The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War (20 page)

On Pinkerton’s orders, Davies took a room at Barnum’s and used the “ready passport” of his New Orleans birth to ingratiate himself with the Southern element. Davies claimed to have come to Baltimore on business, but at every turn, he quietly insinuated that he was far more interested in matters of “rebeldom.” Whenever the crowd at Barnum’s gave voice to anti-Union sentiments, Davies would offer a raised glass and a crisp nod of the head.

Of all the regulars at Barnum’s, Otis Hillard appeared to be the most promising source of information. Davies worked to forge a useful bond, buying drinks with a free hand, and seeking advice on the amusements of Baltimore. Soon, the two men became inseparable. A typical day included dinner at a favorite chophouse called Mann’s, followed by billiards and cigars at Harry Hemling’s, a second-floor “chalk and sawdust” room on Fayette Street. The two were often seen at a concert saloon known as the Pagoda, enjoying the latest in “popular song and genteel merriment.” In the latter stages of the evening, depending on which way Hillard’s moral compass happened to be pointing, they would attend vespers at a local Catholic church or seek the company of Anna Hughes, Hillard’s favored companion at Annette Travis’s establishment. After a particularly eventful evening, if the consumption of alcohol had been such as to render navigation difficult, the two men would sleep in the same room.

“By reason of his high social position,” Pinkerton observed, “Hillard was enabled to introduce his friend to the leading families and into the most aristocratic clubs and societies of which the city boasted, and Davies made many valuable acquaintances through the influence of this rebellious scion of Baltimore aristocracy.” Though these connections proved useful, Hillard himself soon became a source of frustration, as his commitment to the secessionist cause proved to be tenuous. “Because of a weak nature and having been reared in the lap of luxury, he had entered into this movement more from a temporary burst of enthusiasm, and because it was fashionable,” Pinkerton noted. Hillard often spoke of winning fame and glory for himself, but as the calls for armed rebellion grew louder, he appeared to think better of it. “He was inclined to hesitate,” Davies reported, “before the affair had gone too far.” Davies hoped to exploit Hillard’s doubts, pressing him for useful information under the guise of sympathizing with his fears. Hillard, for his part, seemed to enjoy toying with Davies’s obvious interest in Baltimore’s secret cabals. He refused to confide fully in his new friend, preferring instead to dangle his forbidden knowledge just out of reach, always suggesting that he knew more than he could tell, for reasons of personal honor. Undeterred, Pinkerton instructed Davies to keep trying. He was convinced that Hillard would soon become “a pliant tool in our hands.”

Pinkerton appeared willing to go to any lengths. In Chicago, he had often discouraged his operatives from using alcohol as a means of loosening a suspect’s tongue, but in Baltimore, he relied heavily on the “unbridled talk” of the barroom. By the same token, he would later defend against charges that he and his operatives preyed on the weak-willed, exchanging false friendship for information. “Such a technique was distasteful to me,” Pinkerton said of one such case, “but the course pursued was the only one which afforded the slightest promise of success, hence its adoption. Severe moralists may question whether this course is a legitimate or defensible one, but as long as crime exists, the necessity for detection is apparent. In this righteous work the end will unquestionably justify the means adopted to secure the desired result.” Many would disagree, but in this instance—perhaps more so than any other—Pinkerton held himself above criticism. The clock was ticking.

A report from Charles Williams, the operative who had been concerned about passing himself off as a Mississippian, underscored the urgency of the situation. Williams had been trawling for information at Sherwood’s, a “small and rather prim” hotel at the corner of Harrison and Fayette streets, when he noticed that the bartender—Howell Sherwood, the landlord’s brother—appeared visibly troubled, as if struggling with a difficult decision. Taking a seat at the bar, Williams struck up a conversation and found that Sherwood was eager to unburden himself. He began by saying that he was a peaceful man and had no desire to fall in with the “Seces-crowd” of the city. If possible, he insisted, he would prefer to see the Union preserved, but if forced to “give up the Stars and Stripes,” he would pledge his loyalty to the South. Williams allowed as how he felt the same way. Was it inevitable, he asked, that war must come? Sherwood fell silent for several moments, apparently considering his answer carefully. At length, he gave a heavy sigh and began to speak in a halting voice, as if the words themselves were causing him pain. He had overheard murmurs of a horrifying plot against the government, he said—“the vilest proposition that ever was heard of.” In Washington in a few days time, the members of the Electoral College would gather in the United States Capitol to ratify the election of Abraham Lincoln. On that day, Sherwood said, a group of agitators from Baltimore intended to detonate a bomb inside the Capitol, striking a devastating blow to the government and throwing the peaceful transition of power into chaos. “Oh, my God, it is so,” Sherwood insisted. “If anyone had said there was such a conspiracy in this or any other city, I would not have believed it.”

