In
my continuing quest to gain some kind of understanding of exactly what
happened on the night of April 14, 1865, I have worked my way through
several more rather tedious treatments of the Lincoln assassination,
including a relatively new tome by Leonard Guttridge and Ray Neff (Dark Union,
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003) that adds several new layers of
complexity to the fabled attack on Secretary of State William Seward.
And by “new layers of complexity,” I really mean new layers of
absurdity.
One thing we learn from the authors is
that the “house where the Sewards lived was a thirty-room mansion
overlooking Lafayette Square.” A three-story, thirty-room mansion. But
like virtually everyone else who has written about the alleged attack at
the Seward home, the authors offer little commentary on how Lewis
Powell, who by all accounts had never been in the home, could have so
easily navigated his way through it.
The authors
also inform us that, “This was no assassin’s work. Seward’s body was
otherwise unscathed. The knife struck nowhere near the heart or any
other vital organ. It was not aimed at the windpipe. It targeted
Seward’s face – in particular, his ligatured jaw.” In other words, none
of the wounds that Seward allegedly sustained that night were
inconsistent with the injuries he was known to have suffered as a result
of the carriage accident. It is, I have to say, a rather remarkable
‘coincidence’ that Powell’s knife struck only where Seward was
previously injured.
Contradicting
virtually everything else that has been written about the alleged
attempted assassination of Seward, Guttridge and Neff also claim that
“Two male nurses had been assigned to the secretary, and two State
Department messengers, each armed with a Colt revolver, were working
shifts as Seward’s bodyguard. That Good Friday evening one of the
messengers, Emerick Hansell, reached Seward’s home shortly after nine in
the evening … After a meal in the kitchen, he settled himself in an
alcove on the third floor, where most of the family bedrooms were
located.”
So now we find that, in addition to two
active-duty military personnel (George Robinson and Augustus Seward) and
two other able-bodied men (William Bell and Frederick Seward) being
present in the home, William Seward actually had an armed guard
stationed right down the hall from his room – and yet Powell was still
able to locate, get to, and brutally attack his target. Well done, Mr.
Powell!
According to Guttridge and Neff, Hansell
didn’t enter into the melee until after William Seward had been attacked
and Powell was grappling with Robinson: “Then another figure plunged
into the room. It wasn’t Fred. He had already staggered to his bedroom,
beaten nearly senseless. The new arrival was Emerick Hansell … He heard
Robinson cry, ‘Hansey, help me.’”
The always photogenic Lewis Powell
In
case anyone missed any of that, let’s run through the scenario
presented by Neff and Guttridge: William Seward had an armed guard
stationed just down the hall from his room. We have no idea why he had
an armed guard since the President didn’t even have one, but we’ll just
play along and say that he had one. That guard though didn’t respond
when Powell came calling at the door, forcing his way in. He didn’t
respond when Powell argued with Bell and pushed past him. He didn’t
respond when Powell “walked heavy” up two flights of stairs. He didn’t
respond when Frederick Powell stood on the landing loudly arguing with
Powell. He didn’t respond when Powell then physically attackedFrederick,
leaving him for dead (or to wander off to his bedroom, or to get up and
wander into his father’s room). He didn’t respond when William Bell ran
from the house screaming “murder!” He didn’t respond when Powell forced
his way into William Seward’s room. He didn’t respond when Powell
attacked first Robinson and then Seward. No, it wasn’t until Powell was
fighting his way out of the bedroom that Hansell decided to respond. And
even then, despite the fact that Powell had nearly killed three people,
including the guy that Hansell was assigned to protect, he opted not to
use his weapon, choosing instead to become another casualty.
Does all of that make perfect sense to everyone?
If
so, then this infinitely fascinating bit of assassination trivia should
make perfect sense as well: “The Seward episode was further complicated
by a coincidence. Within twenty-four hours of the Good Friday attack,
newspapers reported that Emerick Hansell, the State Department messenger
on protective duty and knifed on the third floor, had died of his
wounds. The obituaries were all but correct. There were two men named
Emerick Hansell. One had indeed succumbed in Washington, but he was a
farrier at the Union cavalry depot at Giesboro at the edge of the city.
His widow was informed that he was kicked in the head while shoeing a
horse. He lingered a week, to die just eight hours after the stabbing of
his namesake.”
