On this day 150 years ago Abraham Lincoln snuck into Washington DC amidst the turmoil of another Fourth Turning in US history. He had been elected in November and the Southern states had begun to seceed. His election was the spark that ignited a terrible bloody Crisis. Below is a description of his secret trip into Washington DC to avoid a potential assassination in Baltimore.
We now sit here 150 years later at the beginning stages of another Fourth Turning with the world in turmoil, confusion and anger. The time for compromise and civility had ended by February 23, 1861. Only all out war would settle the issue.
There will be no compromises today either. People are choosing sides. Union versus non-union. Cost cutters versus spenders. The middle class versus the rich elite. Citizens versus despots. Muslims versus Christians. There are surely dark days ahead. Pretending everything will be alright is a fools game.
If you can’t see the writing on the wall, you just aren’t looking hard enough.
On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected as the 16th President of the United States, a Republican, and the first to be elected from that party. Shortly after his election, many representatives of Southern states made it clear that secession was inevitable, which greatly increased tension across the nation. A plot to assassinate Lincoln in Baltimore was alleged. On February 23, 1861, he arrived secretly in Washington, D.C. For the remainder of his presidency Lincoln’s many critics would hound him for the seemingly cowardly act of sneaking through Baltimore at night, in disguise, sacrificing his honor for his personal safety. However, the efforts at security may well have been prudent.
On February 11, 1861, President-elect Lincoln boarded an east-bound train in Springfield, Illinois at the start of a whistle stop tour of seventy towns and cities ending with his inauguration in Washington, D.C. Pinkerton had been hired by railroad officials to investigate suspicious activities and acts of destruction of railroad property along Lincoln’s route through Baltimore. Pinkerton became convinced that a plot existed to ambush Lincoln’s carriage between the Calvert Street Station of the Northern Central and the Camden Street Station of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. This opportunity would present itself during the President-elect’s passage through Baltimore on February 23, 1861. Pinkerton tried to persuade Lincoln to cancel his stop at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and to proceed secretly straight through Baltimore, but Lincoln insisted upon keeping to his schedule.
Pinkerton famously clashed with Lincoln’s friend and escort, Ward Hill Lamon, over the President-elect’s protection. Lamon offered Lincoln “a Revolver and a Bowie Knife” but Pinkerton protested that he “would not for the world have it said that Mr. Lincoln had to enter the National Capitol armed.”
On the evening of February 22 telegraph lines to Baltimore were cut to prevent communications from passing between potential conspirators in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Meanwhile, Lincoln left Harrisburg on a special train and arrived secretly in Baltimore in the middle of the night. The most dangerous link in the journey was in Baltimore, where a city ordinance prohibited night-time rail travel through the downtown area. Therefore, the railcars had to be horse-drawn between the President Street and Camden Street stations.
According to Pinkerton, a captain of the roads reported that there was a plot to stab the President-elect. The alleged plan was to have several assassins, armed with knives, interspersed throughout the crowd that would gather to greet Lincoln at the President Street station. When Lincoln emerged from the car, which he must do to change trains, at least one of the assassins would be able to get close enough to kill him.
Once Lincoln’s rail carriage had safely passed through Baltimore, Pinkerton sent a one-line telegram to the president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad: “Plums delivered nuts safely.”
Smokey says:
FTES
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23rd February 2011 at 1:00 pm
Administrator says:
Smokey has an 11 1/2 cm pickle.
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23rd February 2011 at 1:01 pm
Administrator says:
Use live ammunition’ against Wisconsin protesters, Indiana official says
By David Edwards
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011 — 10:19 am
One official in Indiana suggested over the weekend that riot police should use deadly force on those protesting Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to strip unions of their rights.
A Saturday tweet from Mother Jones reported on the likelihood that police would soon be clearing the Wisconsin Capitol building of demonstrators.
“Use live ammunition,” a Twitter user named JCCentCom replied.
When confronted, the Twitter user stood by his words, insisting that the protesters were “political enemies” and “thugs.”
“[A]gainst thugs physically threatening legally-elected state legislators & governor? You’re damn right I advocate deadly force,” he wrote.
Mother Jones’ Adam Weinstein later discovered that JCCentCom was a deputy attorney general at the Office of the Indiana Attorney General.
From the writings on his blog Pro Cynic, it seemed that this wasn’t the first time Cox had used over-the-top rhetoric against those he disagreed with.
“But he evinces contempt for political opponents — from labeling President Obama an ‘incompetent and treasonous’ enemy of the nation to comparing ‘enviro-Nazis’ to Osama bin Laden, likening ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Service Employees International Union members to Nazi ‘brownshirts’ on multiple occasions, and referring to an Indianapolis teen as ‘a black teenage thug who was (deservedly) beaten up’ by local police,” Weinstein noted.
In an e-mail, Mother Jones asked Cox to provide some context for his remarks.
“For ‘context?’ Or to silence me? All my comments on twitter & my blog are my own and no one else’s. And I can defend them all,” he replied.