When Williams hurried back to South Street with this information, Pinkerton listened with an air of mounting frustration. He pointed to a stack of reports on his desk, filled with wild stories and outlandish rumors. Alarming as the claims were, none could be confirmed definitively. After more than a week in Baltimore, Pinkerton had yet to achieve the first of the goals he had outlined to Felton—proof of the existence of a plot.

Pinkerton felt certain that Otis Hillard could provide a badly needed shard of evidence, if only he could be induced to do so. A few days earlier, Hillard had been summoned to Washington to answer questions about the rumors surrounding the inauguration. It is likely that Hillard’s summons to Washington was the red flag that caught the attention of the Pinkerton team, but the experience left him more than usually cautious about sharing confidences. Despite Harry Davies’s best efforts, Hillard continued to play coy, offering nothing more than broad hints and vague insinuations.

A significant break came on Tuesday, February 12, when Hillard introduced Davies to a man named Hughes, a daguerreotype photographer recently arrived from New Orleans. As the newcomer gave an enthusiastic report of how matters stood in his home state—Louisiana having seceded the previous month—Davies seized the opening to steer the conversation toward Maryland’s prospects. The visitor warmed to the subject immediately, claiming that officials in Washington had sent out spies to keep an eye on agitators throughout the state. “I understand,” he said, “that they have men watching the railroad bridges between here and Philadelphia. The railroads are afraid that they will be destroyed—but I do not know if it will do any good.” This last remark was accompanied by a significant wink in the direction of Hillard. Davies pressed for more information, but neither man would elaborate on the statement.

For the rest of the day, as the two men made their familiar round of restaurants and saloons, Davies tried to draw Hillard out on the subject. The encounter appeared to have put Hillard in a melancholy mood, and he refused to take the bait. Instead, he brooded on the declining state of his health. Davies, trying to move the conversation forward, suggested that perhaps Hillard’s fondness for prostitutes might be a contributing factor. Hillard drew back and “seemed horrified.”

After a restorative dinner and a round of billiards, Hillard recovered his better humor. His earlier concerns were forgotten as he proposed a visit to Annette Travis’s establishment on Davis Street. Davies willingly tagged along, hoping to maneuver his friend into a more talkative frame of mind. Once again, Hillard arranged to enjoy the company of Anna Hughes, a pale, dark-haired woman who said little but giggled incessantly. Davies turned to leave as the young woman led Hillard toward the stairs, but Hillard laid a hand on his sleeve and asked him to stay. There were still important matters to be discussed, Hillard said with a wink. Reluctantly, Davies followed the couple as they made their way upstairs.

Davies perched awkwardly on a chair in the corner of the room as Hillard made himself at home. “Hillard and his woman seemed very much pleased at meeting,” Davies reported delicately, “and hugged and kissed each other for about an hour.” Even in this setting, Hillard refused to give up his claim to Davies’s attentions. Several times, Davies rose to excuse himself from the room, but each time his friend called him back, suggesting that there was more to be said about “forthcoming events.” As the evening wore on, Hillard teased Davies with hints and preened for Anna Hughes, portraying himself as a man burdened with many secrets, the nature of which would astonish the world. Davies, squirming on his chair in the corner of the room, tried to play along. He alternated words of encouragement with notes of skepticism, suggesting that perhaps Hillard didn’t know as much as he claimed. Try as he might, however, he could not get Hillard to enlarge on his boasts.

