The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War (16 page)

There was little reason to hope that the Old Line State would vote to remain in the Union. In the November election, several Maryland counties had recorded only a single vote for Lincoln, and in two districts he had received no votes at all. Even these meager showings stirred indignation. When a band of six intrepid Republicans in Charles County was found to have cast their votes for Lincoln, angry neighbors ordered them to pack up and leave.

The importance of Maryland, with the Mason-Dixon line squaring off its northern and eastern borders, was obvious to all. It now seemed inevitable that Virginia would secede, and many assumed that Maryland would automatically follow its neighbor. The previous year, a joint committee of the Maryland legislature had responded to the first stirrings of secession in South Carolina with a forceful resolution of support: “[S]hould the hour ever arrive when the Union must be dissolved,” it stated, “Maryland will cast her lot with her sister states of the South and abide their fortune to the fullest extent.” If Maryland made good on this promise and pledged her loyalties to the South, Washington would be hemmed in by secessionist territory and entirely cut off from the North. In that case, as General Scott had suggested to Felton, the federal government might have to abandon its capital city and reestablish itself in Philadelphia or New York.

With the Virginia General Assembly calling for a vote on secession, it appeared that Maryland’s decisive moment was at hand. “The people of the District are looking anxiously for the result of the Virginia election,” noted Frederick Seward, who had joined his father in the capital. “They fear that if Virginia resolves on secession, Maryland will follow; and then Washington will be seized. Meantime the anxiety of the citizens is almost ludicrously intense.”

Pinkerton grasped at once that Felton’s “great connecting link” between Washington and the North must be kept open at all costs. If war came, Felton’s PW&B would be a vital conduit of troops and ammunition. The problem, as Felton explained, was the line’s extreme vulnerability at the many points where it crossed over water. The wooden railroad bridges spanning Maryland’s Gunpowder River and smaller streams could be easily demolished, perhaps even at the moment that a train entered the span. The danger was even greater at Havre de Grace, at the headwaters of Chesapeake Bay, where the line traversed a mile-wide expanse of the Susquehanna River. Although a single-track bridge was under construction, it would not be completed for another five years. In the meantime, railcars arriving at Havre de Grace were uncoupled and placed on ferryboats, which shuttled them across to the opposite bank, a slow and painstaking process and one that could easily be scuttled. As soon as the rumors of sabotage reached his ears, Felton understood that any attack would most likely come at one of these crossings.

For all their concern about the railroad, both Felton and Pinkerton appear to have been blind, at this early stage, to the possibility of violence against Lincoln. They understood that the secessionists sought to prevent the inauguration, but they had not yet grasped, as Felton would write, that if all else failed, Lincoln’s life was to “fall a sacrifice to the attempt.” Instead, as Felton recalled, he did nothing more than supply “a few hints” before Pinkerton set to work. The full degree of peril was beyond his imaginings; “The half,” he admitted, “had not yet been told.”

In this climate of rumor and uncertainty, Pinkerton accepted the commission with a somewhat blinkered view of what was at stake. For the moment, his only concern was the protection of Felton’s railroad. He returned to Chicago to consider the problem, drawing up a seven-page report with recommendations on how to proceed. His proposal made it clear that the situation was changing moment by moment, and that as of yet there had been no tangible proof of a threat against Felton’s line.

“Should the suspicions of danger still exist,” Pinkerton wrote, he would assemble a team of operatives and dispatch them at once to “the seat of danger” in Maryland. Once there, they would assess the risk and attempt to confirm the truth of the plot against the railroad. If successful, Pinkerton and his operatives would go undercover to “become acquainted” with the plotters. In this way, they would soon “learn positively who the leading spirits are that would be likely to do the
Active Labor.
” With this information in hand, Pinkerton could take whatever steps were necessary to thwart the design, either by arresting the plotters or by heightening security at the intended point of attack.

In many respects, the plan Pinkerton presented to Felton was a simple variation on the template he had been using for years, whether pulling shifts as a mail “piler” at the Chicago post office or assigning Kate Warne to pose as the wife of a forger. As Pinkerton explained to Felton, it would be necessary to keep the suspects under the tightest possible surveillance—“an
unceasing Shadow,
” as he called it—in order to worm out their secrets. This meant placing men in saloons, hotels, and billiard halls to catch the suspects in unguarded moments, when they would be most likely to spill their secrets.

