IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREAT TRAGEDY
As we all now know, there was never a more fearless man than Abraham Lincoln, but so bitter and so threatening were his enemies that it was believed by his friends that the Presidency should not be endangered by taking any chances as to his assassination on the way to Washington, for his inauguration. Open boasts were widely made that he would never be inaugurated. Assassination was especially threatened if he should pass through Baltimore, and it was thought best by the managers of his transportation that it should not be known when he passed through Baltimore.
Evidence was uncovered that a band of sworn assassins, headed by a man calling himself Orsini, was to throw the train from the track somewhere between Philadelphia and Baltimore, and then do their monstrous deed. If this failed, they were to mingle with the crowds about the carriage and at the first chance assassinate him, by discharging pistols at him and then throwing hand grenades. In the confusion they expected to make their escape to a vessel awaiting them in the harbor.
The plot was defeated by the managers of the journey sending Lincoln back to Philadelphia from Harrisburg, while all who might be watching him as spies for the plotters thought him to be asleep in a Harrisburg hotel. At Philadelphia he was placed on board a night train for Washington, where he arrived safely the next morning.
It was here at Baltimore, where there was such opposition to the preservation of the Union, that a delegation was some time later sent to Lincoln, demanding that no more troops pass through Maryland. Lincoln replied that the troops had to go to their destination, and, since they could neither go under nor over Maryland, they would have to go through it. Another delegation demanded that all hostilities should cease, and the controversy be left in the hands of Congress, otherwise seventy-five thousand men would oppose any more troops going through Maryland.
President Lincoln assured them that hostilities would not cease until the rebellion was ended, and that he supposed they had room on the soil of Maryland to bury seventy-five thousand men.
This unequivocal language ended such conferences and deputations.
These stupendous difficulties crowding upon Lincoln in the opening of the war, the opposition of powerful men, and the chaos into which the country had been thrown by the slavery agitation are subjects for political history, and were the trying out of the great soul which seemed to have been built up for that purpose from every experience in the living of men.
General Scott had charge of the inaugural ceremonies and the baffled conspirators, scattered by the police, left their hideous work to be done for a no less monstrous purpose four years later.