Be found, just that it was probably true that very dangerous files might exist. Why the media . One question is way the media and the second question is over five years, did the fbi ever get close to any of them . Downtown philadelphia, that was a great big building. There were other outlying i dont really know. [laughter] when he tells the story he describes going downtown one day for another purpose but check out where the fbi is. Its a Tall Building and its impossible, 24hour security and then he describes sometime later looking in a suburban phonebook on the campus oh a fbi office in media. He decided this might be doable. Yes, back here. I want to add. [laughter] there is a documentary that you will have a chance to see in late may as i announced that the Constitution Center and there are some people who have expressed interest in making a movie. You will have a chance to see the real thing. Yes, sir. First of all, excuse me i have a cold. Everything else that is so inspirational and i want to thank you for your sacrifice. This is an ongoing struggle. [applause] this is an ongoing struggle and we continue to do this. I look around the room and im happy to see all the people here but what im not happy about is i dont see any young people here. There are few. [laughter] speak to questions, do you have any plans and its not will you help us if we organize plans to come and speak to young people at their schools and wherever they hang out . Well, young people have not lost heart. Young people havent lost hope. I teach that age group and i think there is a great yearning to begin to try to believe in the meaning of america again, the meaning of america we have lost a lot of that. But the heart has not been lost in those young folks. They have got a lot of heart and i think theyre waiting for the right moment. That moment is really what happened because our country is right now. Theres massive use of money that just takes away from the rest of it. Not only elections but between elections and all that carpetbagging stuff that goes on down in washington. The young people havent given up on this country. I also think we have to as more mature citizens help the young people connect, help them find ways to connect, to organize using social media and every other good tool that they have so that they are not just feeling cynical and apathetic and alone in looking at the problems in our country. They can be empowered by connecting and it can help them try to make that possible. Speak to the extent that we are able to do certain things we are more interested in talking to young people. We have had some nice invitations. From schools and universities. We have time for one more question. This is a logistical question im just picturing that sketch of view. I havent read the book yet but who drew that and why did they draw out . Did they draw sketches of everyone that came in . I was back here where i couldnt hear anything that was being said but i described in the book that my role in preparing for the burglary was to go inside the office. Afterthefact they realize they had been cased by my face. I did try to disguise my parents as much as i could. I never took the gloves off the whole time i was taking notes in my notebook when i was interviewing the man in office. But it was a pretty crummy sketch. [laughter] i didnt look very much like i looked on a daytoday basis. They didnt realize it. They thought of her immediately. That woman as j. Edgar hoover would refer to, that woman who came into the office. J. Edgar, she is right here. [laughter] that but there were so many young women who were active at that time. Any one of 500, 29yearold women. Having your door broken down in that sort of thing. I would like to thank you very much and i would also just like to say that given everything that we now know about the impact of what they did, we have hear people who have pulled off one of the most powerful nonviolennonviolen t acts of persistence in the country. [applause] [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] next on booktv Daniel Stashower recalls the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln prior to the abrahams this is about 40 minutes. Thank you. [applause] thank you for coming out. Its a real pleasure to be here in illinois and especially because this is literally where the wheels of the story started turning both figuratively and literally. The book is the story to a large extent of the famous detective of the 19th century who got his start about a halfhour to the north of here in dundee illinois and it also features a lawyer by the name of Abraham Lincoln who i also understand came to prominence here in illinois. I will give you the plot in a nutshell. The year is 1861. Lincoln has been elected president and it turns out that there was a period in our nations history when president ial elections had a divisive and polarizing effect on the population. Very unlike the perfect harmony of our present day. Over the period of 18 days as lincoln is making his way by train from his home in springfield illinois to washington d. C. For his inauguration as president , the air is filled with rumors of an essay should assassination plot. In maryland where