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From the Inside Flap

times of America's most famous champion of liberty, a man of peace whose fate was to lead a nation at war with itself. Join young Lincoln in the Kentucky wilderness and see how his thirst for knowledge and justice led him to the presidency, where he would be called upon to preserve the Union and abolish the evil of slavery forever.

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1   A Murder Plot in Baltimore   LIKE MANY MURDER plots, this one began with a whisper and a boast.   The whisper of discontent came from many Southerners who were enraged at the results of the 1860 presidential election. Abraham Lincoln, a Republican and a Northerner, had been elected president of the United States. Though Lincoln’s anti-slavery platform had helped him narrowly win the election by carrying the vote in the Northern states, his popularity was sharply limited. As news of Lincoln’s success spread through the country, pro-slavery Southerners angrily cried that his election as the sixteenth president of the United States would mean civil war! The states of the South would never accept Abraham Lincoln, an abolitionist, as their president!   The boast of a plot to assassinate President Lincoln came from the lips of a man named Sipriano Fernandino. He was the house barber at Barnum’s Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland. Like many Southerners, he had been increasingly angered by pressure from Northerners to free the Southern black slaves and to prevent the spread of slavery into western territories which would soon become states. Fernandino believed the entire economic system of the South would collapse if it were forced to give up slave labor. Wealthy plantation owners counted on black slaves to work in their large cotton, rice, and tobacco fields, and they feared the cost of non-slave labor would destroy their profits.   Many Southerners believed that the eleven states which made up the South, and later the Confederacy, would have to secede from or leave the Union, and form a separate country in order to continue slavery. If the South were to secede, the United States would then consist of the eighteen remaining free Northern states which did not allow slavery.   Heated debates erupted in barrooms and parlors about the best way to preserve the South’s traditional way of life. There was an intense rivalry between the industrial North and the agricultural South. Some Southerners quietly agreed that killing President-elect Lincoln before he took office was the solution to maintaining slavery in the South.   Fernandino spoke to many such troublemakers in the weeks following Lincoln’s election. Eventually Fernandino met with a wealthy, aristocratic older man who represented a number of other people like himself. These men seriously believed that a Lincoln presidency would spell disaster for the Southern way of life, and they wanted to prevent Lincoln from taking office in March 1861.   Fernandino boasted that he was just the man to solve the South’s problems of the newly elected president. The barber assured the wealthy man that the South would not have to take such a drastic step as seceding from the Union. With a handpicked band of men, Fernandino said he could destroy Maryland’s railroads and kill President Lincoln, too. Then Washington, the nation’s capital, would be in Southern hands and the North, without a leader, would be crippled. There would be no need for further bloodshed, and the South would be free to continue as it always had.   The wealthy man and his friends felt that Fernandino’s boast made sense. They wanted to avoid bloodshed as much as possible, but they also wanted to stop a president who would free the slaves and thereby devastate the South’s economy. The men offered Fernandino their financial support, but insisted on remaining in the background. Fernandino, delighted with a job that he felt would make him a hero, began to recruit men for the sinister murder plot. Fortunately for President-elect Abraham Lincoln, the barber was careless in his recruiting.   Though Fernandino was careful to tell potential co-conspirators only that they would help to destroy the Maryland railroads, word of the planned murder began to leak out. A railroad worker with Northern sympathies heard of the plot and reported it to his superiors. These men in turn reported their knowledge of the plot to a railroad detective named Allan Pinkerton, a Scotsman who guarded trains for the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad.   When Detective Pinkerton heard about the plot to attack the railroads and kill Lincoln, he immediately dispatched several of his best agents to Baltimore, Maryland to find out more about Fernandino’s plan. Pinkerton’s men, working under assumed names, pretended great sympathy for the South as they chatted with other customers at the bar in Barnum’s Hotel. The secret agents declared that they were ready to defend the South to the death.   