From the outset, Pinkerton realized that he would be racing the clock. If the plotters intended to disrupt Lincoln’s inauguration—now only five weeks away—it was evident that any attack would come soon, perhaps even within days. Given this time constraint, Pinkerton worried that his usual methods would prove ineffective. “The only danger which I perceive to our operating is in the short time we have to work in,” he explained. “Our operations are necessarily tedious—Nay, frequently very slow.” This was to be expected, he said, because the success of his technique relied upon “attaining a controlling power over the mind of the suspected parties,” as when Kate Warne had persuaded Nathan Maroney’s wife to disclose the location of the stolen money. In such cases, however, Pinkerton had had the luxury of time. The capture of Maroney had unfolded at a stately pace over several months. By contrast, Felton’s case would be a wind sprint.

Accordingly, Pinkerton planned to tackle Felton’s problem with an unusually large team of detectives. “Had I plenty of time to work in, I might probably be able to ascertain all that you require with two or three operatives,” he explained. As matters stood, however, “the time is too brief for me to work safely in this manner.” To have any chance of success, he would have to send a wave of men flooding across Maryland, so as to “attack on every point we can find.”

Pinkerton closed his long letter to Felton by urging him to keep the matter entirely confidential, since any indiscretion would likely expose his detectives to danger. “Our strength lays in the secrecy of our movements,” he warned. “As I have before remarked, Secrecy is the Lever of any success which may attend my operations, and as the nature of this service may prove of a character which might to some extent be dangerous to the persons of myself, or any operatives, I should expect that the Fact of my operating should only be known to myself or such discreet persons connected with your Company as it might be absolutely necessary should be entrusted.” Experience had taught Pinkerton that Felton would not be able to keep the matter entirely quiet, so he added a final heartfelt plea: “But on no conditions would I consider it safe for myself or my operatives were the fact of my operating known to any Politician—no matter of what school, or what position.” Possibly this remark struck Felton as a gratuitous swipe, but, in fact, Pinkerton’s distrust of politicians was well founded. He had dealt with shady elected officials for more than a decade, beginning with the corrupt jailer who had released John Craig at the close of his first case. As a result, Pinkerton had learned to play his cards close to the vest.

Felton agreed at once to give his full support and financial backing to Pinkerton’s plan, and the detective departed immediately for “the seat of danger” with a crew of top agents. To a casual observer, Pinkerton and his team would have looked like an ordinary group of travelers as they boarded the train in Chicago that day. The English-born Timothy Webster, with his bright blue eyes and dark, wavy hair, appeared to be just another attentive husband helping his young wife navigate an unsteady set of wooden platform steps. When the compartment door closed behind them, however, the pair quickly separated and took seats on opposite benches. Webster, a married man, was simply playing a role. The young woman was actually a twenty-four-year-old beauty named Hattie Lawton, a recent addition to Kate Warne’s so-called Female Detective Bureau, who would pose as Webster’s bride in the days ahead. “Her complexion was fresh and rosy as the morning, her hair fell in flowing tresses of gold,” Pinkerton wrote of her. “She appeared careless and entirely at ease, but a close observer would have noticed a compression of the small lips, and a fixedness in the sparkling eyes that told of a purpose to be accomplished.”

Kate Warne was also at Pinkerton’s side that day, preparing to play her signature role of the Southern belle with a kindly nature and a sympathetic ear. She had become one of Pinkerton’s most trusted confidants by this time, and it is likely that the two of them spent much of the journey conferring over maps and case files, laying plans for the task ahead. Close at hand was another new recruit, Harry Davies, a fair-haired young man whose ruddy, open face and unassuming manner belied a razor-sharp mind. Davies had traveled widely, spoke many languages, and had a gift for adapting himself to any situation. He had trained as a Jesuit priest, Pinkerton noted, which lent him an “insinuating manner” that proved useful in dealing with sinners. Best of all from Pinkerton’s perspective, Davies possessed “a thorough knowledge of the South, its localities, prejudices, customs and leading men, which had been derived from several years residence in New Orleans and other Southern cities.”

