Lincoln Conspiracy

[Mayerling]

Hollywood's view of the "Un" Civil War, etc.

Boy this is a topic deserving of a thread of it's own.

Part A:

The only movie I recall seeing about the "Lawrence" Raid, was a film made in 1940 called "Dark Command" with John Wayne, Gabby Hayes (naturally), Walter Pidgeon, Roy Rogers, Marjorie Main, Raymond Walburn, and Porter Hall. It took a number of liberties (to say the least). Pidgeon played William Clarke Quantrill (here respelled - for some reason, probably legal - William CANTRELL). The actual Cantrell was not as literate as Pidgeon's character had to be (he had to appear as the educated schoolteacher - lawyer rival of the decent but plainspoken "Duke"). He and the Duke are the rivals for the heroine (I keep thinking Claire Trevor, but I'm probably wrong. Cantrell wants to marry her not only for love but her father (Hall) is the town banker (a Scots immigrant). He wants the father-in-law's support for political advancement. He is also hiding his shameful, hardscrapple background with his plain, earthy mother (Main). The real Quantrill's highest job prior to the war was as a cook on Buchanan's failed expedition (under Albert Sidney Johnston) against the Mormons in 1858-59.

The film is a good western - charting Pidgeon's rise as war fever grips the nation, and his basic unscrupulous behavior (he'll kill and steal from both sides, as will his followers). That much is true. But the raid on Lawrence is shown as being repelled by the forewarned residents. That, unfortunately, did not occur. Also due to the failure (according to the script) Cantrell loses his following and is killed in a shoot out with the Duke.

So, aside from casting aside history, we have a good film - watch it for Pidgeon's performance (he does a courtroom sequence I think is marvelous using the word "pain" as a threat to a previously cowed jury), and those of Main (a western version of her wonderful saddened mother of Humphrey Bogart in "Dead End"), and Porter Hall's stubborn but doomed banker.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Part B:

On "Santa Fe Trail" (which has little to do with this film.

1) Jeb Stuart (Flynn) and George Custer (Regan) were not classmates at West Point (nor were they classmates of George Pickett - in one scene)

2) Buchanan's Secretary of War was John Floyd, a southerner who was probably corrupt, and certainly incompetent. The film makes it Jefferson Davis, Pierce's Secretary of War, usually credited with our making the 1854 Gadsden Purchase of territory from Mexico.

3) Most of the film shows Brown as a violent homicidal lunatic (which in a sense may be true - he was violent and homicidal, but his lunacy is still debated). His character is cleansed at the conclusion: his motive was high minded - to end slavery in the U.S. As opposed to him is his associate, former West Point dropout and opportunist Van Heflin, who betrays Brown and his men at Harper's Ferry promising the arrival of more supporters to defeat the Federal troops under Robert E. Lee (Moroni Olsen) and Stuart and Custer (who was not there - he was at West Point in October 1859). When Brown realizes what Heflin was up to, he kills him. At the end of the film Brown acknowledges and accepts his death, but insists he was right about ending slavery, and predicts only a Civil War can cleanse the land with blood (which his slave insurrection would have minimized). Since he was high-minded and not greedy like Heflin, he as redeemed himself.

Warner Brothers made films for commercial sale around the country, including the South. They could not make a film that lauded "St." John Brown, as Southern Whites would have been furious. This was the best that could be done in 1940.

Massey played Brown again in "Seven Angry Men" (1956), and that film's script included details of the havoc on Brown's own family due to his crusade. One of his sons is played by Dennis Weaver. That is the film to see for a closer and more correct view of "Old Pottawotamie".

Jeff

[jmenges]

In the beginning of Santa Fe Trail, I believe it's Brown's sons who are on 'the Underground Railroad', which in the film is an actual train.



JM

[Mayerling]

I recall that they are - although the particular railroad was a commercial corporation railroad of the day. If I am not mistaken Charles Middleton ("Emperor Ming" in the "Flash Gordon" serials) was in that scene too, and gets killed. The train is carrying boxes of rifles labled "Bibles" if I am not mistaken - "Beecher's Bibles" as slavery advocates called them, after abolitionist Reverend Henry Ward Beecher.

[Lechmere]

I think I've got 'Civil War on the Western Border'.
I think that the Kansas violence before Brown's massacre was minor and six of one and half a dozen of the other, and that he sparked off worse retaliation.
For whatever reason I think the romanticism and glamour of the Missouri Partisans grew over time. In the Dark Command they are the nasty baddies. By the late 1960s things changed with True Grit, Josey Wales, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid and the Long Riders.

