The Andrew Johnson Analogy
by Roedy Green ©2001-2008 Canadian Mind Products
The Andrew Johnson Analogy
What if historians discovered that President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s
successor, had the following links with John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s
assassin?
- What if ten years earlier, Johnson’s father had hired and trained Booth as
a spy/hit man?
- What if Johnson’s father had been implicated in an assassination attempt
on President Franklin Pierce, when he was vice president?
- What if Booth’s and Johnson’s fathers were business partners at the
time of the assassination?
- What if Johnson sent his secret service men to meet with John Wilkes Booth on
Sunday 1865-02-05, 72 days prior to 1865-04-14
when Lincoln was assassinated. Even though was an outstanding warrant for Booth’s
arrest, they did not arrest him.
- What if Johnson arranged meetings for all the cabinet during the week prior to
the assassination with the man who gave Booth his gun collection, ammunition and
get-away horse?
- What if Johnson ordered the chief of police to stop a criminal investigation of
Booth and his family just prior to the assassination?
- What if Johnson provided a carriage for the Booth extended family to leave the
area a few days before the assassination?
- What if Johnson did nothing to stop the assassination, even though he saw Booth
drawing his pistol?
- What if Johnson ordered Lincoln’s bodyguard to throw down his weapon,
allowing Booth to continue with the assassination unimpeded?
- What if Johnson kept watching the Ford Theatre play, laughing and smiling, both
during and immediately after the assassination?
- What if Johnson appointed a business associate of Booth’s to head the
assassination investigation?
- What if after six months of fruitless "searching" for Booth, Johnson
gave up the chase?
“The most important thing is for us to find John Wilkes Booth. It is our
number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.”
~ Andrew Johnson, 1884-04-17
“I don’t know where he is. I have no idea and I really don’t
care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.”
~ Andrew Johnson, 1885-10-16
- What if a little after a year, Johnson suddenly changed his mind and instead
suddenly accused a black man, Soddy Hussem, of murdering Lincoln and lynched him
without providing a scrap of evidence, then declared the case closed.
Do you think historians would have painted as rosy a picture of President Andrew
Johnson as his contemporaries did?
You might ask, why am I babbling about hypothetical evidence against a perfectly
reputable, long-dead, president. I did this to try to sneak past your mental
defenses against thinking any ill of the Bush family. Most people are so
convinced president Bush is a man of honour that they dismiss every piece of
evidence to the contrary as irrelevant. They don’t dispute it. They just
dismiss it as an unimportant tatter of a crazy conspiracy theory. I decided to
mildly disguise the evidence against George W. Bush, to sneak it past your
natural denial. If that sort of evidence would be enough to convict Andrew
Johnson in the eyes of history, then surely it should be enough to trigger an
investigation into the activities of the living George W. Bush