on vitally. So I remember that date pretty clearly. I still have two bottles of wine in the house with labels from Mirasou Vineyards celebrating Moffett Fields 50th anniversary. My guess is that stuff would just taste awful.

B. There’s probably some serious vinegar in there (laughing).

A. I think it could peel paint (laughing).

B. (laughing)

A. But the bottles are beautiful and it’s a nice memory.

B. That’s terrific. What was the plane that you flew that related to the Adak story?

 

A. It was the same airplane, the Lockheed P-3. It’s really called the Orion. It was a four engine, land based turboprop, 127,000 lbs when we started and ended up being about 132,000 pound airplane with four turboprop engines altogether about 17,000 horsepower. Just a great airplane! Full of expensive equipment and normally carrying a crew of between ten and twelve.

B. Now you had mentioned before that this plane was not meant to float.

A. Yeah, think for a moment. This is not a seaplane. This was originally an airliner. It’s designed for pressurized cruising at altitude. It doesn’t have a keel; it doesn’t have any of the kinds of things that make a seaplane into a seaplane. And it’s what makes the landing of the US Air aircraft in the Hudson River so stunning. The idea that he could that and survive it and get everybody out…I mean that’s an authentic miracle.

B. I understand. Wow.

A. For the same reason when Lieutenant Commander Jerry Grigsby in end of October, ’78 put his airplane down into the open Pacific in thirty foot seas, the idea that it would hold together at all, long enough for people to get out of it, is just amazing. It took extraordinary skill and frankly a fair amount of good luck too.

B. How long was that plane in the water?

A. It sank in about two minutes. The survivors’ stories vary between two to four minutes. Your sense of time is really skewed under those kinds of stresses. But they hit the water, broke up just behind the cockpit and just in front of the tail and sank very quickly. Before it went down, 14 of the 15 men aboard had time to get out. And 13 out of those 14 managed to get into a raft. Tragically, the pilot Jerry Grigsby did not. He got into the water, he was swimming towards the raft but he was never able to catch it. Under the wind and the waves at the time there was nothing the guys in the raft could do. And Jerry drifted off to sea and he was lost at sea.

B. This was a storm that took the plane down?

A. That part of the North Pacific around the Aleutians has some of the nastiest flying weather or for that matter steaming weather in the world. It’s very very tough because that very cold dry air comes off of Siberia and hits the relatively warm moist air of the Bering Sea and it just spins up storms that are just ferocious. Those storms come tracking down through the Gulf of Alaska and tear up the North Pacific and Jerry had the misfortune of being operating right on edge of that such that when he went to put Alfa Foxtrot 586 down in the water he was facing 25-30 foot seas.

B. Now he put it down for what reasons?

A. He had a problem with the No. 1 propeller. It translated itself into four separate engine fires. The first two engine fires he could put out. The aircraft has fire extinguisher systems that will put out two fires on any one side. The third fire blew out. When the fourth one flared up, he realized that he was out of options, a little bit like the captain of Amphitrite. He’d run out of options and had to do something decisive and what Jerry did was, before the wing burned off and killed them all, he put the plane into the water. And everything flowed from there.

B. Did this happen right when the storm hit?

A. No. There had been a storm out there the whole time. They were going out from Adak for a flight that was scheduled to be 9 hours. That weather was there and stayed in the Aleutians for the next couple of days. As a matter a fact while the search and rescue flights were being flown looking for them the weather moved down the Aleutian chain, from west to east, and progressively closed the Air Force base and the Navy bases and things like that, tremendously complicating the conduct of the search and rescue missions.

B. Although Jerry Grigsby didn’t make it, how many men were in the life raft at this point?

A. There are now thirteen in the raft at about two or three o’clock Thursday afternoon. Thirteen of them have made it into two rafts. There are nine guys in a seven-man raft and four men in a twelve-man raft.

B. Are they lashed together?

A. The rafts blow apart. After just a few minutes they blow a couple of miles apart and they don’t see each other. Over the course of the next twelve hours three of the young men in the nine-man raft die of exposure. And it’s pretty clear that the rest of them had just a few hours to live. Meanwhile, there is a frantic effort to rescue them. And that effort includes an appeal from Washington to Moscow for assistance because there are no American flag vessels or US Navy ships in the North Pacific around them. It turns out there is a Soviet fishing trawler, the Mys SInyavin. Mys SInyavin is directed by the Soviet Fisheries Ministry to turn around and sail to the wreck site. And she is led to the rafts by a US Coast Guard airplane that has been flying on top of the rafts.