[Mayerling]

The switch to more glamorized southern bad guys probably goes back to "Jesse James" with Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda (as Frank James), John Carridine (as Bob Ford), Henry Hull, Randolph Scott, Donald Meek, and J. Edward Bromberg. That was made by 20th Century Fox in 1939 and would cause MGM to glamorize Billy the Kid in the film of that name starring Robert Taylor the following year. Then in 1941 a sequel to "Jesse James", "The Return of Frank James" was made starring Henry Fonda and John Carridine (reprising their earlier roles), Meek, Bromberg, Hull, and Jackie Coogan. It begins with the sequence of Tyrone Power being shot in the back while hanging a picture in his parlor by Carridine from the earlier film, but this was directed by Fritz Lang. Both films skirted the reality, although the "Jesse James" film has a sequence showing how Jesse becomes a violent and mean fellow to his followers and friends until Frank has a talk with him. The films about the James boys at this point concentrated on the financial villainy of Northern owned businessman personified by the crafty Donald Meek and his assistant Bromberg. Were these any good? As entertainment they were fine, and (to use Hull's dispeptic newspaperman friend of Jesse's editorial conclusion all the time), "Anyone who thinks otherwise, should be beaten up, and taken outside and shot like a dog!"

The critical one that tried to strike a balance with Quantrill and his gang (Frank James rode with Quantrill, not Jesse who was too young) was a film in the middle 1950s with Fess Parker (as the villain) and Jeff Chandler, "The Jayhawker" about the groups of abolitionists who used violence against slave holders in Kansas and Missouri, and were about as bad in their way as Quantrill. Brown would have been associated with the Jayhawkers. Their best known political leader was James Lane, who subsequently was one of Kansas' first two senators (the other was Samuel Pomeroy). Lane is (unfortunately) best recalled as being one of the two men who kept Anna Surratt from seeing President Andrew Johnson in July 1865 in a last ditch effort to save her mother Mary from the gallows. Within a year the two men (the other was former New York Senator Preston King) both committed suicide (King by jumping from a ferryboat into the Hudson; Lane by shooting himself).

[Ginger]

3) [John Brown] was violent and homicidal, but his lunacy is still debated).

You've got some extremely high standards of proof for lunacy, if you can see two sides to the question.

[Mayerling]

Hi Ginger,

I personally feel he was insane, but there is an on-going debate about it among historians. It wasn't my invention.

Jeff

[Ginger]

And today, you know, is the anniversary of Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry.

[Mayerling]

Hah! Good one on me! I knew it was in October but did not know the exact date.

[Mayerling]

Revitalizing this thread

I just was noticing that it has been two years since the last messages on this thread, and as a result we missed out on the one hundred fiftieth anniversaries of the assassination of Lincoln, the temporary escape of Booth and his death at Garrett's Farm, and the trial and execution of Mrs. Surratt, Payne/Paine/Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt. In fact, though unrelated to the assassination and it's aftermath, this month is also the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the execution of Captain Henry Wirtz, the Swiss - born commandant of Andersonville Prison. Somehow some further can be made on the events of April 14-15, 1865 here and related materials.

One thing that has occurred to me, regarding the career of Dr. Tumblety (who was suspected of conspiracy in the Lincoln conspiracy) is that he was supposed to be a member of McClellan's staff in 1861-62 as head of the medical department, but that this was later exploded as a chimera. I was surprised at this rumor because George McClellan was the son of Dr. George McClellan of Philadelphia, the founder of the Jefferson Medical School. It seems so unlikely to me that the General would have been taken in by Tumblety if they met, and given him such a position.

Jeff

[Rosella]

Yes, Jeff, some of these threads need a bit of an airing. My copy of 'American Brutus', the story of Lincoln's assassination and John Wilkes Booth (by Michael Kauffman) is a book I can happily read again and again. It's meticulously researched. I also have 'The Assassin's Accomplice' (Kate Larsen) which deals more specifically with the guilt of Mary Surratt. I found it very interesting, as today she has many adherents who believe she was caught up in the plot against her will. Not so!

[Mayerling]

Yes, Jeff, some of these threads need a bit of an airing. My copy of 'American Brutus', the story of Lincoln's assassination and John Wilkes Booth (by Michael Kauffman) is a book I can happily read again and again. It's meticulously researched. I also have 'The Assassin's Accomplice' (Kate Larsen) which deals more specifically with the guilt of Mary Surratt. I found it very interesting, as today she has many adherents who believe she was caught up in the plot against her will. Not so!

