Plots Against Lincoln  "Disguises And Bodyguards"

"Assassination is not an American practice or habit, and one so vicious and so desperate cannot be engrafted into our political system." That statement, made by Union Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, was based on the fact that not one of President Abraham Lincoln's 15 predecessors as head of state had died other than a natural death. The Civil War, however, had so torn the country that traditional values had been overturned. Threats had been made against Lincoln's life even before he took office. During his 1861 trip to Washington to begin his presidency, Lincoln avoided an alleged assassination plot by Baltimore secessionists by quietly moving through that city in disguise in the middle of the night.

"God damn your God damned old Hellfired God damned soul to Hell", read one of the many threatening letters Lincoln received while he was president. Most of such letters were quietly destroyed by secretaries before Lincoln saw them, but by the time of his death he had in his desk a folder marked "Assassination" that contained 80 of the menacing letters. Lincoln shrugged off the threats, saying, "I cannot possibly guard myself against all dangers unless I shut myself up in an iron box, in which condition I could scarcely perform the duties of a President."

In the summer of 1862, while Lincoln was riding horseback to the Soldiers' Home, his family's summer residence three miles north of Washington, a bullet from an unknown would-be assassin bored a hole through Lincoln's top hat. As a result of the incident, four members of the Washington police force were assigned to guard the president. Dressed in civilian clothes, two bodyguards watched over him from 8:00am until 4:00pm, one from 4:00pm until midnight, and another, sitting outside his bedroom door, from midnight until 8:00am. One bodyguard accompanied Lincoln anytime he left the White House. When Lincoln took his afternoon carriage rides with his wife, a detachment of cavalry would ride alongside.

Fascinating Fact:  One of the bodyguards reported that Lincoln detested the need for protection. The president claimed that the cavalrymen's clanking sabers and the noise of the horses' hooves made it so that he and his wife "couldn't hear themselves talk."


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