The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War (11 page)

With John Brown’s latest unannounced arrival, the Pinkertons set to work once again. Joan gathered fresh clothing while her husband took the fugitives who would not fit under their roof and “got them under cover” with sympathetic friends. Brown himself was taken to the home of John Jones, a self-educated black man who was campaigning tirelessly against the state’s restrictive “Black Laws.” Jones listened along with Pinkerton as Brown informed them that he had arrived in Chicago “without a dollar” and could not continue his journey without financial help. Both Jones and Pinkerton pledged to do what they could. “There is a Democratic meeting in the city today,” Pinkerton said. “I’ll go down and make them give me enough money to send you and these slaves to Canada.”

Pinkerton recalled that he left the house in a “determined frame of mind,” but he soon realized that his plan had a serious flaw. The Democratic meeting he had mentioned was, in fact, a session of the Chicago Judiciary Convention. Although many of the participants would undoubtedly be sympathetic to the plight of Brown’s runaways, few of them would want to pledge support openly in a legal forum. Pinkerton made some concession to the delicacy of the situation by declining to make the request himself. “I was too well known as being an anti-slavery man,” he said, “and I thought my absence from the meeting would be the best thing.” Instead, he dispatched a pair of friends to circulate what he called a “subscription list” among the delegates. When they returned without a single donation, however, Pinkerton took the matter into his own hands. “I decided that I must have the money,” he said. “I was willing to pay something myself but I could not pay the whole.”

Pinkerton’s new tactic was nothing if not direct. Bursting into the meeting hall, he jumped to the stage and motioned for silence. “Gentlemen,” he began as a stunned silence fell over the room, “I have one thing to do and I intend to do it in a hurry. John Brown is in this city at the present time with a number of men, women and children. I require aid, and substantial aid I must have. I am ready and willing to leave this meeting if I get this money; if not, I have to say this. I will bring John Brown to this meeting and if any United States Marshal dare lay a hand on him he must take the consequence. I am determined to do this or have the money.” Folding his arms, Pinkerton stepped back and waited.

For several moments, the audience of “astonished jurists” simply stared at Pinkerton in uncomfortable silence. Then, with a conspicuous clearing of the throat, a young politician rose and made his way forward, holding out a fifty-dollar bill. With a curt nod of thanks, Pinkerton took off his hat and held it out. One by one, the others formed a line and filled the hat with bills. Within minutes, Pinkerton had collected nearly six hundred dollars. When the last man had passed, Pinkerton inclined his head. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said. Placing the hat back on his head, he left the hall without another word.

Later that afternoon, Pinkerton and his elder son, William, collected John Brown and his fugitives from the various homes where they had been lodged the night before and prepared to send them on their way. Pinkerton made arrangements with railroad superintendent C. G. Hammond—“a friend to me and also to the colored people”—to have a special passenger car readied at the Chicago depot. As a grateful John Brown took his leave, he turned and offered a warm farewell, along with a pregnant word of warning: “Friends, lay in your tobacco, cotton and sugar because I intend to raise the prices.” When the abolitionist was safely aboard the train, Pinkerton laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Look well upon that man,” he said. “He is greater than Napoleon and just as great as George Washington.”

*   *   *

THIS OPINION REGARDING JOHN BROWN
would be sorely tested in the months to come. Though Pinkerton had received strong support from Hammond and other powerful railroad men, not all of his colleagues were so sympathetic to the abolitionist cause. One of Pinkerton’s closest friends during these years was the vice president and chief engineer of the Illinois Central, a young West Point graduate named George Brinton McClellan. Pinkerton and McClellan were an unlikely pair. In contrast to the rough-hewn Pinkerton, McClellan was sleek, handsome, and dashing, and had led something of a charmed life. Born in Philadelphia in 1826, McClellan had entered the University of Pennsylvania at age thirteen, then transferred to West Point two years later, graduating second in his class. Upon leaving the academy, he served with distinction in the Mexican-American War, even performing reconnaissance missions for Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, a close family friend. Following the war, McClellan joined Randolph Marcy’s expedition to discover the sources of the Red River, only to find upon his return that all the members of the expedition had been given up for dead. The following year, he put his engineering skills to work for Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, exploring possible routes for the transcontinental railroad. In 1855, at the height of the Crimean War, McClellan was dispatched as an official observer of the European armies, later producing a manual on cavalry tactics and a design for a “McClellan saddle,” which became standard U.S. Army issue.

When Pinkerton met him in 1857, McClellan had resigned his military commission, capitalizing on his engineering and railroad experience to secure a lucrative position with the Illinois Central. Though McClellan was seven years younger than Pinkerton, his remarkable catalog of achievements made a forceful impression on the detective, who adopted the young officer as a mentor and role model. Soon enough, their relationship would take a new shape on the battlefields of the Civil War, amid lasting controversy. To the end of his life, Pinkerton would be one of McClellan’s staunchest supporters, declaring himself “proud and honored in ranking him foremost among my invaluable friends.” In terms of political beliefs, however, it is difficult to understand how the seeds of that bond were sown so deeply during their early association in Illinois. Many of McClellan’s views would have struck Pinkerton as shortsighted and timid. McClellan had no particular sympathy for the institution of slavery, and he hoped to improve the condition of “those poor blacks,” but there were clear limits to his resolve. As he told his wife, “I will not fight for the abolitionists.” Even so, Pinkerton embraced him as a kindred spirit. “From its earliest incipiency,” the detective wrote, his working relations with McClellan had been of “the most agreeable and amicable nature.”

Pinkerton was oddly silent about another of his Illinois Central colleagues of this period. Like Pinkerton, Abraham Lincoln was on retainer with the railroad during these years, and the career of the circuit-riding lawyer—like the detective’s—was inextricably linked to the fortunes of the company. Having returned to practice law in Springfield after serving a term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Lincoln often found himself engaged in the legal issues arising from the rapid spread of the railroads across the state, and by the mid-1850s the bulk of his practice was devoted to railroad law.

