President Lincoln was the subject of numerous assassination attempts. In 1864, 9 months before he was fatally shot by John Wilkes Booth, he was riding to the Old Soldier’s Home outside of Washington DC, alone. A gun shot rang out, and his horse spooked. President Lincoln arrived, without his hat, at the old Soldier’s Home. The following day, two soldiers went looking for the hat, and discovered it on the path, with a musketball hole through the side.
President Lincoln, for his part, dismissed the incident as a likely hunting accident. He told the soldiers that rumors of an assassination plot would be more dangerous to the Union’s cause than silence. Later, he shared the story as s Sleepy Hollow-esque anecdote among friends.
“I can’t bring myself to believe that any one has shot at me or will deliberately shoot at me with the deliberate purpose of killing me.” – Abraham Lincoln
The Baltimore Plot
1861 Crowd waiting for Lincoln. Photo via wikipedia.
What later became known as the Baltimore plot and the Pinkerton plot was actually prevented largely as a result of the efforts of railroad magnate Samuel Morse Felton. In the North, President Lincoln was popular, but the South was already nervous before his inauguration. As Lincoln and his wife Mary planned their journey to Washington, D.C. by rail and without a military escort, Felton heard rumors of an assassination plan that would include the capture of railroads leading to Washington, D.C. and the seizure of the Capitol.
Felton called in professional help – the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Allan Pinkerton was shocked by what Felton told him, but took the plot seriously and set about preventing it.
Pinkerton hired Harry Davies, a young man who had grown up in New Orleans and had the uncanny ability to adapt himself to any situation, pick up new languages quickly, and blend in almost anywhere. The pair began their investigation in Baltimore, at that point, a slaveholding city with a strong secessionist political atmosphere.
Portrait of Private Eye Allan Pinkerton. Photo via wikipedia.
Meanwhile, Lincoln planned an open arrival to D.C., with frequent stops along the route where he would meet the public. He also continued to receive death threats ranging from the expected (knife, gunshot, physical assault) to the highly unusual (spider-filled dumpling, poisoned ink) variety.
By February 17, 1861, both Pinkerton and Davies had encountered members of a plot to kill Lincoln. They had originally assumed that the danger was to the rail line, but now it became clear – the real threat was to the President-elect. The man behind the plot was the barber at Burnam’s hotel in Baltimore, a Sicilian immigrant by the name of Ferrandini.
Cipriano Ferrandini, accused but never indicted, of plotting to assassinate Lincoln. Photo via wikipedia.
Pinkerton sent word to one Sen. Judd, a member of Lincoln’s traveling “suite” and an associate of Pinkerton’s. Sen. Judd believed that Lincoln would not agree to a change in travel plans, and he was largely correct. Eventually, the pair was able to convince the President-elect to disguise himself and skip the Baltimore leg of the trip – a feat which required the help of a Governor, a female detective, a private train, Lincoln’s personal guard, and Pinkerton himself. On the morning of February 23, 1861, Lincoln’s train arrived as scheduled without Lincoln or his wife on it. They had passed through in the middle of the night. According to Pinkerton, a mob was to attack the President-elect with knives.
“Plums delivered nuts safely.” – Pinkerton’s telegraph that the President was safe.
Lincoln in disguise by Harper’s Weekly, 1861.
---Got this out of an article. I hope it helps! (:
Over time, much of the influence of the Mongols has become more of a background to other historical developments. Important trades shifted away from the Silk Road, and the New World gained a greater significance in the global economy. However, one area that the Mongol invasions have continued to affect is in demographics. Central Asia has experienced some of the greatest changes, where the decline of Indo-Aryan or Indo-European languages, such as those based for Persian, reflect a shift more to Turkic type languages. This also likely reflects greater presence of Turkic populations as they increasingly moved across Central Asia during the period of conquests that saw major cities and populations removed. Such migrations had begun in the 11th century but increased further. Many regions remained relatively depopulated for centuries, such as Iran and Iraq, where those regions had once supported far larger populations and those levels of populations did not fully recover until perhaps the 20th century. This also meant these regions became less significant in global affairs, as new powers arose to replace them in the Near East and surrounding regions.
invasions may have contributed to its isolationist policies that started in the late 15th century. The outside began to look like an uncivilized place, where the Mongol destruction was still relatively fresh on the mind of Chinese rulers, leading to a greater focus away from the rest of the world
subsistence farming:In Belize, they are the poorest of the poor, most living by subsistence farming. We lived from subsistence farming, growing sweet potatoes, corn, some sugarcane, and ginger.
Cash Crop:Countries agree to grow cash crops in order to pay off their crippling debts.
