>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
[ Pause ]
>> We're here to have a book talk about NR Books and Beyond series
which is a series of new books that have been published
that have some connection with the Library of Congress or also point
out the importance of good resources and celebrate the outcome
of good library resources, which is often a book and it's a book
that we are able, we hope to not only plug and promote,
but to encourage people to read and to learn more
about the particular field by consulting their local libraries
as well as the Library of Congress.
Today's talk as is -- as are all of our Books
and Beyond talks is being filmed for the Library of Congress website
and there will be a presentation by our author and also a question
and answer period and we hope that you participate in that but I have
to tell you there is a chance you might be part of our website project
if you do participate so thank you for your permission in advance.
[laughter] But that also means that we'd like you
to turn off all things electronic and I will be pleased
to introduce now our speaker and this wonderful book,
which I told Dan I would be happy to be the [inaudible] and point
out there was an advertisement in this current issue
of the New York Times book review about this book and he has lots
and lots of really rave reviews and I congratulate him and am pleased
that we will all be able to enjoy his presentation.
Daniel Stashower is a 2 time Edgar Award winning author
and in this book as you know, he uncovers the riveting true story
of the Baltimore plot and we will learn more about that as we proceed
to hear the story behind his book and to learn more
about what made him create this book for not only our enjoyment
but the enjoyment of everybody.
Dan, as I said, is not only an acclaimed narrative historian
and biographer and an award winner, but his work has appeared
in The New York Times, The Washington Post,
Smithsonian Magazine as well as other publications.
This also is the period when the Library
of Congress has its Lincoln Exhibit up now and I urge you maybe
as you flock out of this room to go across to the Jefferson Building
and take a look at our Lincoln Exhibit.
There will be a book signing at the end.
We will try to end around 1:00 so there is time for a book signing
and that will be the time perhaps for other questions
that you don't get to squeeze in to the question and answer period.
That being said it's my pleasure to introduce our books
and beyond speaker for today Daniel Stashower our award winning
biographer, now a -- one of our Lincoln narratives -- narrators.
Thank you Dan.   [ Applause ]

>> Thank you.
It is a particular pleasure to be here at the Library of Congress.
I spent a lot of time here while I was working on this book.
There was a time when I considered setting up a cot
in the Newspaper and Periodicals Room.
I made use of the Abraham Lincoln papers, the Civil War collections
and especially the records of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
But most of all I relied on many, many helpful reference librarians
who were generous with their time and knowledge and went
out of their way to help me and point out resources
that I would not otherwise have found.
Thank you.
Before I start though, I would like to apologize
if I seem a little bleary this morning.
I started the day at 3:30 in Chicago.
[laughter] As some of you will know, a thread that runs
through this story is a 13 day train ride that Abraham Lincoln took
from Illinois to Washington, D.C. and I feel
as if I stand before you here [laughter] now
with a fresh perspective [laughter] on this having begun the day
at 3:30 a.m. Lincoln too had to get up at 3:30 a.m.
on at least one occasion during his trip from Illinois owing
to the complex arrangements made by his superintendent of arrangements,
a man by the name of William S. Wood and here's how
that experience was described by John Hay,
Lincoln's personal secretary, who was with him on that journey.
He had this to say.
"We were compelled to rise at 4 a.m. At that hour,
the waking human heart yearneth to behold its enemy.
[laughter] At that hour, suddenly aroused men habitually mild wax
vitriolic of temper and demand explanations.
Need I intimate of that weird cluster of men cloaked
and muffled in the dim corridors.
Not one but thirsted for the blood of William S. Wood
as the heart thirsteth for the running of brooks.
I need not.
The anathemas, which were intoned from the double shotted Columbiad
of objurgation fired off by the stout gentleman who had an opinion
to the piping maledictory treble of the thin man
who had lost his spectacles.   Let them lie in the lap

of that silence whereto they have wandered and fallen asleep.
I do not intend to become their historian."
Don't you wish [laughter] journalists still wrote like that?

Okay. First.   The story in a nutshell.