his train of pass below the masondixon line for the first time there were rumors that he will be shot or he will be stabbed or his train will be blown up at a whistlestop appearance in baltimore. Alan pinkerton of the legendary Pinkerton Detective agency is on the scene. He is already there in baltimore and he has just under two weeks to uncover hard evidence of this looming plot before time runs out. What makes the situation even more difficult and more dangerous is that there is no good way to get from springfield to washington at this time. Americas railroads are expanding at a fantastic rate but there is no single direct railway line, no Transcontinental Railroad yet. The Railway System in 1861 looked as if you had taken a plate of spaghetti and thrown it at a map and wherever it lands there is an independent Regional Railway line. In all, lincoln took a route that zigzag crisscroscrisscros s then doubled back on itself covering a distance of 2000 miles on 18 separate independent Railroad Lines as opposed to a journey of a few hundred miles as the crow flies. At each stop lincoln gets out of the train, gets a little speech, waves into the crowd and shakes hands. For him this is the whole point. By the time lincoln sets off for washington, seven states have seceded from the union and lincoln hopes to use this train journey to give people a chance to hear him and to see him, to listen to his ideas. He wants to pour oil on troubled waters, give people a chance to get to know him a little bit and in the end he winds up giving over 100 speeches. He is trying to extend calming words to the north and offer an olive ranch to the south. But baltimore is looming. Three of these independent Regional Railway lines converge in baltimore and creates a choke point for all passenger and freight traffic moving from north to south. You cant get to washington without passing through baltimore. Because the line doesnt go straight through lincoln will have to get out of the train and wade through a heavy crowd just as he has done it every other transfer point, only this time he is in a slaveholding state and there are people in the crowd who have threatened to kill him. Here is how Alan Pinkerton believed it would play out when lincoln arrived at Walter Moores albert st. Train station and its complete with a plot diversion to draw any Police Escort away from lincolns side at the critical moment. Egerton wrote it is fully determined that the assassination should take place on calvin street. When the train entered the debo and mr. Lincoln attempted to pass through the Narrow Passage leading to the street, a party already delegated were to engage in a conflict on the outside and then the policeman were to rush away the disturbance. At this moment, the police had entirely withdrawn and mr. Lincoln would find himself surrounded by eight cents, excited and hostile crowd all hustling and jamming against him and then the fatal blow was to be struck. Many of you will be familiar with the baltimore plot as the episode came to be called. Very few know the story behind the story and that story begins with Alan Pinkerton. Pinkerton is a tough. He is hard to get to know. He is scrappy, grizzled, quick to anger. He began his career in stockholm. He got into trouble with the law in scotland and he came to america as a cooper, a barrel maker and he moved here to illinois. He it looks like he is going to go on quietly make him in barrels for the rest of his life in dundee illinois. One day he is out cutting wood for barrel staves and he comes across the remains of the campfire and something doesnt look right to him. He cant understand what people were doing in this remote spot and why they were there in the middle of the night. He spent a couple of days investigating and he waits around to see what happens. One thing leads to another. He discovers this Remote Island being used by a gang of counterfeiters. He comes back with the local sheriff. He leads a raid that rounds them all up in the next thing you know pinkerton is a lawman. Soon after that by slow degrees he works his way through the ranks and he becomes something entirely new, a private detective and he sets up business for himself in chicago. His logo is this stern unblinking eye clearing out over the words we never sleep. And soon this logo, this unblinking eye brings a new phrase to the language, private eye. Pinkerton was the first. Americas first private eye. By no means the last in but me think of the pinkertons as hard men with waving guns and big fist. You will remember the relentless posse of loman chasing butch and sundance. Paul newman said can you do that . I cant do that. Who are those guys . They are pinkertons. The guys shooting back at train robbers from inside the train cars. They are the pinkertons and the guys at the strike at the steel mill. Those were pinkertons too. Sad to say and the last thing the unionbusting has attached a great deal of infamy to the thinker to name and a considerable amount of confusion about who Allan Pinkerton was. I had a guy come up to me at a pta meeting of all things and he jabs his finger into my chest and he says Allan Pinkerton smashed my grandfather over the head with a club at homestead. And