The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War (34 page)

Mrs. Warne was filled with misgivings as Judd rose to leave. She repeated her warning about keeping Pinkerton’s concerns quiet. Judd offered no promises, saying only that he would return with further instructions later that evening. This was far from reassuring, but for the moment Mrs. Warne had little choice but to stand aside and hope that he would honor Pinkerton’s wishes. As the door closed behind Judd, Mrs. Warne found herself alone with Edward Sanford, whose own curiosity had been inflamed by Pinkerton’s message. Based on his business relationship with the agency, Sanford believed he was entitled to Mrs. Warne’s full confidence. “Now,” he said, with an air of getting down to business, “what is the trouble?” Once again, Mrs. Warne found herself deflecting questions about the drama unfolding in Baltimore. She insisted that she had merely come to New York as a courier for Pinkerton, and “that was all I had to say on [the] business.” Sanford was far from satisfied with this answer. As he pressed harder, Mrs. Warne grew impatient, having covered much of the same ground with Judd moments earlier. “There is no reason why I should tell all I know,” she said tersely. “I have no more to say.”

Sanford pounced on this statement as an admission that Mrs. Warne knew more than she was telling. “There
is
something more,” he insisted, his temper flaring. “If you will only tell me how you are situated, and what you are doing at Baltimore, I can better judge how to act.” Mrs. Warne held firm, repeating only that she had “nothing more to say.” Sanford grumbled at this, complaining that Mrs. Warne was taking unfair advantage of him. Perhaps, he said, she had entangled so many men with her wily deceits that she could no longer be “roped” herself. Mrs. Warne answered him with a laugh. “It is as easy to ‘rope’ me as anyone else,” she admitted, “but just now I really have nothing to say.” Her lighthearted response had the desired effect: “Mr. Sanford laughed at this, and said that I was a strange woman.” To her relief, his anger had vanished, and he now “seemed good-natured again.”

In fact, Mrs. Warne was paying the price for carrying out Pinkerton’s orders to the letter and adhering to his increasingly impracticable demands for secrecy. Both Sanford and Judd were powerful men who were used to getting their own way, and who would have been unaccustomed to such treatment from a young woman, no matter how skilled at “roping” she may have been. Pinkerton had placed her in the untenable position of securing their cooperation on a vague promise of evidence to come. Her skill and tact may be gauged by the fact that Sanford now turned to her for advice in writing a dispatch to Pinkerton, pledging his full support in whatever lay ahead. Sanford also offered the services of a “young attaché” named George H. Burns, who had carried messages back and forth to Mrs. Warne earlier in the day. Burns, Sanford explained, would be able to take full control of the telegraph wires carrying messages in and out of Baltimore, allowing Pinkerton to monitor the lines or cut off communications entirely if he saw fit. “He was [now] very friendly,” Mrs. Warne wrote, “and stayed until after 10:00, when he bade me good night.”

Pausing at the door, Sanford tried one last time to draw out further information, expressing surprise that Pinkerton and Mrs. Warne were so “frightened” by what they had discovered in Baltimore. “I suppose he thought now that I would go on and tell him all I knew, but I said nothing,” Mrs. Warne declared, “only that we were not frightened, and what was more I had never known Mr. Pinkerton to
be
frightened.” Sanford took this rebuff in good humor, then left, promising to keep in close contact.

Sanford had barely closed the door behind him when a telegram arrived from Pinkerton. Mrs. Warne read it with rising dread, knowing that it would touch off a fresh round of difficulties. “I immediately sent for Judd,” she recalled, “who came at once to my room.” Closing the door behind her, Mrs. Warne passed over the folded telegraph slip, which read:

“Tell Judd I meant all I said, and that today they offer ten for one, and twenty for two.”

Judd did not have to be told the meaning of this cryptic message. Pinkerton was simply reporting the latest word from the streets of Baltimore, where the local “sporting men” were setting odds that Lincoln would not pass through the city with his life.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE MUSIC AGENT

I was advised on Thursday morning of a plot in Baltimore to assassinate the President-elect on his expected arrival there.… I sent Fred to apprise him of it.

