Page:House Select Committee on Assassinations, final report.pdf/627

 I. Findings in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

References : Introduction

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. "A Thousand Days John F Kennedy in the White House (Boston Houghton Mifflin Co. 1965) p 116 (hereinafter "A Thousand Days").

"World Leaders Voice Sympathy and Shock—A Flame Went Out," The New York Times, Nov 23 1963, p. 8.

Nelson Lichtenstein ed. Political Profiles The Kennedy Years (New York Facts on File Inc. 1976), p. xvi.

See generally Congressional Research Service Library of Congress "History of Presidential Assassinations in the United States Preceding the Assassination of John F Kennedy," JFK Project No 7 July 5 1978 prepared for the committee.

See Congressional Research Service Library of Congress "An Analysis of Congressional Investigations into the Lincoln Assassination," Nov 16 1978. The U.S House of Representatives authorized two separate investigations into the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. In the first established by resolutions passed on Apr 9 and Apr 30 1866 the House Judiciary Committee was directed to determine whether President Jefferson Davis and other officials of the former Confederate government had been involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln and other leading Federal officials including Vice President Andrew Johnson Secretary of State William Seward and General Ulysses S Grant. The committee was asked to prove or disprove the involvement of the Confederate officials and to report whether special legislation was needed to bring them to trial if they were conspirators. A special committee was formed chaired by Representative James Wilson Its most vigorous member and the author of the final report was Representative George S Boutwell.The second investigation was authorized by a resolution passed July 8 1867 that established a special House committee to make a comprehensive examination of the facts surrounding the assassination and report its findings and recommendations to the House. It was chaired by Representative Benjamin F Butler.The committees were established and largely controlled by radical Republicans who had grown increasingly alienated from President Andrew Johnson as a result of his lenient treatment of the defeated South Republican antipathy culminated in the impeachment trial of President Johnson.The Boutwell committee reported that Confederate President Jefferson Davis probably took steps to implement proposals to assassinate the President. Boutwell could make no stronger statement against Davis given the lack of substantive evidence tying him to an assassination conspiracy. A hoax perpetrated by a key witness had deprived the committee's majority of its case against Davis and it was unable to set forth a convincing case against him. Representative Andrew Rogers filed a strongly worded minority report that took issue with the majority conclusion denouncing the indictment of Davis and other Confederate officials as co-conspirators with Booth.The Butler committee in particular the outgrowth of radical Republican reaction to President Johnson's policy of leniency toward the South, attempted to investigate further allegations linking Confederate officials and others in a conspiracy with assassin John Wilkes Booth. The committee interviewed among others convicted conspirators Dr Samuel A. Mudd, Edward Spangler and Samuel B. Arnold. It appears that after December 1867, the Butler committee took no further action. Butler, however was one of the most vigorous proponents of Johnson's impeachment during 1867. His involvement and that of other committee members in the impeachment proceedings may in part explain the committee's failure to continue its work.