put him in the hospital. Now are you going to write about that in your book mr. Author . Well, two things. One, lovingly people call me mr. Author. Bear that in mind for later. Two the homestead strike of 1892 was a truly horrific episode, a clash between striking steelworkers and pinkerton men in homestead pennsylvania. It was a terrible bloody episode with casualtiecasualtie s and blame on both sides but i can tell you for sure that Allan Pinkerton didnt smash anyones grandfather over the head that day. Here you ask, how can you be so sure . Because he was dead. [laughter] he had died eight years earlier and it has been my experience dead men cracked no skulls. My point is Allan Pinkertons story has gotten tangled up over the years with the darker aspects of his agencys legacy. Allan pinkerton founder of the agency, spent his youth marching for the rights of working men in his native scotland and came under fire literally for doing so. Allan pinkerton founder of the agency, ran a station on the underground railroad here in illinois helping fugitive slaves on their way north to freedom. He was a friend of john brown, the fire and brimstone abolitionists. Even though the assistance he gave to brown in the days leading up to Harpers Ferry put him on the wrong side of the law. He is a lawman by day, a lawbreaker by night and believe me i am not putting him up her sainted and im not looking to apologize for some of the terrible things that he did in that happened on his watch and especially later on. But there is a story here that never gets told and its the story of a barefoot cooper who becomes a worldfamous detective and makes his bones protecting americas railroads. The Illinois Central Railroad and illinois central also has a lawyer on retainer and his name is Abraham Lincoln. There there by is the tale. The bottom line is lincoln and pinkerton come to know each other on the way out than 10 years on when lincoln is president elect of the United States and is being told that there are men waiting to kill him in baltimore trusts pinkerton. He is going to listen to pinkerton. Some of his advisers want him to respond with a crushing display of military force. One of them says, i will get a squad of calvary and cut our way to washington, sir. This is the last thing that lincoln wants to do. He avoids any show of military posturing at this critical time. Pinkertons plan is successful will sidestep the issue. Pinkerton says i will get you safely to washington. You will have to put yourself entirely in my hands. And in those of my most trusted operatives. This most trusted operatives as it turns out is not taken to man at all but it includes an woman woman pinkerton woman. I love this story. One day five years earlier in 1856 pinkerton is sitting at his desk in chicago and there is a knock at the door. He looks up and there is a young woman standing there. She says, she answered uses herself and her name is kate warren. She is a young woman 22 or 23 years old and she says she is looking for work. Pinkerton doesnt quite know what she means. She says while, i have come to inquire as to whether you would not hire me as a detective. Pinkerton is god smacked which is a phrase that my wife who is also scottish likes to use. Pinkerton is god smacked and who can blame him . It is 1856 and susan. Anthony is barely out of the starting gate. It will be decades before women can even vote but here is a young woman who says she wants work as a detective. To his credit pinkerton gives her a hearing and he says it is not the custom to employ women as detectives. How exactly do you propose to be of service . She is ready for this. She says a female detective make go and warm out secrets in ways that are impossible for a male detectives. A man may hide all traces of his guilt from his fellow men but he will not hide it from his wife. And what she proposes to do is strike up useful friendships with the wives of these suspected criminals. Get them to spill the beans and then she will take that information back to pinkerton. That is what she did. On the night in question in the hour of peril if you will, lincoln was accompanied not by a squad of calvary but by a resourceful young woman who was posing as his sister, a traveling companion. That was only part of pinkertons plan on that night. Earlier, one of pinkertons men had insinuated himself into a meeting of a conspirator in baltimore at which secret outlets were to be drawn. One ballot was marked in red to designate the fact that no one was to know future this red ballot. In this way the identity of the chosen assassin honored patriot as they called him would be kept secret until the last possible moment. And later emerged instead of a single red ballot in this box there were eight. In this way, if one or two of the chosen men each of whom believed he was the sole, one or two of them lose no problem there were six more waiting. One of them would be sure to strike a fatal blow and his pinkerton understood this was a good plot. It was audaciously simple and efficient. He said it was a capital plan and much better conceived than the one which finally succeeded for years after and destroying mr. Lincolns life. Well its a good plan and it