The days between election day and the presidential inauguration are normally quiet and uneventful. The four months between the election of 1860 and inauguration day in 1861 were anything but quiet as they were filled with events that would change the course of the entire country.
I’m Mark Martin with "Martin’s Must Reads" and Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch in their book The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America’s 16th President—And Why It Failed tells a story of subterfuge, conspiracies, hatred and outright murder plots against America’s most beloved President, Abraham Lincoln.
When President Lincoln was elected, America was deeply divided on the issue of slavery. Southern pro-slavery states issued threats during the campaign, words that turned into death threats against President Lincoln as early as three days after the election.
The book’s real story focuses on the events in Baltimore, Maryland. Although Maryland had not seceded from the Union, Baltimore was filled with passionate and often radically violent pro-slavery factions. Those factions hatched a plot to destroy the United States and make the entire country pro-slavery by killing the president-elect on his way to his inauguration as he traveled through Baltimore. The authors detail the murder plot but also the efforts of several coordinated people who were dedicated to discovering and preventing the plot and thus preserving the Union.
The Lincoln Conspiracy reads like a mystery but always in the mind of the reader is the realization these events were real, and the horror that the plot almost succeeded. If you are concerned about the divisions our country faces today, Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch's book The Lincoln Conspiracy is a must read as they tell us of a time when those divisions threatened the nation’s very existence.