The year is 1861.
Abraham Lincoln has been elected President.
Now stay with me here.
It turns out that there was a period in our nation's history
when presidential elections had a polarizing effect [laughter]
on the population.
Very unlike the perfect harmony and civility of our present day.
So over a period of 13 days as Lincoln traveled by train
from Springfield to Washington for his inauguration, the air is filled
with rumors of an assassination plot.
In Maryland, where Lincoln's train will cross below the Mason-Dixon
Line for the first time, there are rumors that he will be shot
or he will be stabbed or that his train will be blown
up at a whistle stop in Baltimore.   America's top lawman Allan Pinkerton

of the legendary Pinkerton Detective Agency is on the scene.
He's racing the clock.
Lincoln's train is on the way so Pinkerton only has 13 days
to uncover hard evidence of this looming plot before time runs out.
And here's how Pinkerton himself described the danger.


"It had been fully determined that the assassination should take place
at the Calvert Street Depot", Pinkerton wrote.
"When the train entered the depot and Mr. Lincoln attempted to pass
through the narrow passage leading to the streets,
a party already delegated were to engage in a conflict on the outside.
And then the policemen were to rush away to quell the disturbance.
At that moment the police being entirely withdrawn,
Mr. Lincoln would find himself surrounded by a dense, excited
and hostile crowd, all hustling and jamming against him
and then the fatal blow was to be struck."
As the detective went on to explain to William Herndon,
Lincoln's law partner turned biographer,
"The plot had been audaciously simple and efficient.
Excuse me for endeavoring to impress the plan upon you", he wrote.
"It was a capital one.
And much better conceived than the one,
which finally succeeded four years after in destroying


Some of you will be familiar with The Baltimore Plot as it came
to be known but very few will know the story behind the story
and that story beginning with Allan Pinkerton.
Pinkerton is a tough nut.
He's scrappy, grizzled, quick to anger.
He was born in Scotland.
He got into trouble with the law in Scotland
and he came to America as a cooper.
A barrel maker and it looks like he's going to go
on quietly making barrels for the rest of his life.
One day he's out cutting wood for barrel staves and he stumbles
across something suspicious.
The next day he brings the local sheriff back
and together they lead a raid that winds up rounding
up a gang of counterfeiters.
They were making counterfeit coin on this island
on the banks of the river.
Next thing you know Pinkerton is a lawman and soon after that,
he becomes something entirely new, a private detective.
His logo is a stern unblinking eye glaring
out over the words, "We Never Sleep."
Soon that logo, the all seeing eye brings a new phrase
to the language, private eye.
We think of the Pinkertons as hard men with big fists and blazing guns.
You'll remember "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid."
Paul Newman says, "Can you do that?   I can't do that.

Who are those guys?"   They're Pinkertons.

The guys shooting back at the train robbers
from inside the freight car, they're Pinkertons.
The guys knocking heads together during the strike at the steel mill,
those were Pinkertons too.
Sad to say and this last thing, the Union busting has led to a lot
of controversy and some misunderstanding
over who Allan Pinkerton was and what he did.
I had a guy come up to me once and he poked his finger into my chest
and he says, "Allan Pinkerton cracked my grandfather over the head
with a club at homestead.   Put him in the hospital.

Are you going to write about that in your book Mr. Author?"
Well two things.
One, I quite liked being called Mr. Author [laughter] Just -- note that.
Two, what he was talking about was the Homestead Strike of 1892.
This is a truly horrific clash between Pinkerton men
and striking steelworkers in Pennsylvania.
A terrible bloody episode with plenty of blame to go around
and casualties on both sides but I can tell you, for sure,
that Alan Pinkerton did not crack this gentlemen's head --
this gentlemen's grandfather over the head with a club that day.
How can I be so sure?   Well because he was dead.

