How History Unfolds on Paper: Important Americana from the Eric C. Caren Collection, Part X

The New York Herald
New York, Sunday Morning, February 24, 1861. Whole No. 8934. Printed newspaper. Folio. 8 pp. Creasing from old folds; separations along center vertical fold, some repairs to same.

Breaking front-page news of a conspiracy to prevent President-elect Abraham Lincoln from assuming the presidency: "Startling Intelligence" of the "Alleged Plot to Assassinate Him" and his "Sudden Departure" for Washington, D.C.

A special dispatch from Harrisburg, dated the day prior, reports, "the city was startled just now by a rumor that Mr. Lincoln had left by a special train...Two hours before the Herald reporter obtained the facts, but was kept locked in a room, unable to use them, until half an hour before this despatch was written. The details of the whole affair were obtained by him...In brief, Mr. Lincoln, the President elect, left Harrisburg secretly at six o'clock last evening, took a special train over the Pennsylvania Central Railroad to Philadelphia, thence took a special train to Washington...The reason for this movement, so extraordinary and unprecedented, is that Mr. Lincoln's friends believe, from information acquired--I am not permitted to tell how--that if he carried out his programme, and left by special train at nine this morning, the train would either be run off an embankment, blown up by grenades placed beneath the track, or some way destroyed...or that, this failing, Mr. Lincoln would be mobbed and assassinated in Baltimore..." Further dispatches report more detail on Lincoln's hurried and secret journey from Harrisburg to Washington, D.C.: reporting his arrival in Baltimore on February 23 in disguise ("Mr. Lincoln arrived here at eight o'clock, incog., and went direct to Washington"), and then his arrival in Washington later that day, where he was received by President Buchanan and other delegations.

On page four is printed Lincoln's February 22 speech in Philadelphia at Independence Hall, stating "that all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated and were given to the world from this hall. I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence..."

Detective Allan Pinkerton, operating undercover in Baltimore during the two weeks before Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, uncovered a plot to assassinate the President-elect as he passed through the city en route to Washington, D.C. Pinkerton's investigation began after Moses Felton, an executive of the Pennsylvania, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, hired him to investigate rumors that secessionists planned to sabotage his rail lines. Disguised as a wealthy Southern stockbroker, Pinkerton infiltrated local business circles and discovered a secret secessionist group led by Cypriano Ferrandini, a Corsican barber. On February 21, Pinkerton informed Lincoln of the threat. Lincoln initially hesitated, insisting first on a public stop in Harrisburg and then Philadelphia before altering his route. On the night of February 22, he agreed to a covert passage. Disguised in a shawl and accompanied by Pinkerton and others, Lincoln secretly traveled by an overnight train through Baltimore under the cover of darkness. To prevent news of his movement from spreading, the group cut telegraph lines along the route. They successfully arrived in Washington unscathed and unrecognized at dawn on February 23, prompting Lincoln to remark upon exiting the train, "Well, boys, thank God this prayer-meeting is over."