Ok I read "Killing Lincoln" by O'Reilly and I have a question.

[yellowcanine]

There is a discussion about threats on Lincoln's life. The claim is made that baskets of fruit injected with poison were sent to the White House and had to be tested before they could be safely eaten. Two questions-
Hypodermic needles were around in 1861 but it seems a bit far fetched to suggest that they would have been so generally available that amateur assassins could have obtained them and injected fruit. Secondly, how could they possible have tested fruit for injected poisons in 1861? We have difficulty today knowing how to effectively test fruit for pesticide residues etc and the tests themselves are relatively complicated - certainly not anything which would have been available in 1861. Unfortunately, O'Reilly does not provide the usual citations one would expect in a book which purports to be history so it is impossible to know what the source of this claim is.

The book is actually not a bad read but it does have some really annoying things in addition to the lack of citations - getting inside the heads of Booth, Lincoln, etc for example - I can understand a little of this but O'Reilly really over does it.

[Neoma]

1. How did you manage to read a book of his without puking?

[Journeyman]

2. I've read dozens of bios of Mr Lincoln, and at least three books on his assassination. . .

this is the first I've ever heard that someone tried to "Snow White" the President.

I humbly suggest you leave O'Reilly's distortions and lies in the dust bin where they belong. (The official Lincoln Museum at Ford's Theater refuses to stock Killing Lincoln because it is so riddled with errors.)

If you'd like a far more interesting read, well-researched and well-received, I suggest Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson. It was published last year and should be available in paperback soon.

[yellowcanine]

3. I have read lots of Lincoln books also - that is why I was asking. I started reading Lincoln and

Civil War histories when I was in grade school and haven't quit. I literally could not help myself regarding O'Reilly's book. My in-laws had it - It was there and I read it. Mostly it is a recapitulation of secondary sources written in the popular style of, for lack of a better term, getting "inside the head of major figures" - something a real history would never do. And as I noted, the lack of citations - all that is there is a list of secondary sources unconnected to specific events in the book - which as any serious high school student knows is not even adequate to be considered a serious history. So if one wishes to research a specific claim further, the book is useless. If poisoned fruit was sent to the WH even once it would be a significant event and one would expect to find references to it in nearly every major book on Lincoln. I am not looking for other books to read, I am trying to find out if there is any basis for this claim at all. Out of academic interest I would like to know how testing may have been done on food coming into the WH in the 1860s. As I understand it today any undocumented gifts of food sent to the WH are simply discarded.