needs a better plan if its going to be foiled. And pinkerton had one. Pinkerton had a strategy that has many years of service as a railroad that enabled him to devise and put into practice. For more than a week lincoln had been tethered to a moment by moment timetable of speeches and receptions. The plans of the conspirators had been laid accordingly. They knew exactly where he would be at any given moment. Anybody would. All you have to do was look in the newspaper and you would know where lincoln would be at any given moment and pinkerton knew the only way of thwarting this plot was to get lincoln to breakaway from the wellpublicized itinerary and proceed directly to washington ahead of schedule under the detectives personal protection. If pinkerton who would make the president elect through baltimore ahead of time the assassins would be caught off guard. By the time they took their places for the scheduled arrival of lincolns train, lincoln himself would already be safe in washington. But, pinkerton knew that what he was proposing was foolhardy and dangerous. Even if lincoln made his move ahead of schedule the route to washington would pass through baltimore in any case. There simply wasnt any other feasible way of getting there. So if any hands hands of this change in plans gets out lincolns position would be far more precarious. Instead of traveling openly and surrounded by friends and protectors, he would be alone, relatively exposed with only one or two man at his side. It is tempting to say that pinkerton was throwing a hail mary pass. It was really a quarterback sneak. If it worked he would pick up the extra yardage and get the first down. If it doesnt work you may lose your quarterback and this is where the female detective has her moments of glory. On this particular night, it occurred to pinkerton if anyone was on the lookout for lincoln for any unexpected movements and he believed all the train stations and hotels were being watched, they would expect to see the familiar tall figure in the stovepiped had traveling in the company of a large group of men and that being the case they would likely pass over the young woman who was busily making arrangements for her ailing brother who she insisted would retire immediately to his train compartment and was not to be disturbed on the journey. Lincoln it seems was charmed by this and we are told that he had something to say when he was introduced to kate warren on that night. He was supposed to have said i believe it has not hitherto in one of the prerequisites of the presidency to inquire in full bloom so charming and accomplished a female relation. Well its a lovely phrase. I dont know if he actually said it but it is recorded in the history books and i like to think so. As some of you will know mine is not the first book ever to feature Abraham Lincoln. Thats the new fords Theater Center in washingtwashingt on there is a winding fivestory tower of books all about lincoln 34 feet high. Not only has there have been acres of very excellent books written by modern scholars but you could build a bridge from here to springfield and back to washington and home again with volumes of reminiscence that were written into time. Lincoln as a new hymn books and no two of them could quite agree on what happened in baltimore. Sources conflict. Historical agendas alive. No one can even agree on what lincoln was wearing on his head on the night in question. So the challenge of doing this look as well as the fun part was to try to unpack some of that baggage, to untangle the crossed wires and to look past the highly charged politics of the moment and try to get at what really happened. Well, i hear you ask why should there be any controversy about it . Because at the critical moment of the story february 221861 there were two men at lincoln side, one to his right and one to his left and these two men came to hate each other with a boiling passion. One of them was pinkerton and the other was lincolns friend and selfappointed bodyguard. Later on when the feud between the two of them had taken on real heat lemon accuse pinkerton of having fabricated the entire episode to burnish his own reputation. Most of the controversy about what happened in baltimore begins there are and because pinkertons operation was deeply flawed there was much to criticize. A great deal of the information that pinkerton gleaned in baltimore was picked up in barrooms and in brothels and in other places where the telling of falsehoods and exaggerations were not unknown. So if you are looking to pick apart the information that he had gathered in the days leading up to this event it wasnt hard to do so. But its ridiculous to say as lamin and many others did that there was no danger at any time in baltimore. Of course there was danger. Of course there was danger. When Abraham Lincoln the abolitionist minded president elect of the United States, the man who had said a house divided against itself cannot stand head of course the particulars of the threat are a legitimate subject for debate but the existence of a threat beyond dispute. As the newspaper editor forest creeley said at the time, there was 40 times the reason for shooting him in 1861 than there was in 