s for Mr. Lincoln, and
if he showed himself; for a speech. Whenever there was time, he would
go to the rear platform of the car and bow as the train moved away, or
utter a few words of thanks and greeting. At the capitals of Indiana,
Ohio, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and in the cities of
Cincinnati, Cleveland, Buffalo, New York, and Philadelphia, halts of
one or two days were made, the time being filled with formal visits and
addresses to each house of the legislature, street processions, large
evening receptions, and other ceremonies.

Party foes as well as party friends made up these expectant crowds.
Every eye was eager, every ear strained, to get some hint of the
thoughts and purposes of the man who was to be the guide and head of the
nation in the crisis that every one now knew to be upon the country, but
the course and end of which the wisest could not foresee. In spite of
all the cheers and the enthusiasm, there was also an under-current of
anxiety for his personal safety, for the South had openly boasted that
Lincoln would never live to be inaugurated President. He himself paid no
heed to such warnings; but the railroad officials, and others who were
responsible for his journey, had detectives on watch at different points
to report any suspicious happenings. Nothing occurred to change the
program already agreed upon until the party reached Philadelphia; but
there Mr. Lincoln was met by Frederick W. Seward, the son of his future
Secretary of State, with an important message from his father. A
plot had been discovered to do violence to, and perhaps kill, the
President-elect as he passed through the city of Baltimore. Mr. Seward
and General Scott, the venerable hero of the Mexican War, who was now at
the head of the army, begged him to run no risk, but to alter his plans
so that a portion of his party might pass through Baltimore by a night
train without previous notice. The seriousness of the warning was
doubled by the fact that Mr. Lincoln had just been told of a similar,
if not exactly the same, danger, by a Chicago detective employed in
Baltimore by one of the great railroad companies. Two such warnings,
coming from entirely different sources, could not be disregarded;
for however much Mr. Lincoln might dislike to change his plans for so
shadowy a danger, his duty to the people who had elected him forbade
his running any unnecessary risk. Accordingly, after fulfilling all
his engagements in Philadel