Finding the Right Sources

Finding sources for Mary Surratt has been easy. Finding time to read through them this week, not so much.

This week has been one of the most stressful of my life. I have been working on the fall play (I was cast as Rosencrantz in the school production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), and the show has taken over my life. Finding time to sit down and read through my sources for this paper (or any of the papers that I'm supposed to be writing right now - I have five on the docket) has been nigh on impossible.

That being said, I have flipped through all my sources at least once, so I have a vague idea of what sources will be useful to me.

My idea of what I want to write on, at the moment, is this: Mary Surratt was innocent of plotting to kill Abraham Lincoln. While she might have known about the prior plot to kidnap the president and hold him for ransom, that has no bearing on what she was tried for. Therefore, I only wish to examine her innocence for the charges placed against her: conspiring to assassinate the President of the United States.

As far as primary documents go, the trial transcripts are my best source of information. However, all of the documents are kept on microfiche at the National Archives and are very difficult to obtain. Therefore, I am mostly able to find them through secondary sources, such as Theodore Roscoe's The Web of Conspiracy, which devotes multiple pages solely to reprinting the testimony of Surratt and other witnesses. The other primary sources that I think might be helpful are newspapers. James L. Swanson and Daniel R. Weinberg's Lincoln's Assassins is complete with full-color photographs of many of the primary documents of the time period, which I would not have been able to obtain otherwise.

As for secondary documents, the two that I think will end up being the most helpful to me are the two biographies of Surratt: Elizabeth Steger Trindall's Mary Surratt: An American Tragedy, and Kate Clifford Larson's The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. Trindall argues for Surratt's innocence, while Larson argues for her guilt, so it will be interesting to see both sides of the argument. I also look forward to reading through Louis Weichmann's book on the trial and conspiracy, A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and of the Conspiracy of 1865. Because Weichmann was the leading witness against Surratt at her trial, it will be valuable to see his testimony as he has written it.

As I have suspected from day one, James L. Swanson's Manhunt has been an invaluable resource to me, providing me with one of the most well-organized bibliographies I have ever seen and helping me to organize my timeline of the assassination, arrests, and trial. I owe Swanson a great debt - not only for sparking my original interest in the assassination, but providing such a well-structured understanding of it as well.

I look forward to being able to interact more with my sources this week and next. The play is finally wrapping tomorrow night (I'm both sad and happy about this - as I am about most things coming to an end), but the good thing is that I will finally have time to get some hardcore research done!

Choosing and Researching: Beginning the Term Paper

Today in class, our professor told us to choose a topic for our term paper from any time period in American history, and then blog about our topic and research ideas for it.

That threw me for a loop.

If you've read my About Me, you know that most of the things that I tend to study and read about for fun in history are European history - in fact, at this same moment, I am researching and writing a term paper for a class on the French Revolution, which is what I would like to specialize in during graduate school. Choosing that particular topic was relatively easy - I was able to come up with a couple of topics and wound up choosing the political fashions of Marie Antoinette and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. They will probably turn up multiple times during my discussion of term paper research throughout the process, as I wind up doing research for both papers.

Lady Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire - Thomas Gainsborough

Because of my personal love of European history, focusing on a topic in American history is difficult. I enjoy studying the Civil War, so my first thought was perhaps studying the battles near my hometown, or the battle within my hometown. However, after thinking it over, I realized that not only is there way too much information on these battles, but that it would be difficult to get hold of in time for turning in my bibliography. My next thought was a president, or perhaps American spycraft. Spycraft seems to be a little too difficult to find sources on - while it is a fascinating topic, most of the spying that I am interested in is done within the context of European history. So that left a president.

My two all-time favorite presidents are Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. So, I quickly narrowed my possible topics down to the two of them. I asked myself what it was about the two of them that fascinated me so much - why Jefferson? Why Lincoln?

Thomas Jefferson - Third President of the United States and Most Adorable Nerd

What attracted me to Jefferson, I decided, was his ability to be an awkward nerd about life, and still be a genius. One of my favorite stories about him was that, as a student, he asked a girl out courting and, after she rejected him, suffered a headache for a day from embarrassment. I'm also fascinated by his wine collection and his time in France - why, out of all of the Founding Fathers, was it Jefferson who absorbed so much of French culture and characteristics? This seems especially interesting to me since his presidency is so intertwined with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, one of the most rough and tumble events in early America. I also love Monticello, Jefferson's house in Virginia - I've visited twice, and every time I enter I'm filled with greater respect for a man who was a genius ahead of his time, and yet also trapped within social conventions that he felt he could not escape.

