As we get closer to the 20th century conspiracies become harder to research or prove. Generally the families, companies, or individuals involved take greater steps to cover their activities. In some cases the cover ups are so complete that some conspiracies will never be able to be proven. We start with some local history.
Texas 1836
On an unseasonably warm day in April a small band of rebels defeated the larger federal army of Mexico and by literally threatening Santa Ana at gunpoint secured a treaty making Texas into a republic. The key man in all of this was General Sam Houston. The former governor of Tennessee came to Texas to practice law. Some say he came at the behest of President Jackson to foment rebellion in what was then the Mexican state of Coahulia y Tejas.
The American government certainly was interested in the territory. As early as the 1810’s they had looked the other way while private armies of American citizens had tried to takeover the state.
Houston enters the picture in about 1833. He had spent some time in Washington DC advocating for the Cherokee tribes and he left the city after being found guilty of attacking a congressman on the street. Some say that President Jackson used his influence to get Houston out of his predicament and encouraged him to go to Texas to stir up trouble.
While in Texas, Houston receives considerable military aid from “private” citizens in the US including not only weapons but “volunteers” from various American states. Shades of Crimea 2014.
The US government did nothing to prevent these actions.
It is somewhat telling that upon the successful end of the revolutionary war that Houston sought the annexation of Texas into the US. It was rejected but Houston continued working on the issue until annexation was accepted ten years later.
Washington DC 1865.
The facts that cannot be disputed are that President Lincoln attended Ford’s theater and that an assassin shot him at point-blank range from behind. Beyond that, the motives, the plot, and even those involved are hard to prove.
John Wilkes Booth is considered almost universally to be that assassin. Booth was possibly the greatest actor of the age. Sometimes referred to as the “handsomest man in America”
The civil war deeply affected him. Despite his pro-confederate leanings his family urged him not to join the confederate army, however he took every opportunity to voice his support for the South. Soon he gathered about him a close circle of like-minded friends and offered their services to the southern cause.
This den of spies and saboteurs was not highly regarded by the confederate secret service. Reports showed that they considered Booth and his friends to be unreliable at best.
Booth himself was somewhat erratic. At times angrily decrying the northern government and at other times urging caution.
His first plot was not to assassinate Lincoln but to kidnap him and exchange him for 10,000 confederate prisoners. This failed due to Lincoln changing his plans at the last-minute.
Embittered by the surrender of the South he plotted vengeance on the president. The plan was not just to kill Lincoln but the secretaries of state, war, and the vice president leaving the government in total chaos. He assigned his friends to carry out their parts in the plot but saved the main target for himself.
The plot began to fall apart almost immediately with everyone else missing their targets. So it fell to Booth to carry out his part. He shot Lincoln in the back of the head and jumped from the balcony crying “Sic Semper Tyrannis“, thus always to tyrants, the state motto of Virginia. In the dramatic escape he broke his leg and stumbled away into the night.
Escaping on horseback he was tracked down to farmer Garret’s barn and killed as the barn was set on fire.
But many questions and theories were left behind.
Most shocking is the theory that secretary of war Edwin Stanton knew of the plot beforehand and did nothing. It was widely known that Lincoln and Stanton did not like each other and some have speculated that Lincoln was preparing to fire Stanton. Curiously on the night of the assassination plot Stanton changed his plans and totally avoided his would be assassin. Did Stanton know of the plot?
Then there is the fate of Booth himself. Booth escaped Washington with a man called James Boyd and that the autopsy of Booth afterwards showed that the dead man did not have a broken leg like Booth was reported to have. Some speculate that the remains found in the barn were those of Boyd not Booth.
A story put out by a Tennessee lawyer called Finis Bates claims that Booth eventually escaped to Japan and returned to the US years later to finally die in Oklahoma in 1903.
Attempts to compare the DNA of the man buried in Oklahoma with living Booth relatives have been blocked by the courts
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