The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War (2 page)

Many dilemmas arise in exploring the facts of the Baltimore plot—sources conflict; historical agendas collide. There is also a certain mythologizing effect cast over the firsthand accounts, most of which were written in the heavy gloom that followed Lincoln’s assassination, in 1865. As a result, the fallen president is portrayed as a saintly and resolute figure, preternaturally aware of his own destiny, and much given to gazing heroically into an uncertain future. In many cases, well-intentioned colleagues have placed dialogue in his mouth that might have been lifted from the hackneyed Beadle’s Dime Novels of the day. At the same time, the sheer volume of “Lincoln as I knew him” books presents its own challenge. It is quite possible that the two-thousand-mile route from Springfield to Washington could be paved over in volumes of reminiscence, and no two of them would agree on what Lincoln said or thought about the fateful trip through Baltimore, or even on the strangely controversial topic of what he wore on his head.

Allan Pinkerton presents an even greater set of contradictions. “Stormy, husky, brawling,” as Carl Sandburg would say of Chicago, Pinkerton’s adopted hometown, the detective and his legacy are riddled with paradoxes. A Scottish immigrant who made good in America, Pinkerton was proud of his rags-to-riches success, and collaborated on more than a dozen lively, self-promoting memoirs that detailed his most celebrated cases. Yet throughout his life, he remained guarded and difficult to read, as enigmatic as one of the cipher keys he used to send encrypted messages to agents in the field. He began his career as an idealistic social reformer, vowing never to investigate “trade-union officers or members in their lawful union activities,” but he is remembered today as a strikebreaker, and a puppet of America’s robber barons. Though he rose to fame as America’s “Number One Lawman,” he thought nothing of flouting the law in the service of a greater good, and spent years defying the Fugitive Slave Act, assisting runaways as a stationmaster on the Underground Railroad. Civil War historians castigate him for his work as General McClellan’s chief of intelligence, during which he supposedly exaggerated his estimates of enemy troop strength, but during the Baltimore affair he came under fire for insisting that the conspiracy was far smaller than others had supposed, and that the danger was all the greater because of it. And finally, at the moment when he wished to collect laurels from the public for his service to President Lincoln, Pinkerton found himself branded a liar, and mired in a bitter feud that would cloud his legacy for generations to come.

As a result of these conflicts and ambiguities, the details of the Baltimore plot soon became a subject of controversy. Some critics questioned whether Pinkerton’s actions were justified, while others were quick to point out the flaws in his investigation. Even Lincoln’s personal secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay—both of whom traveled with the president-elect on the train from Springfield—were decidedly cautious in stating that Pinkerton’s case had “neither been proved nor disproved by the lapse of time.”

There is no denying that at least some of Pinkerton’s evidence was pure hearsay. Much of it was obtained in saloons and brothels, under circumstances where the telling of falsehoods is not unknown. But Pinkerton’s detractors tend to overlook the fact that his conclusions were confirmed and amplified by Lincoln’s most trusted advisers, including Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the United States. There is no question that Pinkerton’s methods were high-handed and at times unlawful, but many of the cavils that were heaped upon him in 1861 would not be expressed or even considered today. It is now understood that there are dangers to be apprehended when a president moves freely through a vast crowd or rides in an open conveyance. Those apprehensions did not yet exist at the start of the Lincoln presidency. As one New York newspaper noted at the time, “assassination is not congenial to the American character.” Perhaps not, but it would soon become all too real.

“The events about to be related have been for a long time shrouded in a veil of mystery,” Pinkerton wrote in a memoir published near the end of his life. “While many are aware that a plot existed at this time to assassinate the President-elect upon his contemplated journey to the capital, but few have any knowledge of the mode by which the conspiracy was detected, or the means employed to prevent the accomplishment of that murderous design.”

Strangely, those words are as true today as they were in Pinkerton’s time, and the detective was already swimming against a tide of criticism when he wrote them. The distinguished historian John Thomas Scharf, chronicling the history of his native Maryland in 1879, insisted that Pinkerton’s actions had been an insult to the “fair fame of one of the chief cities of the country,” and expressed a hope that the matter would “soon be settled once and for all.”

I myself am a resident of Maryland, and I am as partial to blue crabs and black-eyed Susans as the next man. At a remove of 150 years, however, I believe it is possible to treat this episode without undue risk to the fair fame of Baltimore. It bears noting, however, that to this day our state song—“Maryland, My Maryland”—makes reference to “the despot’s heel” and “tyrant’s chain” of Lincoln and his kind, and builds to a final, spirited rallying cry: “Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum!”

Lincoln would likely have been amused. “Fellow citizens,” he wisely declared in the early years of his presidency, “we cannot escape history.”