I agree Rosella, unfortunately she was pro-Confederate, and the conspirators did use her boarding house (which is still standing!) as a meeting place, and she probably did take weapons out to Surrattsville. She's not the totally innocent lamb her deepest adherence believe. But one might argue that she should have gotten a jail sentence rather than be executed. Just how far was one to go regarding punishing her. In the atmosphere of that trial of the conspirators the ideas of mercy tempering justice were few and far between. Also, in the year 1865, being a Roman Catholic did not help matters.

Besides Tumblety, there were other figures who were rounded up and considered as conspirators - but never tried. A Portuguese sea captain named Joao Celestin or Celestina was one, and historians have tried to figure out how (if at all) he figured in the abduction plot or the assassination.

Jeff

[sdreid]

There is a poster over on websleuths putting Boston Corbett forward as a possible Ripper suspect.

[Mayerling]

There is a poster over on websleuths putting Boston Corbett forward as a possible Ripper suspect.

This theory has been bandied about in recent years. Corbett was a definite nut job (how many men castrate themselves to reduce the temptation to use prostitutes - Corbett did). He may have shot Booth (no one is really certain - the barn was surrounded by troops, all firing at the man in the center near the flames - Corbett told one of the troop leaders (Conger or Baker?) he fired the shot. Maybe he did.

He shared (with all the troops) in divvying up the reward money. But he did little afterwards of note that I'm aware of. Then in 1884 or 5 he got a job from the Kansas Legislature to be a guard there. One day in 1887 he shut the doors and told all the legislators that God told him they must die for their sins. He started firing - fortunately nobody was killed. He was arrested, but the court was merciful and sent him to an asylum. Within a year he fled, and told one man he met after his escape that he felt (given his claim that he avenged Lincoln) the nation had been very ungrateful.

A biography of Corbett was written about a decade or so ago. The author discussed what happened, as the man vanished after 1888. One theory was he headed into what was still the "Indian Territory" (now Oklahoma) and may have ended up in Enid, Oklahoma. If so this is interesting because in 1903 a man named David E. George killed himself with an overdose of some drug in Enid, and died claiming he was John Wilkes Booth, and had not been killed at Garrett's Barn. A lawyer named Finis Bates heard this and looked in on the dead man's corpse - and he felt he recognized the man as one "John St. Helene" whom Bates met decades earlier, who made the same claim. Bates would pay to have the body embalmed, instructing the embalmer to comb the hair and treat George's drooping moustache in a certain way, and voila the corpse had a vague resemblance (I'd say very forced and vague) to John Wilkes Booth. A copy of the photo of the embalmed corpse as Bates arranged it in 1903 will be found in the book "The Web of Conspiracy" by Theodore Roscoe, who reviews this story in detail. Bates made a career exhibiting the corpse as that of John Wilkes Booth in middle America at state fairs and other locations. At one point Henry Ford took an interest in the possibility of purchasing it from Bates for his Greenwood Village Museum.
Ford was fortunately talked out of it. Later pictures of the corpse that exist show it deteriorating, and getting balder with gaps in it's teeth. It's present whereabouts are unknown.

This weird story has been taken up by some as a basis for a sequel for Corbett - not that he claimed to be David E. George, but that he arrived in Enid to settle down, and while walking met David E. George, realized it was Booth, had a stroke or heart attack and died. Well it makes an interesting story anyway.

[Before I leave this, Finis Bates did have a family. His granddaughter did well for herself, playing a psychopathic fan of author James Caan in "Misery" and winning an Academy Award for best actress. His granddaughter is Kathy Bates. See the IMDb (International Movie Data base) entry on Kathy Bates to verify this point.]

The second theory regarding Corbett's fate (and the one favored by his biographer) was that he made a fatal error in the direction west he headed in. He should have gone northwest, not southwest. Because the southwestern part of Kansas was full of ex-Confederates, to whom Booth was a hero. This theory (which again, his biographer felt made sense) suggested that when word came out that Corbett had broken out of the asylum and was seen headed west, the locals in that area awaited for him, and when he showed up killed him - then burying the body so that nobody knew (outside of his murderers) what happened to him.

Finally came this third theory. Corbett was originally born in England, and so was actually an immigrant here. This theory suggests, given his fear and extreme dislike for prostitutes, leading to his self-mutilation, he did not head west or southwest, but east and caught a ship bound for England. Then he would gravitate to London, and ... well you can fill in the rest of this theoretical line yourself.

It's also been tied to Tumblety, that the "bumbling people" at Scotland Yard heard of a weird American connected to Lincoln's Assassination, and jumped to the wrong conclusion and wrong target (poor Doc T., according to this).

Personally I feel he did not return to England, but did go west, and died in some manner in one of the western states or territories.

Jeff