B. Oh, so they know where they are?

A. They know exactly where they were. They just can’t get them out of the water. And the water is going to kill them. The nearest Coast Guard cutter is 2-1/2 days away. It’s a Coast Guard cutter, also out of Adak, Alaska, Hamilton class cutter, and she’s not going to get there until Saturday morning. This is now Thursday night. So the Mys SInyavin turns around, heads back to the wreck site and manages in the middle of the night to collect the ten living men, who are hours from death at most, and the three bodies. They will spend a week in the Soviet Union in two hospitals, one in Kamchatka, the Kamchatka Peninsula and one on the Soviet mainland. And then quite remarkably and quite surprisingly they are released. And they are home Saturday, nine days after they hit the water with the three bodies of the young crewmembers who died. So the story is about a ten day story. What makes it exciting is that the sources on that were very very good. I have in fact, among other things, the tape recordings of the emergency radio transmissions between the aircraft and the ground in 1978. And when you listen to them it is breathtaking. One of the young crewmembers, the tactical coordinator, is talking to Elmendorf radio and at 200 feet above the water, he is telling Elmendorf that, okay, they are going in. They’ve stretched this out as long as they can. He’s sitting at a window. His station has a window. He’s sitting above the water, looking at these horrific waves, the horrific wind, telling them that they have 15 of them aboard, that they’ve got life rafts, that they’re all wearing survival suits. And his voice is so calm and so collected that he sounds like a sports announcer watching a ballgame. You would think that there would be something in his voice that would tell you he thinks he was going die because he had every reason to believe he was. And it’s not. The kid’s just out of college. It’s just an extraordinary demonstration of professionalism and coolness that, every time I hear that transmission, and I’ve probably heard it 150 times, I marvel at it.

B. I assume that when you do a book tour you play that tape during your talk. It must be breathtaking for folks who hear that.

A. I play that tape and play a number of sections from it. I begin with that because it’s just so arresting to hear that. And then I explain to people “Okay, this is what you heard. Now let’s listen to it again”. And as I say, every time I go through that I get a lump in my throat. Matt Gibbons is the guy whose voice that is. Matt lives on Half Moon Bay in California now. He works for a technology company called Novellus. You look at Matt today, he looks like…do you know the American cartoon character Elmer Fudd?

B. Yes (laughing).

A. Okay. Matt looks a little like Elmer Fudd. And what you don’t realize looking at Matt is here’s a guy of exquisite courage. I mean just extraordinary courage. And it’s all wrapped up in this quite ordinary body. Interestingly enough, I mentioned to you that Jerry Grigsby died. He was never able to swim to a raft. Two years later, Matt married Jerry’s widow. They live today, happily, more than thirty years later, in California where this is still a big part of their lives, this whole memory.

B. Have you met most or all of the survivors?

A. All of them. With one exception they all cooperated very generously while I was writing the book. One of them was in my squadron for a brief period of time. The navigator was in my squadron before he went to this squadron. And the guy who wrote the Navy investigation for this I knew. The commanding officer of the squadron was a contemporary of mine so I knew him too. So it was a story in the family and it was possible to tell it especially persuasively, especially convincingly because I had flown the airplane most of my life. I’d operated out of that part of Alaska. I had flown off the Soviet coast where they were flying. And I kind of understood a lot of what was going on there although I won’t pretend to you that I have any experienced anything remotely like what they went through which is just an extraordinary event.

B. That’s pretty amazing.

A. It’s a neat story.

B. And you’ve picked four rather amazing stories. I can’t wait to see what’s up your sleeve next, Andy.

A. I haven’t even begun to think about it. I’m deep in Amphitrite and her women. What I try to do is to always be working on a book and in the intervals around the edges of that, I generally write a periodical article each year. There has been one published in Naval History Magazine every year for the last, I don’t know how long. And they’re generally 5000-6000 word features on exciting adventures. The American expedition up the Congo [B. Note: This article was voted Feature of the Year by Naval History magazine in 2006]. The American expedition down the Amazon. Henry Eckford, an American ship designer in the 1830s, who ended up quite improbably running the shipyard for the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul. They’re stories that are odd and they’re interesting and it gives me a chance to take a midway break from working on the book to dip into something else for a couple of weeks and then refresh and revitalize until I get back into it.

B. When you retired from the Navy, what rank were you at?

A. I was a Captain.

B. And you also spent some time in Vietnam?

A. I spent a year in Vietnam on the MACV staff at Ton Son Nhut. My graduate degree was in Southeast Asian Politics. I’m a graduate of the School of International Affairs, because I expected to go to Vietnam, I concentrated on Southeast Asia.

