The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War (15 page)

It seems to me the inauguration is not the most dangerous point for us. Our adversaries have us more clearly at disadvantage on the second Wednesday of February, when the votes should be officially counted. If the two Houses refuse to meet at all, or meet without a quorum of each, where shall we be? I do not think that this counting is constitutionally essential to the election; but how are we to proceed in absence of it? In view of this, I think it is best for me not to attempt appearing in Washington till the result of that ceremony is known.

Though Lincoln had redirected Seward’s concern to another channel, William Herndon reported that he was now “annoyed, not to say alarmed” at the threats that he would not reach Washington alive, and the insistence from many quarters that “even if successful in reaching the Capitol, his inauguration should in some way be prevented.” Hoping for reassurance, Lincoln decided to take a sounding from General Scott, who was also on the scene in the capital. Lincoln knew that Scott’s support would be essential in any coming conflict, especially if the situation at Fort Sumter worsened. Though Lincoln did not say so explicitly, he also sought confirmation that Scott, a Virginia native, would serve under the Lincoln administration even if his state followed South Carolina in seceding from the Union.

Thomas Mather, Illinois’s adjutant general, was dispatched to Washington, bearing a letter from Lincoln. Arriving in the capital, Mather called on Scott at his home, but was told that the seventy-four-year-old general was too ill to receive visitors—a discouraging sign. Mather left Lincoln’s letter and returned later. This time, he was promptly ushered to the general’s bedside. “I found the old warrior, grizzly and wrinkled, propped up in the bed by an embankment of pillows behind his back,” Mather recalled. “His hair and beard were considerably disordered, the flesh seemed to lay in rolls across his warty face and neck, and his breathing was not without great labor. In his hand he still held Lincoln’s letter.” Though the general was pale and visibly trembling from his long illness, it was clear that Lincoln’s message had stirred his passions. “General Mather,” he declared, straightening his back against his pillows, “present my compliments to Mr. Lincoln when you return to Springfield, and tell him I expect him to come on to Washington as soon as he is ready.” Any resistance, the old veteran promised, would be met with all the considerable force at his command.

Greatly reassured, Lincoln announced that he would remain in Springfield until mid-February. He told journalist Henry Villard that plans for his “impending removal to the federal capital” were being laid, though the route and date of departure had not yet been fixed. “I think Mr. Lincoln’s preferences are for a southerly route,” Villard reported, “via Cincinnati, Wheeling and Baltimore, doubtless to demonstrate how little fear he entertains for his personal safety.” Villard allowed that pressure from concerned friends would likely force the president-elect to adopt a more northerly path, but in either case, Lincoln would make “stoppages” along the way to greet his supporters. “He knows that those who elected him are anxious to see how he looks,” Villard explained, “and hence is willing to gratify this, their excusable curiosity.”

In the coming weeks, the task of planning Lincoln’s journey to Washington would prove nearly as complicated as that of assembling his cabinet. Political considerations aside, there was no simple or obvious means of making the trip at the time. Although the nation’s railroads continued to expand at a fantastic rate, there was not yet a single direct railway line running from Illinois to Washington, D.C. Instead, Lincoln would have to travel across a rough patchwork of independent regional lines, a relay instead of a marathon. At various stages of the journey, especially in cases where the gauge of a particular railroad’s track happened to be incompatible with that of the next line, a change of locomotives and cars would be required. Lincoln and his party would have to make frequent transfers from one railway’s terminus to the next, usually riding in open carriages, and sometimes even carrying their own baggage.

Since each of the many regional lines had its own president and officers, Lincoln also had to concern himself with the political loyalties of dozens of powerful railway executives. At least one official—John Work Garrett of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, who had more than five hundred miles of track running below the Mason-Dixon line—was believed at the time to have Southern sympathies that might pose a threat to the president-elect’s safety. “[Y]our life is not safe, and it is your simple duty to be very careful of exposing it,” Horace Greeley warned in a letter to Lincoln. “I doubt whether you ought to go to Washington via Wheeling and the B. & O. Railroad unless you go with a very strong force.” Lincoln, however, let it be known that a “martial cortège” was out of the question, as it would signal exactly the sort of warlike posture he had been at pains to avoid. He told Henry Villard that he utterly disliked “ostentatious display and empty pageantry” and would make his way to Washington without a military escort.

