He also told Frederick that in his cover letter he was advising Lincoln to change the time of his planned passage through Baltimore. “I know it may occasion some embarrassment, and, perhaps, some ill-natured talk,” Seward said. “Nevertheless, I would strongly advise him to do it.”

  All Frederick knew at this point was that Lincoln by now would be somewhere in Philadelphia. He boarded the next train and headed north.

  “The train, a tedious one, brought me into Philadelphia about ten o’clock at night,” he recalled.

  Along the way he had learned from his fellow passengers and from newspaper reports that Lincoln and his retinue planned to spend that night at the Continental Hotel, a massive Italianate structure at Ninth and Chestnut in the heart of the city, four blocks from Independence Hall. At the time of its completion a year earlier it was reputed to be the largest hotel in the nation, with seven hundred rooms for up to twelve hundred guests. Frederick made his way there through streets crowded with cheering celebrants and resounding with music. “Within, the halls and stairways were packed, and the brilliantly-lighted parlors were filled with ladies and gentlemen, who had come to ‘pay their respects,’ ” he wrote. The crowd seemed to grow especially dense ahead of him, and he presumed that Lincoln would be at its center. “Clearly, this was no time for the delivery of a confidential message.”

  He found Lincoln’s son Robert and introduced himself; Robert in turn directed him to Ward Lamon, Lincoln’s tall and powerfully built bodyguard, who took Frederick by the arm and said he would bring him to Lincoln right away.

  Frederick hesitated; he wanted as private a meeting as possible. At this, Lamon laughed.

  “Then, I think I had better take you to his bedroom,” Lamon said. “If you don’t mind waiting there, you’ll be sure to meet him, for he has got to go there some time tonight; and it is the only place I know of where he will be likely to be alone.”

  * * *

  —

  Elsewhere in the city, on that same day, Lincoln’s aide, Norman Judd, received a cryptic message requesting that he come to another hotel—the St. Louis, on Chestnut Street—to meet a man named J. H. Hutchinson. Judd arrived around six forty-five p.m. and this time found Allan Pinkerton himself. Also present was Samuel Felton, the railroad president.

  Pinkerton wanted this meeting because he believed the details of the alleged plot had grown alarming enough that Lincoln needed to be informed face-to-face. The detective told Judd he was so convinced that an assassination attempt would be made in Baltimore that he believed the president-elect should abandon the rest of his schedule and leave for Washington immediately to upset whatever arrangements the conspirators might have in place.

  Lincoln still had a long night ahead of him full of social responsibilities, set to culminate in a display of fireworks. It was after ten p.m. by the time he was at last free to meet with Pinkerton—roughly the same time that Frederick Seward was making his way to the Continental Hotel. By this time Pinkerton had left his own hotel and had come to the Continental, to Judd’s room, wholly unaware that Seward’s son would soon be in the same building. Judd sent Lincoln a note asking him to come to his room “so soon as convenient on private business of importance.”

  Lincoln arrived around eleven p.m. followed by a large crowd, which one of his associates managed to halt at the door. Lincoln recognized Pinkerton from prior business encounters and greeted the detective warmly. Pinkerton told his story. Lincoln listened intently but was skeptical. Pinkerton watched him. “During the entire interview,” Pinkerton wrote, “he had not evinced the slightest evidence of agitation or fear. Calm and self-possessed, his only sentiments appeared to be those of profound regret, that the Southern sympathizers could be so far led away by the excitement of the hour, as to consider his death a necessity for the furtherance of their cause.”

  When Pinkerton urged Lincoln to leave immediately for Washington on a train scheduled to depart Philadelphia in one hour, he rejected the idea. “I didn’t like that,” Lincoln would later tell an early biographer. “I had made engagements to visit Harrisburg and go from there to Baltimore and I resolved to do so. I could not believe there was a plot to murder me.”

  Lincoln considered the next morning to be particularly important. He had timed his Philadelphia stop to coincide with Washington’s birthday itself. He was scheduled to climb atop a stage in front of Independence Hall and raise the new thirty-four-star American flag. The symbolism was powerful. The flag represented the entire Union, seceded states and all. Only his actual arrival in Washington would have more importance.

  Meanwhile, in Lincoln’s bedroom at the Continental, Frederick Seward waited, savoring the quiet “that was in such contrast to the bustle outside.”

  * * *

  —

  After Frederick had waited over an hour, he was at last retrieved by Ward Lamon for his meeting with Lincoln. Frederick had never seen Lincoln in person, only “campaign portraits,” but now here came the man himself, striding toward him down the hall. “I could not but notice how accurately they had copied his features,” Frederick wrote, “and how totally they had omitted his care-worn look, and his pleasant, kindly smile.”

