The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War (35 page)

On reaching Washington, the two men received a briefing from an official they later declined to name. “With secret instructions from this gentleman we went to Baltimore,” Walling reported. “Mr. Kennedy’s duty was a very delicate one. We were soon satisfied that Baltimore was bitterly irritated, but whether the feeling against Mr. Lincoln was personal enough to make his passage through the city dangerous was hard to determine. The situation demanded closer investigation.” Digging deeper, Kennedy sought out his counterpart in the local police force, Marshal George P. Kane, a man whose loyalties he had already come to doubt. “I ascertained from Marshal Kane himself the plan by which Maryland was to be precipitated out of the Union, against the efforts of Governor Hicks to keep it there,” Kennedy would write. “He told me Maryland would wait for the action of Virginia, and that action would take place within a month; and ‘that when Virginia seceded through a convention, Maryland would secede by gravitation.’”

Kennedy, like Pinkerton, declined to place his confidence in a man who publicly advocated secession. Instead, he instructed Captain Walling to dispatch a pair of detectives to Baltimore to begin working under cover. After giving the situation much “anxious thought,” Walling selected two experienced officers, Thomas Sampson and Ely DeVoe, who began operating under the names of Anderson and Davis. “They were instructed to go to Baltimore, look over the ground and ingratiate themselves with disaffected persons,” Walling wrote. “In other words, to use their own discretion and find out all they could.” The two detectives were to report their findings to Col. Charles P. Stone in Washington. Stone was one of two men serving as a “right hand” to Gen. Winfield Scott. The other, as fate would have it, was Col. Robert E. Lee. (“I do not know what induced me to select Stone in preference to Colonel Lee,” Kennedy would later admit, “but I did so.”)

*   *   *

BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION,
Sampson and DeVoe played their roles with gusto. “As soon as we reached our destination we assumed the role of Southern sympathizers and mixed freely with the secessionists,” Sampson recalled. “We were well supplied with money, very swaggering and loud-mouthed, and soon made friends with a certain class of Southerners whose talk was ‘fight to kill.’ We stayed at the Fountain Inn and for some weeks had a good time. By degrees we worked our way into the confidence of our new friends.”

By the time Allan Pinkerton and his Chicago detectives reached Baltimore in early February, Sampson and DeVoe were already hard at work. For more than two weeks, Kennedy’s men and Pinkerton’s were working on parallel tracks, but the two teams were unaware of each other’s efforts for most of that time. It is likely, given the many points of intersection between the two investigations, that at times Pinkerton’s men were literally tripping over Sampson and DeVoe. Had Pinkerton known of their efforts, he would likely have admired their ingenuity. Though Pinkerton had more men on the ground, the New Yorkers had managed in a very short time to infiltrate Baltimore’s secret societies and military units. The major difference lay in what the two teams were doing with the intelligence they gathered. Pinkerton was communicating directly with Lincoln’s suite as they made their way across the country, while Kennedy funneled his information down to Washington. The fact that Sampson and DeVoe were headquartered at the Fountain Hotel, the name of which had been used to signal Lucius Chittenden on his mysterious dead-of-night errand to Baltimore in mid-February, suggests that Chittenden’s “committee of safety” had direct ties to the Kennedy network.

As matters stood, however, the two teams were likely working at cross purposes on more than one occasion. Both Otis Hillard and Cypriano Ferrandini complained to Pinkerton’s men of being under constant observation by “government spies,” and it is possible that the presence of the New York investigators contributed to this climate of suspicion. On the evening of Pinkerton’s meeting with Ferrandini at Barr’s Saloon—during which the Italian barber had declared that “Lincoln shall die in this city”—the detective’s efforts had been hampered by a “pair of strangers” who appeared to be eavesdropping on the conversation. Their presence had caused Ferrandini to cut his remarks short, and Pinkerton was greatly annoyed at having to remain behind to keep watch over the interlopers. It is entirely possible that the two strangers were none other than Sampson and DeVoe.

In any event, while Sampson and DeVoe worked their way into a company of “Southern Volunteers,” Superintendent Kennedy dispatched a third man to Baltimore, an officer named David S. Bookstaver, who took the identity of a “music agent” with interests at the city’s theaters and concert halls. While Sampson and DeVoe mixed with “rebel roughs,” Kennedy wrote, “Bookstaver gave particular attention to the sayings and doings of the better class of citizens and strangers who frequent music, variety, and book stores.”

