Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy - Eamon Javers [22]
Pinkerton knew that the presidential train would be an irresistible target. He decided to bring Lincoln to Washington ahead of schedule on a regular passenger train, instead, and roll the presidential train though on its regular timing as a decoy. Incredibly, he left Mary Todd Lincoln and her sons aboard the decoy train. Perhaps that was to lend a sense of realism to the procession, or maybe this was simply an era in which no one could contemplate that the assassins might strike at a woman and children.
The undercover Pinkerton agent Kate Warne rented the two rear sleeping cabins of the regular southbound passenger train out of West Philadelphia, telling ticket agents that she needed to transport her brother, who she claimed was an invalid. Felton and a small squad of Pinkertons spirited Lincoln into the cabin. Allan Pinkerton stood by Lincoln’s door, and handed the tickets to the train conductor, never revealing who was in the cabin with him.
Pinkerton deployed agents along the train’s route, to watch for saboteurs trying to blow up the tracks or assassins preparing to assault the train. They waited in preset positions with lanterns to signal the train that all was well in each sector. Allan Pinkerton stood on the rear platform monitoring progress, sector by sector. The train left Philadelphia late in the evening, and pulled into Baltimore at 3:30 A.M., where it paused at the platform. This stop was the moment of highest danger. Only a few armed Pinkertons stood between the roiling population of Baltimore and a vulnerable Abraham Lincoln.
All they heard, though, was a drunk on the platform singing “Dixie” at the top of his voice. After an agonizingly long wait at the Baltimore station, the train rolled on to Washington, arriving at 6 A.M.
Later, when the decoy presidential train rolled into Baltimore, a menacing crowd of thousands gave lusty cheers for Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy. But all they could do was holler.*
THE PINKERTONS STAYED in government service throughout the Civil War, and the company continued to operate its corporate service out of its Chicago offices. The Pinkerton precedent of intertwining private-sector intelligence agencies with government service continues to this day.
Allan Pinkerton went to work for General George McClellan’s army of Ohio, taking the rank of major. He turned to Timothy Webster, one of his most trusted agents, to help infiltrate the Confederacy. An Englishman who’d begun working for Pinkerton in 1853, Webster was dressed in the classy outfits of a dapper Brit, posing as a rebel-loving copperhead. At this point, the British were teetering toward full diplomatic recognition of the Confederate government, which would have been a blow to Union hopes for reconciliation.
Webster set up shop in Baltimore and cultivated copperhead contacts. He soon met the members of a secret society of Confederate loyalists called the Sons of Liberty, and heard from them about plans to stir up trouble for the federal government in Maryland. Thanks to Webster’s spying, Pinkerton agents pinned down the date of a large copperhead gathering. Webster himself, still undercover, was one of the keynote speakers, haranguing the audience with anti-Union rhetoric. But just as he reached fever pitch, Allan Pinkerton, a squad of detectives, and dozens of federal troops burst into the room and arrested the leaders of the plot.
Later, Webster made his way south, and reached out to the Confederate government, brazenly offering his services as a spy against the North. The Confederates employed him, giving him access to high echelons of their government and all kinds of Confederate facilities.
Now working as a double agent, he compiled detailed reports on the military installations he saw, including fortifications in the strategically