Call me a skeptic if you will, but I
am finding it very difficult to believe that that was a ‘coincidence.’
Truth be told, I’m finding it almost impossible to believe that there
were two guys named Emerick Hansell living in Washington, DCin 1865, let
alone that one of them died within hours of the other being brutally
attacked. If such reports did indeed circulate, then they had to be
deliberately false reports. And those false reports led to a very
predictable outcome:
“The farrier’s death had the
effect of stilling questions that only the other Hansell might have
answered. Many years would pass before the State Department’s messenger,
then in pensioned retirement following a resumed career on the federal
payroll, would give his story under strict guarantees of
confidentiality. His recollection then was that he had been the third
man on the landing, rushing to Private Robinson’s aid, convinced that
the man he and the soldier grappled with was Major Augustus Seward, the
secretary’s troubled son.”
It is obvious from this
passage that Guttridge and Neff based their account of the alleged
attack at the Seward residence on Hansell’s belated, off-the-record
recollections. The authors appear to be unaware that Hansell’s story is
wildly at odds with the accounts of other supposed witnesses, or perhaps
they just don’t care.
The Seward family home in Washington, DC
We
now have testimony from three guys claiming to have been in William
Seward’s bedroom and to have acted in his defense. One of them, Augustus
Seward, had no one assisting him and he thought he was fighting against
either his father or his father’s nurse. Another of them, Emerick
Hansell, was assisted only by Robinson and thought he was grappling with
Augustus Seward. The third, George Robinson, thought that he was
fighting with a guy he described to a newspaper reporter as having
“light sandy hair, whiskers and moustache.” And he, of course, thought
that he was assisted by someone who was never identified.
None
of the three saw Frederick Seward lying unconscious outside William
Seward’s room, but Robinson did see him enter the room. None of them
made any mention of the presence of Fanny Seward, though her belatedly
released statement would hold that she was in the room as well. None of
them saw Frances or Anna Seward either, though you would think they
would have come to see what all the commotion was about at some point.
Though Powell and Hansell were both supposedly packing heat, and
Augustus Seward’s testimony at trial indicated that he retrieved a gun
as well, not a single shot was fired that night at the Seward mansion.
After being awakened by the commotion, which necessarily would have
included Bell’s shouts of murder, Major Seward nevertheless opted to
initially respond without a weapon. Hansell apparently responded without
his weapon as well. And Bell, ignoring the fact that Seward already had
an armed guard and a militarily trained and armed son, felt the need to
run down the street seeking outside help.
It’s
hard to imagine a more ridiculously contradictory set of stories. Two of
the ‘witnesses’ essentially identified each other as the assailant, and
the third offered up a description that did not in any way fit the
always clean-shaven Lewis Powell. To say that there was reasonable doubt
in this case would be a serious understatement, but the tribunal had no
problem convicting Powell and sentencing him to death (there were even,
as previously stated, contingency plans to have him executed before the
trial even concluded).
But then again, Doster did
wrap up his ‘defense’ of Powell by delivering a closing argument that
began as follows: “May it please the court: There are three things in
the case of the prisoner, Powell, which are admitted beyond civil or
dispute: (1) That he is the person who attempted to take the life of the
Secretary of State. (2) That he is not within the medical definition of
insanity. (3) That he believed what he did was right and justifiable.
The question of his identity and the question of his sanity are,
therefore, settled, and among the things of the past.” With a defense
like that, how could he lose?
Lewis Powell’s empty gravesite
Perhaps
James Swanson, who appears to fancy himself to be the reigning expert
on the Lincoln assassination, can clear up the confusion surrounding
what exactly happened at the Seward manor. In his bestselling Manhunt: The Twelve-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (William
Morrow, 2006) Swanson spins a uniquely preposterous account of the
alleged attack. Like other self-styled historians, he handpicks facts
from the accounts of various alleged participants while conveniently
leaving out all the contradictory elements of those accounts.
One
thing that Swanson does get right in his overly wordy account is an
acknowledgement that Powell’s alleged assignment would have been a very
difficult one: “This was a difficult mission even for a man like Powell,
a battle-hardened and extremely strong ex-Confederate soldier. Powell
had three problems. First, how could he get inside Seward’s house? …
Once inside, it was Powell’s job to track down Secretary Seward in the
sprawling, three-story mansion … Powell faced a third challenge: he did
not know how many occupants … were on the premises.”
