“Will the President permit General Scott, without reference to the War Department and otherwise, as secretly as possible, to send two hundred and fifty recruits from New York Harbor to re-enforce Fort Sumter, together with some extra muskets or rifles, ammunition, and subsistence stores?

  “It is hoped that a sloop of war and cutter may be ordered for the same purpose as early as tomorrow.”

  What General Scott envisioned was a show of force; the ship he had in mind was the new U.S.S. Brooklyn, a large steam warship moored at the Gosport Naval Shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia. It was a “screw sloop,” driven by propellor rather than paddle wheels, and carried twenty-one guns. Its captain was David G. Farragut of eventual “Damn the torpedoes” fame.

  This was exactly the thing that Anderson’s men at Sumter hoped to see through their spyglasses, according to Captain Doubleday. “As the insurgents at this period had but few field-guns, and a very scanty supply of cannon-powder, the Brooklyn alone, in my opinion, could have gone straight to the wharf in Charleston, and have put an end to the insurrection then and there.” The garrison at the time had no knowledge of any specific plan involving the Brooklyn or any other warship but nonetheless watched the distant bar closely for smoke from a ship’s funnel or the glint of a tall sail. “If we ascended to the parapet, we saw nothing but uncouth State flags, representing palmettos, pelicans, and other strange devices,” Doubleday wrote. “No echo seemed to come back from the loyal North to encourage us. Our glasses in vain swept the horizon; the one flag we longed to see was not there.”

  On New Year’s Eve, General Scott sent a message directly to the commander of Fort Monroe in Virginia, which protected the Gosport shipyard, ordering him to get the Brooklyn ready and to load it with troops and arms, and provisions to last ninety days.

  “Manage everything as secretly and confidentially as possible,” Scott admonished, and added: “Look to this.”

  Springfield

  The Real Danger

  December 31

  With Anderson at Sumter, the national crisis immediately became more charged. Lincoln’s frustration deepened, fed by numerous tributaries, foremost among them his own inability to direct events in the administrative vacuum left by Buchanan, but also by lesser founts, like the unrelenting surge of petitioners seeking patronage jobs in his administration. Journalist Henry Villard called them “place-wanting cormorants.” A deluge of correspondence threatened to overwhelm him, much of it stained with hatred and carrying threats both veiled and blatant that he would not survive long enough to become president. News reports hinted at plots against the city of Washington itself, with the Springfield Republican conveying an explicit threat from radical U.S. senator Louis T. Wigfall of Texas that “the capital would be in the hands of the secessionists before Inauguration Day.” The proslavery New York Herald added detail to this miasma of menace when it reported earnestly on New Year’s Day that a large Southern force had in fact already been marshaled and was primed to seize Washington.

  Adding to the pressure Lincoln felt was the looming matter of his inaugural speech, which seemed certain from the perspective of the day to be the most important speech of his life, and, owing to his public silence thus far, certain to command the nation’s attention. Yet two months remained until he could deliver it and at last take office. “I would willingly take out of my life a period in years equal to the two months which intervene between now and my inauguration to take the oath of office now,” he told a friend in a moment of unusual despond. In those two months, anything could happen. “Because every hour adds to the difficulties I am called upon to meet, and the present Administration does nothing to check the tendency toward dissolution, I, who have been called to meet this awful responsibility, am compelled to remain here, doing nothing to avert it or lessen its force when it comes to me.” Citing scripture, he told his friend, “My cup of bitterness is full and overflowing.”

  A rising chorus echoed Lincoln’s frustration. His friend and political advisor, Thurlow Weed, through his newspaper the Albany Evening Journal, posited, “Our only regret is, that Mr. Lincoln could not have taken the helm of state, as successor to Mr. Buchanan, on the first Monday in December.” Another concurring voice, this one Southern, was former congressman Alexander H. Stephens, a proslavery Georgian who at least for the moment favored preservation of the Union. In a December 30 letter he urged Lincoln to do what he could to “save our common country,” and advised: “A word fitly spoken by you now would be like ‘apples of gold in pictures of silver,’ ” this last a reference to Proverbs 25:11 in the Old Testament of the Bible. A diminutive man of one hundred pounds or so, Stephens was nicknamed “Little Ellick” and often referred to as “the Little Pale Star from Georgia.” Which he apparently did not mind, once describing himself as “a malformed ill-shaped half-finished thing.” Though small, he was also fiery, and in his mind mighty, always willing to express moral certitude. When a fellow Georgian said, “I could swallow him whole and never know the difference,” Stephens shot back, “If you did there would be more brains in your belly than there ever will be in your head!” In his letter to Lincoln, Stephens warned, “When men come under the influence of fanaticism, there is no telling where their impulses or passions may drive them.”

  Lincoln did get some good news, however, when William Seward, on Friday, December 28, fully fourteen days after Lincoln’s invitation, at last accepted the post of secretary of state, this after “due reflection and with much self-distrust,” as Seward put it. Having thus delayed, however, he had no compunction about now recommending rapid action. “Habit has accustomed the public to anticipate the arrival of the President elect in this city about the middle of February,” he told Lincoln in a letter dated the same day, “and evil minded persons would expect to organize their demonstrations for that time.” He urged Lincoln to forgo tradition and come to Washington “a week or ten days earlier. The effect would probably be reassuring and soothing.”

