A duo of historical detectives, William Lee Richter and Joseph E. “Rick” Smith III, recently announced they would release their findings of fact via an academic article they authored entitled Could John Wilkes Booth Have Committed Suicide at Garrett’s Farm? Now, they’ve entered into an exclusive agreement allowing unparalleled access to the pedagogic piece, including reference and source material, for sole publication here upon the Suite101 website. In addition, Messrs. Richter and Smith have agreed as well to furnish answers to any and all questions as regards the results of their research.
RS: “How long have you both been studying the American Civil War and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln?”
Richter: “I first became interested in the Civil War in that early 1950s. I had a friend down the street and we both would read all sorts of books and then compare and discuss what we had read and what we thought. I remembered an article out of the old Childcraft series on Robt E Lee in Mexico scouting for Gen Winfield Scott, hiding behind a log for hours as he found the route around the enemy positions at Cerro Gordo. So Lee was a hero of ours from early on. We loved his generalship and use of mobility to defeat Yankee armies in 1862 and 1863. That brought us to JEB Stuart and John Mosby and their daring-do. A subscription to Civil War Times Illustrated followed”
“I got the old Avalon Hill game of Gettysburg and wore it out. Eventually I redrew the maps and increased the battlefield to 6 times the original, using topographic maps from the ROTC department at LSU. I also recreated the unit pieces, using brigades rather than the Avalon Hill divisions system. I guess I had crossed the dividing line between Civil War buff and Civil War nut. I even used this system to teach military history in my college classes, years later”
“The CWTI had a Lincoln Assassination special issue in 1965, which really brought home the topic to me for the first time. But it took until 1998 before I went into the Lincoln Assassination full-time. I am not sure what did it for me. I was taught during my PhD study at LSU by Prof T Harry Williams, a big-time Lincoln Scholar out of Wisconsin. He gave the usual treatment of Lincoln as one of the greatest American presidents, but I always had doubts of the story. Something was wrong. Ultimately it was Thomas Di Lorenzo’s The Real Lincoln that put my doubts into print”
“By then I had given a beginning talk to the service society SERTOMA, the program director of which was married to my wife’s boss at the time. I used material on the various theories as to who assassinated Lincoln, mostly taken from Roger Norton’s web page on the Assassination. By 1999, I was a member of the Surratt Society and spending weeks in the forerunner to the James O Hall Library researching the topic, followed up by the excellent Booth Tour of his Escape route conducted the incomparable Mike Kauffman”.
Don’t Turn Your Back On Me
Smith: “My interest in The War began at an early age. I suppose that I would credit my great uncle, with whom I spent a lot of time on his farm in Virginia, which lies along the route of Lee's Retreat, with getting me interested in the War Between the States. Although born in Maryland, I have always considered myself a displaced Virginian; most of my family and my ancestors are and were Virginians and quite a few of them served The Cause in General Lee's army. I suppose, really, it is in my blood; it is in the way I think and speak; and in my associations. For better or for worse, I am tied to that War through my predecessors”
“As to the Lincoln assassination; I suppose my introduction was through Jim Bishop's book, The Day Lincoln Was Shot. I was 13 years old when I read Mr. Bishop's book and had been thinking at the time about the War drawing to a close and what was happening, not only to those men returning from the fighting, but also to those who had stayed behind. Mr. Bishop's book was important since there was not much detail regarding Booth's [and "his 'action' teams" as William Tidwell referred to them] movements. There was plenty about Mr. Lincoln though; we know he had a cup of black coffee and a boiled egg for breakfast that morning. But what really piqued my interest was not so much what was in Mr. Bishop's book, but what was missing and I sure wanted to know more”.
RS: Speaking to you both, one senses strong sentiments about the subject matter, why so?”
Richter: “I had always wanted to write an historical novel. My wife finally said, “Shut up or do it!” The result was the Last Confederate Heroes, about Booth and his compatriots as real people, with noble ideas and motives, not stupid, bungling assassins (although they were that, too). I followed that with Sic Semper Tyrannis that put Booth’s thoughts into a readable, comprehensible form, and commonly held in the South”.
