Lincoln Part 165

Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the a.s.sa.s.sination of Lincoln (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988), by William A. Tidwell, James O. Hall, and David Winfred Gaddy, offers a provocative account of attempts to kidnap and kill Lincoln. Tidwell's April '65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1995) offers further evidence of Booth's connection with the Southern secret service. Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 18631869 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1974), and Herman Belz, Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy During the Civil War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969), provide illuminating accounts of the Thirteenth Amendment and of the failure of Ashley's reconstruction bill. The fullest account of the Hampton Roads peace conference is in Edward C. Kirkland, The Peacemakers of 1864 (New York: Macmillan Co., 1927). Donald C. Pfanz, The Petersburg Campaign: Abraham Lincoln at City Point, March 20-April 9, 1865 (Lynchburg, Va.: H. E. Howard, 1989), gives a detailed chronology of Lincoln's visit to Grant's army.

546 "the national honor": Strong, Diary, p. 511.

546 "in all history": James A. Briggs to John Sherman, Nov. 12, 1864, Sherman MSS, LC.

546 "was a possibility": CW, 8:101.

546 "limitations in politics": Hay, Diary, pp. 234, 239.

547 "any man's bosom": CW, 8:101.

547 "insatiable for our blood": Larry E. Nelson, Bullets, Ballots, and Rhetoric: Confederate Policy for the United States Presidential Contest of 1864 (University: University of Alabama Press, 1980), p. 158.

547 "despotic Caesar himself": Michael Davis, The Image of Lincoln in the South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971), p. 68.

547 "used to things!": Carpenter, Six Months, pp. 6263.

548 "of its instruments": Ibid., pp. 6566.

548 "in this city": Ward Hill Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 18471865, ed. Dorothy Lamon Teillard (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.: 1911), p. 275.

548 Lincolns' private rooms: For these increasingly careful security precautions, see George S. Bryan, The Great American Myth (New York: Carrick & Evans, 1940), pp. 6066. See also "Guarding Mr. Lincoln," Surratt Courier 12 (Mar. 1987), pp. 1, 7.

549 "out of the City": Lizzie W.S. to AL, July 1, 1864, Lincoln MSS, LC.

549 "with your help": Seymour Ketchum to AL, Nov. 2, 1864, Lincoln MSS, LC.

549 "the public good": Tidwell, Come Retribution, p. 234.

549 "of such means": Ibid., p. 235.

549 retaliation against Lincoln: Joseph George, Jr., "'Black Flag Warfare': Lincoln and the Raids Against Richmond and Jefferson Davis," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 115 (July 1991): 317318. Jefferson Davis himself knew of Confederate plans to kidnap Lincoln, and he was the more willing to entertain the idea, because he believed there had been several Northern-inspired plots against his own life. (Davis to J. William Jones, May 10, 1876, Davis Personal Papers, Virginia State Library; J. Thomas Scharf, interview with Jefferson Davis, July 8, 1887, in Baltimore Sunday Herald, July 10, 1887.) The Confederate President discussed the proposed kidnapping with his young adjutant, Colonel Walter H. Taylor, who was, Davis said much later, "the only man who ever talked to me on the subject of his [Lincoln's] capture or at least the only one who I believed intended to do what he proposed." But he declined to endorse Taylor's plan "on the ground that the attempt would probably involve the killing, instead of bringing away the captive alive" (Davis to Taylor, Aug. 31, 1889, C. Seymour Bullock MSS, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina). Immediately afterward Davis reported this conversation to his wife, saying that "Taylor was a brave man and of course did not see that Mr. Lincoln could not be captured alive." After Davis explained that "the plan was impracticable for that reason if for no other," Taylor agreed to drop it, because he "would not lend himself to a plan of a.s.sa.s.sination any more than I would" (Varina Howells Davis to Henry T. Loutham, May 10, 1898, Jefferson Davis MSS, University of Alabama). For all these references on Davis, Taylor, and the kidnapping plot, I am indebted to Professor Joan E. Cas.h.i.+n.

549 Thomas Nelson Conrad: For an excellent account of Conrad's scheme, see Terry Alford, "The Silken Net: Plots to Abduct Abraham Lincoln During the Civil War" (unpublished paper, Annandale, Va., Apr. 21, 1987).

549 "and at hand": Anonymous to AL, Sept. 21, 1864, Lincoln MSS, LC.

550 "plug-hat": Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, pp. 266269, places this episode in 1862, but Tidwell, Come Retribution, p. 237, shows that it occurred in Aug. 1864.

550 "humiliating failure": Alford, "The Silken Net."

550 "threats like these": John W. Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 2:425.

550 "nineteen enemies": Carpenter, Six Months, p. 276. See also Harry J. Carman and Reinhard H. Luthin, Lincoln and the Patronage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), chap. 11.

550 "more substantial service": Wayne C. Temple and Justin G. Turner, "Lincoln's 'Castine': Noah Brooks," LH 73 (Fall 1971): 170.

551 "cases-not principles": John T. Hall to AL, Oct. 17, 1864, Lincoln MSS, LC.