George S.E. Vaughn

Who was George S.E. Vaughn?

George S. E. Vaughn was a convicted Confederate spy during the American Civil War who claimed to have been pardoned by Abraham Lincoln an hour before Lincoln's assassination in the President's last official act.

Vaughn's claim was widely circulated at the time of his death in 1899, including in the New York Times. However, in 2011, David Blanchette, director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois said there is no formal document in the archives verifying the claim. Interest in the claim was spurred in January 2011, when the National Archives announced that Thomas Lowry, a "longtime Lincoln researcher," confessed on January 12, 2011 to changing the date of a pardon in the National Archives of a different soldier from April 14, 1864 to April 14, 1865 in order to enhance his credentials as a historian.

According to his obituary, Vaughn was born in Virginia and moved to Canton, Missouri. He was recruited into the Confederate Missouri State Guard by Martin E. Green, brother of U.S. Senator James S. Green.

Green, while camping at Tupelo, Mississippi, dispatched Vaughn to deliver letters to his wife in Canton. Vaughn was captured six miles south of Canton at La Grange, Missouri. The letters were found, and Vaughn was accused of being a spy and was sentenced to be shot.