This is History, Mystery Theater, episode three.

I wanted to do a follow-up to Who Was Abe, kind of like a Who Was Abe, Part 2.

It would be absolutely not impossible, but incredibly long to, if it's at all possible, to accurately paint a picture of Abraham Lincoln.

As I said before, there's a problem and there's a benefit all at the same time.

There's much more information surrounding Lincoln and the assassination than there was previously.

Of course, they're not called assassinations, but I mean, Jackson had an attempt that is chronicled.

It is believed that William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor were both poisoned.

Buchanan, the president, before Lincoln, was certainly poisoned, but survived.

That is a matter of record.

How that happened, of course,

is disputed because of the cover-up, et cetera, et cetera. But the point is, by 1865, there were still

enough advances in communications that, and the books that would follow because it just didn't stop in 1865

as years went by others who were not principles necessarily in the assassination conspiracy

but who knew something was up and also what happened afterward, became

more willing to talk as they advanced an agent because they realized that at that point they

were also beyond any kind of indictment for treason, et cetera.

But with all that other information comes also all the other stuff that's bloated and sensational.

So again, just like it is today, really to a certain extent with the inception of the Internet,

as it was back in 1865 and such with photography and with telegraph lines,

with rail being the fastest form of travel at that time,

but was not available earlier.

I mean, all these things add up to more accounts of what happened,

...