Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume Two).djvu/74

Rh Confederacy, Booth originated the plan to murder the President, under the influence of the motives and reasons that are set forth in his diary and in the letter to Mr. Coyle.

4. His influence over the persons who were involved in the conspiracy to abduct Mr. Lincoln, was so great that he was able to command their aid in the commission of the final crime.

When the investigations were concluded there remained in the possession of the Committee on the Judiciary a quantity of papers, affidavits, letters and memoranda of no value as evidence. These were placed in a sealed package. The package was deposited with the clerk of the House of Representatives. The preservation of the papers may have been an error. They should have been destroyed by the committee. Some doubts were expressed however as to the authority of the committee. Further investigations were suggested as not impossible. I am the only person living who has knowledge of the papers. They are now the possession of the House of Representatives. It is not in the public interest that the papers should become the possession of the public.

The testimony of John Minor Botts of Virginia, given before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, February 18, 1866, presents Mr. Lincoln as a diplomatist at the outset of his experience as President.

Mr. Botts had been a leading member of the Whig Party and he was a Union man from the beginning of the contest to the end of the war. As the work of secession was advancing in the Gulf States Mr. Lincoln became anxious for the fate of the border States and especially for Virginia and Kentucky, which promised to serve as barriers to the aggressive movements of the South in case of war. Mr. Botts came to Washington at the request of Mr. Lincoln in the early days