So when I finished the degree program, as expected I ended up going to Vietnam and I spent a year in Psychological Operations. It was our mission to persuade the members of the North Vietnamese Army in the Republic of Vietnam to surrender and to persuade the members of the Viet Cong to rally to the government. And you can tell by the way the war came out how successful I was in that. Which is to say, not at all!

B. (laughing)

A. And I spent many years reflecting on that failure. And I finally concluded that you can’t get people to quit if they think they’re winning. And there is no reason why they thought that they weren’t winning, because they were. It was clear to them, and consequently all our persuasion, all our dropping of leaflets on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, all our propaganda broadcasts, one thing and another we were doing. We were just going through the motions. We were having no effect whatsoever.

B. At the time, did you know that?

A. At the time, I suspected it but I didn’t know it, and I wasn’t going to quit trying. As you can tell, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. And it was very ill conceived, the effort we made. And we used to drop 12 or 13 million propaganda leaflets at a time. There must be parts of Laos today that you can still walk hip deep through propaganda leaflets assuming that they haven’t disintegrated into paper mache. And that effort was just silliness.

B. But at the time, it seemed to make sense (laughing)!

A. Well (laughing) Lord knows we were trying! One of the things we tried to do is we decided that people were not picking up leaflets because they’d get in trouble if they did.

B. Oh, okay.

A. So people said, “What would they pick up. They’d pick up money, wouldn’t they”? So there was a program where one side of the leaflet was printed with money. Printed as if it were a piaster or a North Vietnamese dong or something. So then we realized “Hey, that’s really dangerous”! You start that stuff then you encourage people to counterfeit your money and now all kinds of stuff unravel. So, we went from that to the idea of “Why don’t we print propaganda on tobacco leaves!”, because all these guys will pick up tobacco to make cigarettes to smoke. But you start trying to feed tobacco leaves through high speed printing presses…

B. (laughing loudly).

A. I want to tell you the mess you can make is just stupefying! Modern equipment or what was modern then, can’t handle something like that. So there are a lot of things we did that, that when I look back on, I say to myself “Gee that was silly!” But there are more important criticisms than what I’m saying.

B. These are the stories that the general public never hears (laughing). I don’t think they’re stories out of school. They’re just things that happened.

A. We set up a propaganda radio station in the Highlands of Pleiku and people started saying “Hey, wait a minute. Who’s going to hear this? There aren’t enough radios around.” So the decision was “Alright, let’s buy some really cheap radios, fix tuned to this station and just air drop them.” And then there was decision made that said “Okay, we have to make sure that there is no way that these radios can be traced back to us.” So a some expense, we had a bunch of radios made (little things about the size of a pack of cigarettes), we had a bunch of these things made and paid quite a bit of money to make sure that there was no component in the radio that identified its origin. You know, Made in…made here, or made there. And then we started scattering these things up and down Vietnam. Well, unless you believed in the Radio Fairy, there’s only one place these things could have come from…

B. (laughing)

A. …the United States! So the whole concept of dropping these mysterious radios that nobody knew where they came from was silly because everybody knew where they came from.

B. Considering the channel that they were locked in on…

A. There was one player in that part of the world with enough money to do that…

B. & A. (laughing).

A. Anyhow, I’ve had a lot of time to think back on this stuff. It was odd. Very odd. And more than odd it was in many respects, tragic.
I felt very strongly as a young man. One of the parts of the deal was if you were a commissioned officer in regular Navy, if there was a war going on you were honor bound to serve. And on the strength of that I’ve never regretted what I did but I have looked back with a certain amount of bemusement as to just how it all came out.

I hope that gives you a sense of maritime adventures that I’ve been working on and writing up and how it is I got from the rescue of Alfa Foxtrot 586 to the trials and tribulations of John Harrison Surratt Jr. and finally to what tragically happened to the women aboard the convict transport Amphitrite off the beach of Bologne in 1833.

B. This has been fascinating history and I’m really thrilled that you shared it with us. It has been my pleasure to talk with you and share these great stories with my readers. Andy, thank you so much.

A. I’ve enjoyed meeting you over the ether. I’ve enjoyed talking to you and I appreciate your interest and attention.

B. Thank you.

END

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I want to thank Andy for this interview and look forward to our continued conversations in the future.

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

 

 

 

 

Mr. Lincoln In Enemy Territory? by Laurie Verge

April 21, 2009: Barry Cauchon

This afternoon I was having a nice discussion with Laurie Verge, the Director of the Surratt House Museum, when she told me about a recent visit the museum had by a large group of Lincolns, Mary Todd Lincolns and one General Ulysses S. Grant. I couldn’t picture this humorous event so I ask her if she could send me a picture. She did one better, Laurie directed me to Abraham Lincoln Online where she posted the following story. As well, the photos were all posted on Flickr  http://flickr.com/gp/pgparks/03YE97 of which some are reproduced here. All photos were taken by Cassi Hayden/M-NCPPC.

