Christopher McIlwain - The Million-Dollar Man Who Helped Kill a President: George Washington Gayle and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

THE

MILLION-DOLLAR MAN

WHO HELPED KILL A PRESIDENT

George Washington Gayle
and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

THE

WHO HELPED KILL A PRESIDENT

George Washington Gayle
and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

CHRIS MCILWAIN

Savas Beatie
California

2018 by Chris McIlwain

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

First Edition, first printing

ISBN-13: 978-1-61121-394-2

eISBN 978-1-61121-395-9

Mobi ISBN 978-1-61121-395-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McIlwain, Christopher Lyle, author.

Title: The Million-Dollar Man Who Helped Kill a President: George Washington Gayle and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln / by Christopher Lyle McIlwain, Sr.

Other titles: George Washington Gayle and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Description: First edition. | El Dorado Hills, California : Savas Beatie, [2018]

Identifiers: LCCN 2018019665| ISBN 9781611213942 (hardcover) |

ISBN 9781611213959 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Gayle, George Washington, 1807-1875. | Lincoln,

Abraham, 1809-1865--Assassination. | Lincoln Assassination Conspiracy Trial, Washington, D.C., 1865. | Advertising, Newspaper--United States--History--19th century--Miscellanea. | Lawyers--Alabama--Biography. | Legislators--Alabama--Biography. | Alabama--Politics and government--19th century. | Southern States--Politics and government--19th century. | Dallas County (Ala.)--Biography.

Classification: LCC E457.5 .M45 2018 | DDC 973.7092 [B] --dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018019665

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But, thanks to a good Providence, Lincoln is not the incarnation of fate, as some Tories and cowards have schooled their minds to believe. He is but a man working with human instrumentalities, and himself but a leaf oating on the endless stream of human destiny.

Selma (Alabama) Reporter

September 22, 1863

T HE assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, was a traumatic and pivotal event for the entire nation, both North and South. Public reaction in Washington, D.C. spread like a wild fire.

When Booth fled from the epicenter of that figurative fire at Fords Theater, members of the audience reportedly rose to their feet, rushing toward the stage, many exclaiming Hang him! Hang him!

Not everyone was mourning Lincolns death.

Others were more prudent in their comments. Recognizing the possibility that in its blind rage the North would not take the time to discern whether particular Southerners had been loyal or disloyal, one Alabama editor quickly offered an exculpatory theory of John Wilkes Booths motivation. [W]e believe [Lincolns murder] to have been the deed of one who, however talented in his profession, has yet those gloomy and fantastic conceptions of his art which have culminated in a deed unequaled in tragic darkness since the days of romance.

Like most presidential assassinations, the murder of Abraham Lincoln has spawned a multitude of conspiracy theorists who have offered many different ideas about who might have been behind Booth and his team of assassins. From the beginning, the primary theory relentlessly pursued by Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton and federal prosecutors was that Confederate president Jefferson Davis had directed the taking of Lincolns life, and had authorized a former Confederate senator from Alabama, Clement Claiborne Clay (known as C.C. Clay, Jr.), who was then serving as a Confederate agent in Canada, to recruit and finance a team to carry out the assassination.

Some have theorized that Davis had, at least, expressly or implicitly, authorized Confederate efforts to have Lincoln kidnapped in 1863 or 1864 and brought south to use as bargaining leverage. Lincolns death would galvanize the North in favor of the war effort and undermine months of Confederate efforts to encourage a peace movement there in preparation for the 1864 presidential election and a revolt after that election if Lincoln won. For this reason, Davis supposedly thought it wise to have close control over the kidnapping scheme.

Available evidence indicates that John Wilkes Booth had contact with Confederate agents in Canada in 1864, possibly regarding this But the sources of this information were all Booths co-conspirators or their acquaintances who had every reason to mislead federal investigators and the public on this issue and claim that Booth never mentioned doing harm to Lincoln.

Recent scholarship has uncovered no evidence of official sanction of any of Booths actions by the Confederate government or Jefferson Davis. And assuming someone did sanction Booths kidnapping plot, why did Booth change the operation to the assassination of not only Lincoln but also Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward? Edwin Stanton and the federal prosecutors were certain Davis was behind this too, but they were never able to locate any convincing evidence supporting such a theory. This has not prevented Lincoln assassination buffs from digging in that direction, but so far, the evidence amassed is not convincing.

Another persistent theory supported by many prominent academic historians is that Booth suddenly and unilaterally changed the plan to murder because he became enraged when Lincoln advocated black suffrage in a speech on April 11, 1865, just three days before the assassination.

This is actually a cautionary tale about how the sausage of history is sometimes made. The seed for the theory was not one of Booths writings or even of anyone who knew him. Instead, it was the pen of a newspaperman George Alfred Townsend, who published what he called a romance upon the conspiracy of Bootha work of fictionin 1886. In that book, titled Katy of Catoctin , Townsend wrote in a footnote that Frederick Stone, a Maryland lawyer for Booth gang member David Herold, had told him Booth transformed the plan from kidnapping to murder when Lincoln announced his support for black male suffrage. More specifically, Townsend wrote that:

President Lincoln addressed the people from his mansion in Washington on the night of April 11 saying:

If universal amnesty is granted to the insurgents, I can not see how I can avoid exacting in return universal suffrage, or at least suffrage on the basis of intelligence and military service.

There were then hundreds of thousands of colored soldiery, and the insurgent President had demanded the right to arm the slaves.

Booth was standing before Mr. Lincoln on the outskirts of the large assemblage.

That means nigger citizenship, he said to little Harold, by his side. Now, by God! Ill put him through.