Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 303, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 December 1910 — CAMP FIRE STORIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CAMP FIRE STORIES

HE SAVED LINCOLN’S LIFE Timothy Webster Had Much to Do With Spiriting President-Elect From Harrisburg. In 18C1 the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore road was the only direct line connecting New York city and the New England States with Washington; that the railroad should be kept unbroken at this critical time was of the utmost importance, writes W. B. Beymer in Harper’s Magazine. It was readily discovered that a plot existed aifiong the Maryland secessionists to cut the line by burning the bridges, but the first hint of the real purpose of the conspirators came to Pinkerton in a letter from the master machinist of the railroad, My. William Stearqs. He wrote: “I am informed that a son of a distinguished citizen of Maryland said that he had taken an oath with pthers to assassinate Mr. Lincoln before he gets to Washington.” This letter was received on February 10 —the day before Mr. Lincoln

left his home in Springfield, 111., and started on his eastern tour en route for Washington. Pinkerton sent for more of his men, and redoubled his efforts to learn something tangible of this or any other plot. Time passed rapidly. Siic% a conspiracy, well organized, did Ist—he learned enough in Baltimore to convince him of that; also—through Stearns —that a branch of the organization was at Perrymansville in the guise of a cavalry company. Webster, who had been withdrawn from there, was hurried back, and within 24 hours had been enrolled as a member of the company. Then, handicapped by the shortness of time, he made a supreme effort to gain the confidence of the in ner circle of conspirators; who alone were in the principal plot. Few men could have succeeded as Webster did, few have such a personality as his. Naturally he was of a quiet, reserved disposition, seldom speaking unless spoken to, and never betraying emotion or excitement. “Webster’s talent for sustaining a role of this kind amounted to positive genius; In a lifetime of detective ex perience I have never met one who could more readily adapt himself to circumstances,’’ Allan Pinkerton has written. It was with such a weapon that Webster was making his great fight. The tour of the president-elect was rapidly drawing to its end. Webster, consummate actor, was making haste* slowly; grave, fiery, serious, bolster ous—each at the golden time, he played with a masterful hand upon the excited, high-strung conspirators. From the first his efforts had been covertly direct against the cavalry company’s officers; they were in the secret or no one was. At last, one morning after drill, the captain with much secrecy asked him to call that night at his house, “and say nothing about it.” How the time must have dragged till the appointed hour! But with the first step he made into a room whose windows were hung with heavy quilts and blankets he knew that success had come at last. Webster was introduced to three strangers in the group, members of the league from Baltimore; then took his place at the table with the rest and listened —joining in now and then with a word or two—as they discussed the plans for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at the Calvert street depot in Baltimore, on February 23. The plans were fully matured except for the selection of the person to fire the shot. The story of bow Allan Pinkerton placed his proofs of the conspiracy before Lincoln in the Continental hotel in Philadelphia on the night of Febru ary 21 ; of the spiriting of Mr. Lincoln out of Harrisburg next evening back to Philadelphia in a private trainwhile Harrisburg, wit® telegraph wires secretly grounded, lay cut off from all communication with the outside world; of the passage through Baltimore in the dead of night, and the safe arrival of the president-elect, accompanied by Allan Pinkerton and Colonel Lamon, in Washington at six o'clock in the morning of the day he was expected in Baltimore, has been told again and again, but Timothy Webster'# part is known to but f*»

Was Interrupted by Three Strangers.