In
Swanson’s telling of the tale, on the night of April 14, 1865, “Fanny
[Seward] watched over her father and listened to the sights and sounds
of the never-ending celebrations in the streets.” Of primary interest
here is the mention of the “never-ending celebrations.” General Lee had
just surrendered to General Grant, the Civil War was all but over, and
the nation’s capitol was in a celebratory mood. Just the night before,
public buildings and private homes across the city were lit up with
candles and gaslights while fireworks exploded overhead, providing, by
all accounts, a uniquely awe-inspiring view of the city.
The
next day, April 14, was a Friday and those celebrations continued well
into the night, with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets
to join in the revelry. The Seward mansion sat, as previously noted,
right across the street from Lafayette Square, which surely would have
been filled that night with a sizable portion of that mass of humanity.
Keep that in mind as we work our way through Swanson’s highly dubious
account.
“Around 10:00 P.M.,” according to Swanson, Fanny Seward “put down her book, Legends of Charlemagne,
turned down the gaslights, and, along with Sergeant George Robinson, a
wounded veteran now serving as an army nurse, kept watch over her
recovering father.” For the record, Robinson was not yet a sergeant,
which is one of many factual inaccuracies that can be found throughout
Swanson’s supposedly authoritative books.
Shortly
after Fanny had lowered the lights, Lewis Powell approached the front
door of the home and “rang the bell … [and] William Bell, a
nineteen-year-old black servant, hurried to answer the door.” Amazingly,
Swanson knows what William’s age was at the time even
though Bell himself was unable to provide that information when asked at
trial! In any event, an argument ensued between Powell and Bell and,
“For five minutes, the assassin and the servant bickered about whether
Powell would leave the medicine with Bell.”
Powell
next pushed past Bell and proceeded up the stairs, where, as we know, he
encountered Fred Seward and argued with him as well. After appearing to
lose the argument, Powell began to retreat down the stairs but then
quickly pivoted and attempted to shoot Fred Seward. When the gun failed
to fire, “Powell raised the pistol high in the air and brought down a
crushing blow to Seward’s head. He hit him so hard that he broke the
pistol’s steel ramrod, jamming the cylinder and making it impossible to
fire again.”
Broke the steel ramrod?! No
shit? I could see possibly bending it, but how do you “break” a steel
ramrod? Had Powell or anyone else hit Seward with that kind of force,
and then delivered a few more equally devastating blows, he would
certainly have killed him. But according to Swanson, Powell didn’t even
knock him down (directly contradicting, of course, Bell’s sworn
testimony at trial): “Powell moved lightning fast. He shoved Fred aside
and struck Robinson in the forehead hard with the knife.” Swanson later
informs us that Fred remained conscious and on his feet throughout the
ordeal, though he mostly just “wandered around the house like a zombie,
babbling the same phrase, ‘It is … it is,’ over and over unable to
complete the thought.”
Meanwhile, “The assassin
pushed past the reeling sergeant and the waiflike girl blocking his path
and sprinted to the bed” where the ailing William Seward lay helpless.
According to Swanson, the only thing that saved Seward’s life was
Powell’s poor aim, which resulted in him completely missing the
motionless secretary of state with his first two knife thrusts. By the
time he connected, Robinson had rejoined the fight and was attempting to
pull Powell away from Seward. At about that time, “Fanny … screamed,
not once, but in a ceaseless, howling, and terrifying wail that woke her
brother Augustus, or ‘Gus,’ who was asleep in a room nearby. Fanny then
opened a window and screamed to the street below.”
So
now, in addition to Bell running down the street screaming “murder,” we
have Fanny Seward screaming out an open window. And yet still, with
celebrants swarming around the capitol, no one was able to respond in
time to even see Powell, let alone try to stop him! Sounds perfectly
reasonable to me. As does the fact that “Gus” was able to sleep through
the knock on the door, the argument between Bell and Powell, Powell’s
noisy ascent of the stairs, Powell’s argument with Frederick, Powell’s
attack on Frederick, Powell forcing his way into William Seward’s room,
Powell’s attack on Robinson, Powell’s attack on William Seward, and all
the screaming that all the victims would undoubtedly have been doing as
they were being viciously attacked. Old Gus was a pretty sound sleeper, I
guess.