Abraham Lincoln - The Glue that Held the Union Together

What I find most fascinating about Abraham Lincoln is his role in the Civil War. I suppose (if I'm being completely honest) what I'm really fascinated by is his assassination. I conveniently already have a source for a paper on the Lincoln assassination in my dorm room with me: James Swanson's Manhunt, a book that I found fascinating the first time I read it, and continue to find fascinating.

After a long train of thought, I decided that my topic would be the Lincoln assassination, the chase for the assassins, and their trials and executions - a topic that, if necessary, I shrink after talking with my professor.

Then it came time to look at what I needed to do for research. The previous semester, I wrote a term paper on the influence of the mistress on court life at Louis XIV's Versailles, so I am very familiar with our ILL (interlibrary loan) system. I decided that the best course of action would be to turn to Swanson and see what he had listed in his bibliography, and see how many of those books were available at Spring Hill. After that, I could start looking for ebooks through my public library back home, primary sources through the National Archives, and maybe even microfiche newspaper announcements in the archives at nearby universities. A biography of the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, might not be a bad place to start, in order to gain an understanding of his actions. This might be where I start this weekend. 

But first, I think I'll go back to the beginning - time to reread Manhunt. I'm looking forward to research!

Manhunt cover art - my first source for my paper! 

UPDATE: After discussion with my professor, I have narrowed my topic down to Mary Surratt, her involvement in the plot, and he subsequent trial. Surratt was the only woman tried among the conspirators, and was executed along with them for supposedly aiding and abetting John Wilkes Booth in his plot to assassinate the president. I have never found the evidence against Surratt very convincing, however - in fact, I have always felt that the military tribunal that tried the conspirators was attempting to try Booth in absentia through the figures of the conspirators,  since Boston Corbett had killed Booth before he could be tried. I think of all the figures, Surratt's trial is the most fascinating, and I look forward eagerly to diving into my research!

Reading The Landscape of History: Or, Why I Really Like Prose that Flows Well

I'm reading The Landscape of History by John Lewis Gaddis for my history class (future blog posts on this to follow), and I can't help but notice how well Gaddis transitions between huge important historical topics and clever anecdotes and witticisms, which is a trait that I really appreciate in authors (a good example from Gaddis' book is when he opens Chapter Four by talking about how he kept associating the term "teasing out" with hairdressing - which is an amazing analogy, and absolutely hilarious in context).

Which set me to thinking - what is it that I really like about this book? What does it have in common with other non-fiction works that I have enjoyed in the past?

And the answer that I came up with, in my musings, was this: I like prose that flows well.

This may be a trait of being an English major as well, but I enjoy books where the author writes his/her prose as if it is a novel. Some of these works are more successful than others. All of them, however, allow the reader to get into the mind of the people of the time, whether it be through a third person omniscient narrator, or through a semi-narrative, semi-informative method of storytelling. This is a (very limited) list of the ones that I really liked:

Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates - David Cordingly
I'm pretty sure that this book reads so well because of the fantastic nature of piracy in general, and the fact that this book focuses mainly on the Golden Age of Piracy (think Blackbeard, Morgan, and Calico Jack) makes it even more fascinating.

Manhunt: The 12 Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer - James L. Swanson
This thing reads like a murder mystery and adventure novel. Swanson's narrative never really lags, and the tension constantly builds. I also learned so much about Lincoln, Booth, and the assassination that I didn't read anything that wasn't associated with the main figures for months.

The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine - Benjamin Wallace
I am unashamedly fond of our third president, and this book deals with him, albeit in a round-about manner: it focuses on one of the greatest scandals in the wine world, that of the Jefferson Wine Bottles. Rumored to be the oldest bottles of wine in existence, their existence was questioned by everyone from the highest of wine critics to the staff of Monticello. But they also fooled the greatest of minds. It's a really entertaining read, going into the story of wine and white-collar crime - and, of course, Thomas Jefferson's sojourn in Paris.

Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 - Bryan Burroughs
This book is amazing - fast-paced, well-researched, and insanely fascinating. It covers all of the major criminals of the day - Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and John Dillinger - in intricate detail, all while contrasting them with the FBI agents who chased them and, in many situations, gunned them down.

One Summer: America, 1927 - Bill Bryson
Honestly, just any of Bill Bryson's books. Because all of them are hilarious. And the ones that I've read - this one, At Home, Shakespeare, and Notes from a Small Island (not technically about history, but with lots of very interesting historical content thrown in at random intervals) are very witty looks at the world.

I'm looking forward to seeing where Gaddis goes with Landscape of History!