  But it was not the inauguration that troubled Lincoln. He felt reasonably assured that Commanding General Winfield Scott would make good on his pledge, delivered through an intermediary, to protect him upon his arrival in the capital. The old general with reassuring élan had promised that if any secessionist forces “show their faces or raise a finger I’ll blow them to hell.”

  Lincoln’s concern lay elsewhere. “I have been considering your suggestions as to my reaching Washington somewhat earlier than is usual,” Lincoln wrote in his reply to Seward. “It seems to me the inauguration is not the most dangerous point for us. Our adversaries have us more clearly at disadvantage, on the second Wednesday of February, when the votes should be officially counted.” Here he referred to the constitutionally mandated final count and certification of the electoral vote, to be conducted in the House on February 13, 1861, by Buchanan’s vice president. Ordinarily this would be the most routine of events, a celebration of the constitution and of peaceful succession, but the tensions of the times raised all manner of concern, especially given the fact that the vice president, the man who would count and certify the electoral votes, was Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, who not only sympathized with the South but had been Lincoln’s leading opponent in the presidential election. “If the two Houses refuse to meet at all, or meet without a quorum of each, where shall we be?” Lincoln wrote. “I do not think that this counting is constitutionally essential to the election; but how are we to proceed in absence of it?”

  In light of this, he told Seward, “I think it is best for me not to attempt appearing in Washington till the result of that ceremony is known.”

  * * *

  —

  So ended the year, with none of the optimism that past New Year’s celebrations had brought, only the promise of tumult to come, perhaps even violence. “Oh God save our dear City Charleston,” wrote planter Keziah Brevard on December 29. “Let not a head be bruised by the Northern people—thou canst save us, Oh save us!! This old year truly goes out full of trouble. Let better signs soon gleam on us and Oh that ’61 could bring peace and love to thy people.”

  On New Year’s Eve she had a dream, a nightmare, in which “fearful” clouds drifted overhead. She was standing near the brick oven in her mother’s home. In the corner of her yard she saw fire—“two raging, smoking fires, the flames burning high at intervals.” She cried out. She ordered the fire extinguished. The fear woke her.

  “Now about 2 O’clock A.M.—” she wrote, “and all gloom without—My Country!!! My Country!!!”

  * * *

  —

  In Washington, New Year’s Day was subdued, despite excellent weather: “a fine clear and rather cool day,” according to diarist Charles Francis Adams, who made a point of noting weather conditions in the first line of each of his diary entries. As per New Year’s custom, Adams made the rounds of various homes and receptions.

  He had planned to call on General Scott, but the general was ill “and did not receive me.” Adams made numerous other visits and talked for a time with Senator Seward. “I thought Mr. Seward was graver than usual today,” Adams wrote, “and he talked much of the obligation of the people of this city to make preparations for defense. On the whole, I suspect there is something in it.” He learned as well, to his relief, that General Scott had not been named secretary of war to replace the disgraced Floyd, something Adams had feared. He interpreted the appointment of Joseph Holt as a signal that Buchanan might be planning to toughen his approach to the secession crisis. “This was the only encouraging thing of the day,” he wrote.

  Varina Davis made the rounds as well. This New Year’s Day was for her an especially poignant one. She and her husband, Jeff, who would soon resign from the Senate, were preparing to leave town and return to Brierfield, Davis’s plantation in Mississippi. Varina went to the White House to say goodbye to Buchanan by herself, her husband having vowed never to have any future interaction with the man. She described her farewell as “affectionate.”

  In a letter to a friend, she complained that a pall seemed to have settled over Washington this New Year’s Day. There were no parties or dinners; Southern men now shunned Buchanan because of what they perceived to be his betrayal over Sumter. The city had become a “great mausoleum,” the atmosphere full of “gloom,” she wrote. Varina did not share her husband’s harsh disavowal of Buchanan. “I love the dear old man,” she wrote, “and would like to forget that I do.”

  * * *

  —

  Elsewhere in Washington, Texas senator Wigfall, the fire-eating advocate of rebellion, learned of War Secretary Floyd’s exit and his replacement by Holt; on January 2 he wired the news to Charleston.

  “Holt succeeds Floyd. It means war.”

  1861

  Part three

  PRECIPICE

  (January 1–February 11)

  Use every effort to soothe and tranquilize your principal; do not see things in the same aggravated light in which he views them; extenuate the conduct of his adversary whenever you see clearly an opportunity to do so, without doing violence to your friend’s irritated mind. Endeavor to persuade him that there must have been some misunderstanding in the matter. Check him if he uses opprobrious epithet towards his adversary, and never permit improper or insulting words in the note you carry.

  —The Code Duello

  Philadelphia

  Dorothea’s Warning

  January

  On a Saturday in January 1861, a woman walked into the Philadelphia office of Samuel M. Felton, Sr., president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, with an urgent story to tell, something she had discovered while traveling through the South promoting the creation of more-humane asylums. Her story had nothing to do with insanity, however—at least not the organic kind that consumed her days.

