The Lincoln assassination and Major Henry Rathbone
Still playing out
Report #200 — the Lincoln assassination and Henry Rathbone, reread by layer: Rathbone's 17 Apr 1865 deposition and 15 May trial testimony, Clara Harris's affidavit (1865 Memorial Record), Leale's 1865 report and 1909 address; the invitation chain (Grant, Eckert, Colfax, Oglesby, Haynie, Robert Lincoln) — Rathbone and Harris asked 'at the very last'; guard John F. Parker left his post, complaint dismissed 2 Jun 1865, not called at the trial; Hanover 23 Dec 1883 and Hildesheim to 1911 — German court and asylum records not found, verdict and reason for being in Germany disputed, held; who was behind it — five accounts (Booth's group; Confederate government/Canada; Stanton/Eisenschiml; Jesuits/KGC; the money-power claim) built to equal depth, sources graded, none picked; no record places Rathbone in any plot — held; the money-power claim on Lincoln (Greenback opposition; Belmont as Rothschild agent and Democratic chairman; Cooke) — no 1865 record ties a financier to Booth, held; 'Zionist' for 1865 — no claimant found, held; JFK and Israel — claim and rebuttal at equal depth (Dimona pressure; inspections deceived; NUMEC findings both ways; Angleton's two roles; Ruby; Permindex), not examined by Warren, HSCA, Church Book V or the 2025 House hearing — held (jfk_assassination_israel_claim)
OPEN
The call: On 14 April 1865 the actor John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.
On 14 April 1865 the actor John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Major Henry Rathbone, an Army officer sitting in the President's box with his fiancée Clara Harris, fought Booth and was badly cut with a knife. Rathbone and Clara were invited only after General Ulysses S. Grant, who commanded all the armies of the Union (the United States side in the Civil War), and several others said no. The police officer guarding Lincoln, John Parker, had left his post; a complaint against him was dropped, and he was never called to testify at the 1865 military trial of the people accused of helping Booth. Rathbone's and Clara Harris's sworn statements, made three days after the shooting, survive. In 1883 in Hanover, Germany, Rathbone killed Clara and spent the rest of his life in an asylum; the German court and asylum files on him are not among the sources, and the sources disagree on why the family was in Germany and on what the court decided. There are five accounts of who was behind Lincoln's killing, each disputed. Booth and his small group: the 1865 trial and later historians point to it, though the same court also claimed the Confederate President had encouraged the plotters. The government of the Confederacy, the Southern states that broke away from the United States and fought it in the Civil War: key trial witnesses for it were later shown to have lied, while Booth's contacts and money from Confederate agents in Canada are documented. Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War (the cabinet member in charge of the Army): his refusal to spare the officer Lincoln asked for and the missing pages of Booth's diary are documented, and each has another explanation on record. The Jesuits (an order of Catholic priests) or a secret society, the Knights of the Golden Circle: Charles Chiniquy, a former priest, blamed the Jesuits in 1886, and the man who informed on one of the accused in Rome said in 1866 that he believed the clergy protected him; the Knights charge appears in the sources gathered only as one of the descriptions of Booth that a 1940 historian lists, and the writings of those who make it are not among them; neither side quotes a document tying either group to Booth. Bankers: on one side, bank committees opposed Lincoln's paper money in 1862, the Rothschilds' New York agent chaired the Democratic Party that opposed Lincoln in 1864, the banker Jay Cooke made large profits from Treasury business, and Booth kept a bank account in Montreal; on the other, other bankers backed the paper money, the same agent wrote in 1861 that the North would never allow the Union to split, the Confederate agents' money in Canada was traced in 1865 to Confederate government drafts, and no document tying a financier to Booth is quoted by either side. A separate question, whether Israel had any part in President John F. Kennedy's killing in 1963, is disputed: those who argue it point to Kennedy's 1963 pressure on Israel's nuclear reactor and other records, those who reject it point to the same records' limits, none of four U.S. government inquiries into that killing examined it, and it stays open.
