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Baltimore, Allan Pinkerton,
and the Plot to Assassinate President Lincoln, 1861
Introduction
On February 11, 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln boarded an east-bound
train in Springfield, Illinois at the start of a whistle stop tour in seventy
towns and cities ending in Washington, DC. While enroute to Washington, Lincoln
was introduced to Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton's National Detective
Agency of Chicago, who had been hired by the Baltimore, Wilmington and Baltimore
Railroad to investigate suspicious activities along the Baltimore route and the
destruction of railroad property. 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,
allowing conspirators to assassinate the President-elect during his passage
through Baltimore on February 23, 1861. Pinkerton tried to convince
Lincoln to cancel his stop at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and proceed straight
through Baltimore, but Lincoln insisted upon keeping to his schedule.
On the evening of the 22nd, telegraph lines to Baltimore were cut to prevent
communications from passing between potential conspirators. Meanwhile, Lincoln
left Harrisburg on a special train, arriving in Baltimore in the middle of the
night. Since a city ordinance prohibited night time rail travel though the
downtown area of the city, the railcars had to be horse-drawn between the
President Street and Camden Street stations. 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."
On the afternoon of February 23rd, Lincoln's schedule train arrived in
Baltimore. The large crowd that gathered at the station to see the
President-elect quickly learned that Lincoln had already passed by and had to be
content with viewing Mary Todd Lincoln, her sons, and John Hay, Lincoln's
private secretary. The newspapers, however, harpooned Lincoln for slipping
through Baltimore in the dead of night. Adalbert Volck, a Baltimore dentist and
caricaturist, was inspired to pen his famous satirical etching, "Passage
Through Baltimore." Volck's image of a startled Lincoln in his nightshirt
peering out of the side of his rail car as it passes through Baltimore has
become part of the Lincoln iconography.
Most historians believe that Pinkerton perception of an assassination plot
was incorrect and Lincoln came to regret that he slipped through the city
unannounced.
National History Standards
Materials compiled in this document can be used by educators to fulfill the
following National
History Standards for Grades 5-12:
Era 5: Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)
STANDARD 2: The course and character of the Civil War and its
effects on the American people.
Standard 2A: The student understands how the resources of the
Union and Confederacy affected the course of the war.
5-12: Identify the turning points of the war and
evaluate how political, military, and diplomatic leadership affected the
outcome of the conflict. [Assess the importance of the individual in
history]
Standard 2B: The student understands the social
experience of the war on the battlefield and homefront.
5-12: Compare the human and material costs of
the war in the North and South and assess the degree to which the war
reunited the nation. [Examine historical perspectives]
Primary Resources
DESCRIPTION: [Antietam,
Md. Allan Pinkerton ("E. J. Allen") of the Secret Service on
horseback].
DATE CREATED/PUBLISHED: 1862 September.
REPRODUCTIONS: How
to Order Photographic Reproductions
COPYRIGHT: Copyright
and Other Restrictions
SOURCE: Selected
Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865
REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Washington, D.C.
DESCRIPTION: Letter,
R. A. Hunt to Abraham Lincoln (Warns Lincoln of assassination attempt)
DATE CREATED/PUBLISHED: January 18, 1861
REPRODUCTIONS: How
to Order Reproductions
COPYRIGHT: Copyright
and Other Restrictions
SOURCE: The
Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. Series 1.
General Correspondence. 1833-1916
REPOSITORY: Library of Congress, Washington, DC
DESCRIPTION: Letter,
Charles Gould to Henry C. Bowen (Plot to assassinate Lincoln)
DATE CREATED/PUBLISHED: February 5, 1861
REPRODUCTIONS: How
to Order Reproductions
COPYRIGHT: Copyright
and Other Restrictions
SOURCE: The
Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. Series 1.