Laurie was kind enough to allow me to reprint her article and some of the photos. Thanks Laurie. I enjoyed them a lot.

Barry

That's a whole lot of Lincolns here!!!!!

 

Mr. Lincoln in Enemy Territory?  by Laurie Verge

After 144 years, has all been forgiven?

Today, April 17, 2009, fifty Mr. Lincoln presenters, several Mrs. Lincolns, and one General Grant, ventured into the heart of Southern Maryland, a hot bed of Confederate sympathies and espionage activities during the Civil War. Their target? A visit to historic Surratt House Museum, where guns, ammunition, and other supplies had been hidden in March of 1865 as part of an aborted kidnap plot against the president. These items ultimately brought Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, to the home within two hours of shooting Mr. Lincoln on April 14, 1865 – resulting ultimately in the arrest, trial, and execution of Mary Elizabeth Surratt and bringing about one of history’s mysteries: Did the lady deserve to die?

The Lincoln presenters are holding their annual convention at the Colony South Hotel in Clinton, (once Surrattsville) Maryland, just down the road from Surratt House. Costumed guides at the museum were quick to point out that, in 1860, Mr. Lincoln earned only one vote in the county. He did a little better in 1864. Throughout the war, Surratt House served as a stop on the Confederate underground route that ran from the Potomac River to the Union capital.

Today, both sides were very friendly; and the entourage of Brady photographers that followed the presidents all day captured many memorable pictures – including a group photo posed at the front door that stopped rush hour traffic on the road that runs past the museum.

Laurie Verge, Surratt House Museum

Photos by Cassi Hayden

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Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

What Time Did the RMS Titanic Really Hit the Iceberg?

April 18, 2009: Barry Cauchon

The triple screws of the RMS Titanic

This past April 14 & 15 marked the 97th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. If you are like me, I enjoy thinking about events like this in ‘real time’. For instance, Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at 10:15 pm EST (Eastern Standard Time) on April 14, 1865. I currently live in this same time zone so every year on April 14 between 10:00 and 10:30 pm I imagine the series of events that took place minute by minute. I’ve done this since I was a kid so please don’t assume that I’m certifiable (at least not just yet)!

In the sinking of the Titanic, a number of different factors come into play which mess up my little game so I thought I’d waste a few minutes of your time explaining them to you (lol). The simple facts about the sinking are this:

1. The Titanic struck the iceberg at 11:40 pm on April 14, 1912.
2. The Titanic sank 2 hours and 40 minutes later at 2:20 am on April 15, 1912.

Now here is where it gets tricky.

The times noted above were recorded based on “shipboard” time (the actual time on the ship). Based on where the Titanic was located in the North Atlantic at the time of the collision, the shipboard time was 1 hour and 50 minutes ahead of EST. As many of us are not lucky enough to be in the middle of the North Atlantic when the anniversary is celebrated, here are the adjusted times based on Eastern Standard Time.

1. The Titanic struck the iceberg at 9:50 pm (EST) on April 14, 1912.
2. The Titanic sank 2 hours and 40 minutes later at 12:30 am (EST) on April 15, 1912.

But wait, there is more! For the real perfectionists out there, what about Daylight Savings Time (DST)? Well DST was not a factor in 1912 as it didn’t go into use in England, Germany and the United States until WWI. However, it is in effect today. So if you attempt to reenact the minute by minute events in real time by using the EST calculations above you will again be incorrect. Assuming that you are in the EST zone during Daylight Savings Time, then these are the correct times to base your ‘real time’ reenactment.

1. The Titanic struck the iceberg at 10:50 pm DST (EST) on April 14, 1912.
2. The Titanic sank 2 hours and 40 minutes later at 1:30 am DST (EST) on April 15, 1912.

Confusing! You bet! But if this kind of perfection turns your crank, then use this third option and you will be as close to the truth as you can get.

On April 14, 1912 I struck the iceberg at 11:40 pm shipboard time, 9:50 pm EST and 10:50 pm DST (EST) and sank at on April 15, 1912 at 2:20 am shipboard time, 12:30 am EST and 1:30 am DST (EST).

So the next time you think about the RMS Titanic on the evening of April 14 & 15 know what time it really struck the iceberg and when it sank. You could be the hit at your next Titanic sinking party!

