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NYC: Is the secret of Lincoln’s assassination underground in Brooklyn?
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1844 Atlantic Avenue tunnel, Brooklyn, NY
For a while, I lived on Court Street in Brooklyn, NY, and sometimes shopped in the Middle Eastern markets on Atlantic Avenue, which crossed Court Street several blocks from my apartment. I loved fig jam, and it was the only place I knew to get it.
What I didn’t know was that, not too long before I moved there, a man named Bob Diamond had found the oldest subway tunnel in the world. I probably trod on its entrance, a manhole at the intersection of Court St. and Atlantic Avenue.
There’s great stuff down there. The tunnel linked the Long Island Railroad to the East River; from there, it was easy to get onto the island of Manhattan. Built in 1844—and used until 1859—the tunnel was not built by burrowing, as later tunnels were, but by digging a trench, lining the sides with granite, and constructing a vaulted roof from brick. The roof, according to the history channel, was then covered over with dirt and paving and used, again, as the street it had been before subway construction. Even with today’s traffic, there is no danger of a collapse; it is said to be able to hold about 15 times the weight that pounds it every day, even now.
The whole tunnel is not yet excavated, however, and therein lies a very provocative possibility. According to the man who rediscovered the tunnel, Bob Diamond, the unexcavated part probably contains not only the original platform, where passengers got on and off the train, but an old locomotive. And near that locomotive might be hidden the missing pages from the diary of John Wilkes Booth, who killed President Lincoln, according to Diamond.
Booth’s diary, found on him when he was shot, was maintained in government archives until the conspiracy trial some months later. When the diary was entered into evidence, it was missing 18 pages; the originals of these have never been found, although there are some who believe that perhaps they were found in 1977. If those pages are ever verified, they described the involvement of some of Lincoln’s friends, Confederate leaders, War Department Secretary Stanton, and northern businessmen. It is, of course, virtually a certainty that there was a conspiracy, whether or not Stanton, et al, were involved.
I don’t mind tunnels, but I wouldn’t seek them out as the sole purpose of a trip. Still, the chance to stand in the presence of such evil—if they are there—as the missing Booth diary pages represents might be worth a trip. More worth it if that section is ever opened and the diary pages actually found there, of course.
But still, it has connections enough with the run-up to the Civil War to be intriguing. Walt Whitman, who volunteered as a nurse during the war, had written for a Brooklyn newspaper beforehand. Of the tunnel, after its closure, he wrote:
The old tunnel, that used to lie there under ground, a passage of Acheron-like solemnity and darkness, now all closed and filled up, and soon to be utterly forgotten, with all its reminiscences; however, there will, for a few years yet be many dear ones, to not a few Brooklynites, New Yorkers, and promiscuous crowds besides. For it was here you started to go down the island, in summer. For years, it was confidently counted on that this spot, and the railroad of which it was the terminus, were going to prove the permanent seat of business and wealth that belong to such enterprises...
The tunnel closed just a couple of years before the Civil War began. Whitman quit his job; he was an abolitionist, and the paper’s owners were not. He had begun his writing career in earnest; locals had begun using the tunnel to make booze and hide various sorts of contraband, among which were not, one might assume, slaves fleeing to Canada.
If the missing Booth diary pages were in the tunnel near the locomotive, it would be interesting to see what they say. Do the original pages include references to Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War? Originally opposed to Lincoln, Stanton “vigorously pursued the apprehension and prosecution of the conspirators involved in Lincoln’s assassination. These proceedings were not handled by the civil courts, but by a military tribunal, and therefore under Stanton’s tutelage. Stanton has subsequently been accused of witness tampering, most notably of Louis J. Weichmann, and of other activities that skewed the outcome of the trials.” (Wikipedia)
Suggestive. Also suggestive is the fact that Stanton virtually tortured the seven male conspirators during the trial, keeping them in padded masks, secured around their throats and painfully tight over their eyes. One might well wonder what he feared they might say or see. Strange behavior for someone born a Quaker. But then, being Secretary of War is strange behavior for someone born a Quaker. (We would see similar discordance in the life of Richard M. Nixon a century later.) Stanton was a bit mad, it seems. He served under Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, who fired him. He barricaded himself in his office and refused to leave, citing the Tenure of Office act.
It would be very interesting to see those 18 pages. It would be very interesting to see the tunnel through which the conspirators, most of whom probably had ridden on that railroad, traveled. The tunnel through which Walt Whitman, our first poet laureate, doubtless traveled.
And fortunately, one can. Bob Diamond is conducting a tour of this underground railroad tunnel on January 25. Call 718-941-3160 for reservations and information. (Diamond conducts a tour about once a month; you can't get down there any other way, as Diamond has the "franchise" with the city to do this, which is only fair, since he did the research and excavated the tunnel with his own shovel and a few friends, to begin with.)
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