John Nicolay, his new secretary, insisted that Lincoln was unwilling to compromise his duty for the sake of personal safety. “He knew,” Nicolay explained, “that incitements to murder him were not uncommon in the South, but as is the habit of men constitutionally brave, he considered the possibilities of danger remote, and positively refused to torment himself with precautions for his own safety; summing the matter up by saying that both friends and strangers must have daily access to him; that his life was therefore in reach of anyone, sane or mad, who was ready to murder and be hanged for it.” There was no way that Lincoln could guard against all danger, Nicolay concluded, unless he shut himself up in an iron box—“in which condition he could scarcely perform the duties of a President.”

At least one railway executive—Samuel Morse Felton, president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad—believed that the president-elect had failed to grasp the seriousness of his position. Felton, a stolid, bespectacled blue blood whose brother was president of Harvard at the time, was not a man given to saber rattling. Nevertheless, in January 1861, even as Lincoln downplayed the possibility of danger, Felton became convinced of what he called a “deep-laid conspiracy to capture Washington, destroy all the avenues leading to it from the North, East, and West, and thus prevent the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln in the Capitol of the country.” For Felton, whose track formed a crucial link between Washington and the North, the threat against Lincoln and his government also constituted a danger to the railroad that had been his life’s great labor. Though he had been concerned about secessionist activity for some time, Felton’s decisive moment came on a wintry Saturday afternoon in his office in Philadelphia, when he looked up from his desk and saw Dorothea Dix, the celebrated social reformer, standing in the doorway. Nearly sixty at the time, Miss Dix was instantly recognizable in her familiar attire: a plain dark-colored dress with a white ruffle at the throat. She wore her chestnut hair gathered in a coil at the back of her head, setting off a “sweet grave face, lighted up by not too frequent smiles.”

Felton jumped to his feet and showed his visitor to a seat. For more than twenty years, Felton knew, Dorothea Dix had been a vigorous crusader for the rights of the mentally ill, visiting hundreds of jails, hospitals, and almshouses to report on the treatment of sufferers, and advocating the benefits of “moral treatment,” as opposed to the “heroic” measures of the time, which often featured painful physical restraints and dangerous narcotics. “I had known her for some years,” Felton recalled. “Her occupation had brought her in contact with the prominent men of the South. In visiting hospitals she had become familiar with the structure of Southern society, and also with the working of its political machinery.”

Miss Dix claimed to have no political agenda—“I have no patience and no sympathy either with northern Abolitionists or southern agitators,” she declared—but after Lincoln’s election, she had begun to hear rumors that alarmed her greatly. Fearing that her concerns would not be taken seriously in Washington, she brought her case to Felton instead, knowing that he would give her a fair hearing. Impatient to speak, she brushed Felton’s pleasantries aside and told him she had “an important communication to make.” Seeing the urgency in her expression, Felton closed the door to his office and settled himself behind his desk. Miss Dix promptly launched into a chillingly clear and concise outline of a Southern plot to topple the government of the United States. She spoke for more than an hour, her blue-gray eyes fixed intently on Felton’s face, giving a “tangible and reliable shape” to what Felton had previously heard only in scattered rumors. “The sum of it all,” Felton recalled, “was that there was then an extensive and organized conspiracy throughout the South to seize upon Washington, with its archives and records, and then declare the Southern conspirators
de facto
the Government of the United States. The whole was to be a
coup d’etat
. Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration was thus to be prevented.”

As Felton listened with growing alarm, his visitor gave additional details. The agitators, she told him, planned to disrupt all of the railroad lines connecting Washington with the North—not just Felton’s—which would not only sever communication and commerce but also “prevent the transportation of troops to wrest the capital from the hands of the insurgents.” Felton’s railroad, Miss Dix went on to explain, would be easily captured. Several paramilitary drill teams were already conducting exercises at various points along the track, “pretending to be Union men.” In truth, Miss Dix insisted, these so-called committees of safety had pledged their loyalties to the South: “They were sworn to obey the command of their leaders, and the leaders were banded together to capture Washington.”