Bryan Corbin, a spokesman for the Indiana attorney general’s office, told the magazine that Cox’s comments were “inflammatory” and would be reviewed.
“We do not condone any comments that would threaten or imply violence or intimidation toward anyone,” he added.
“Individuals have the First Amendment right to post their own personal views in online forums on their own time but as public servants, state employees also should strive to conduct themselves with professionalism and appropriate decorum in their interactions with the public.”
As of Wednesday morning, Cox had declined to provide further explanation for his tweets or writings on his blog.
The battle for union rights was expected to move next to Indiana, where Democratic state senators had fled the state to run out the clock on a bill that would have weakened collective bargaining.
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23rd February 2011 at 1:29 pm
Administrator says:
Gaddafi’s Next Move: Sabotage Oil and Sow Chaos?
There’s been virtually no reliable information coming out of Tripoli, but a source close to the Gaddafi regime I did manage to get hold of told me the already terrible situation in Libya will get much worse. Among other things, Gaddafi has ordered security services to start sabotaging oil facilities. They will start by blowing up several oil pipelines, cutting off flow to Mediterranean ports. The sabotage, according to the insider, is meant to serve as a message to Libya’s rebellious tribes: It’s either me or chaos.
Two weeks ago this same man had told me the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt would never touch Libya. Gaddafi, he said, had a tight lock on all of the major tribes, the same ones that have kept him in power for the past 41 years. The man of course turned out to be wrong, and everything he now has to say about Gaddafi’s intentions needs to be taken in that context.
(See “The Rule of Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi.”)
The source went on and told me that Gaddafi’s desperation has a lot to with the fact that he now can only count on the loyalty of his tribe, the Qadhadhfa. And as for the army, as of Monday he only has the loyalty of approximately 5,000 troops. They are his elite forces, the officers all handpicked. Among them is the unit commanded by his second youngest son Khamis, the 32nd Brigade. (The total strength of the regular Libyan army is 45,000.)
My Libyan source said that Gaddafi has told people around him that he knows he cannot retake Libya with the forces he has. But what he can do is make the rebellious tribes and army officers regret their disloyalty, turning Libya into another Somalia. “I have the money and arms to fight for a long time,” Gaddafi reportedly said.
(See TIME’s special report “The Middle East in Revolt.”)
As part of the same plan to turn the tables, Gaddafi ordered the release from prison of the country’s Islamic militant prisoners, hoping they will act on their own to sow chaos across Libya. Gaddafi envisages them attacking foreigners and rebellious tribes. Couple that with a shortage of food supplies, and any chance for the rebels to replace Gaddafi will be remote.
(See TIME’s exclusive interview with Gaddafi.)
My Libyan source said that in order to understand Gaddafi’s state of mind we need to understand that he feels deeply betrayed by the media, which he blames for sparking the revolt. In particular, he blames the Qatari TV station al-Jazeera, and is convinced it targeted him for purely political motivations. He also feels betrayed by the West because it has only encouraged the revolt. Over the weekend, he warned several European embassies that if he falls, the consequence will be a flood of African immigration that will “swamp” Europe.
(Comment on this story.)
Pressed, my Libyan source acknowledged Gaddafi is a desperate, irrational man, and his threats to turn Libya into another Somalia at this point may be mostly bluffing. On the other hand, if Gaddafi in fact enjoys the loyalty of troops he thinks he has, he very well could take Libya to the brink of civil war, if not over.
Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer, is TIME.com’s intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower.
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23rd February 2011 at 1:55 pm
Smokey says:
Administrator,
Check out these charts. Right up your alley.
You’ll nut on this shit.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
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23rd February 2011 at 6:56 pm
llpoh says:
Smokey – those charts are a load of shit. Notice how NOWHERE do they show what percentage of taxes each group actually pays. The top 20% pays virtually all of the tax paid, while the bottom 50% pays not a fucking thin dime. The “bottom 80%” chart that they show about how much more they pay comes out to about $30 per person. What a load of absolute horseshit.
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23rd February 2011 at 7:17 pm
Dave says:
Motherfucking Jones? Get real. David Korn looks like a chimp and lisps like a queen. He wouldn’t know the truth if it smacked him on the ass. Why is it the same people who decry the race card are all for the class warfare card?
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23rd February 2011 at 7:44 pm
Dave says:
I’ll be all for taking all that money from the “wealthy, filthy bankers, wall streeters, dictators etc.” as soon as you all will be willing to pile it up in the middle of the square and burn it in front of the FSA! But take it just to redustribute it? Fuck no!
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23rd February 2011 at 7:53 pm
howard in nyc says:
allen pinkerton ES. notorious bullshitter and self-promoter. today he would be the head of TSA.
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23rd February 2011 at 11:36 pm
bigargon says:
Agree with you Howard.
General McClellan used Pinkerton for his military intelligence and constantly overestimated Lee’s forces.
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23rd February 2011 at 5:13 am