General Correspondence. 1833-1916
REPOSITORY: Library of Congress, Washington, DC
DESCRIPTION: [Charles
P. Stone] (Memorandum pertaining to danger in Baltimore)
DATE CREATED/PUBLISHED: February 21, 1861
REPRODUCTIONS: How
to Order Reproductions
COPYRIGHT: Copyright
and Other Restrictions
SOURCE: The
Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. Series 1.
General Correspondence. 1833-1916
REPOSITORY: Library of Congress, Washington, DC
DESCRIPTION: Letter,
William L. Schley to Abraham Lincoln (Plot to harm Lincoln in
Baltimore)
DATE CREATED/PUBLISHED: February 23, 1861
REPRODUCTIONS: How
to Order Reproductions
COPYRIGHT: Copyright
and Other Restrictions
SOURCE: The
Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. Series 1.
General Correspondence. 1833-1916
REPOSITORY: Library of Congress, Washington, DC
DESCRIPTION: Passage
Through Baltimore
ARTIST: Adalbert John Volck (1828–1912)
DATE CREATED/PUBLISHED: Etching, 1863
REPRODUCTIONS: How
to Order Photographic Reproductions
COPYRIGHT: Copyright
and Other Restrictions
SOURCE: Civil
War Treasures from the New-York Historical Society
RESPOSITORY: New York Historical Society
TITLE: Baltimore
and the nineteenth of April 1861
AUTHOR: George William Brown
DATE CREATED/PUBLISHED: 1887
NOTE: Brown was the mayor of Baltimore at the time of the
riot. See chapter
1 for account of plot.
SOURCE: The
Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay
Region, ca. 1600-1925
REPOSITORY: Library of Congress, American Memory
DESCRIPTION: Published transcription, Pinkerton's Account
of the Plot
DATE CREATE/PUBLISHED: 1866
SOURCE: Norma B. Cuthbert, Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot 1861:
From Pinkerton Records and Related Papers. San Marino: The Huntington
Library, 1949.
REPOSITORY: Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore
DESCRIPTION: Published transcription, Allan Pinkerton's
Record Book, 1861
DATE CREATE/PUBLISHED: 1866
SOURCE: Norma B. Cuthbert, Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot 1861:
From Pinkerton Records and Related Papers. San Marino: The Huntington
Library, 1949.
REPOSITORY: Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore
DESCRIPTION: Published transcription, Judd's Account of
the Plot, 1866
DATE CREATE/PUBLISHED: 1866
SOURCE: Norma B. Cuthbert, Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot 1861:
From Pinkerton Records and Related Papers. San Marino: The Huntington
Library, 1949.
REPOSITORY: Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore
- DESCRIPTION: Plot
to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
DATE CREATED/PUBLISHED: June 1868 in Harper's New Monthly
Magazine
COPYRIGHT: Copyright
and Other Restrictions
SOURCE: The
Nineteenth Century in Print: Periodicals
REPOSITORY: Digitized by Cornell University Library and
the Preservation Reformatting Division of the Library of Congress
See also:
Additional Media Resources
Abraham Lincoln
Research Site. Website compiled by a former American history teacher.
Secondary Resources
Arnold, Isaac H. "Plot
to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln" Harper's Magazine (June 1868):
123-128.
Mason, Victor Louis. "Four
Lincoln Conspiraces." The Century. (April 1896):889-912.
Sheads, Scott Sumpter and Daniel Carroll Toomey. Baltimore During the
Civil War. Linthicum: Toomey Press, 1997.
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Credits
Teaching
American History in Maryland is a collaborative partnership of the Maryland State Archives and the Center for History Education (CHE), University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), and the following sponsoring school systems: Anne Arundel County Public Schools, Baltimore City Public School System, Baltimore County Public Schools, and Howard County Public Schools.
Other program partners include the Martha Ross Center for Oral History, Maryland Historical Society, State Library Resource Center/Enoch Pratt Free Library, with assistance from the National Archives and Records Administration and the Library of Congress. The program is funded through grants from the U.S. Department of Education.
This document packet was researched and developed by Nancy Bramucci.
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