15. He had to be smuggled into Washington when arriving to enter the presidency
Maryland was a slave state in which a large faction was bitterly opposed to the election of Abraham Lincoln. For the president-elect, who remained in Springfield, Illinois during his election and for several weeks following, his route to Washington would be through Baltimore, Maryland, a city where anti-Lincoln (and Republican) sentiment seethed. Lincoln publicly announced that he would travel to the nation’s capital openly, with an announced itinerary which included stops during which he would speak to the electorate, including one in Baltimore, where he was scheduled to arrive at Calvert Street Station on February 23, departing from Camden Station ninety minutes later. It was to be his last stop before arriving at Washington.
In those days there was no Secret Service to provide protection to Presidents and Presidents-elect (Lincoln would sign legislation creating it on the last day of his life in 1865), and private security was called upon to protect Lincoln during his journey. In Baltimore, the Pinkerton Detective Agency uncovered a plot to assassinate the President-elect as he passed through the city. Lincoln, in disguise, slipped through the city on an earlier train than his own special, which arrived as scheduled but without its expected passenger. Newspapers, especially those which had opposed Lincoln during the election, ridiculed the president-elect, and accusations of cowardice were joined with the celebratory cheers for the new president before he took the oath of office in Washington the following month.