As his team headed east, Pinkerton seized the chance to get the lay of the land. “I took passage on one of the trains of the road, intending to see for myself how affairs stood, and to distribute my men in such a manner as to me seemed best,” he said. “I resolved to locate my men at the various towns along the road, selecting such places where, it was believed, disaffection existed.” Not surprisingly, the signs of political unrest grew more pronounced as the train pushed toward Maryland and crossed the Mason-Dixon line. At Havre de Grace, the vital crossing point of the Susquehanna River, Pinkerton and his operatives mingled among the locals and heard open expressions of hostile intent. When the train pulled away, a Pinkerton man was left behind to conduct further observation.

Across the river in Perrymansville, twenty-seven miles outside of Baltimore, Pinkerton found an even more intensely warlike mood. The village had long been a hub of railroad workers, but the Fort Sumter crisis had transformed it into a staging area for a makeshift unit of armed cavalry. Pinkerton soon realized that these freshly minted soldiers, though “professedly sworn to protect the railroad,” had a different agenda. “Under the influence of bad men the secession movement had gained many supporters and sympathizers,” he noted. “Loud threats were uttered against the railroad company, and it was boastfully asserted that ‘no damned abolitionist should be allowed to pass through the town alive.’” Though he heard much talk of this kind, Pinkerton knew better than to take such pronouncements at face value. “I have always found it a truism that ‘a barking dog never bites,’” he said, “and although I had but little fear that these blatant talkers would perform any dangerous deeds, I considered it best to be fully posted as to their movements.” Accordingly, Pinkerton made a snap decision to post Timothy Webster in Perrymansville. Webster would look for work among the railroad workers, while Hattie Lawton, in her role as his wife, would seek out “useful friendships” among the women of the community. After a few last-minute arrangements, Pinkerton took his leave of the two operatives and pressed on toward Baltimore, where Felton’s line terminated.

As Pinkerton’s train rolled into Baltimore during the first week of February, the detective observed that the mood of opposition to Lincoln’s inauguration became “manifestly more intense.” Pinkerton took rooms at a boardinghouse on Howard Street, near the Camden Street train station, and he and his remaining operatives fanned out across the city, mixing with crowds at saloons and restaurants to listen to the “grumblings and grouses” of the citizenry. “I soon found that the fears of the railroad officials were not wholly without foundation,” he reported, but he insisted that he had no firm evidence of imminent danger. Even so, the depth of secessionist feeling in Baltimore persuaded him that the possibility of some kind of organized plot was very real. “The opposition to Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration was most violent and bitter,” he wrote, “and a few days’ sojourn in this city convinced me that great danger was to be apprehended.”

It was inevitable that Pinkerton’s focus should come to rest on Baltimore. The city, as one of Lincoln’s advisers would note, was “the back door of the National Capital.” Three separate rail lines converged to form a hub at the center of the city, creating a choke point for all passenger and freight traffic moving through the region. Felton’s brick-fronted depot on President Street was the southern terminus of his Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad; roughly a mile to the south was the Baltimore and Ohio line’s Camden Street Station, running south to Washington; and lying between the two, half a mile to the west, was the Calvert Street Station of the Northern Central line, running up to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. So long as these three rail lines remained in operation, Baltimore would have unparalleled strategic importance in the event of war.

At the time, Baltimore had a population of over 200,000—nearly twice that of Pinkerton’s Chicago—making it the nation’s fourth-largest city, after New York, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn, which at that time was a city in its own right. As a major port, Baltimore was not only a thriving center of shipping but also the arrival point for huge numbers of immigrants from Ireland and Germany, giving rise to a deeply entrenched gang culture much like that of New York City. Allegiances were forged according to neighborhood, nationality, and trade, and battles were fought on much the same lines. Gangs with colorful names such as the Rip Raps, Blood Tubs, and Black Snakes ruled the streets, and even reached out to form political alliances. On election days, the gangs took to the streets to intimidate voters and stuff ballot boxes. According to the
Baltimore Republican,
the “gutters flowed with rivers of blood.”