George McClellan recalled crossing paths with Lincoln on many occasions during these years. “More than once I have been with him in out-of-the-way county-seats where some important case was being tried,” wrote McClellan, “and, in the lack of sleeping accommodations, have spent the night in front of a stove listening to the unceasing flow of anecdotes from his lips. He was never at a loss, and I could never quite make up my mind how many of them he had really heard before, and how many he invented on the spur of the moment. His stories were seldom refined, but were always to the point.”

Whatever his personal feelings may have been, McClellan made his political views clear during the fateful election campaign of 1858, when Lincoln, as the candidate of the newly formed Republican party, challenged incumbent Stephen Douglas for his seat in the U.S. Senate. McClellan and many other Illinois Central men threw their support behind Douglas, a fact that made itself felt during the famous series of debates that decided the contest. As the candidates had agreed to meet in seven different congressional districts, a great deal of travel on the Illinois Central was required. “At all points on the road where meetings between the two great politicians were held, either a special train or a special car was furnished to Douglas,” noted Lincoln’s friend Ward Hill Lamon, “but Lincoln, when he failed to get transportation on the regular trains in time to meet his appointments, was reduced to the necessity of going as freight.” Lamon recalled one ignominious occasion when a freight car carrying Lincoln was shunted off the main track to allow Douglas’s special to thunder past. “The passing train was decorated with banners and flags, and carried a band of music which was playing ‘Hail to the Chief.’ As the train whistled past, Mr. Lincoln broke out in a fit of laughter and said, ‘Boys, the gentleman in that car evidently smelt no royalty in our carriage.’”

At times, Lincoln left a similar impression with the gentlemen in his own car. One passenger who traveled along with him to a debate was startled by the “uncouth, not to say grotesque” appearance of the candidate: “That swarthy face, with its strong features, its deep furrows, and its benignant, melancholy eyes, is now familiar to every American [but] at that time it was clean-shaven and looked even more haggard and careworn than later, when it was framed in whiskers. On his head he wore a somewhat battered stovepipe hat. His neck emerged, long and sinewy, from a white collar turned down over a thin black necktie. His lank, ungainly body was clad in a rusty black frock-coat with sleeves that should have been longer; but his arms appeared so long that the sleeves of a ‘store’ coat could hardly have been expected to cover them.”

It is likely that Pinkerton also crossed paths with Lincoln at some stage during his travels on the Illinois Central, but if so, he did not record it. Pinkerton did, however, follow the debates closely. “The famous contest absorbed public attention throughout the country,” he recalled. “The two candidates indulged in open discussions of public policy, which were remarkable for their brilliancy and for the force and vigor with which their different views were uttered. It was during this canvass that Mr. Lincoln made the forcible and revolutionizing declaration that: ‘
The Union cannot permanently endure half slave and half free.
’”

In fact, Lincoln first made the famous statement while accepting his party’s nomination at the start of the race: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.” Lincoln went on to warn that recent shifts in national policy, including the Dred Scott decision and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, would lead to the spread of slavery throughout the Union if left unchecked.

Even Lincoln’s closest allies recognized that these sentiments, which suggested that conflict between the North and the South was inevitable, sounded a note that was far too pointed and clamorous for the times. “It is true,” said William Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner at the time, “but is it wise or politic to say so?”

Though Lincoln ultimately went down to defeat in the Senate race, his ideas—and the eloquence with which he expressed them—captured the attention of the nation, raising him to national prominence. Lincoln, wrote Herndon, had now become centrally entwined in the issues facing the nation. “His tall form enlarged,” said Herndon, “until, to use a figurative expression, he could no longer pass through the door of our dingy office.”

Lincoln’s increasing prominence signaled what Pinkerton called “a growing sentiment of abolitionism throughout the North,” which, in turn, “aroused the advocates of Slavery to a degree of alarm.” As a result, the new year of 1860 “opened upon a scene of political agitation.” In February, at Cooper Union in New York, Lincoln attempted to elaborate his opposition to slavery while offering reassurance to fractious elements in the South. While he insisted that slavery was “an evil not to be extended” into the new territories of the West, Lincoln acknowledged that the institution was protected by the Constitution where it already existed. He urged his fellow Republicans to “calmly consider” the demands of the Southern states and to “yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can.” The address ended on a soaring note: “Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

The speech received a rapturous reception and helped to establish Lincoln in the East as a possible contender in the upcoming presidential contest. “Mr. Lincoln is one of Nature’s orators,” wrote Horace Greeley, “using his rare power solely and effectively to elucidate and to convince, though their inevitable effect is to delight and electrify as well.” Though he had not yet declared himself as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, his aspirations were becoming clear. “I will be entirely frank,” Lincoln admitted to a friend. “The taste
is
in my mouth a little.”

*   *   *

BY THAT TIME,
tensions had been further inflamed by John Brown’s abolitionist crusade, raising what Pinkerton called “a spirit of fierce opposition in the minds of the Southern leaders.” On October 16, 1859—seven months after Pinkerton had put him on a train in Chicago—John Brown led his notorious raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in the hope of sparking a slave revolt throughout the South. Brown’s tiny force of eighteen men was quickly overwhelmed by a detachment of marines under the command of Col. Robert E. Lee, and six weeks later—on December 2, 1859—Brown went to his death on a scaffold in Charles Town, Virginia. “I am waiting the hour of my public
murder
with great composure of mind, & cheerfulness,” he had written to his family a few days earlier, “feeling the strongest assurance that in no other possible way could I be used to so much advance the cause of God; & of humanity.”