Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

There has never been a public legal investigation concerning the alleged plot to assassinate the President elect at that time. Sufficient facts have been made known through the testimony of detectives to justify the historian in assuming that such a plot was formed, and that it failed only because of the change in Mr. Lincoln's movements. It was alleged that “statesmen, bankers, merchants, and others” were engaged in the conspiracy,¹ and that these were meeting secretly then, and did meet secretly a long time thereafter, in a private room in Taylor's Building. The plan, as revealed, seems to have been to create a mob of the most excitable elements of society in Baltimore, ostensibly against the Republican Committee in that city, while they and the nobly loyal citizens were honoring Mr. Lincoln by a public reception at the railway station. In the confusion created by the mob, the hired assassins were to rush forward, shoot or stab the President elect while in his carriage, and fly back to the shelter of the rioters.

The policemen of Baltimore at. that time were under the direction of George P. Kane, as Chief Marshal. He was a violent secessionist, and seems to have been the plastic instrument of conspirators in Baltimore, who were chiefly of the moneyed Oligarchy, connected by blood or marriage with the great land and slave holders in the more Southern States. Kane afterward fled beyond the Potomac, took up arms against his country, and received a commission in the insurgent army. It is asserted that an arrangement had been made for him to so control the police on that occasion, as not to allow a suppression of the mob until the terrible deed should be accomplished. His complicity in the movements which resulted in the murder of Massachusetts troops while passing through Baltimore, a few weeks later, makes it easy to believe that he was concerned in the plot to assassinate the President elect.

George P. Kane.

The disloyal press of Baltimore seemed to work in complicity with the conspirators on this occasion. A leading editorial in the Republican, on the 22d, was calculated to incite tumult and violence; and on the following morning, the day on which Mr. Lincoln was expected to arrive in Baltimore, the Exchange, in a significant article, said to its readers :--“The President elect of the United States will arrive in this city, with his suite, this afternoon, by special train from Harrisburg, and will proceed, we learn, directly to Washington. It is to be hoped that no opportunity will be afforded him — or that, if it be afforded, he will not embrace it — to repeat in our ears the sentiments which he is reported to have expressed yesterday in Philadelphia.” ² Intelligence of Mr. Lincoln's arrival at Washington soon spread over the