THE MEN THAT KILLED LINCOLN
The Knights of the Golden Circle had suffered terrible communications break downs during the last few months of the Civil War. There were C.S.A. spies and traitors scattering like rats long before Robert E. Lees surrender to U.S. Grant. It was every man for himself time!. Even Jeff Davis himself was making tracks to save his own hide.
There were two men high up in the ranks of the O.A.K. and they along with a Knight of the highest stature in the organization, and most wealthy,had been in charge of several of the largest Knights of the Golden Circle operations established before the Civil War began. The two knights each millionaires by there own right, had a personal vendetta against Abraham Lincoln, each for his own personal reasons. It amounted to a loss of a great deal of money to both men to make it short.
Having Lincoln killed by the actor John Wilkes Booth was a plan that was hatched in St.Luis most likely when Booth attended a local K.G.C. meeting while touring at the theatre there (he was also a courier for the K.G.C. and could have been delivering conveyance). This would have put him in the same room with at least two of the other gentlemen I mentioned, both of whom would later take part in the assassination of Lincoln. By their actions, I can only assume that they met Booth at St. Luis. Booth along with the two men, could have traveled to a clandestine meeting elsewhere in the area. meeting with Knights that i don't even know.
Later the assassins were formed by the group, and then they were trained like any other terrorist group. You don't just attack a presidential cabinet simultaneously without some training and a practice run first. Where did this training take place? in the motel room at the Kirkwood Hotel, with everybody in a smoke filled room hovering over a scratch pad??
No, I don't think that is where the practice run took place. These were serious men, with a serious plan to kidnap a UNITED STATES PRESIDENT.......The question was, did there hand picked team of assassins have balls enough to go through with it. Money was paid out, Rooms and horses had been rented people chosen traveled there, armed and instructed. The only thing left to do was have a dry run to see if they would go through with the kidnapping! The leader of the bunch being Booth, with no combat experience to speak of, or leadership abilities for that matter, had been instructed and lead by a keen Knight in the Golden Circle with combat experience and nerves of steel. This superior in the assassination plot would stay in the shadows only meeting with Andrew Johnson and John Wilkes Booth.
The practice run went like this:
Booth
learned that Lincoln was scheduled to attend a matinee performance of the play Still Waters Run Deep at the Campbell Hospital on the outskirts of Washington on
March 17, 1865. Booth, O'Laughlen, and the other co-conspirators planned on intercepting the president's carriage. The group lay in wait along the road. Finally,
a polished carriage(or a presidential carriage?) came into view and the gang prepared itself. But the president had changed plans and the carriage
was possibly that of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase.(COPPERHEAD) Booth's
attempt(or
practice attempt?) to kidnap Lincoln had failed,
or did it?. O'Laughlen returned to Baltimore.
Nobody backed out.........Booth called them off......sounds like a practice run for a squad of terrorist to me, and squad captain JW Booth could now
report the confidence of his men to his superiors and move on to plan '"
A" substitute the word
kill for kidnap.
think about it, L.C.