According to Swanson, Augustus Seward and
George Robinson then jointly battled Powell, which we already know
directly contradicts the sworn testimony of both of them. That fight
supposedly spilled over into the hallway outside Seward’s room. At that
time, “Secretary Seward’s wife, alarmed by Fanny’s screams, emerged from
her third-floor, back bedroom in time to witness the climax of the
hallway struggle between Powell and her son Gus. Uncomprehending, she
assumed that her husband had become delirious and was running amok.
Fred’s wife, Anna, rushed to the scene …”
Apparently
Frances and Anna Seward slept even more soundly than Augustus. With
their arrival though, Powell was outnumbered six to one, and that didn’t
even include Hansell, who, according to Swanson, decided that his best
bet was to get the hell out of Dodge: “On [Powell’s] way out, he caught
up with Emerick Hansell, who was running down the staircase, trying to
stay ahead of the assassin. The State Department messenger, on duty at
Seward’s home, was fleeing rather than joining the battle.”
Of
course he was. That’s probably why we all remember him being lynched,
which is undoubtedly what would have happened if Swanson’s tall tale was
true. I guess Hansell slept through most of the ordeal as well,
foolishly choosing to flee at the same time as Powell. You’d think he
would have just stayed wherever it was that he was hiding. Or run
sooner. Those would have been safer options. But then again, since he
had a gun and was backed up by at least six people, and the assailant
was unarmed, maybe he should have just done his job. That way, he
wouldn’t have had to haul his gravely wounded body up two flights of
stairs to get into bed before the doctor got there.
It
is more than a little odd, I must say, that both Augustus Seward and
Frances Seward claimed to initially believe that the ‘intruder’ was
actually William Seward “running amok.” Was that a common thing for the
secretary of state to do? Even when everyone knew that he was confined
to bed and completely immobile?
Mr. Robinson, by
the way, had a change of heart after telling a reporter about the
intruder with “light sandy hair, whiskers and moustache.” By the time
the trial rolled around just a few weeks later, Robinson was sure that
Powell was the assailant. That may have been due to the fact that he had
received a gold medal, $5,000 in cash, and a promotion. And he later
was awarded the knife allegedly used by Powell in the attack.
This is said to be the only known remains of Lewis Powell
It
is impossible for me to believe that the alleged events at the Seward
home ever took place. All the available evidence overwhelmingly suggests
that it was an entirely manufactured affair. Fanny and Frances Seward,
as previously discussed, did not live long after the alleged attack.
Neither, of course, did Lewis Powell. William and Frederick Seward chose
to never speak publicly about the alleged incident. Augustus Seward,
George Robinson, William Bell, and (belatedly) Emerick Hansell gave
wildly conflicting accounts. And as mainstream historians continue to
work diligently to bend the conflicting accounts into some kind of
believable storyline, the story just gets more and more ridiculous.
The
more deeply immersed in this I become, the more I am convinced that the
key to understanding the Lincoln assassination may be in understanding
what didn’t happen at the Seward residence. For if the alleged
parallel attack on the Sewards never took place, then clearly there was
much more to the events of April 14, 1865 than the activities of John
Wilkes Booth and a ragtag band of conspirators.
Before
wrapping up, let’s take a look at one final curiosity surrounding the
alleged attack on the Seward family: in all the accounts that I have
read – and I have now worked my way through fourteen books chronicling
the Lincoln assassination – it is either stated or implied that Powell
(and Bell) ascended just one flight of stairs to get to William Seward’s
bedroom, and descended just one flight to exit the house. But Seward’s
bedroom was on the third floor of the home, which meant that reaching
him (and Frederick and the rest of the cast) would have required first
ascending one flight of stairs, then crossing a second-floor landing,
and then ascending a second flight of stairs.
That
curious fact seems to have remained deliberately obscured for many, many
years now. And it’s not hard to figure out why, for if that fact is
pointed out, it raises the very obvious question of exactly how Powell
would have known to bypass the home’s second floor and proceed directly
to the third.
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