The Eisenschiml Thesis

THE EISENSCHIML THESIS William Hanchett The most original and provocative of all writers about Lincoln's assassination is Otto Eisenschiml, whose resourcefulness and curiosity about some aspects of the murder led him in 1933 to the archives of the Judge Advocate General's Office in theWar Department inWashington, D. C There, where few individuals had searched before, he discovered a dust-covered filing cabinet containing material now known as "Investigation and Trial Papers Relating to the Assassination of President Lincoln."1 "I have always been proud of my steadynerves," he wrote years later, "but in this instance I admit thatI trembled like a dope addict. I was holding in my hands priceless source documents which would change the acceptedaccounts of Lincoln's assassination and force the rewriting of an important chapter in history."2 Although bom, raised, and educated in Austria, Eisenschiml was an American citizen by birth. His father had emigrated to California at the time of the gold rush, and during the Civil War saw action at Shiloh as an officer in an Illinois regiment. He next became an Indian scout, and, while living in Nevada, an American citizen. Moving to Chicago, he worked as a butcher until 1872, when he returned to Austria and married. His son Otto was bom in Vienna on June 16, 1880. Always proud of his United States citizenship, the senior Eisenschiml talked to his son about Lincoln and Grant and his experiences in America, and advised him to emigrate as soon as his education was complete. Young Eisenschiml took the advice. Upon receiving a diploma in chemical engineering from the Polytechnic School of Vienna in 1901, he sailed for the United States.3 Starting out as a chemist in a steel factory in Pittsburgh and in a linseed * This article was delivered as an address at the50th annual meeting of the Lincoln Club of Delaware, Feb. 9, 1979. Otto Eisenchiml was the club's speaker at its 25th meeting. 1 The papers were accessioned by the National Archives in 1941, and made available on microfilm in 1965. Contrary to what is sometimes stated, they werenever classified Secret, though officers in charge may have given that impression in order to discourage civilian intrusions. Anyone with Eisenschiml's resourcefulness and determination could have examined them, and at least two individuals did so before Eisenschiml. 2 Otto Eisenschiml, Without Fame. The Romance of a Profession (Chicago, 1942), 34344 , and O.E., Historian Without an Armchair (Indianapolis, 1983), 112-15.·' Without Fame, 4-7, and Who's Who in America, ¡963. Civil War History, Vol. XXV, No. 3 Copyright ® 1979 by The Kent State University Press 0009-8078/79/2503-0001 $01.05/0 198CIVIL WAR HISTORY oil plant in Chicago, Eisenschiml soon began to act as a consultant for businessmen with chemical problems—how to keep the transparent address windows in envelopes from clouding over, for example, and how to make an oil cloth flexible, waterproof, and heat resistant for use in hospitals and elsewhere. Opportunities for chemists with an eye for business were plentiful, and shortly after World War I he left his laboratory and, as president of the Scientific Oil Compounding Company, became the distributor of raw materials used in the manufacture of paints, varnishes, and fungicides. Within a few years he had made a fortune.4 Eisenschiml was glad to give up his career in chemistry, forhe craved wider recognition. Chemists were responsible for breathtaking improvements in medicine and agriculture and in thousands of products consumed everyday, yet they were unknown to the public, looked down upon by those who profited from their skills, and paid the wages of stenographers. He became a businessman, Eisenschiml said, out of necessity: "my choice might have been different, had chemists been regarded with more respect, and had the financial returns been anywhere near adequate."5 As a boy in Austria, Eisenschiml's interest in American history had been aroused by his father's stories. As a man in the United States, it was stimulated by his own travels. In 1913, after inspecting as a consultant some abandoned mines in the Black Hills, he continued west to Montana, where he visited the site of the famous...