For Bookstaver, the situation reached a crisis point on Wednesday, February 20, the same day that Kate Warne returned from New York under orders from Norman Judd. On that day, according to Kennedy, Bookstaver obtained information that “made it necessary for him to take the first train for Washington.” Arriving in the capital early on Thursday morning, Bookstaver sought out the team’s Washington contact, Col. Charles P. Stone. By some accounts, Bookstaver was so eager to make his report that he tracked Stone to his rooming house and pulled him out of bed. In any case, the New York detective soon had Stone’s full attention.

Bookstaver gave Stone a hurried summary of what he had learned during his three weeks in Baltimore. During that time, he had often “heard threats of mobbing and violence,” but he had dismissed much of this talk as empty barroom chatter. Now, he said, he had cause to believe otherwise. Within the past few days, he had learned of a “serious danger of violence” in Baltimore, as well as a concrete plan for “the assassination of Mr. Lincoln” during his passage through the city. Unless something was done, Lincoln would surely die before he reached Washington.

Afterward, Bookstaver declined to record the precise details that had convinced him of the sudden urgency of the situation, nor did he give any accounting of how he had acquired the information. Whatever he said that morning, however, left Colonel Stone thoroughly convinced. As soon as Bookstaver finished speaking, Stone rushed the warning directly to General Scott, who now considered the threat in Baltimore to be an established fact. Bookstaver, he said, had provided “the closing piece of information” that confirmed the dark suspicions he and his men had formed in the previous weeks, being “entirely corroborative” of the thick file of warnings and rumors “already in our possession.”

Time was growing short. Lincoln was due to reach Baltimore in two day’s time, at 12:30 on the afternoon of Saturday, February 23. As a military man, Scott realized that the Baltimore plotters had a crucial advantage. Lincoln’s itinerary had been a matter of public record for weeks, making it all too easy for potential assassins to lay their plans. In order to foil these designs, Scott knew, Lincoln would have to break away from the moment-by-moment timetable he had followed since leaving Springfield. As Colonel Stone declared, “All risk might be easily avoided by a change in the travelling arrangements.”

If this seemed plain enough to a military man, General Scott knew that a politician would see the matter differently. He told Stone that Lincoln’s “personal dignity would revolt” at the idea of making any change to his plans, even “on account of danger to his life.” Stone objected strenuously. “Mr. Lincoln’s personal dignity was of small account in comparison with the destruction, or, at least, dangerous disorganization of the United States government,” he insisted, “which would be the inevitable result of his death by violence in Baltimore.” If the planned assassination were to succeed, Stone declared, “we should find ourselves in the worst form of civil war, with the Government utterly unprepared for it.”

General Scott needed no persuading on this point. The difficulty, he believed, lay in making the case to Lincoln, and convincing him to take the necessary steps. Although Scott had already been in touch with Lincoln several times since the election, he saw that this task would have to be entrusted to someone with greater influence than he had. He quickly decided that Senator Seward, who was also known to be concerned for Lincoln’s safety, offered the best chance of success. In the months following the election, Lincoln had been extremely solicitous of his defeated rival, seeking the senator’s advice on cabinet appointments and submitting a draft of his inaugural address for Seward’s approval. General Scott reasoned that if Seward put his weight behind the assassination concerns, Lincoln might be convinced that he was “not coming to Washington to be inaugurated as quietly as any previous President.”

Having decided on this course of action, Scott jotted a note to Seward. He told the senator that Colonel Stone, a “distinguished young officer,” was acting on his behalf: “He has an important communication to make.” Stone took the message to Seward at the Capitol and then gave him a summary of what he had learned from Bookstaver. Seward “listened attentively to what I said,” Stone recalled, and asked a number of questions. Like General Scott, the senator took Bookstaver’s warning as confirmation of his own fears. He asked Scott to write down his information and invited him to add any suggestions he cared to make. Once this was done, Seward took the paper and hurried from the room.