—WILLIAM H. SEWARD, in a letter to his family, February 23, 1861

AS THE SUN ROSE
on the clear and chilly morning of Wednesday, February 20, New York’s City Hall and the Astor House hotel appeared to be staring each other down across the wide expanse of Broadway. The imposing bulk of City Hall put its best face forward with a brilliant facade of Massachusetts marble, but at the rear the building gave way to more economical Newark brownstone, reflecting a shortage of funds during construction. By contrast, the stolid granite exterior of the Astor House—with its Doric columns and entablature—masked a gleaming modern interior of black walnut, with a tree-shaded central courtyard under a high rotunda of cast-iron and glass. In between the two landmarks, white slabs of a shiny pavement known as Russ created a slick surface, treacherous in wet weather, where even the horses were known to lose their footing.

At eleven o’clock that morning, Lincoln emerged from the Astor House and was driven the short distance across Broadway in an open carriage, “amid the most enthusiastic cheering” of the crowds gathered outside, to attend a reception at City Hall. On this occasion, Lincoln’s host would be Fernando Wood, the charismatic and crafty mayor of New York City, whom a colleague would recall as “the handsomest man I ever saw, and the most corrupt man that ever sat in the Mayor’s chair.”

Mayor Wood, who had pointedly declined to welcome Lincoln to the city the previous day, now received him in the lavish Governor’s Room on the second floor, availing himself of the many symbolic features of the room: “Mr. Lincoln entered, hat in hand, and advanced to where Mayor Wood was posted,” reported the
New York Times,
“behind Washington’s writing desk, and immediately in front of Governor Seward’s portrait.” Backed by the stern full-length image of Seward, New York’s most outspoken proponent of compromise, Wood took the occasion to deliver a lecture on the “political divisions” that had “sorely afflicted” his city, and expressed concern that “the present supremacy of New York may perish” if the Union should be dissolved. “To you,” he told the president-elect, “we look for a restoration of fraternal relations between the States, only to be accomplished by peaceful and conciliatory means—aided by the wisdom of God.”

A murmur of disapproval ran through the room at this high-handed moralizing, but Lincoln, according to the
Times,
managed to preserve his “characteristically thoughtful look” until Wood concluded his remarks. Now, as he made to reply, he “brightened his face with a pleasant smile,” and expressed gratitude for the kind reception he had received in a city whose residents “do not, by a large majority, agree with me in political sentiment.” Nevertheless, he continued, he believed that New Yorkers stood with him in support of the “great principles” underpinning the government. “In regard to the difficulties that confront us at this time,” he declared, “I can only say that I agree with the sentiments expressed by the Mayor. In my devotion to the Union, I hope I am behind no man in the nation … There is nothing that could ever bring me to consent—willingly to consent—to the destruction of this Union, in which not only the great City of New York, but the whole country has acquired its greatness, unless it would be that thing for which the Union itself was made.” He then expanded on this last remark with a graceful play on the familiar metaphor of a “ship of state”: “I understand that the ship is made for the carrying and preservation of the cargo, and so long as the ship is safe with the cargo it shall not be abandoned. This Union shall never be abandoned unless the possibility of its existence shall cease to exist, without the necessity of throwing passengers and cargo overboard.”

For many New Yorkers, these aptly chosen words marked a turning point. The previous day, the Reverend Irenaeus Prime, an editor of the
New York Observer,
had expressed “overwhelming” disappointment at the sight of Lincoln, “looking weary, sad, feeble and faint” as he passed along Fifth Avenue. “He did not look to me to be the man for the hour.” Today, however, the Reverend Prime found himself duly converted. “Mr. Lincoln’s reply was so modest, firm, patriotic, and pertinent, that my fears of the day before began to subside, and I saw in this new man a promise of great things to come.”

That sense of promise was much in evidence at the reception that followed Lincoln’s remarks, during which some five thousand New Yorkers were hurried through the Governor’s Room as if “discharged by a piece of ordnance.” It was amusing, said the
Times,
to see “the bewildered look of the injected visitors” as they were hustled through the receiving line by police and soldiers. Lincoln shook hands and exchanged pleasantries for the better part of two hours, then followed this effort with a speech from the second-floor balcony of City Hall. Once again, the careful preparations of Superintendent John Kennedy were much in evidence. At the conclusion of the speech, a line of officers “suddenly faced outwards,” rapidly clearing a path for Lincoln’s exit.

