The thwarted plot to kill Lincoln on the streets of Baltimore

The election of Abraham Lincoln as president on November 6, 1860, sparked a furious backlash in the South, where waves of secession had already started to brew. There was such a backlash against the president-elect that some plotters promised he would never make it to the nation's capital for his inauguration. In order to prevent Lincoln's inauguration at the country's Capitol, secessionist conspirators devised a "malicious conspiracy to conquer Washington, destroy all roads leading to it. from the North, East, and West," according to Felton, head of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad.

On his journey to his inauguration, the incoming president Lincoln traveled through Baltimore in the dead of night on February 23, 1861. In Baltimore, a city already known for its Southern sympathies, detective Allan Pinkerton, who was recruited to provide security for the trip, is persuaded that the president-elect is the target of an assassination plan. On April 18, 1864, more than three years later, Lincoln came back to speak at the Maryland State Soldier Relief Fair. In comparison to the city he had to primarily sneak through during the challenging early months of 1861, it had undergone significant development. The city was finally traversed by Lincoln's hearse on its route to Springfield, Illinois, on April 21, 1865.