Finally, Davies lost patience. Jumping to his feet, he told Hillard that he was leaving, and his tone suggested that the two men would not be seeing each other again. “I started for the door,” Davies said, but as he turned the handle, Hillard called after him, telling him to wait. He seemed to realize, belatedly, that he had pushed his friend too far. For several days, he had been playing a game of cat and mouse, hinting at grand designs of which he dared not speak. Now, it appeared, Davies was prepared to turn his back. All other urgencies were forgotten as Hillard disentangled himself from Miss Hughes and followed Davies out onto the street. At last, he was ready to talk.

The two men made their way back to Davies’s room and sat talking into the early hours of the morning. Hillard spent considerable time describing his activities with the Palmetto Guard, one of the many rifle-toting “committees of safety” that were springing up across the state. He mentioned that his unit would be drilling the following evening at a secret gathering place and that he would be obliged to join with them. Davies listened with rising impatience. Though this was more than Hillard had ever revealed before, it was hardly earth-shattering news. Timothy Webster, the detective Pinkerton had stationed among the railroad crews in Perrymansville, had already managed to join a unit of National Volunteers there, marching along the banks of the Susquehanna River.

Davies changed tactics. Playing up his role as an ardent secessionist, he chided Hillard for being sluggish in his response to the Northern threat. His home state of Louisiana, he reminded Hillard, had already withdrawn from the Union. The practice drills of the Palmetto Guard, by contrast, seemed little more than empty posturing.

Hillard fell silent, apparently stung. He gave a sidelong glance at his friend, then cleared his throat. When he spoke again, his manner had changed. He affected a breezy tone, as if remarking on the weather, but he fixed Davies with an intense gaze, indicating the true import of his words. “He then asked me,” Davies said, “if I had seen a statement of Lincoln’s route to Washington City.”

Davies lifted his head, at last catching sight of a foothold amid all the slippery hearsay. It was the first time that Hillard had made direct reference to Lincoln’s passage through Baltimore, much less suggested a link—oblique as it was—between the president-elect’s movements and the activities of a Maryland militia unit. Struggling to remain composed, Davies said only that he had seen a statement of Lincoln’s itinerary in the newspapers.

The answer appeared to encourage Hillard. “By the by,” he said lightly, “that reminds me that I must go and see a certain party in the morning the first thing.”

Again, Davies was careful not to appear overeager, so as not to put Hillard off. “What about?” he asked.

“About Lincoln’s route,” Hillard replied. “I want to see about the telegraph in Philadelphia and New York and have some arrangements made.”

“How do you mean?” Davies asked.

Hillard gave a shrug to suggest that he was merely speculating, but then he went on to outline a coded system that would allow the progress of the president-elect’s train to be tracked from stop to stop, even if telegraph communications were being monitored for suspicious activity. “We would have some signs to telegraph by,” he explained. “For instance, supposing that we should telegraph to a certain point ‘all set up at 7,’ that would mean that Lincoln would be at such a point at 7 o’clock.”

Davies fell silent, nodding his head. He realized at once that the existence of a cipher of this type signaled a well-developed plot, or “mature arrangement,” involving Lincoln’s train. Once again, he shaped his reply in a manner that would strike at Hillard’s pride, in hopes of drawing out additional details. Why should the guardsmen bother with codes and signals, he asked, when there did not appear to be any specific scheme for using them? “It is very singular,” Davies said, “that some plan of action has not been proposed.”

Hillard chafed at this, his mask slipping a bit. He insisted that there was, in fact, a carefully plotted strategy in place. The codes, he continued, were only a small part of a larger design. “I asked him what it was,” Davies reported, but Hillard would not divulge anything more.

“My friend,” he said grimly, “that is what I would like to tell you, but I dare not—I wish I could—anything almost I would be willing to do for you, but to tell you that I dare not.”

Davies continued to hammer at Hillard’s vanities and insecurities, peppering him with heavily barbed questions for the better part of an hour. At length, it became clear that Hillard would say nothing more, and that he now regretted revealing as much as he had. As the two men parted, Hillard cautioned Davies to say nothing of what had passed between them. Looking pale and fretful, he set off once again to seek comfort in the arms of Anna Hughes. Davies waited until Hillard had passed out of sight, then headed to Pinkerton’s office to make his report.