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com

“An Awesometalk With” Ed Isaacs, Owner of Civil War Diary from Soldier Who Guarded the Lincoln Conspirators

April 10, 2009: Barry Cauchon

 

Ed Isaacs holds the diary of his great great grandfather George E. Dixon.

Life has a way of blessing you when you least expect it. Call it karma, good luck or maybe even a genuine intervention by a higher power. I personally believe that things happen for a reason and so when this story began about two weeks ago, I can say that I was blessed again. A kind and humble gentleman by the name of Ed Isaacs, a retired fire fighter from Norwalk, Connecticut wrote to me saying that he had just come into possession of the diary of his great great grandfather, George E. Dixon. George was a Civil War sergeant in Company C of the 14^th Regiment Veterans Corp; the regiment that was assigned to guard, and eventually take part in the executions of several of the Lincoln assassination conspirators in 1865. This was extremely exciting news for me as this is the focus of my current research.

Once Ed shared some of the contents of the diary with me, I knew I was seeing something that was never before on the public record.

The diary is the first known document found to list the names of the guards and their duties guarding the prisoners. It also adds another perspective to the story. It’s a first hand account, documented in the handwriting of the man who was actually there and participated in this famous historic event.

From a researcher’s point of view, George E. Dixon’s diary is a great find. And as you’ll read, Ed Isaacs’ efforts to share this as well as honor the members in his family tree are genuinely uplifting. I am happy and honored to share this story with you on his behalf. Enjoy.

Barry 

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B. Hey Ed. How are you? 

 

E. I’m good and ready to go! 

 

B. (laughing) Alright then, let me start by asking you where you live and what did you do for a living before you were retired?

E. The answer to that is I live in Norwalk, Connecticut. I just recently retired on Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17^th of this year from the Norwalk Fire Department with nearly 32 years on the job.

B. Wow. 

E. Yup. It was a good career. I took good care of my family with that.

B.  Let me ask you about two associations that you are affiliated with. You are a member of The Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and a member and past president of The Sons of the American Revolution.

E. Yes I am.

B. What are those organizations and how do they serve their members?

E. These are hereditary societies whose missions are to preserve the ideals our forefathers fought for during the Civil War and the American Revolution. I was the past president of The Roger Sherman Branch, Connecticut Society Sons of the American Revolution. I had three ancestors that were in the Revolutionary War and they were Amos Dixon, John Saunders and Samuel Brown Isaacs. And then I became a member of The Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and my ancestors there of course were George E. Dixon and Edwin Lorenzo Tuttle who fought in the 5^th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers and then he reenlisted into the 17th.

B. And the reason we are talking here today is because of your great great grandfather, George E. Dixon.  

 

Sergeant George E. Dixon wearing his medals which can be seen later in this article.

 

You contacted me by email back on March 23 and I’d like to read a portion of that note now.

“I recently acquired a diary that was my great-great grandfather’s. His name was George E. Dixon from Poundridge, NY. During the Civil War he was stationed in Washington, D.C. This is what his diary says,  

May 16, 1865: On guard at the old penitentiary over the Booth party conspirators.
I was in the court room during the day while the witness’s were being examined. I saw the bullet that killed the President, also the pistol and two carbines. Booth’s photograph and the boot that was cut open to take it from his broken leg by Dr. Mudd.

 July 7, 1865: On guard at the penitentiary. The execution of Surratt, Payne, Atzerodt + Herold.

 I hope you find this interesting”.

Well Ed (laughing) the first thing that I thought to myself was ‘DAH! Of course I’d find this interesting”. For me, this is great stuff. This is sort of what I specialize in and so I was dying to talk to you and I’m glad that we now have a rapport and are talking more and more about this.

E. And for me it was very interesting because I wasn’t really aware of any of that history. Maybe I mentioned that I have his obituary, “Civil War Veteran Claimed by Death”. Commenting on the execution, of which he was an eyewitness, he says in his diary,

 “The first two, having fainted, were carried to the gallows by the guards: the latter two walked calmly up and put their heads in the nooses.”

So of course, when I eventually got the diary this is what I expected to see. I’ve never seen this line in here yet! So, it could have been hearsay from his wife or a child. But the information I did find was pretty fantastic.

B. So that quote is actually not in the diary from what you can find so far! 

E. I have not found that quote. Nope. 

B. George lived to be quite old. And two things I’ll ask you to explain to everyone are ‘Who was George Dixon’ and ‘what was his history’?

E. George E. Dixon was 90 years old when he passed away. He was a Civil War Veteran who resided in Pound Ridge, New York. He was well known to the people of Stamford. He was the driver for an old mail and passenger stagecoach line for many years. He was born in Pound Ridge on December 2, 1834.