  Felton knew this visitor, Dorothea Dix, from years of prior acquaintance. Out of respect for her work he had given her a rail pass for free travel on his road. Now fifty-eight years old, she was tall and thin, a flagstaff in dark silk. She wore her deep-brown hair parted at the center, drawn back into a braided bun; her facial features were small—not pinched, exactly, but cramped in a way that gave her a vinegary aspect. In contrast, Felton, fifty-one, clean-shaven and smooth-featured, conveyed an affable openness.

  Ordinarily confident to the point of seeming imperious, Dix had found herself uncertain as to who should hear her story, even whether she should tell it at all, for to tell it risked betraying the confidences of others. During her travels she had encountered many Southerners at all levels of society who welcomed her into their inner circles despite her New England roots. She despised abolitionists, befriended slaveholders. While ardently and single-mindedly committed to helping the insane, and convinced that she acted at the direction of God—“I am the instrument to do his holy will”—she expressed little concern for the vastly greater proportion of the South’s population consigned to slavery. Instead she embraced the proslavery ethos of James Hammond and Edmund Ruffin, at one point observing, while traveling in North Carolina, that “negroes are gay, obliging, and anything but miserable.”

  As a result, her Southern hosts spoke to her with great candor about their fear of Lincoln and what he might do once in office. Although for the most part oblivious to politics, even Dix understood that there was more here than simple anxiety. This was desperation. The wild passion for secession was, she acknowledged, a kind of insanity in itself. She told Felton she had found evidence of a rapidly advancing plot to assassinate Lincoln and take over the government. Her deep voice and grave appearance added an aura of credibility to her story. “For more than an hour she related to me what I had heard before in rumors,” Felton wrote. “The sum of it was that there was an organized and extensive conspiracy to seize Washington.” The conspirators would then declare themselves to be the government, Dix told him. “The whole was to be a coup d’état.” She had details: She described how the conspirators had studied the rail bridges into Baltimore and how they proposed also to interrupt the railroad line south of the city, the only north–south line into Washington. Whoever controlled it and the telegraph lines that ran alongside would control all access to the capital from the north.

  Her story echoed reports from Felton’s own men about similar plans they had overheard while working along the railroad’s Philadelphia-to-Baltimore route. They told Felton that secessionists planned to burn railroad bridges and commandeer the large steam ferry at Havre de Grace, Maryland, which carried trains and other traffic across the Susquehanna River. The bridges were made of wood; the ferry was the sole means by which trains from the North could connect to the final forty-mile stretch of tracks into Baltimore, and thus a crucial and fragile nexus.

  Alarmed anew, Felton sent an associate to Washington to meet with Gen. Winfield Scott and convey all that Dix had told him. With Lincoln soon to begin his inaugural journey, the danger seemed imminent. Felton also took more direct and practical action. His railroad and others had long employed Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, founded in 1850, to protect their lines and prevent theft by employees. Conductors, the agency found, were deft at pocketing money from cash fares, a few dollars here, a quarter there. Felton now contacted the agency’s founder, Allan Pinkerton, and asked him to investigate not just the threat to the president-elect, but to the tracks, trestles, and other structures that comprised his railroad, all of which seemed likely targets for sabotage.

  A man of the Railroad Age, Pinkerton immediately set out for Philadelphia, arriving on January 19 to meet in person with Felton. Pinkerton took the assignment. A week later, in a January 27 letter to Felton, he outlined his plan, which hinged on placing “an unceasing Shadow” on the likely conspirators, even in their homes or boarding houses.

  Five days later, on February 1, Pinkerton and eight of his agents, whom he called “operatives,” were on their way south, among them twenty-seven-year-old Kate Warne, chief of the agency’s female detectives, who, according to Pinkerton, could be commanding and vivacious but also possessed “that rare quality in womankind, the art of being silent.” The plan was to converge on Baltimore. There, Lincoln’s train would stop at the city’s Calvert Street Station; he would then have to walk or ride by carriage about a mile to another station, at Camden Street, for the final leg of his journey to Washington. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have afforded an ideal opportunity for a welcome parade to escort Lincoln to his next train, but these were anything but ordinary times, and this was no ordinary city. Maryland was a slave state, part of what was considered the border South, and Baltimore, its principal city, seethed with secessionist zeal. Pinkerton and Felton agreed that it was during that transfer between trains, in a slaveholding city sympathetic to disunion, that Lincoln would be most vulnerable. Moreover, the city’s chief of police, George P. Kane, was an avowed secessionist who made it clear that he had no intention of deploying officers to help protect Lincoln as he traversed the city.

  On the way south, Pinkerton placed agents at various points in Delaware and Maryland to gauge the level of unrest. They followed Pinkerton’s tried-and-true modus operandi: infiltrate and observe. In his manual for training new operatives he called it “Testing,” a potentially months-long process that hinged on the operatives’ “being entirely unobserved and unnoticed.”