Civil War Roundtable to present on Lincoln assassination

The Tuscarawas Valley Civil War Roundtable will meet in the Community Room of the Dover Public Library on Thursday, May 12 at 6:30 p.m. The featured presenter, John Fazio, will present, "The Death of Abraham Lincoln and the Great Kidnapping Myth."

Fazio exposes as a gigantic myth the all-but-universally accepted history that Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, led an action team in a conspiracy to kidnap Lincoln, but had a change of heart and decided, at almost the last minute, to murder him instead. The plan, ostensibly, was to convey Lincoln to Richmond, there to be held as a hostage pending the release of Confederate prisoners of war.

The speaker proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Booth never intended to kidnap anyone and that, pursuant to instruction from his handlers in the Confederate Secret Service, under the overall direction of the highest levels of the Confederate government, multiple assassinations were always his purpose and goal.

John C. Fazio has a B.A. and J.D. from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He now lives in Fairlawn (an Akron suburb) with his wife, Mary, who is retired after a career in public relations. Between them, they have seven children, all of whom have left the nest. John joined Mary in retirement in 2016 after practicing law for 50 years. He is a student of history, with an emphasis on European and American history and with an even greater emphasis on the most defining event in American history, the Civil War.

He is a member of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable and has been its president. He is also a member of the Lincoln Forum, the Surratt Society, the Cleveland Grays and the Western Reserve Historical Society. He has taught Civil War history at Chautauqua Institution, frequently speaks on the war and other subjects before Roundtables and other groups and has written and published more than 50 articles and essays on the war and other subjects. In addition, he has written Decapitating the Union: Jefferson Davis, Judah Benjamin and the Plot to Assassinate Lincoln, after five years of research and writing. The book, which was published by McFarland & Co., Publishers, was released in March, 2015.

The mission of the Tuscarawas Valley Civil War Round Table is to educate the community about the American Civil War, preserve Civil War heritage and to remember those who struggled for their cause. For more information, please contact the Dover Public Library at 330-343-6123.

— Submitted by Dover Public Library

This article originally appeared on The Times-Reporter: Civil War Roundtable to present on Lincoln assassination