[laughter] He'd been dead for 8 years.
And it's my contention that dead men crack no skulls.
[laughter] My point is that Pinkerton's story has gotten tangled
up over the years with the darker aspects of his agency's legacy.
Allan Pinkerton, the founder of the agency spent his youth marching
for the rights of working men in his native Scotland and came
under fire literally for doing so.
Allan Pinkerton, the founder of the agency ran a station
on the Underground Railroad helping fugitive slaves
on their way north to freedom.
He was a close friend of John Brown, the Fire and Brimstone Abolitionist.
Even though the assistance he gave to Brown in the days leading
up to Harper's Ferry put him on the wrong side of the law.
Now I'm not here to put him up for saint hood and I'm not looking
to apologize for some of the terrible things that he did
and that happened on his watch and especially later on,
but there's a story here that never gets told.
And it's the story of a barefoot cooper
who becomes a world famous detective
and makes his bones protecting America's railroads.
And one of his biggest clients is the Illinois Central Railroad.
And the Illinois Central also has a lawyer on retainer
and his name is Abraham Lincoln; and thereby hangs a tail.
The bottom line is that Pinkerton and Lincoln came to know
of each other on the way up and ten years on, when Lincoln is being told
that there are men waiting to kill him
in Baltimore he trusts Pinkerton.
Some of his advisors want him to respond
with a crushing display of military force.
One of them says, "I'll get a squad of Calvary, sir,
and cut our way to Washington, sir."   Lincoln doesn't want to do that.

At a time when he still hopes for reconciliation with the South,
Pinkerton offers a better way.
Pinkerton says, "I will get you safely to Washington,
but you have to put yourself entirely in my hands and in those
of my most trusted operative.
And this trusted operative it turns out is not a Pinkerton man
at all, but a Pinkerton woman.   And I love this part.

One day five years earlier in 1956, Pinkerton is sitting
at his desk minding his own business.
There's a knock at the door.
He looks up to see a young woman standing there.
She introduces herself as Kate Warne.
She's a widow, 22 or 23 years old and she's looking for work.
Pinkerton assumes she's talking
about secretarial work and who could blame him?
It's 1856.
Susan B. Anthony is barely out of the starting gate.
But Kate Warne looks at him and says, "I have come to inquire
as to whether you would not employ me as a detective."
Pinkerton -- as my wife who is also Scottish likes
to say -- He's gob smacked.
[laughter] To his credit, he gives her a fair hearing.
"It is not the custom to employ women as detectives", he says.
"How exactly do you propose to be of service?"
And she's ready for this.
She says, "A female detective may go and worm out secrets in ways
that are impossible for male detectives.
A criminal may hide all traces of his guilt from his fellow men
but he will not hide it from his wife and those women, she says,
won't spill their secrets to a man.   But they will tell another woman."

And again and again, she would strike up a useful acquaintance,
become friendly with the wife of a suspected criminal,
slowly pull forth details that were useful to the Pinkertons.
Again and again.
That's what she did and much more besides.
"And on the night in question, in the hour of peril, if you will,
Lincoln was accompanied not by a squad of Cavalry, sir,
but by a resourceful young widow who posed as his sister
and traveling companion."
Lincoln it seems was charmed by this and we're told
that he had something pithy to say when he was introduced to Kate.
He supposedly said, "I believe it has not hitherto been one
of the perquisites of the Presidency to acquire in full bloom so charming
and accomplished a female relation."
[laughter] Well, don't know if he actually said
that but I'd like to think.
Well as some of you will know, this is not the first book ever
to feature Abraham Lincoln.
[laughter] Seen here the day after his safe arrival in Washington
for his first inauguration.
At the new Ford's Theater Center here in Washington as many
of you will know there's a winding, five-story tower
of books about Lincoln 34   feet high.

Not only have there been acres of very excellent books written
by modern scholars but you could build a bridge from here
to Springfield out of volumes of reminiscence
that were written at the time.
Lincoln as I knew him books and no two of them agree entirely
on what happened in Baltimore.   Sources conflict.

Historical agendas collide.
Nobody can even agree on what Lincoln was wearing on his head
on the night in question.
So the fun part, as well as the challenge, of doing this book was
to try to unpack some of that baggage,
untangle some of the crossed lines,
look past the highly charged politics of the moment and try
to get at the substance of what happened.
You may ask, well why should there be any controversy about it?
Well that part is easy.
At the critical moment of the story, February 22nd, 1861,
there were three men at the center of it and all three had reason
to go fuzzy on the details.   The first was Lincoln himself.