Seward wanted to get the message into Lincoln’s hands as soon as possible, but he also believed that the situation’s “peculiar sensitiveness,” as he phrased it, required him to remain in Washington. Since he could not carry the message to Lincoln himself, and because he felt that the telegraph wires couldn’t be trusted in such circumstances, he needed a messenger in whom he could place his full confidence. As it happened, there was someone close at hand: Seward’s thirty-year-old son, Frederick.

The younger Seward, an editor of the
Albany Evening Journal,
was seated in the gallery of the Senate Chamber when a page approached and touched him lightly on the arm, whispering that his father wished to see him. “Going down I met him in the lobby,” he recalled. In hushed tones, the elder Seward explained the situation and passed over a brief note he had written to Lincoln, along with the messages from Scott and Stone. “Whether this story is well founded or not, Mr. Lincoln ought to know of it at once,” Senator Seward told his son, “but I know of no reason to doubt it. General Scott is impressed with the belief that the danger is real. Colonel Stone has facilities for knowing, and is not apt to exaggerate.” The senator paused, glancing around to make certain he was not being overheard. “I want you to go by the first train,” he continued. “Find Mr. Lincoln wherever he is, and let no one else know your errand!”

The younger Seward set off at once for the station and boarded a train for Philadelphia, his mind churning with anxiety and regret. “The time had not yet come,” he would later write, “when Americans in general could realize that a crime at once so nefarious and so foolish as the assassination of the Chief Magistrate was possible.”

Seward was fully convinced that Abraham Lincoln’s survival rested on his shoulders, and he had no way of knowing, as he passed through Baltimore on his way north, that Allan Pinkerton was already speeding toward Philadelphia on the same mission.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A FEW DETERMINED MEN

PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN departs today for Washington, and the WINDOWS AND BALCONIES OF THE MUSEUM afford a fine view of him as HE LEAVES THE ASTOR HOUSE AND PASSES DOWN BROADWAY, directly in front of the Museum, so that he will be seen plainly and distinctly. Who will not embrace the opportunity to look upon the NATION’S HEAD, the NATION’S DELIVERER, the PEOPLE’S FAVORITE and FRIEND?

Remember, this is the last chance in New York.

—advertisement for Barnum’s American Museum, February 21, 1861

EARLY ON THE MORNING
of February 21, even as David Bookstaver made his report to Charles Stone in Washington, Abraham Lincoln boarded a steam ferry at New York’s Cortlandt Street terminal for a brief, choppy crossing of the Hudson River to New Jersey, the first leg of that day’s travel to Philadelphia. It was soon apparent, as Lincoln came ashore to a familiar scene of chaos at the landing in Jersey City, that he had passed out of Superintendent John Kennedy’s efficient jurisdiction. “The Jersey police were overwhelmed,” reported the
New York Times.
“Vainly did they brandish their clubs and push the crowd back.” As Lincoln moved toward the train that would carry him south, an enthusiastic “Son of Erin” barreled out of the crowd in a giddy effort to shake his hand. The police detail quickly surrounded the eager Irishman and duly “punched him off the platform” with their clubs, much to the amusement of the crowd. As the multitudes surged again, however, the police line gave way. “It was like being in a hydraulic press,” wrote Joseph Howard. “Verily, our reporter’s bowels ache when he mentally recalls that excruciating collapse.” As Howard and the other “compressed unfortunates” howled with pain, their cries were taken to be cheers for Lincoln.

Lincoln, shielded by his escorts, would have been pleased to hear any sound that could be mistaken for cheering that morning. For the first time, he had entered a state that he had not carried in the election. New Jersey had gone to Stephen Douglas by a narrow margin, and signs of ambivalence, if not outright hostility, were plainly visible along the route. In Newark, where Lincoln paused to give a pair of speeches later that morning, his carriage passed a black-bearded effigy swinging by the neck from a lamppost, together with a placard reading
THE TRAITOR’S DOOM.

By noon, Lincoln had reached Trenton, where a heaving crowd at the train depot “beat down the line of feeble constables” with a mighty rush, swarming forward as Lincoln entered his carriage. Howard reported himself sorry to see Lincoln and his suite struggling in the crush, but he admitted to a certain satisfaction in the distress of the local worthies: “It did me good to see them pummeled, pushed and squeezed,” he wrote.