  

George E. Dixon's business card.

He attended the schools of that district. And on April 4, 1859, he married Sarah E. Birdsall, a native of Pound Ridge. After the Civil War broke out, he volunteered for the service of his country, joining the 6^th Regiment New York Heavy Artillery. He was mustered in at Yonkers, and went to a training camp for three months. 

B. [NOTE: At this point in the interview I interrupted Ed with another question and we never got back to George E. Dixon’s history, so here is the rest of it before we pick up the interview again].

His military service states:

 He enlisted as a Private in the 172nd Infantry Regiment New York on September 6, 1862, at the age of 27. He was transferred into Company M, 6th Regiment New York Heavy Artillery on December 4, 1862. He was transferred on January 26, 1864 from Company M to Company A. He was wounded on June 20, 1864 at Petersburg, Virginia. He was transferred to Company M, 6th Regiment New York Heavy Artillery on January 19, 1865 and then transferred to Company C, 14th Regiment Veterans Reserve Corps January 19, 1865. On July 7, 1865, he was appointed Sergeant in Company C of the 14th Regiment of Veteran Reserve Corps to rank as such from the 1st day of July 1865. During the war, he was twice wounded in action and fought in the following battles: Manassas Gap, Mire Run, Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Harris House, North Anna River, Totopopomoy, Cold Harbor, and Besada Church. In this last battle, he was wounded when the handle of a musket was shot off and later, at Petersburg, he was shot in the right arm. He was honorably discharge July 31, 1865. Just prior to his discharge, he was present to witness first hand, a chronicle of American History. During his final service in Washington, DC, he served as sergeant of the guard at the penitentiary in Washington where the persons implicated in the death of President Abraham Lincoln were kept and later was in charge of the guards at the execution of Mary Surratt, Lewis Payne, George Atzerodt, and David Herold, who were involved in the assassination plot.

 Following the war, he returned to Pound Ridge where in 1868, he was given a contract of carrying mail between Stamford and Pound Ridge; a position which he held for 22 years. At first, he only carried the mail three times a week but, later, the number of trips was increased to six. When the rural routes were instituted, he continued carrying freight and passengers until 1916.

Ninety-year old George E. Dixon died on March 16, 1925; just 19 days shy of his 66th wedding anniversary (April 4, 1925). He was one of the oldest members of the Charles A. Hobbie Post #23 of the Grand Army of the Republic located in Stamford. At the time of his death, he was survived by four children – Charles L. of New York City, Mrs. Ada Isaacs of New Canaan, Myron A. of Stamford, and Wilbur of New Canaan: his wife, Sarah E., and 14 grandchildren and 15 great grandchildren.

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George and Sarah Birdsall Dixon on their 65th wedding anniversary.

B. You sent me two pictures of George, one of him and his wife and the other being a family portrait. I guess these are both from their 65^th wedding anniversary on April 4, 1924. Is that correct?

[Note: Just last Saturday, April 4, 2009 would have marked George and Sarah’s 150^th wedding anniversary].

E. That’s correct. At their home which we referred to as “Charter Oak Place”. 

B. In the family photo, is there somebody there that you are directly related too? 

George and Sarah and their family on their 65th wedding anniversary

E. The young couple right behind Sarah and George were my grandparents. The young gentleman is Clarence Isaacs and his wife Muriel. It is very sad how things go because that picture was taken in April, 1924 and my father had just been born in February of that year. My grandmother, Muriel  died the following year at only 21 years old. My grandfather Clarence died at 30 years old in 1927. So they didn’t have a great long life, yet Clarence’s mother Ada, who’s standing right next to him, lived to 96 years old. That’s Ada Dixon Isaacs, my great grandmother.  

Muriel Isaacs, Clarence Isaacs and Ada Dixon

 

B. Well…I’d love to say that …

E. …you don’t know what tree you’re going to be in. Right!

B. Exactly (laughing).

E. Yup.

B. When did you first get interested in your great great grandfather? I know you have some items of his as well as his diary.

E. Well first, the items that I have, I didn’t have to worry about collecting, outside of the diary, because the items were already here. My father was a great collector. In my family, we save everything. I’ve got a bible from Samuel Brown Isaacs who was in the Revolutionary War and I’ve got a powder horn from Amos Dixon.