One agent named Harry Davies, using an alias, soon found himself in the center of a group of pro-slavery Baltimore men who had an intense hatred for Lincoln. Would he be interested in joining them in a special mission to destroy three Maryland railroads?   Davies agreed heartily, hoping the Baltimore men would reveal more of the plot to him. They did. Davies soon found himself at a special meeting of the conspirators led by Fernandino. In addition to destroying the railroads, they would put an end to the unwelcome Northern influence by killing Abraham Lincoln. Their assassination plot revolved around the route of the train bringing Lincoln and his family from their home in Springfield, Illinois to Washington for his inauguration. Fernandino had read in the newspapers that Lincoln planned to speak from the rear of his train when it pulled into Baltimore.   After explaining the plan to the conspirators, Fernandino solemnly passed around a hat with eight markers inside, seven white and one red. Each man was to take a marker and then keep his choice secret. The one who held the red marker knew his assignment—to shoot President-elect Lincoln as he spoke from the rear platform of the train.   Fernandino had not told his men the exact truth. The hat contained three red markers, not one. That way, if one assassin backed out of the plot, there were two others ready to murder the president. He was taking no chances that Lincoln would reach Washington alive.   Agent Davies tensed as the hat reached him. He took a deep breath as he dipped his hand inside. He wanted no part in the killing of Lincoln, none at all. Slowly he opened his fist. The marker was white. He breathed a sigh of relief.   In the meantime, Detective Pinkerton had set up headquarters in Baltimore and coordinated a gigantic effort as his agents reported their information to him. He ordered railroad crews under his agents’ supervision to whitewash the railroad bridges. If the conspirators tried to burn the bridges, the whitewash would prevent fire. Pinkerton then sent urgent messages to the presidential train, already en route to Washington. Under no circumstances must Lincoln pass through Baltimore on that train! However, he was to get off the train at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and give a speech to his supporters as originally planned.   In Harrisburg, on February 21, 1861, men and women gathered quietly in the large, chilly room to hear Lincoln speak. Their voices hushed as an introduction was spoken. They strained forward as a tall, lean man stepped to the podium. For many, it was their first glimpse of Abraham Lincoln, the prairie lawyer from Illinois who had been elected president of the United States nearly three months before.   Abraham Lincoln had just turned fifty-two, stood over six feet tall, and weighed 180 pounds. The straggling dark beard covering his chin was new, suggested in a letter by a little girl who had thought it would add dignity to his face. Lincoln’s gray, brooding eyes carried a hint of sadness. His dark hair, only slightly threaded with gray, was coarse. Despite his new position as the nation’s most powerful man, the president-elect wore simple clothes.   From the podium, Lincoln peered tensely at the expectant faces. Although his audience was unaware of his inner feelings, the president-elect was irritated. Originally he was scheduled to deliver a speech and then chat afterward with the audience. Now there was to be a change in plans. Lincoln spoke the text of his speech. It was laced with the homespun humor for which he had become famous, and sparkled with the well-turned phrases of an educated man.   The eager listeners who longed for a few moments of conversation with Lincoln were sorely disappointed at the speech’s end. Lincoln thanked the audience and then claimed he had a blinding headache. Excusing himself abruptly, he hurried out.   The special train that had brought Lincoln and his family from Springfield was scheduled to continue on to Washington, where he would prepare for his inauguration. The disappointed Harrisburg audience believed that Lincoln had gone to rejoin his family on that train. Instead, Lincoln was driven in a horse-drawn cart to Philadelphia, where he secretly boarded a different train bound for Washington. Pinkerton was to be one of Lincoln’s bodyguard on the last and critical stage of the journey.   As Lincoln was hurrying to Philadelphia, Pinkerton was busy with his own tasks. He ordered the telegraph wires cut from Harrisburg to Baltimore. That way, the would-be assassins in Baltimore could have no information about Lincoln’s sudden change of plans.   Pinkerton joined the Washington-bound train exactly as planned. He stood alone on the rear platform of the observation car, watching for signals from his agents. As the train neared each crossing and bridge, an agent standing in the darkness flashed a lantern to signal to Pinkerton that all was well. Inside, secluded in a private car, Lincoln worked over his inauguration speech, tucked carefully into a leather gripsack, or bag, that he carried himself.   