Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Preface

In 1997 the Surratt Society, in Clinton, LMaryland, published the Ab~aham Lincoln Assassinatio?~ Bibliog~aphyby Blaine V. Houmes. The bibliography was the first of its hnd devoted exclusively to Lincoln's assassination. Listed are approximately 3,000 entries representing 2,900 journal, magazine, newspaper , and newsletter articles and 100 monographs. This number represents roughly 20 percent of the general bibliography (16,000 entries) devoted to Abraham Lincoln. The majority of the 3,000 "assassination" entries are the product of nonacademic or avocational historians who drew most of their material from secondary sources and anecdotal reminiscences that are questionable or can be shown to be incorrect. LManyof the assassination books that have included primary sources have relied heavily on secondary sources in their interpretation of the events associated with Lincoln's death. In Blood 072 the Moon I have relied principally on primary sources and sought independent corroboration of the recollections of those persons who figured prominently in the story. The principal primary sources that form the core of documents concerned with Lincoln's assassination are found in Record Group (RG) 153, Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General , and Record Group 94, Records of the Adjutant General's Ofice, located in the National Archives Record Administration (NARA).These records are published as microfilm copies (,M-599 and M-619 respectively) and are available from the National Archives as well as several libraries and research facilities throughout the country. The principal file, M-599, is known as Investigation and Trial Papers Relating to the Assassination of President Lincoln or the "Lincoln Assassination Suspects" (LAS) file. These papers contain a wide range of materials gathered mostly between April 15 and July 3, 1865. The records consist of pretrial interrogations, letters offering information, and the verbatim transcript of the trial proceedings taken down by court reporters skilled in the use of phonography, a form of shorthand writing. Colonel Henry L. Burnett was called from h s post as judge advocate of the Northern Department (Cincinnati, Ohio) and assigned to the office ofJoseph Holt, chief of the Bureau ofMilitaryJustice. Burnett and his staff gathered evidence from a variety of sources that was used in both the pretrial investigation and the subsequent court trial (court martial case file IiLZM 2251) of those charged with Lincoln's assassination.The combined records, published as microcopy M-599, appear on sixteen microfilm reels numbered l through 16. Record Group 94 contains the records that deal with the claims for xii Preface reward offered to those persons instrumental in the apprehension of those charged with Lincoln's assassination. In an effort to insure fairness and accuracy in paying the reward money, a special commission, known as the Commission on Rewards for Apprehension of Lincoln Assassins and Others, was established by the adjutant general to receive and adjudicate all claims.These claims and associated documents are published as microcopy M-619, reels 455 through 458. Shortly after the trial ended, three separate hardback versions of the testimony were published. Petersen and Brothers of Philadelphia published the first manuscript (Petersen version); Benn: Perley Poore, a Boston newspaper journalist, was the second to publish (Poore version); and Ben Pitman, the originator of the trial transcript, was the last to publish (Pitman version). The three versions were published between July 1865 and November 1865. The versions differin important ways. The first two versions, Petersen's and Poore's, were copied from the dailynewspaper accounts. While the Poore version was edited for typographical errors, the Peterson version lacks editing of any kind. The two versions also lack the closing arguments of the prosecution and defense counsels.Most important, they lackindexing,which makes it difficult to locate testimony by specific witnesses without familiarizing oneself with the entire transcript. Witnesses testifying on the same subject did not always appear chronologically, but were occasionally called out of sequence, mahng it difficult to read the testimony as it relates to a particular defendant unless one is thoroughly familiar with the contents of the three volumes. The Pitman version suffers no such deficiency. Pitman gathered the evidence from throughout the transcript as it related to one defendant regardless of chronology and combined it under a single heading. His editing, however, eliminated the questions and frequently summarized the answers. Where the testimony is unclear or in controversy, Pitman does give the testimony verbatim. Most important, the Pitman version contains a chronological index within major headings. The strengths of Pitman's version are outweighed by its weaknesses. Pitman...