But the question is always asked “When did I get interested in it”? Like a lot of people would say “When your parent dies”. My dad was very interested in our family history. And of course when I lost him in 1990, I’d always remember as a young kid when I was 10, 12, 14 years old, the many weekends we would spend going to a cemetery, a library, a town hall or somewhere always looking for facts on family. And that’s what we did. And of course as I came up on sixteen years old, I’m looking at my watch saying “Dad, I got a date. I gotta get out of here”. I didn’t show as much interest then. But when I lost him it became one of the most important things in my life. Honoring my ancestors is honoring my father, Howard R. Isaacs.

 My family has a lot of history in this area.  Ralph Isaacs and Mary Rumsey Isaacs settled in Norwalk in 1725.  My family has not moved more than 20 miles in 284 years.

B. What are some of the items that you obtained from your father?

E. I have George E. Dixon’s certificate promoting him to Sergeant. I’ve got his pension paper. I’ve got original news articles about George and Sarah’s 65^th wedding anniversary and of course the article on his death. I’ve got many photos including George with family members in front of his home “Charter Oak Place”. I’ve got a medal given to him for serving in the 6^th Regt. New York Heavy Artillery, Army of the Potomac and his GAR [Grand Army of the Republic] medal. And now I have his diary!

 

George Dixon's New York Volunteers Heavy Artillery Army of the Potomac and GAR medals

 

B. Well, let’s talk about the diary then (laughing)!

When you contacted me on March 23 you had only just received it a few days before on March 18, so you haven’t had it that long.

E. When it arrived at my house in the envelope I did not open it. I needed to relax in anticipation of what I would discover. I just put it downstairs in a safe place until Sunday the 22^nd and that was the first time I opened it. I was just so relieved.

B. How long have you known of its existence?

E. I didn’t know if it still existed. All I had was just a copy of his obituary that said “…in his diary” and that one quote that I haven’t been able to find. But I didn’t know where that diary could be. So really, the story of how I got it is very interesting.

B. I’m sure. Can you tell us?

E. Before I retired, I was looking at family members’ histories and went on Ancestory.com. I started loading the names of different family members that I had, on it. I looked at photographs of George and Sarah and the extended family. One of my parents had put the names of the different family members on the back of the photos. So I just started looking at the different names and I found one, that was Floyd E. Dixon. I put Floyd E. Dixon into my family tree just looking to see who else would be searching for this particular Dixon and I found one that matched exactly. And then of course, I made a phone call to Maine to Pamila Dixon Tift and said, “Hi, I’m your cousin”. I started sending her a lot of information about our great great grandfather.  When I sent her a copy of George’s obituary talking about his diary, she called me back and said she had that diary.

B. (laughing).

E. Needless to say, I nearly fell out of my chair here. But I had to keep my wits about me. Through many emails and conversations over the next week or so I let her know that since I had everything else of his, and I’m only minutes from Pound Ridge where he lived; and I visited the home where he lived many times… that the diary needed to be here. I was very fortunate that she agreed with me.  

If anything else was interesting, she told me that she put it in the mail on March 16th and just by coincidence, I looked at his obituary again that night and noticed that March 16, 1925 was when he died. So everything has a meaning.

 

The resting place of George E. Dixon, Sarah Dixon and Ada Isaacs.

B. Yeah for sure! What an amazing story. It sounds like coincidence but perhaps it’s not. It goes deeper than that and was meant to be in your hands.

E. That’s exactly right.

B. When you first opened the diary did you focus on any one page after you looked through it?

E. The main one for me was of course the page we just talked about where he was an eyewitness in the courtroom when the witnesses were being examined. That one, and the other page that’s seems to be the one getting us all really excited, page 27, with the names of the guards and executioners. I didn’t have a clue what anything on this page meant, so I contacted you.

 

Page 27 from the Dixon diary.

  

B. At first, when you sent me a photo of the page, we were debating whether the list of names was of guards or prisoners. Well it turned out that it was a list of guards from the 14^th Regiment Veterans Corp.

  

A list of men from the 14th Regiment and the schedule of cells they were assigned to guard.

 

But the names that really jumped out at me were the four at the bottom of the page [#15, 16, 17 & 18]. And those were the names of the four guards that stood under the scaffold and who were responsible for knocking the props out, or springing the traps.

  

Although some of the names are spelt incorrectly, the names of the four soldiers who sprung the traps at the conspirator executions are in Dixon's list: William Coxshall, Joseph Haslett, George F. Taylor and Daniel F. Shoupe (Shoup).

[Ed later pointed out that on this same page George notes this very fact when he writes “The last four numbers were executioners. Sergt. G. E. Dixon, Co. C, 14^th Reg”.]

  

The note that George penned indentifying the four men that sprung the traps at the execution.