On the morning of February 23, 1861, Washington was raw and damp, its sidewalks little more than lanes of frozen mud, its inhabitants—black and white—chilled to the bone as they went about their business in the early-morning light.   Elihu B. Washburne, congressman from Illinois, was as chilled as any of them. Stiffening in the dawn cold, he waited impatiently at Washington’s train depot and bitterly cursed William Seward, the senator from New York. Seward had promised he would accompany Washburne to meet this all-important train, and then at the last minute, had failed to appear. Washburne’s teeth chattered, and his proud beard did little to shield his slowly freezing face.   As the train pulled in, Washburne straightened to his full height. He watched the passengers bustling away and chattering. Not one gave him more than an absentminded glance. Washburne had begun to wonder whether his instructions were correct—was this the train he was supposed to meet? As the ranks of passengers thinned out, he noticed an odd trio approaching him. Instinctively he backed away.   The three men radiated an air of reckless danger. The small man on the left had his hand stuck in the pocket of his thick wool overcoat—an overcoat not thick enough to disguise the outlines of a small pistol hidden underneath. The man on the right was tall and heavyset, and both his hands plunged into the pockets of his coat. Washburne wondered wildly whether this man carried two pistols.   The lanky man in the center of the trio wore a slouch hat tilted over his eyes to hide his face, an effect heightened by his turned-up collar and dark beard. His long, bony fingers tightened on a leather gripsack. Washburne squinted at the man who now looked strangely familiar. Then Washburne’s freezing face suddenly relaxed into a warm smile. Abraham Lincoln, the next president of the United States, had safely arrived in Washington.   Lincoln was not happy about the manner of his secret arrival in the nation’s capital. Though Pinkerton, the small man, and Ward Hill Lamon, his bodyguard with two guns, were plainly relieved that they had escaped Fernandino’s attempted assassination in Baltimore, Lincoln regarded the affair as ridiculous.   The new president understood his lack of popularity in the South. Since election day, newspaper headlines screamed their disapproval, and stacks of hateful letters and death threats filled up Lincoln’s law office in Springfield, Illinois.   Yet Lincoln was curiously unconcerned about his own personal safety. When he was first informed of the possible assassination plot brewing in Baltimore, he refused to change his plans. He had chosen to ride a special train from which he could give speeches while on his way to Washington, and that is what he intended to do. It was only when Detective Pinkerton pointed out that Lincoln’s wife and children could well be endangered that the president-elect yielded and agreed to sneak into the nation’s capital on a different train. This time, like so many other times, Lincoln realized that this was the right thing to do.   Throughout his life, Abraham Lincoln would demonstrate again and again that he did what he thought was right even under the most difficult circumstances. Despite the terrible pressures to sacrifice principle for popularity, Lincoln boldly spoke for the ideals he believed in.   Abraham Lincoln was committed to abolishing the Southern institution of slavery. He firmly believed that all the American states—the Union—should remain united in order to preserve their strength against foreign nations. Though he wanted desperately to avoid a bloody civil war that would wrench the country apart, when it came, he resolved that the greatest issue was preserving the Union. He was determined that the United States of America would remain one country, no matter what the price or how great the heartbreak, because it was the just and correct thing to do.  

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Product details

Series: Great Lives

Paperback: 128 pages

Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (August 12, 1989)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0449903753

ISBN-13: 978-0449903759

Product Dimensions:

5 x 0.2 x 8.5 inches

Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.1 out of 5 stars

3 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#1,766,607 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Good Book

I love history and reading about great people of the past. This is a short book but very revealing. Good read

It was easy reading with lots of little known facts. The President and his wife took on a personality that I didn't expect.

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