Disunion: Lincoln slips through Baltimore

(NYTimes) Feb. 23, 1861: The last day of Lincoln’s journey was the most difficult of all. He had braved the elements, the enormous crowds and the strain of speaking incessantly. By his words, and even more by his physical presence, he had shored up America’s flagging belief in her institutions. “Never before have we had man in the open air,” Whitman once wrote. Now, a million or so Americans had glimpsed a top hat parting a sea of humanity, or seen a bearded man wave from the back of a speeding train, or waved to him on a balcony in a downtown hotel, and felt a connection to their government.
But on this day, he had to reverse his open-air approach, and indulge in a most un-Lincolnesque deception. Continued

Photo: Passage through Baltimore, Adalbert Volck, 1861 (Library of Congress).