  The two exchanged greetings. Lincoln made polite inquiries about Frederick’s father and how things were going in Washington. Frederick gave him the three messages: one from his father, one from General Scott, and the report from Col. Charles Stone. Lincoln took a seat at a table under a gas lamp and began to read. Gas lamps were not yet able to cast light directly downward, only up into globes or reflectors, which made reading possible but difficult. The gas made a quiet whooshing sound, like someone blowing air softly through his lips.

  Stone’s report was direct. Its first sentence read: “A New York detective officer who has been on duty for three weeks past, reports there is serious danger of violence to, and the assassination of, Mr. Lincoln, in his passage through the city should the time of passage be known.” The detective, Stone wrote, had only recently come to believe Lincoln might be endangered, “but now he deems it imminent—He deems the danger one which the authorities and people in Balt. cannot guard against.”

  Lincoln read the report in silence with no sign of worry, at least none that Frederick could detect. “Although its contents were of a somewhat startling nature,” Frederick recalled, “he made no exclamation, and I saw no sign of surprise in his face.” Frederick was unaware of Lincoln’s meeting earlier that night with Allan Pinkerton.

  Lincoln read the report through, then read it again. He turned to Frederick.

  “Did you hear anything about the way this information was obtained?” he asked. “Do you know anything about how they got it?”

  This was the first of a number of pointed questions that Frederick was hard-pressed to answer.

  “Your father and General Scott do not say who they think are concerned in it,” Lincoln said. “Do they think they know?”

  Frederick could offer little, other than to say that he believed his father’s knowledge of the conspiracy was limited to the contents of Colonel Stone’s report.

  “Did you hear any names mentioned?” Lincoln pressed. “Did you, for instance, ever hear anything said about such a name as Pinkerton?”

  No, Frederick answered; only General Scott and Colonel Stone.

  Lincoln paused.

  “I may as well tell you why I ask,” Lincoln said. He explained that even before his departure from Springfield there had been rumors of trouble. “I never attached much importance to them—never wanted to believe any such thing.” Meanwhile, he continued, Pinkerton without his knowledge had become involved and had begun reporting his findings to Norman Judd. Lincoln told Frederick that earlier that very evening he had met with Pinkerton and heard him warn of “an attempt on my life in the confusion and hurly-burly of the reception at Baltimore.”

  To Frederick this seemed “a strong corroboration” of the danger Lincoln faced, but Lincoln did not see it that way.

  He smiled, shook his head. “That is exactly why I was asking you about names. If different persons, not knowing of each other’s work, have been pursuing separate clues that led to the same result, why then it shows there may be something in it. But if this is only the same story, filtered through two channels, and reaching me in two ways, then that don’t make it any stronger. Don’t you see?”

  Frederick told him he believed the two investigations were independent and that out of prudence Lincoln should adopt his father’s suggestion to change the time and manner of his final train ride to Baltimore.

  “Well, we haven’t got to decide it to-night,” Lincoln said, “and I see it is getting late.”

  Lincoln sensed Frederick’s disappointment at his not immediately heeding the warning. With kindness in his voice (as Frederick later recalled), Lincoln said: “You need not think I will not consider it well. I shall think it over carefully, and try to decide it right; and I will let you know in the morning.”

  Philadelphia

  Change of Plan

  February 22

  In Philadelphia on Friday morning, February 22, Lincoln climbed into a carriage drawn by four white horses and proceeded to Independence Hall. “The President elect had enjoyed a good night’s rest, and felt better for it,” the Philadelphia North American reported, adding that “he came forth fresh as a daisy.”

  A large crowd was already present and demanded not only that he raise the flag, as planned, but also make a speech, which he had not planned. He obliged. As often happened when he spoke extemporaneously—as had happened in Indianapolis—he let down his guard. A reporter for the Philadelphia Daily Evening Bulletin noted that he spoke “in a low tone, hardly audible.”

  He was deeply moved, he said, to find himself standing in the place where the nation was founded. “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”

  A loud cheer rose from his audience.

  He explained that the struggle for independence and the enduring nature of the resulting confederation of states had often led him to ponder what guiding principle had made it so durable. “It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother land,” he said, “but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time.”

  Great applause, here.

  “It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.”

  Another round of cheering.

  “This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.

  “Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can help to save it. If it can’t be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But, if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle”—he slapped a hand against his knee—“I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it.”

  * * *

  —

  He ascended a special platform erected around a tall flagstaff outside the hall. The crowd had multiplied. Surrounding trees were ornamented with men. Lincoln removed his coat and hauled the flag up hand over hand. The resulting cheers were described by one observer as “maniacal” and resounded for minutes.

  The thing that lingered was Lincoln’s reference to equality, the uniquely American promise “that all should have an equal chance.” A reporter for the New York Herald was quick to discern the greater meaning of Lincoln’s remark: Fulfillment of that promise, he wrote, meant “nothing more or less than the progressive steps of African emancipation.”

