[123] This includes Delaware, 110,420, and Maryland, 599,846.
[124] Marshal Kane and most of the police were reported to be Secessionists. Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, 50, 61.
[125] Lamon says that Mr. Lincoln afterwards regretted this journey, and became convinced "that he had committed a grave mistake." Lamon, 527. So also McClure, 45, 48.
[126] For accounts of this journey and statements of the evidence of a plot, see Schouler, Hist. of Mass. in Civil War, i. 59-65 (account by Samuel M. Felton, Prest. P.W. & B.R.R. Co.); N. and H. iii. ch. 19 and 20; Chittenden, Recoll. of Lincoln, x.; Holland, 275; Arnold, 183-187; Lamon, ch. xx. (this account ought to be, and doubtless is, the most trustworthy); Herndon, 492 (a bit of gossip which sounds improbable); Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, 45-103. On the anti-plot side of the question the most important evidence is the little volume, Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861, by George William Brown. This witness, whose strict veracity is beyond question, was mayor of the city. One of his statements, especially, is of the greatest importance. It is obvious that, if the plot existed, one of two things ought to occur on the morning of February 23, viz.: either the plotters and the mobsmen should know that Mr. Lincoln had escaped them, or else they should be at the station at the hour set for his arrival. In fact they were not at the station; there was no sudden assault on the cars, nor other indication of assassins and a mob. Had they, then, received knowledge of what had occurred? Those who sustain the plot-theory say that the news had spread through the city, so that all the assassins and the gangs of the "Plug Uglies" knew that their game was up. This was possible, for Mr. Lincoln had arrived in the Washington station a few minutes after six o'clock in the morning, and the train which was expected to bring him to Baltimore did not arrive in Baltimore until half after eleven o'clock. But, on the other hand, the news was not dispatched from Washington immediately upon his arrival; somewhat later, though still early in the morning, the detectives telegraphed to the friends of Mr. Lincoln, but in cipher. Just at what time intelligible telegrams, which would inform the public, were sent out cannot be learned; but upon any arrangement of hours it is obvious that the time was exceedingly short for distributing the news throughout the lower quarters of Baltimore by word of mouth, and there is no pretense of any publication. But while the believers in the plot say, nevertheless, that this had been done and that the story of the journey had spread through the city so that all the assassins and "Plug Uglies" knew it in time to avoid assembling at the railway station about eleven o'clock, yet it appears that Mr. Brown, the mayor, knew nothing about it. On the contrary, he tells us that in anticipation of Mr. Lincoln's arrival he, "as mayor of the city, accompanied by the police commissioners and supported by a strong force of police, was at the Calvert Street station on Saturday morning, February 23, at 11.30 o'clock ... ready to receive with due respect the incoming President. An open carriage was in waiting, in which I was to have the honor of escorting Mr. Lincoln through the city to the Washington station, and of sharing in any danger which he might encounter. It is hardly necessary to say that I apprehended none." To the "great astonishment" of Mr. Brown, however, the train brought only "Mrs. Lincoln and her three sons," and "it was then announced that he had passed through the city incognito in the night train." This is a small bit of evidence to set against the elaborate stories of the believers in the plot, yet to some it will seem like the little obstruction which suffices to throw a whole railway train from the track. I would rather let any reader, who is sufficiently interested to examine the matter, reach his own conclusion, than endeavor to furnish one for him; for I think that a dispute more difficult of really conclusive settlement will not easily be found.
[127] Some of the Southern members of Congress collected and recited sundry noteworthy utterances of Republicans concerning slavery, and certainly there was little in them to induce a sense of security on the part of slaveholders. Wilson, Rise and Fall of Slave Power, iii. 97, 154.
[128] Toombs declared, as Lincoln had said, that what was wanted was that the North should call slavery right. Wilson, Rise and Fall of Slave Power, iii. 76. Stephens declared the "corner-stone" of the new government to be "the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery ... is his natural and normal condition;" and said that it was the first government "in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." N. and H. iii. 203; and see his letter to Lincoln, ibid. 272, 273. Mississippi, in declaring the causes of her secession, said: "Our position is thoroughly identical with the institution of slavery,—the greatest material interest in the world." N. and H. iii. 201. Senator Mason of Virginia said: "It is a war of sentiment, of opinion; a war of one form of society against another form of society." Wilson, Rise and Fall of Slave Power, iii. 26. Green of Missouri ascribed the trouble to the "vitiated and corrupted state of public sentiment." Ibid. 23. Iverson of Georgia said it was the "public sentiment" at the North, not the "overt acts" of the Republican administration, that was feared; and said that there was ineradicable enmity between the two sections, which had not lived together in peace, were not so living now, and could not be expected to do so in the future. Ibid. 17.
[129] Historians generally seem to admit that the South had to choose between making the fight now, and seeing its favorite institution gradually become extinct.
[130] Sometimes, though very rarely, the word was used.
[131] See Lincoln's message to Congress, July 4, 1861.