Page:Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865.djvu/300

260 stage, without the concurrence and co-operation of Mr. Floyd, who threw Wigfall into a paroxysm of explosive wrath by flatly refusing to have anything to do with the enterprise. It was accordingly abandoned, so far as Mr. Buchanan was concerned.

When Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated, in March, 1861, the organization of plotters was still intact; but no plan of assassination had, as yet, received the sanction of the conspirators as a body. It was their purpose to kidnap Mr. Lincoln and hold him in captivity, without injury to his person, until such concessions were made to the Southern leaders as their plan of compromise rendered necessary. This second scheme of abduction, having proved as abortive as the first, was abandoned in favor of a more deadly purpose. Some of the more desperate among the conspirators, exasperated by repeated failures, resolved to dispose of Mr. Lincoln by the swifter and surer means afforded by the dagger or the bullet.

Circumstances, in a surprising way, seemed to favor their murderous designs. Against the protest of his friends, who by detective means had obtained from the plotters many of their secrets, Mr. Lincoln made the Soldiers' Home his summer residence. The conspirators thought that either abduction or assassination could be accomplished without difficulty. They resolved upon the latter. They would dispatch him during one of his lonely rides after nightfall from the White House to his summer retreat. The attempt was made.

In the spring and early summer of 1862 I persistently