The Hour of Peril

The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War (2013), a non-fiction book by American historian Daniel Stashower, recounts an attempt by Baltimore Secessionists to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln, and the efforts of America’s first private detective, Allan Pinkerton, to foil the plot. Critics found the book an “enthralling page-turner” (Publishers’ Weekly) and a valuable re-appraisal of Pinkerton’s reputation.

Lincoln was elected president in 1860. Rather than proceed straight from his home in Illinois to take up office in Washington, D.C., the president-elect embarked on a circuitous tour of the country, traveling by train. He wanted to introduce himself to the people of the country. However, talk of secession was rumbling in the South, and Stashower suggests that several different Southern groups considered Lincoln’s tour an opportunity to murder him. Some of these plots might have been carefully planned, and many might have been barroom braggadocio. In the event, only one came to fruition.

This was the plan of Baltimore barber and Corsican immigrant Captain Cypriano Ferrandini. He enlisted a band of 20 “Southern patriots” to aid him. Lincoln’s schedule had been widely published, so the plotters knew the president-elect would arrive at the Calvert Street train station in Baltimore on the morning of February 23. There, he would have to navigate a narrow passage on foot to reach the street. Ferrandini’s plan was to stage a distraction at this moment to draw the attention of the local police escorting Lincoln, creating an opportunity for the assassins to box in the president-elect and stab him.



Meanwhile, such an attempt was not unanticipated in Lincoln’s camp. Lincoln’s 22-year-old personal secretary, John Hay, wrote to a friend as Lincoln’s train crossed the Mason-Dixon line, worrying that their party would not reach Washington “unless in long, narrow boxes.” Lincoln had a personal bodyguard, Ward Lamon. An old friend of Lincoln’s, Lamon was a 300-pound, hard-drinking lawyer who carried two pistols and an arsenal of other weapons. However, Lincoln’s team feared that the formidable Lamon would not be enough to protect the president-elect, especially as Lincoln insisted on holding “handshaking levees,” in which long lines of people were invited to shake his hand one-by-one. Lincoln believed that everyone was entitled to meet the president, and some of his staffers feared their chief was “so kindly” that he could not really believe in the possibility of political assassination.

Fortunately for Lincoln and his team, rumor of Ferrandini’s plot reached Allan Pinkerton. Much of Stashower’s book is given over to Pinkerton’s story. The self-educated son of a Scottish cooper, Pinkerton founded the United States’ first detective agency. Popularly known as the “Pinkertons,” his agency would come to be associated after his death with strikebreaking. However, Stashower shows that Pinkerton himself—although skeptical of the labor movement—was a Chartist in his Scottish youth and a committed abolitionist in America, whose house in Illinois was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Pinkerton was also a pioneer in the hiring of women. Kate Warne, a young woman whose eyes, according to the detective, were “filled with fire,” presented herself at Pinkerton’s office asking for work. Initially “thoroughly unsettled” by this unconventional request, Pinkerton heard Warne’s arguments for the usefulness of a female detective and was convinced.



When he learned of the plot against Lincoln from an agent embedded with Secessionists in Baltimore, Pinkerton offered his services to the president-elect. One of his first actions was to send Warne to his side. While Lincoln was traveling by train, Warne posed as the sister of an “invalid” who did not want to be disturbed, to keep the president-elect’s presence on the train a secret.

Meanwhile, Pinkerton threw himself into investigating the Baltimore plot and devising ways to keep the president-elect safe. He persuaded Lincoln—much against the latter’s will—to change his schedule, arriving in Baltimore 12 hours early. This required tricky train transfers, which could potentially expose Lincoln, but Pinkerton relied on Warne to make these safe.

Next, Pinkerton had to devise a way to disguise Lincoln, whose height, beard, and trademark stovepipe hat made him highly recognizable. Pinkerton persuaded the president-elect to wear a cloak over his face to cover his beard and to swap his stovepipe out for a soft woolen hat. Lincoln was also convinced to slouch to disguise his height.



Lincoln was dismayed to adopt this skulking and unpresidential approach, but Pinkerton persuaded him that these measures were necessary. Stashower concludes that without Pinkerton’s skill and authority, Lincoln’s life might well have been in danger during his trip through Baltimore. Instead, Lincoln arrived safely at the White House, unscathed except for a barbed newspaper comment which accused him of arriving in the nation’s capital “like a thief in the night.”