This episode had been a public relations disaster for him.
His advisors warned him that he would be ridiculed if he fell
in with Pinkerton's plan and he was.
So Lincoln was anxious to downplay it and move on especially
because he needed Maryland in the Union.
"Public sentiment is everything," he later declared.
"With public sentiment nothing can fail.
Without it nothing can succeed."   The second player was Pinkerton,

who insisted on total secrecy concerning his role
because that was quite simply how he did business.
"Secrecy is the lever of my success," he often said;
and at the beginning of this particular operation,
he wrote to the man who hired him and said,
"On no condition would I consider it safe for myself
or my operatives were the fact of my operating known
to any politician no matter of what school or what position."
It was unrealistic of him once Lincoln became involved in the drama
to imagine that this could be kept quiet.
Nevertheless he did try.
He did hope it could and he extracted a promise
from Lincoln himself that it would be kept quiet.
He believed loose talk
on this subject would put his agents in danger.
He believed the operation was ongoing even
after Lincoln had been safely delivered to Washington.
Loose lips sink ships.
And the third figure is a man named Ward Lamon, a friend of Lincolns.
Lamon came to hate Pinkerton with a boiling passion over the course
of the drama in Baltimore.
By the end he was determined to see Pinkerton deprived of any credit.
So Lincoln you know, Pinkerton you've heard of.
But who's this?
Well, Lamon was this big 300-pound hard-drinking, glad-handing,
banjo-playing lawyer from Lincoln's early days in Illinois
and when the time came for Lincoln to go
to Washington Lamon appointed himself as his de facto bodyguard.
Under his coat he carried two pistols, a large knife,
a set of brass knuckles, [laughter]
and for good measure a blackjack also something called a slungshot,
which was a sort of primitive --
it looks like a slingshot fired from the wrist.
Truly amazing weapon.
Lamon felt that he could handle pretty much anything
that came his way.
Pinkerton saw things differently and the two
of them just rubbed each other the wrong way.
Later when the feud between them had taken on real heat,
Lamon accused Pinkerton of having fabricated the entire episode
to burnish his own reputation.
He wrote, "Being intensely ambitious to shine in the professional way
and something of a politician besides it struck him" --
meaning Pinkerton -- "that it would be a particularly fine thing
to discover a dreadful plot to assassinate the President-elect,"
and he discovered it accordingly.   He went on to say something else.

"It is perfectly manifest that there was no conspiracy.
No conspiracy of 100, of 50, of 20, of 3.
No definite purpose in the heart of even one man


So in Lamon's view if that pesky self-aggrandizing Allan Pinkerton
had left well enough alone everything would have been A okay
and it's too bad that Lincoln such a kindly
and trusting soul put his faith in such a man.
So three different men, three different stories.
It's no wonder that there is confusion about what happened.
So what's the truth?
I will start by reading you two lines from a letter that was written
on February 23rd, 1861, at the very moment that this Plot was unfolding.
Just two lines.
"I was advised on Thursday morning of a plot in Baltimore
to assassinate the President-elect on his expected arrival there.


That letter was written by William H. Seward,
Lincoln's designated Secretary of State to his family
on the day Lincoln arrived in Washington.
Fred was his son who carried a letter warning Lincoln
in Philadelphia where he had stopped for the night.
Seward, Lincoln's indispensable man, the man who came within an inch
of being the republican nominee for President himself.
This isn't Pinkerton spinning a yarn.
This isn't loose talk in some Baltimore barroom.
It's the Secretary of State.
This is the equivalent of Hillary Clinton
or John Kerry speaking to Barack Obama.
This is the equivalent of John Foster Dulles talking to Ike
or Kissinger talking to Nixon.
This is like Dean Rusk telling John F. Kennedy there might be trouble
in Dallas.
Now I'm sorry, I know that I sound like a fanatic on this subject
and if my wife were here, she would jump forward and hit me in the neck
with a tranquilizer dart [laughter]
and then slowly back away while I calm down; but it drives me nuts
when people suggest that Pinkerton somehow sold
that poor gullible Abe Lincoln a bill of goods.
Lincoln was no country bumpkin and although he liked Pinkerton
and trusted him, he wasn't prepared to act, wasn't prepared
to take the dramatic steps that Pinkerton was asking of him
on Pinkerton's say so alone.   He needed a second opinion.

