The
investigations of this detective, a Mr. Pinkerton, had been carried on
without the knowledge of the New York detective, and he reported not
identical, but almost similar, conditions of insurrectionary feeling and
danger, and recommended the same precaution.
Mr. Lincoln very earnestly debated the situation with his intimate
personal friend, Hon. N.B. Judd of Chicago, perhaps the most active and
influential member of his suite, who advised him to proceed to
Washington that same evening on the eleven-o'clock train. "I cannot go
to-night," replied Mr. Lincoln; "I have promised to raise the flag over
Independence Hall to-morrow morning, and to visit the legislature at
Harrisburg. Beyond that I have no engagements."
The railroad schedule by which Mr. Lincoln had hitherto been traveling
included a direct trip from Harrisburg, through Baltimore, to Washington
on Saturday, February 23. When the Harrisburg ceremonies had been
concluded on the afternoon of the 22d, the danger and the proposed
change of program were for the first time fully laid before a
confidential meeting of the prominent members of Mr. Lincoln's suite.
Reasons were strongly urged both for and against the plan; but Mr.
Lincoln finally decided and explained that while he himself was not
afraid he would be assassinated, nevertheless, since the possibility of
danger had been made known from two entirely independent sources, and
officially communicated to him by his future prime minister and the
general of the American armies, he was no longer at liberty to disregard
it; that it was not the question of his private life, but the regular
and orderly transmission of the authority of the government of the
United States in the face of threatened revolution, which he had no
right to put in the slightest jeopardy.
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