I guess as we’ve talked a little bit further it sounded like George, at the time being a Sergeant, perhaps was in charge of scheduling some of his men to guard the prisoners, hence his list of guards names.

 

 

 

 

 

E. These names didn’t mean anything to me because even though I have my family here that I honor very much, I didn’t follow the history as much as I should. But now I’ve started looking into it more. As you know I’ve bought the book “American Brutus” by Michael Kauffman and I have just bought “The Trial” by Ed Steers Jr. That’s just about twice as many books as I’ve probably ever read in my life.

B. (laughing) Well the two authors you mentioned are both excellent in this field. The field of the assassination.

E. Oh yes. It’s very exciting.

B. On your behalf, I did approach some of these gentlemen who I correspond with and respect highly. And right off the bat we had a really good response from Michael Kauffman. I think his first response to me, before I passed it on to you, was “WOW”! So it really meant something to him as it related to his own research. I know that he is now working with you to further discover what other information is to be found in that list as well as in the other pages of the diary.

Michael is definitely excited about the project. I have had responses from other Lincoln experts. Some are quite busy right now. But eventually these folks will get back to you as their schedules free up.

E. I know for sure that this has to be exciting for some of them just like when you contacted me. If someone is going to give you his cell phone number you know that they are interested. To get the home phone number from Michael Kauffman or to hear from Laurie Verge, I mean that is very exciting and I’m very honored for George E. Dixon. I really am!

B. Laurie Verge is the Director of the Surratt House Museum and Surratt Society. She is quite interested in collecting whatever information she can on George, putting it into their files, so any future researchers have an opportunity to explore him and see how his life relates to perhaps the research that they are doing. It’s an exciting time, Ed!

E. It really is. When I retired on March 17, officially after the 18^th, I wondered what I was going to do other than feet hitting the floor in the morning and going to get a cup of coffee. I’m still not that old but I plan on doing something down the road. But to have this happen, there isn’t a day right now where I don’t have something to do. I’m doing a newspaper interview tomorrow in George’s hometown of Pound Ridge at 10:00 o’clock. It’s all about honoring George and it’s a great thing. I’m really enjoying it.

B. Do you have children Ed?

E. I have a 19-1/2 year old daughter Emily and my son will be 18 in June and that is Christopher.

B. Do they find interest in this or are they sort of like how you were back when? They have their own life right now!

E. Just like me! (laughing).

B. (Laughing)

E. My wife is very good with this. She understands that not everyone is into this when you are a teenager. But everything is going to be put away safely and catalogued somehow so they’ll have things to look at and be proud of when they do show interest. My son is also a member of The Sons of the American Revolution. And in December of this past year I got my daughter into The Daughters of the American Revolution. So they are good to go. It is just a matter of what they want to do with their lives and their time. But they are good to go.

B. What’s your hope for yourself now that you are retired?

E. Now that I have the Dixon diary, I can see my first book. I can see myself going on some talking tours. Maybe do some schools. It would be very interesting once I figure out everything. It’s nice to say that you’ve got something but you want to make sure that you know what you are talking about. If I can put something together, I would enjoy it. I really would. It’s a nice thing and so many people are interested in the Civil War and of course the assassination of Lincoln. It’s a lot to go over. It really is a lot. 

B. Well it’s a great part of our history and the Dixon clan has been a part of it for decades, for centuries. And you must carry on the tradition.

E. Exactly. There you go.

B. Well Ed, this has been great. And you and I will obviously be talking well beyond this interview. I think there is a lot more to look into and as we start to pick it apart and figure out which way to go, I’m glad you’re taking me for the ride.

E. I feel I’m honored to have you ask me these questions. I’m very excited. And as I’m sitting here looking at my computer now I see this picture of Harold Holzer, the eminent Lincoln scholar and Civil War expert. And thinking that you’re interviewing me, and you’ve interviewed him and some of these other guests, I’ve got some pretty big shoes to fill.

B. (laughing).

E. I’m floating on a cloud right now.

B. I have to thank Harold because he was my first interview. He actually contacted me when I was searching out some information for another gentleman who had written me. He is a gracious man and always very generous with his time, and I will always be grateful to him for that. 

E. You have a great website. And of course as you already know, the short article that you put on there about me yesterday, I’ve already sent out to many of my friends (laughing).

B. Ah yes…the TEASER!!! (laughing).

E. You’ve got a lot more followers now, I tell you!

B. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you Ed.

E. Again, I’m just very excited and very honored.

B. You’re a good man Ed and I’ve enjoyed learning about you, your family and George E. Dixon. Thanks again.

E. Thank you.

END

Best

Barry

outreach@awesometalks.com