PART ONE

THE COOPER
and
THE RAIL-SPLITTER

Allan Pinkerton in 1861.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress

PROLOGUE

HIS HOUR HAD NOT YET COME

Lincoln’s inaugural ceremonies, March 4, 1861.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress

SECURITY THAT DAY
was the tightest Washington had ever seen. Sharpshooters crouched on the rooftops along Pennsylvania Avenue and in the windows of the Capitol. Armed soldiers—many of them “in citizen’s dress”—fanned out through the crowd, looking for agitators. Companies of uniformed volunteers swelled the ranks of the parade marchers, and a corps of West Point cadets readied themselves to form a sort of flying wedge around the presidential carriage. A cavalry officer riding nearby used his spurs to keep his mount—and those nearby—in an “uneasy state,” making it difficult for a marksman to get off a shot “between the dancing horses.” Inauguration Day—March 4, 1861—found the city tensed for a blow.

Just past noon, an elegant horse-drawn carriage rolled to a stop at the side entrance of Willard’s Hotel on Fourteenth Street, two blocks east of the White House. Looking gray and doddery, President James Buchanan eased himself down from the open coach. The Old Public Functionary, as he was known, had just departed the Executive Mansion for the last time as president. In keeping with the solemnity of the occasion, he wore a formal but out-of-date swallowtail coat and an immense white cravat that spread over his chest “like a poultice.” He appeared thoroughly worn-out, one observer noted, and had few political allies left to mourn his exit. “The sun, thank God, has risen upon the last day of the administration of James Buchanan,” declared the
New York World.

Willard’s Hotel, the city’s largest, was packed to capacity for the inaugural festivities, with proprietor Henry A. Willard booking an average of three people to a room. In the words of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the stately six-story building could be “much more justly called the centre of Washington and the Union than either the Capitol, the White House, or the State Department.” This had been especially true since the arrival ten days earlier of President-elect Abraham Lincoln, whose presence in the hotel had sparked a “quadrennial revel” of visitors. “Everybody may be seen there,” Hawthorne would write. “You exchange nods with governors of sovereign States; you elbow illustrious men, and tread on the toes of generals.”

The arrival of President Buchanan would mark the end to the political scrum. Pausing for a moment outside the hotel, Buchanan removed his low-crowned silk hat and passed through the side entrance. Moments later, he reemerged, walking arm in arm with Abraham Lincoln. The president-elect wore a new black cashmere suit, which had been made for him in Chicago, and carried a gold-tipped ebony cane. As the two men stepped into the waiting carriage, a group of soldiers standing near the hotel entrance snapped to attention, and a Marine band struck up “Hail to the Chief.” Lincoln smiled and tipped his stovepipe hat, but his face appeared drawn and even more heavily lined than usual. He had been up most of the night, laboring over a final draft of his inaugural address. Moments earlier, while waiting for Buchanan to arrive, he had sat jotting notes as his son Robert read the speech aloud, giving him a better sense of how the words would strike the ears of his listeners. Distracted by this last-minute tinkering, Lincoln left Willard’s Hotel without paying his tab. Several weeks later, when the lapse was brought to his attention, he sent the money over from the White House with a note of apology.

Lincoln and Buchanan sat side by side as their driver swung the carriage onto Pennsylvania Avenue, signaling the start of a “glad and sumptuous” parade that would carry them to the Capitol. The hour-long procession featured floats, marching bands, columns of veterans of the War of 1812, and a richly appointed “tableau car” carrying thirty-four “beauteous little girls,” each representing a state of the Union. A throng of some 25,000 people crowded along both sides of the broad avenue. Many in the crowd had come from out of town to witness the proceedings, and a few had been obliged to spend the night sleeping on the pavement after being turned away at the city’s overbooked hotels. Those who could not get a clear view scrambled for higher ground. “The trees upon the corners,” reported a Philadelphia paper, were “as full of small boys as an apple tree in fruit-bearing season.”

“The Inaugural Procession at Washington,” from
Harper’s Weekly,
March 1861.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress

The temperature that afternoon had turned cool and bracing, and it is likely that the atmosphere in the presidential carriage was chillier still. During his campaign, Lincoln had criticized Buchanan sharply, though neither man escaped censure in the press as Inauguration Day approached, especially in the South: “An imbecile official is succeeded by a stupid Rail Splitter,” declared an Atlanta newspaper. As the carriage neared the Capitol, however, Buchanan is said to have struck a conciliatory note. Anticipating his return to his estate in Pennsylvania, the outgoing president turned to his successor. “My dear sir,” he said, “if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed.”