An independent verification and he had one.
More than one as it turns out.
And if William and Fred Seward were here today, they would be likely
to remind us -- spoiler alert --
something bad happened to Lincoln four years later at Ford's Theater
and on that night the older Seward got stabbed in the throat
and the younger one got his head cracked open by one
of Booth's conspirators so I imagine they would be even more fanatical
on this subject than I am.   Of course, there was danger.

Of course there was.   The abolitionist President-elect

of the United States was setting foot below the Mason-Dixon Line
in a slave-holding state for the first time.
There is much to criticize about Pinkerton's operation in Baltimore
and the particulars of the threat are a legitimate subject for debate
but the existence of a threat is beyond dispute.
As the newspaper editor Horace Greeley said,
"There was 40 times the reason for shooting him in 1861 than there was
in '65 and at least 40 times as many intent on
killing or having him killed."
And Greeley finished by saying, "No shot was then fired; however,
for his hour had not yet come."
As for Pinkerton, he came to regard this episode as the highlight
of his career even if as he admitted
to William Herndon he had come upon it by lucky chance.
"From my reports you will see how accidentally I discovered the plot",
he wrote.
"I was looking for nothing of the kind
and had certainly not the slightest idea of it.
But on his tombstone you can see what a modest [laughter] affair this
tombstone is.   One finds the following inscription.

" In the hour of the nation's peril he conducted Abraham Lincoln safely
through the ranks of treason to the scene
of his first inauguration as President."

So why this story at this moment?
I mean, I'm guessing that most of you in the room will know
that Lincoln survived to become President of the United States
and that shortly thereafter the nation was plunged into Civil War
so why tell this story now?   Well there are two reasons.

One, it's a barnburner of a story.
[laughter] It reads like one of the yellow-backed adventure novels
that Pinkerton himself loved to read in the day.
You've got conspirators taking blood oaths at midnight.
You've got detectives jumping off of trains.
You've got the President-elect in disguise steeling through the seat
of danger as Pinkerton called it under the sable wing of night.
That's the first reason.
And the second is this and Dan puts his reading glasses back on
and begins to read in a clear pleasing baritone [laughter],
"The events of 1861 continue to capture our attention not only
for the drama of the plot and its detection but also
because Lincoln's handling of the crisis
and its fallout would mark a fateful early test of his Presidency
with many dark consequences.   The stakes were enormous.

Had Mr. Lincoln fallen at that time", wrote Pinkerton,
"it is frightful to think what the consequences might have been."
And I hasten to point out this is not an actual newspaper.
It is not a Dewey defeats Truman kind of thing, it is something
that one of the mad geniuses at my publishing house whipped up
and I just love it so much that I can't resist.
[laughter] You see how it's got little age marks on it
and the tattered corners and it's properly aged.
I'm just crazy about it.   To continue.

"There is no question that Pinkerton's methods were high-handed
and at times unlawful but many of the criticisms
that were heaped upon him in 1861 would not be expressed
or even considered today.
It is now understood that there are dangers to be apprehended
when a President moves freely through a vast crowd
or rides in an open conveyance.
Those apprehensions did not yet exist at the start
of the Lincoln Presidency.
As one New York newspaper noted at the time,
'Assassination is not congenial to the American character.'
Well perhaps not but it would soon become all too real.
The events about to be related here have been
for a long time shrouded in a veil of mystery."
Pinkerton wrote in a memoir published near the end of his life.
While many are aware that a plot existed at this time,
to assassinate the President-elect upon his contemplated journey
to the capitol but few have any knowledge of the mode
by which the conspiracy was detected or the means employed
to prevent the accomplishment of that murderous design.
Strangely, those words are as true today as they were
in Pinkerton's time and the detective was already swimming
against a tide of criticism when he wrote them.
The distinguished historian John Thomas Scharf chronicling the
history of his native Maryland in 1879 insisted
that Pinkerton's actions had been an insult to the fair fame of one
of the chief cities of the country and expressed a hope
that the matter would soon be resolved,
settled rather once and for all.
I myself am a resident of Maryland and I'm as partial to blue crabs
and Black Eyed Susan's as the next man.
At a remove of 150 years; however, I believe it's possible
to treat this episode without undue risk to the fair fame of Baltimore.
It bares noting; however, that to this day our state song "Maryland,
My Maryland" makes reference to the despots heel and tyrant's chain
of Lincoln and his kind and builds
to a final spirited rallying cry, "Huzza.