Under Kennedy’s watchful eye, Lincoln enjoyed one of the smoothest days of his journey as he made his rounds in New York. At the Astor House that morning, he had greeted a ninety-four-year-old supporter who had voted in every presidential election to date, going all the way back to George Washington. That afternoon, he accepted a pair of new hats from rival manufacturers, and diplomatically avoided expressing a preference between the two: “They mutually surpassed each other,” he managed to say. Mrs. Lincoln and the boys, meanwhile, accepted an invitation from P. T. Barnum to visit his celebrated “American Museum” on Broadway at Ann Street, where the exhibitions at that time included Major Little Finger—a “less intelligent” relation of Tom Thumb—as well as “The Great Grizzly Mammoth Bear Samson,” said to weigh two thousand pounds. Seven-year-old Tad declined to join the visit at the last moment, claiming that he had seen more than enough bears back home in Springfield.

That evening, Lincoln dined in unaccustomed luxury at the Astor House with vice president–elect Hannibal Hamlin, whose own inaugural journey from Maine had brought him to New York that afternoon. Hamlin would recall that Lincoln appeared bemused when confronted with a plate of oysters on the half shell. “Well,” he remarked, “I don’t know that I can manage these things, but I guess I can learn.” Afterward, both men attended a performance of Verdi’s
A Masked Ball
at the Academy of Music, slipping into their box after the curtain rose on the first act. Curious patrons subjected the pair to a “double-barreled opera glass attack,” which was followed, as word of their presence spread, by a rousing chorus of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Lincoln, exhausted by the day’s labors, ducked out before the end of the performance, and gave Hamlin the job of addressing a crowd of supporters gathered outside the hotel.

*   *   *

KATE WARNE,
also exhausted from her exertions in New York, had made her way back to Baltimore to report to Pinkerton by that time. “I went to bed tired,” she said of her efforts the previous evening, after talking long into the night with Norman Judd at the Astor House. Judd’s concerns about Lincoln’s safety had been reignited by Pinkerton’s “ten for one” telegram, reporting the odds given in Baltimore’s betting shops that Lincoln could not pass through the city alive. Though Pinkerton had intended simply to impress Judd with the gravity of the situation, so as to ensure the politician’s full cooperation, the message brought Judd to the edge of panic. Though he stopped short of carrying the message straight to Lincoln, he told Mrs. Warne that he wanted her to meet with Hannibal Hamlin as soon as he reached New York. “I said that it would never do,” Mrs. Warne reported, adding firmly “that I could not say anything more to Hamlin than I had said to him.” Seeing that she would not budge, Judd’s anxiety eventually exhausted itself. It was agreed that Mrs. Warne would leave for Baltimore on a morning train, as planned, and make arrangements for Pinkerton to rendezvous with Judd in Philadelphia, Lincoln’s next stop. The time and place of the meeting would have to be arranged on arrival, but Judd knew that he would not be hard to find: “I informed her,” he later recalled, “that I should be in the carriage with Mr. Lincoln” as he greeted the citizens of Philadelphia.

Mrs. Warne would not have been the only detective working late that night. New York’s police superintendent, John Kennedy, was also said to be laboring “deep into the weary hours” to ensure that Lincoln’s remaining time in the city passed without incident. According to the
Times,
Lincoln had “frequently expressed his admiration of the excellent police arrangements” throughout his stay, and he even had Kennedy brought to the Astor House so that he “might be complimented as he deserved.” Kennedy accepted the thanks gladly, but assured Lincoln that he and his men had simply been carrying out their duty. “Well,” Lincoln is reported to have said, “a man ought to be thanked when he does his duty right well.”

In fact, Kennedy was doing far more than his duty. The previous month, he had been summoned to Washington to accept a politically sensitive commission. Capt. George W. Walling, later a chief of police, joined him on the express train to the capital. “During the journey the Superintendent told me of the condition of affairs,” Walling recalled. “I learned that the Washington authorities were uneasy. They had requested that some of the most trustworthy officers of the New York police should be detailed for service in Baltimore to ascertain what grounds there were for such suspicions.” The reason for the concern, Walling continued, was “the state of public feeling in Maryland, especially in Baltimore, through which Mr. Lincoln was to pass on his way to Washington to assume office. Riots were feared, and there were sinister rumors of threatened attempts to assassinate the President-elect.”