I understand that Abraham Lincoln is America's favorite person and I can kind of see why historians would toe the mythology line for him, so what I'm going to say may seem treasonous to some people. But out of respect for Honest Abe, I'm going to clear some things up.

When Abraham Lincoln was declared the winner of the 1860 American Presidential election, his political managers suggested that he make the most of his trip to the Capitol by taking a tortuous tour of the Northern states by rail, stopping at all the major and middling cities to give speeches and shake hands at various junkets and jamborees along the way.

One thing that was odd was that after Lincoln's train had left Cincinnati, people along the route began having difficulty determining which of the passengers on the train was supposed to be the President. At many of the stops, however, the crowds weren't given a chance to hazard a guess. Citing a pressing schedule and the President's ill health, the train cruised on through without so much as a Presidential bow from the caboose landing.

There was more excitement to come. The most famous incident of the trip occurred in Philadelphia on February 21, 1861. Here the Presidential party was apprised by a couple of messengers of a probable assassination attempt planned to take place in Baltimore, just two stops ahead. These warnings were brought to the President-elect separately, and apparently through separate channels, by Allan Pinkerton and Frederick Seward (son of Lincoln's incoming Secretary of State WIlliam Seward) the latter intelligence having a stamp of endorsement from the country's top military commander, General Winfield Scott.

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Lincoln was reluctant to alter his plans (according to the narrative) but at length agreed to sneak away from the official inauguration train at Harrisburg, (the stop preceding Baltimore) double back to Philadelphia with Pinkerton and a friend from Illinois named Ward Hill Lamon and then take the night train to Washington DC from Philadelphia, arriving at their destination several hours earlier than the rest of the party who had spent the night in Harrisburg.

The only person in Washington that was alerted by Pinkerton to the incoming President's adjusted schedule was congressman Elihu Washburne. Upon arriving, the small contingent escorting the President made its way through the station to the reception committee of one. As they passed under the gas lamps, Washburne got a close look at the new President. "You can't play this on me!" the congressman said.

Pinkerton wrote a report of the whole episode but used aliases to conceal the names of his agents and many of the alleged conspirators. Among the aliases can be found the following names: "William H. Scott," "Harry Hemling," "Joseph Howard," and "O.K. Hillard." Coincidentally, the Commanding General of the United States Army, as mentioned above, was at that time Winfield Scott, and Abraham Lincoln's Vice President-to-be, also on the train, was Hannibal Hamlin. The two journalists traveling on the inauguration train with the Lincoln family were Joe Howard and Henry Villard. Joe Howard, you might remember (or not) was the instigator of a notorious Civil War news "hoax," in which a forged proclamation from the President (reporting supposed military setbacks and ordering another draft) was sent to newspapers on stolen Associated Press copysheets. Howard got in some trouble then for impersonating the President.

At any rate, in order to put the issue on a more objective footing, I made use of AI-based identity analysis software to look at the photographs. For this test I submitted a pair of putative Abraham Lincoln photos (above, left) and a pair comprising a photo of Abraham Lincoln and one of Morrissey (above, right). The computed likelihood of the pair's depicting the same person is registered as a decimal percentage. In light of the computer's verdict, we see that both the traditional story of Abraham Lincoln and the Morrissey-is-Abraham-Lincoln conspiracy theory appear to be on shaky ground.

Owing to the vicissitudes of war and the incessant palace intrigues inflicted on the White House from every direction, many were called to play, just as others insisted on playing, the role of the President. However, the various Presidential doubles were not always unified in terms of policy or philosophy.

Things took a dark turn in the autumn of 1862. By December of that year, the President had personally made, since July, more than 800 questionable and, let's say… "highly tendentious"…appointments throughout the administration, not including the favors he had been calling in by the dozens at West Point for the friends and family of the new coterie settled around him at the White House.

This was the same President that tried to create a new holiday on April 30 devoted to "National Humiliation" and demanded that the Senate publish a book expressing the country's sympathy for communism. In August of 1863, however, the administration was taking a different tack, and appointed the sixth of the month as a national day of celebration.

In order to preserve the confidence of the nation, the ruse had to be carried out through the end of the war. Earlier, when the war was expected to be won easily (or at least scheduled to end sooner), it was given out that Lincoln would not seek re-election. But the war lingered on. Lincoln was re-elected. A month after the second inauguration, the war was over. Now, after Lee's surrender, the event of the President's unexpected death would serve as a solemn benediction to the conflict rather than a blow to morale. And besides, it would now have the effect of rendering the terms of peace politically irreversible.

The timing really worked out in another way too. The assassination of Lincoln occurred on Good Friday and his body was laid in state on Easter. Surely you are dazzled by the sophisticated form of wickedness evinced in this novel scheme! No?