[laughter] Lincoln would likely have been amused.
[laughter] "Fellow citizens", he wisely declared in the early years
of his Presidency, "we cannot escape history."
And I thank you and I'd be happy to take any questions.
[ Applause ]   Thank you.

[ Applause ]   Sir.

>> Was anybody ever prosecuted for any aspect of this conspiracy?
>> It's one of the most peculiar aspects of the drama and it is
yet another reason why there is so much controversy, debate,
and confusion over this episode and I do detail it at some length.
The short answer is a whole lot of people
who were high-ranking officials in Baltimore were placed under arrest,
but the men that Pinkerton fingered
as being the conspirators actively involved in it were not.
And in fact the leader of them after disappearing from the scene
for a while actually returned and carried
on as if nothing had happened.
To my way of thinking, this speaks more to Lincoln's need --
and to the entire administration's need to get past it,
not to focus on it, to keep Maryland in the Union and to just carry on.
The episode was very quickly swept aside by the fast march
of events leading up to the Civil War,
not least of which was Fort Sumter.
When the war had ended and the time had come
when people might have gone back and taken a serious look at this,
there was -- Lincoln had been assassinated,
there were those conspirators to deal with
and I don't think they had a taste for stirring the ashes
of the plot that had failed.   Anybody else?

Sir.
>> I'd once heard several years ago that the Commissioner of Police
in Baltimore is now appointed or since then has been appointed
by the governor rather than the mayor because of their involvement?
>> Well yeah.   --

>> And excuse me, could you repeat the question please?
>> If I'm understanding you correctly, you've heard --
this is about the police chief?   >> Or commissioner.

>> Or Commissioner of Baltimore now --
>> Now or since then has been appointed
by the governor of the state.   >> -- appointed by the governor.

>> Rather than the mayor because of the involvements
of the local [inaudible ]
>> I honestly don't know that but I can tell you that the gentlemen
who was directly involved with this, a man named George Cane,
Marshal Cane is an incredibly interesting figure
and an important part of this store.   Pinkerton did not trust him.

Believed that he and the -- his police force would do nothing
when Lincoln came through.   He overheard him saying that he --

that would only be necessary to detail a small police force and many
of the actions that Pinkerton took were based on this assumption
that Cane was untrustworthy.
Well come to find out, Cane seems to have had his own plan underway
for seeing Lincoln passed through without excitement.
He did have a plan and if he had a plan --
of course it's difficult to know for sure --
but if he had a plan then his remarks
that Pinkerton overheard take on a different --
take on a very different construction.
Well there might not be that much need to detail a police force
because Lincoln isn't going to be where we thought he was
at the moment in question.   I will also say that

Cane, a man who showed great bravery
at many points during his career went
on to become the mayor of Baltimore.
So as far as being appointed by the governor, that guy in particular,
although he spent time in prison, he was arrested.
He spent time in prison in the immediate aftermath of the war.
He went on to return to Baltimore and again hold --
hold office, which I think speaks to --
says something about the attitude of moving past it.
Sir.
>> What was Mary Todd Lincoln doing at this time?
[inaudible]   >> A very, very good question.

She's an important figure throughout the story.
There had been talk before the train ride started that she was put off
by going -- by going along.
She did not want to travel with her husband and she didn't want
to have her sons along on the journey.
She did travel for most of the journey on the train with Lincoln
and there was something said in the press to the effect of, you know,
she had been advised by her friends not to do it
but she stoutly declared that she would stand
by her man come what may.
But you flip forward a few pages, Lincoln does what he does
in Baltimore, which is to slip through
and there's some feeling abroad that well if there was so much danger,
Mr. President, why did you leave your wife and family to pass
through on the root you were supposed to take?
You better believe the Baltimore Sun jumped on that.
There were storied that, what gives?
You know? It wasn't good enough for you but you left your wife
and family to pass through?
"And there's a quote that I particularly love,
so there is to be some pluck in the White House even
if it is under a bodice."
[laughter] But again there are indications and the press accounts
of the time, directly conflict with each other but there is one account
that says she fell in with the plan of Marshal Cane
about whom you were asking that she did get off the train ahead
of when it pulled in to the station.
Had lunch in the home of a prominent citizen of Baltimore and then went
to the station where she picked up the second leg of the journey
and went on safely to Washington, which was a very elegant way
of sidestepping the problem.   Anyone else?

