And while an ‘army brat’, child of an NCO or even a private soldier may interact (play) with the children of officers, I doubt even in this egalitarian climate that there would be much social contact as those children grew older.

Finally, if I understand it aright, the Union strongly denied that any such plot had been afoot in the Dahlgren-Kilpatrick raid. Whatever might have been charged by the Confederate government and newspapers sympathetic to that government, the federal government and the northern press obviously denied that Dahlgren was in fact INVOLVED in an assassination plot. Therefore, unless there is evidence that Herold knew otherwise it is probable that he never connected Dahlgren to any such conspiracy except, perhaps, as a matter of conjecture.

My point precisely.

Eric

Teej

Then, too, obviously the two men were on opposite sides of the conflict which would have further ‘distanced’ them from any type of relationship that could have led to an influence by one upon the other. If men in the same family were divided by sectional loyalty, how much greater would have been a division between men who were worlds apart in their social standing. There was already a great ‘division’ in place between the two before the tragedy of the war even began.

Over time, it seems to me that there was much more to John Wilkes Booth than has been understood and appreciated except, perhaps, by Michael Kauffman. The handsome young actor seemed a veritable ‘Pied Piper’ who led people to abandon even the semblance of rationality in order to follow his seductive influence (talking about influence). Men of reasonable intelligence seemed to relinquish even the strongest of human responses, the concept of self-preservation in order to follow Booth. His errors, miscalculations and plainly irrational acts seemed entirely without moment to those who fell under his spell from Davey Herold to Mary Surratt and everyone in between. I am reminded of two figures in liturature and history here: Svengali and Rasputin. Booth seems a real candidate for a similar place in history.