Perspectives, a blog of ideas from The Johns Hopkins University

Presidential preinaugural whistle stop in Baltimore, 1861

Posted on 16. Jan, 2009 by Tracey Reeves in Uncategorized

The president-elect and outgoing chief executive James Buchanan pass the northwestern base of Capitol Hill en route to Lincoln’s inauguration. Harper’s Weekly, March 16, 1861. Library of Congress. (Click for larger image)

President-elect Obama is likely to get an enthusiastic welcome Saturday in Baltimore, one stop on his whistle-stop train trip down the Northeast Corridor en route to Washington and the inauguration. That wasn’t true for Abraham Lincoln, who — because of concerns about mob violence — had to sneak through Baltimore at night on his way from Illinois to Washington.

And, as Johns Hopkins alumnus Michael Burlingame notes in his newly published Lincoln biography, Mary Todd Lincoln’s pre-inaugural trip through Baltimore — after Abe’s — was downright harrowing.

“On the evening of February 23, Mary Lincoln and the rest of the presidential entourage reached Washington. In Baltimore, an unruly mob had greeted them with three loud cheers for Jefferson Davis and three groans for Lincoln. As the party detrained in the Monumental city, the crowd surged back and forth with such force that it drove people off the platform and trampled them. Roughneck boys and men, not content merely to knock the hats off of leading Republicans, surrounded Mrs. Lincoln’s car, insulting her rudely. Captain John Pope overheard many ugly expressions and observed several menacing faces amid the crowd, which he thought “consisted precisely of the people capable of [committing an] outrage.

“Nonetheless, at lunch Mrs. Lincoln told her hosts `that she felt at home in Baltimore, . . .’ “

Source: Pages 40 – 68, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume II: I Am Now Going to Be a Master, by Michael Burlingame (Sadowski Professor of History Emeritus at Connecticut College.); The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Burlingame’s multi-volume biography was published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in time for the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth this year. Burlingame, who received his PhD from the university in 1971, takes a comprehensive look at Lincoln’s life, including his time in the White House and his battles with aggressive office seekers, hostile newspaper editors and field commanders.

Barack Obama, who is known to admire Lincoln, has said he will take the oath of office on the same Bible that the 16th president used at his swearing-in.

To read more of Michael Burlingame’s new biography, which was published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth on Feb. 12, you can read this sample chapter which concerns the inauguration (PDF).