>> Did you source the Pinkerton files and documents?
Are there any source documents that Pinkerton is [inaudible]
>> Yes. There were field reports at the time
which ironically survived specifically because he lent them
to William Hurnden for copying and therefore they were not there
when Pinkerton's -- when the bulk of Pinkerton's papers were destroyed
in the Chicago fire; however, those papers then fell into the hands
of Ward Lamon, the man who came to hate him so much
and he saw some rather indelicate things that Pinkerton had said
about him in those documents and that was throwing gasoline
on the embers and the feud between them just went --
>> [ Inaudible ]   >> Just went sky high.

No. No. They still survived.   Sir.

>> How does this story relate to the Pratt Street Riots
that just happened the couple months later?
I mean doesn't that [inaudible] an awful lot of credibility
to what Pinkerton was [inaudible]
>> Yes. How does it relate to the Pratt Street Riot April 19, 1861?
Troops from Massachusetts
and elsewhere reached Baltimore from the north.
They had to follow largely the same route
that Lincoln could have taken traveling from one train station
to another to continue on to Washington.
They were attacked; there were fatalities.
It was a bloody episode in which,
again Marshal Cane played a significant role and it was taken
by many to be the clinching evidence that yes, there was a problem.
The idea was that something similar would have happened had
Lincoln come.   It's not as simple as that.

You can't -- it's not -- you can't say because this happened
that would have happened and indeed the mayor of Baltimore
at that time said, you know, if only Mr. Lincoln had appeared
as scheduled in February, said a few soothing words to the crowd
in that way that he has, perhaps this could have been turned aside.
So once again, you know, there's --
there are opinions on both sides of the equation.
Ma'am.
>> Can you elaborate on the Kate Warne [inaudible]
>> She's all over this thing.
[laughter] But the idea and there's one long chapter in here that's one
of her cases that I particularly like but in this role,
in order to get Lincoln safely from -- through Baltimore,
they didn't want to have to charter a special train in the middle
of the night, which would have called a great deal of attention
to itself, particularly at that moment,
would have naturally drawn suspicion and likely have suggested
that there was a person of importance traveling to Washington.
So for one leg of the journey, from Philadelphia to Baltimore,
Lincoln had to travel on a regular passenger train at night.
And in order to travel on that regular passenger train,
they were very concerned about making sure
that nobody was going to pick him out easily.
Well this isn't easy.   He's a very, very tall man with --

who has just grown a very distinctive beard
and is usually seen in a very distinctive stovepipe hat.
So he didn't wear the hat.
He had a coat that apparently he kept bundled high around his face
and Kate Warne was given the job of securing a sleeping berth,
letting it be known that she was traveling with her invalid brother
who was very ill and not to be disturbed during the journey
and therefore was able to keep people away and let him travel
and deflect suspicion from this last minute arrival, this very,
tall gangly figure arriving who needed to be hustled
into the train moments before it left
and was given an excuse therefore not to interact
with the other passengers and with the ticket collectors
and that was her doing.   Anyone else?


Then I thank you for your attention.   Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]
>> Thank you Dan and you're a good storyteller in print and in person.
We all enjoyed your tale and learning a little bit
of history along the side and we're very pleased that the Library
of Congress and especially the Pinkerton diaries,
which I didn't know about, play such a major role.
The next part of the books and beyond is always a book signing.
Books are for sale out in the foyer but we'll have Dan here
at this table and I'd like to form the line this way if we could
and we'll get him started but let's conclude with another round
of applause for Dan Stashower.   [ Applause ]

>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.