65 and at least 40 times as many intent on killing him or having him killed. Greely was sitting behind lincoln when he delivered his first inaugural address and he expected any moment to hear lincolns word arrested by the crack of a rifle. He said no shots were then fired however for his hour had not yet calm. As for pinkerton, he came to regard this episode as the highlight of his career even if as he freely admitted to William Herndon lincolns law partner turned biographer that he had come upon the whole thing by lucky chance. He said, from my report you will see how accidentally i discovered. I was looking for nothing of the kind and having certainly not the slightest idea of it. But on his tombstone here in illinois one finds the following inscription. In the hour of the nations peril he did, Abraham Lincoln through the ranks of treason to the scene of his first inauguration as president. Now i am guessing that many people who come to this story will know that Abraham Lincoln survived to become president of the United States and is soon afterwards the nation was plunged into civil war. Why tell the story . Why now . There are three reasons. One, its a barn burner of a story. It reads like one of the yellow back adventure novels in the day that pinkerton himself love to read. You have conspirators taking blood of that midnight and detect its jumping off the trains. You have president elect of the United States stealing through town in disguise past the seat of danger as pinkerton called it under the sable wing of night. Two, the civil war is full of moments where the whole shooting match came down to a matter of inches. Picketts charge. There stands jackson like a stonewall railing behind the virginians. This was one of those moments. And the final reason is this and with that i put on my reading glasses and will read a short passage in a clear and pleasing baritone. The events of 1861 continued to capture our attention not only for the drama of the plot and its detection and also because lincolns handling of the crisis and its fallout with mark a fateful early test of his presidency with many dark consequences. The stakes were enormous. Had mr. Lincoln fallen at that time it is frightful to think what the consequences might have been. There is no question that pinkertons methods were highhanded and at times on lawful but many of the criticisms that were heaped upon him in 1861 would not he expressed or even consider today it is now understood that there are dangers to be apprehended when a president moves freely through a vast crowd or writes an open conveyance. Those apprehensions did not yet exist at the start of the lincoln presidency. As one new york newspaper noted at the time, assassination is not congenial to the american character. Perhaps not, but it would soon become all too real. The events about to to be related here have been for a long time shrouded in a veil of mystery pinkerton wrote in a memoir published near the end of his life. While many are aware that the plot to assassinate the president elect upon his contemplated journey to the capital but few have any knowledge of the mode by which the conspiracy was detected or the means employed to prevent the accomplishment of that murderous design. Strangely these words are as true today as they were in pinkertons time and was already swimming against the tide of criticism when he wrote them. The distinguished historian john thomas sharp chronicling the history of the state of maryland in 1879 insisted that anchor tenants actions had an insult to the fame of one of the chief cities of the country and expressed the hope that the matter of would soon be settled once and for all. I myself am a resident of maryland and i am as partial to blue grass and blackeyed peas is the next man. How to remove 150 years however i believe is possible to treat this episode without undue risk. It bears noting however that to this day our state song maryland, my maryland makes reference to the tyrants chain of lincoln and his time and builds to a finals are a good rallying i. She spurns, the northern sky. Lincoln would likely have been amused. Fellow citizens he widely declared in the early years of his presidency, we cannot escape history. I thank you very much. I would be delighted to take any questions that you have. [applause] thank you. Did you do any research in springfield . O. Kosher and i have to say original documents were the fun of it. The egerton archives such as it is much of which was destroyed in the chicago fire now reside in the library of congress and that was also useful. It was terrifically interesting to look through newspapers of the day many of which were saying exact way the op visit things that they had said the previous day or were being set at the same time in other newspapers, a very interesting time. [inaudible] the question is he was criticized at the time. He was more than criticize. His advisers said that he would be ridiculed and accused of cowardice and he was. The newspapers, there are caricatures showing him sort of in ringlets fleeing toward the capital like a frightened schoolgirl. There is one showing him crouching in a freight car, hissing at the site of a cat. All kinds of things