The engine's record — word for word
Integration record for Report #200. SOURCE: a research report (Gemini deep research, 'Forensic and Historiographical Assessment of the Lincoln Assassination and Major Henry Reed Rathbone', Oct 2026), answering the Lincoln / Rathbone prompt; it reports it could not reach the engine export (its line 3). All 442 of its factual statements were checked against its 15 cited sources (13 read; no. 1 has no address; no. 3 is a pirated-book host, not used): SUPPORTED 83 / PARTLY 124 / NOT IN CITED 73 / CONTRADICTED 9 / BLOCKED 17 / NO CITATION 136; the 226 without a working source were searched (FOUND 41 / IN PART 85 / CONTRADICTED 3 / NOT FOUND 19 held / the report's own readings 78). Laydown: HERE ALAN/LINCOLN-RATHBONE-REPORT-LAYDOWN-2026-10-08.html. The engine-maker directed: add everything, including the edge-table endpoints and the people tried. READ BY LAYER (Concept #56), not true/false. T1 THAT NIGHT — Rathbone's deposition (House Divided) and 15 May testimony (Pitman, archive.org; no cross-examination printed); Clara Harris's affidavit (1865 Memorial Record): the smoke kept her from seeing the man clearly until he leaped; Leale 1865 report (Ford's Theatre transcription) and 1909 address; Harry Hawk's letter. Disputed and held: time of the shot (9.30 / 10.30 / 2230), what Booth shouted, shot-to-leap (thirty seconds / about a minute). T2 THE INVITATIONS — Bryan (1940): the Grants, Eckert, Colfax, Oglesby, Haynie, Robert Lincoln declined; Rathbone and Harris asked 'at the very last'. Grant's Memoirs: Burlington. Why the Grants left (children / Mrs Grant and Mary Lincoln) held. T3 PARKER AND THE BOX — charged 1 May, tried 3 May, complaint dismissed 2 Jun 1865, no transcript; on the force to 1868; not called at the trial (NPS). Coachman Francis P. Burke. Box locks broken the month before (NPS HSR); peephole and bar — who made them disputed, held. T4 AFTER 1865 — married 1867; resigned 1870; Hanover 23 Dec 1883; declared insane; Hildesheim to 14 Aug 1911; Engesohde; removed 1952. Held: German court file and decree, asylum registers, the verdict (convicted / acquitted by reason of insanity), why he was in Germany (consul / vacation / travel / schooling). T5 WHO WAS BEHIND IT — five accounts held at equal depth with every source graded for publisher, interest and tier (Bryan 1940 and the Army CMH guide are parties to the argument), none picked: Booth's group (trial record; Bryan calls Pitman 'an unreliable summary'); Confederate government (Proclamation 131; Montreal; the cipher; Conover's perjury); Stanton (Eisenschiml 1937; Eckert's 1867 telegraph testimony — crossed wires, commercial line only); bankers, Jesuits, KGC (recorded and rejected by Bryan; no record either way). Booth's diary leaves: when removed, disputed. Nine people tried: verdicts and disputes in their entries. T6 RATHBONE ACROSS THE ACCOUNTS — no record places Rathbone, Clara Harris or Ira Harris in any plot (Concept #60: absence of a record, not proof either way). REPORT ERRORS NOT CARRIED IN: Rathbone's deposition quoted 'verbatim' with words changed and sentences added that are not in it (the deposition is in House Divided; the added lines resemble his 15 May trial testimony).; Rathbone 'seated in the other [chair]' — his deposition: the end of a sofa next to Miss Harris.; A quotation given to Clara Harris that is not in her affidavit; her affidavit says the smoke kept her from seeing the man clearly until he leaped.; Booth 'severed Rathbone's arm' — the sources: a wound several inches deep, cut nearly to the bone, an artery severed.; Booth's 'desperate strength' and his 'tilting forward' because of Rathbone — in neither Rathbone statement; he says he caught at Booth's clothes.; 'I am bleeding to death!' attributed to Rathbone via Leale — in neither of Leale's accounts.; Harris and Leale cited to Rathbone's deposition (source 4), and Hawk cited to a book's contents page (source 2).; Clara Harris accepting 'on the condition' Rathbone came — sources say both were invited and accepted.; Grant's 'formal note of regret' late Friday afternoon — Bryan: Grant told Lincoln in person after 2 p.m.; The family 'relocated to Germany in 1882' and 'no consul commission' — Wikipedia: President Arthur appointed him consul to Hanover; National Geographic: a family vacation, December 1883 (both held).; Clara 'died on the bedroom floor' — National Geographic: on their bed.; The children 'sheltered by a domestic servant' — Dave Taylor: Clara's sister Louise, their nanny, who locked their door.; and others listed in the ripple draft. ENGINE RECORDS TESTED BY THE REPORT (Divergence #207, rfk_1968_assassination, kirk_assassination, church_committee, lincoln_niagara_1848): quoted word-for-word by the report; its grades on them are its readings, held; dated notes added. APEX: held (Concept #147).
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