A heavy snow had begun to fall by the time Miss Dix finished speaking. Stepping to the tall windows, Felton looked down as one of his own trains rolled into the nearby terminus, trailing a column of sparks and vapor. After a moment, he turned and clasped Miss Dix by the hands, thanking her warmly for coming to see him. As he showed her to a waiting carriage, Felton promised immediate action.

Returning to his office, Felton drew up a hasty report to General Scott and sent it on to Washington in the hands of a trusted employee. The general’s response to the railway executive was considerably less reassuring than the one he had sent to Lincoln. Scott indicated that he was well aware of the danger and was taking steps to reinforce Washington, but he allowed that he had not been able to rouse the Buchanan administration to any further action, which left him fearful of “the worst consequences.” As of yet, nothing had been done to secure the routes into the city—not even those that skirted or passed through potentially hostile territory in states such as Maryland, where sentiment was running strongly toward the South. Given the circumstances, Scott admitted to Felton, “he feared nothing would be done … and that Mr. Lincoln would be obliged to be inaugurated into office at Philadelphia,” rather than risk the dangerous journey south to Washington.

Disheartened, Felton resigned himself to the fact that the government would offer no assistance. “I then determined,” he said, “to investigate the matter in my own way.” What was needed, he realized, was an independent operative who had already proven his mettle in the service of the railroads. Snatching up his pen, Felton dashed off an urgent plea to “a celebrated detective, who resided in the west.”

By the end of January, with barely two weeks remaining before Lincoln departed Springfield, Allan Pinkerton was on the case.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MOBTOWN

Should that little craft fall into the hands of pirates, one broadside from the Pennsylvania four-decker will clear the road to Washington. Lincoln, if living, will take the oath of office on the steps of the National Capitol on the 4th of March. My State will guarantee him a safe passage to the White House!

—SENATOR SIMON CAMERON of Pennsylvania (later Lincoln’s first secretary of war) on the prospect of Maryland’s secession, January 1861

PINKERTON LOST NO TIME.
Felton’s letter landed on his desk on January 19, a Saturday. The detective set off within moments, flashing one of the many courtesy railroad passes he carried as he hopped aboard the next available train. He reached Felton’s office in Philadelphia only two days later, an impressively rapid response for the time.

Felton had only hinted at the scope of the problem in his letter. Now, as Pinkerton settled into a chair opposite Felton’s broad mahogany desk, the railroad president spelled out the details. According to Miss Dix and other reliable sources, he explained, there was a plot afoot among “the roughs and secessionists of Maryland” to destroy the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad. If successful, Washington might well fall into the hands of “rebel insurgents.”

Shocked by what he was hearing, Pinkerton listened in silence. For all his commitment to the abolitionist cause, he had been slow to grasp, as he later admitted, that the country stood at the brink of war. “I entertained no serious fears of an open rebellion, and was disposed to regard the whole matter as of trivial importance,” he explained. “I was inclined to believe that with the incoming of the new administration, determined or conciliatory measures would be adopted, and that secession and rebellion would be either averted or summarily crushed.” Felton’s plea for help, the detective said, “aroused me to a realization of the danger that threatened the country, and I determined to render whatever assistance was in my power.”

For the moment, the detective needed time to consider how to attack the problem. Pinkerton and his operatives had thwarted every imaginable type of train robbery by this time, but never a “deliberate and calculated design” to disrupt a railroad for political reasons. As he reviewed the situation from Felton’s office in Philadelphia, the full weight of the dilemma became clear. Much of Felton’s line was on Maryland soil. In recent days, four more states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Georgia—had followed the lead of South Carolina and seceded from the Union. Louisiana and Texas would soon follow. Maryland had been roiling with anti-Northern sentiment in the months leading up to Lincoln’s election, and at the very moment that Felton poured out his concerns to Pinkerton, the Maryland legislature was debating whether to join the exodus.