George Proctor Kane - Kane and The Baltimore Plot

Kane and The Baltimore Plot

In February 1861, Detective Alan Pinkerton, working on behalf of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, uncovered what he believed to be a plot to assassinate President-elect Lincoln as he journeyed through Baltimore on his way to Washington to begin his first term. Pinkerton presented his findings to Lincoln, which included his belief that Kane, Marshall of Police of Baltimore, was a “rabid rebel” who could not be trusted to provide security to Mr. Lincoln while in Baltimore. Pinkerton believed that Kane could participate in the plot merely by underperforming in his duties, thereby giving others ample opportunity to carry out their plans, and claimed to have overheard a conversation in a Baltimore hotel in which Kane indicated that he had no intention of providing a police escort for Lincoln. Baltimore at this time was a hotbed of pro-Southern sympathies. Unlike other cities on the President-elect’s itinerary, including New York, Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Baltimore had planned no official welcome for Lincoln. Pinkerton’s information regarding Kane, along with other information discovered by him, his operatives and others, led to the President-elect’s decision to follow the detective’s advice, changing his travel plans and passing through Baltimore surreptitiously nine hours ahead of his published schedule.

In 1868, in response to stories then circulating in the press about the Baltimore plot, Kane wrote a lengthy account of his view of the events of Feb. 21-23, 1861. He believed the President and his family would arrive in Baltimore as planned on the North Central Railroad at the Calvert Street Station at 12:30 pm on February 23, and depart on a 3 pm train from the Camden Station on the west side of town. That left two and a half hours to fill in a city in which the President got only about 1000 votes, and most of those, according to Kane, from “the very scum of the city.” In other words, there were no sizable numbers of upper crust Lincoln supporters who might be counted on to rally around the President in a public display, and entertain him, as had happened on the President’s previous stops in New York, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia. Kane came up with a plan, which he implemented, in which John S. Gittings, who owned the North Central Railroad, would travel to Maryland Line, get on the President’s train, and accompany him to Baltimore. Once in Baltimore, the train would make an unscheduled stop at Charles and Bolton Streets, where Kane would meet it with carriages that would carry the President and his family to Gittings’ mansion on Mt. Vernon Place. There a sumptuous meal would be served. This plan avoided the Calvert Street Station altogether and kept the President largely out of view of rabble rousers. According to his own account, Kane carried out his plan exactly, with the only exception being that the President was not aboard the train, having already traveled through Baltimore. Newspaper accounts that described Mrs. Lincoln being met by an unruly crowd in the Calvert Street station were erroneous; she had already alighted from the train.