  * * *

  —

  That morning Lincoln agreed to alter his schedule in accord with a plan put forth by Pinkerton and Norman Judd. First, however, he insisted on fulfilling his obligations in Harrisburg, where he was to speak to the state legislature.

  Under the new plan, Lincoln would then leave Harrisburg in secret on a special train bound for Philadelphia to catch Samuel Felton’s regularly scheduled midnight express to Baltimore, which would arrive at the city’s Calvert Street station at three-thirty in the morning. There, before dawn, he would change trains for the final run to Washington.

  Lincoln understood there was a political risk in seeming to sneak into the capital, especially when the rest of the journey had been so public. This did not daunt him. “Unless there are some other reasons besides fear of ridicule,” he said, “I am disposed to carry out Judd’s plan.”

  Fort Sumter

  Salute

  February 22

  For the men at Fort Sumter, the stress and fatigue of heavy work and constantly being on guard was taking an increasing toll. Asst. Surgeon Crawford had always been in robust health, but the stress was wearing him down. “If we get out of this place safely I must have some holiday,” Crawford wrote to his brother. “I need rest and quiet. My throat still burns like a coal and my general health for the first time in my service is not good. My heart is sad at the condition of the country and as far as I can see there is no prospect of better times.”

  He made no effort to reassure his brother. “You have cause for all your concern for us, for we daily, I may say hourly anticipate an attack,” he wrote in another letter. “Everything foreshadows it and it cannot be long postponed. We have not been reinforced and you ask with great pertinence, Why. Why indeed. Simply because the ‘don’t initiate’ policy of Mr. Buchanan has led us on by degrees to the point at which to reinforce us would require an army and a general battle.” The Carolinians were working at a furious pace twenty-four hours a day, Crawford wrote. “I have just looked over at their works at Cummings Point. They look like bees, so large a force is at work there.”

  Crawford expressed a degree of bitterness, leavened with pride, and made it clear that he had no illusions about the subtext of what was occurring. “We are to be left to ourselves and our own exertions as a sacrifice to turn public opinion against those who attack us, and then if possible save the border states and the Union,” he wrote. “But there is a power behind the throne, the first gun fired at our fort will call the country to arms; the bugle that sounds the attack upon us will echo along the slopes of the Alleghenies, and the granite hills of the North, along the shores of the great lakes, and far away on the rolling prairies of the west and the earth will shake with the tread of armed men.”

  His foremost hope, he told his brother, is that “we come honorably out of our difficulties. That is my earnest prayer now.”

  * * *

  —

  On Friday, February 22, Major Anderson broke his commitment to conserving ammunition and authorized his gun crews to fire a salute in honor of George Washington’s birthday.

  This began at noon. The men fired thirty-four times, one shot for each state, including the seceded states, at thirty-second intervals. “These were loaded with canister and produced a fine effect,” wrote Asst. Surgeon Crawford, who happened to be on guard duty. He directed the fire of guns located at Sumter’s gate. Spectators crowded the ramparts of the opposing forts now in Confederate hands, Crawford noted, and “drew their inferences as to what shot and shell would do from the same sources.”

  Diligent always, Major Anderson wrote a message to his superiors notifying them of the tribute, even as the guns were booming and gusting white smoke into the air.

  * * *

  —

  “The insolent wretch!” wrote Mary Chesnut in her diary when she learned of Anderson’s salute several days later. “Anderson fired 34 guns for all the original United States—in utter scorn of our ‘Confederate States.’ ”

  Washington

  One Very Dark Night

  February 22

  On the way to Harrisburg, Lincoln stopped in Leaman Place, Pennsylvania, near Lancaster. He was so hoarse he could barely speak. The waiting crowd, said to number five thousand, called instead for his wife to appear, at which point, according to the Lancaster Daily Evening Press, “Mr. L. brought her out, and said he had concluded to give them ‘the long and the short of it!’ This remark—alluding to the disparity between his height and hers—produced a loud burst of laughter, followed by enthusiastic cheers as the train moved off.”

  This was Friday, February 22, the last day before Lincoln’s arrival in Washington. After Harrisburg, he was to travel in secret, accompanied only by his putative bodyguard Ward Lamon. The rest of his retinue would follow on the scheduled train and reach Baltimore at midday. “Tomorrow we enter slave territory,” secretary Hay wrote to a friend. “There may be trouble in Baltimore. If so, we will not go to Washington, unless in long, narrow boxes.”

  Anxiety about the coming inauguration seemed to permeate the atmosphere. From William Seward’s home in Auburn, New York, his wife, Frances, wrote, “I shall not feel that you are quite safe until the 4th of March has passed. I am glad there is but 10 days more.” She added a wry observation about Lincoln’s journey thus far and his propensity for flirting with, and sometimes kissing, young women. “Mr. Lincoln is having a pleasing tour—it must be especially gratifying to the damsels who were kissed in the presence of the multitude. I wish men would not allow women to make fools of them but they do sometimes.”