Don’t Let My Memory Fade
Smith: “In the subsequent years, I read the works of many authors, some good, some not so good and formed my beliefs and ideas regarding the drama of the Lincoln assassination and all the many various players. The work which Mr. Hall, General Tidwell & Mr. Gaddy did with Come Retribution really brought things together for me. In my view, Come Retribution is the sacred scripture of the Lincoln assassination history. It shows that the assassination of President Lincoln was an act of war during a time of war and explains why Lincoln was assassinated. I know that this agitates a whole lot of people, but it is vitally important to understanding the real reasons for the actions against the person of Mr. Lincoln. Our nation was still at war when President Lincoln was assassinated. We have the luxury of being able to look back on events and know how they will turn out; those living at the time, including Mr. Lincoln, could only see what was occurring”
“Bill Richter's Last Confederate Heroes was also important to me because it put the flesh on the bones of Come Retribution and brought the whole thing to life. When we are reading or writing about events in the past, it is important to cast off modern sensibilities, thought and language and try to put ourselves into the particular context of the history we are studying. So many historians and writers ignore these things and continue to perpetuate the folk lore aspects of Lincoln and the Lincoln assassination and tend to over simplify probably because most Americans just don't have time for or don't have any interest in the details and only absorb historical information in short, History Channel style portions”
“I guess the other thing that helped shape my feelings was the invitation given to me by Laurie Verge about 12 years ago to become a docent at the Surratt House Museum. To be able to give tours of the old house dressed in period clothing, to be in that historic place and to be able to speak with visitors, not only about my views but theirs too, is really a privilege”.
RS: So what brought about, first, your re-opening the proverbial barn door as regards Booth’s death and second, your disagreement with other scholarly sleuths and serious students that Booth died as a result of ‘suicide by cop’?”
Richter: “Just the notion that suicide by cop was too pat. Booth wanted to have it done and asked that the troopers back off 50 feet and give him a “fair” fight. The officers refused and insisted that he surrender. Booth thus had no choice but to surrender and hang as a public spectacle or to kill himself and prevent a public mocking. He chose the latter”.
Smith: “I sure hope that the article which Bill Richter and I wrote will not be looked at as an attack on Steve Miller's & Blaine Houmes' article, ‘Suicide By Cop’, because it certainly was not meant that way. Nor was it meant to be an attack on Dr. Lattimer's work in this area. We make reference to the article written by Steve and Blaine and to Dr. Lattimer's work, but in a courteous manner. This is how it should be done and this is how we would want to be treated”
“Our article's topic was one that we had been interested in for some time as one that would stand by itself and not be a response to any other work necessarily, but only to be a thought piece. In the article we cite the suicide by cop theory as one example of the differing thoughts and opinions which exist in Lincoln assassination literature”
“The Booth suicide article does not defend or deride the notion that John Wilkes Booth committed suicide; it only demonstrates that it was mechanically possible. Bill had treated the idea in his book, Last Confederate Heroes and I thought that it should be resurrected. I won't say any more about it right now as I would want those who would wish to read it to form their own views”.
RS: “Last but not least, did you expect an outpouring of objection and opposition by your peers to pre-publication "advance proofs" of Could John Wilkes Booth Have Committed Suicide at Garrett’s Farm?
Richter: “Yes, but not from our regular readers, instead of and rather than, at least one of the writers of the Suicide by Cop theory”.
Smith: “Yes, I did expect there would be some objection to the theory in our article, which is simply that it was certainly mechanically possible for John Wilkes Booth to have committed suicide with a Colt's 1860 Army Model .44 and to inflict a wound of the type he sustained and subsequently died from. When anyone writes on anything related to the subject of the Lincoln assassination, they have to expect some objection. Everyone has opinions. The important thing is to get yours into the public view. There are plenty of people who have objections to some of James O. Hall's work even though he is probably the foremost Lincoln assassination scholar, so any objection to my views would certainly be no surprise”.
Note: In 2007, Richter and Smith coauthored the nonfiction tome In The Shadows of the Lincoln Assassination: The Life of Confederate Spy Thomas H. Harbin and then in 2008, Smith served as the editor of Richter’s factual fiction volume The Last Confederate Heroes.
Note: Richter's writings include: "'Shoot to Get Out of the Way': The Murder of Texas Freedmen's Bureau Agent William G. Kirkman by Cullen Baker and the Historians," in Kenneth Howell (ed.), Still the Arena of Civil War: Violence and Turmoil in Reconstruction Texas, 1865-1874 (North Texas State University Press, forthcoming). "'The Road to Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions': James Longstreet in War and Peace," in Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Thomas E. Schott (eds.), Lee and His Generals; Essays in Honor of T. Harry Williams ( University of Tennessee Press (2012), 203-28.; Historical Dictionary of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2nd ed., Scarecrow Press, 2012).;Sic Semper Tyrannis: Why John Wilkes Booth Shot Abraham Lincoln ( iUniverse, 2009).; The Last Confederate heroes: The Final Struggle for Southern Independence & the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Rev. ed., Burgundy Press, 2008). & Historical Dictionary of the old South (Scarecrow Press, 2006).
Note: Additional Footnotes denoted in Part 2 [4-14] continue in concluding Part 3.
Rick Stelnick - Rick Stelnick is a superannuated political scientist, crime historian and historical detective.
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