The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War (6 page)

As it turned out, however, a plodding country cooper was just what Craig wanted. Turning suddenly, the older man asked point-blank if Pinkerton had ever passed any counterfeit currency. “Yes, Mr. Craig,” Pinkerton replied promptly, “but only when I could get a first-class article. I frequently ‘work off’ the stuff in paying my men Saturday nights. Have you something really good, now?”

Craig answered that he had a “bang up article,” and passed over a pair of bogus ten-dollar bills. Pinkerton had never seen a ten-dollar bill—real or bogus—in his entire life, but for Craig’s benefit he pretended to be a shrewd judge of forgeries. “I looked at them very, very wisely,” he recalled, “and after a little expressed myself as very much pleased with them.”

Craig now made his proposal. He would sell Pinkerton five hundred dollars’ worth of phony bills for twenty-five cents on the dollar, or $125 in genuine “eastern bills.” If all went well, he would take Pinkerton on as his local partner, allowing the young cooper a chance to clear more cash in one year than Dundee’s most prosperous merchant would see in a decade. Pinkerton took a moment to weigh the offer, then put out his hand to seal the deal. The two men arranged to carry out the exchange later that day at an appropriately remote spot—an unfinished church building in nearby Elgin.

This would be the first great test of Pinkerton’s career, and he bungled it badly. As Craig rode off toward Elgin, Pinkerton headed back to Dundee to report to Hunt and Bosworth, who immediately supplied the cash needed to make the exchange, confident that Craig’s arrest and prosecution would soon follow. At the deserted church in Elgin, however, Pinkerton’s inexperience showed itself. As he passed the bundle of cash over to Craig, the older man asked him to step outside for a few minutes to see if anyone happened to be watching. Pinkerton did as directed, realizing too late that he had “placed myself in the man’s power completely” by taking his eyes off the money. A moment later, Craig reappeared, telling an absurd story: A shadowy colleague had swooped in unexpectedly, he claimed, and left a mysterious parcel behind. “He is never seen by any living person with whom I have business,” Craig insisted. “Look under that stone over yonder. I
think
you will find what you bought.” Pinkerton saw at once that he had been badly outmaneuvered. Craig had arranged matters so that he could not be apprehended in possession of incriminating evidence. Reaching down, Pinkerton took the parcel from under the stone and found fifty ten-dollar bills inside. Glancing at Craig, Pinkerton saw a steely, self-satisfied expression on the older man’s face. “Old John Craig is never caught napping, young man,” he said pointedly.

Pinkerton hesitated for a moment, badly unsettled, as Craig continued to study him carefully. Recovering himself, Pinkerton saw that he had no choice but to continue playing his role, in the hope that the situation might yet be turned to his advantage. Thumbing through the packet of bills, he asked Craig how much more of his “product” happened to be available. The counterfeiter hedged, but he allowed as how he might be able to get his hands on an additional four thousand dollars. Pinkerton leapt at the opening. “Look here, Craig,” he said, “if you wouldn’t be in too big a hurry about getting back home, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I believe I could make arrangements to buy you out altogether.” Clutching the forged notes, Pinkerton hastily improvised a plan. If Craig would allow him a few days to gather up the necessary “eastern bills” from friends in the area, Pinkerton would meet him in Chicago, at a hotel called the Sauganash, to make the exchange. After a moment’s consideration, Craig agreed. In the meantime, he said, he would lay low at the home of a friend. “Good-bye, then,” said Craig shaking Pinkerton’s hand. “But, mind you, be discreet!”

Being discreet was now the least of Pinkerton’s problems. He had, in effect, made an all-or-nothing bet on the integrity of a counterfeiter. If Craig were to have second thoughts, or receive a better offer, Pinkerton would have nothing to show for Hunt and Bosworth’s money but a pile of worthless paper. Even so, as the two men parted ways, some previously untapped instinct told Pinkerton that Craig could be trusted to keep their bargain: “Criminal though he was, he was a man who, when he had passed his word, would be certain to keep it.”

Returning to Dundee, Pinkerton found that Hunt and Bosworth did not share this opinion. Craig had ridden off with a great deal of their money in his saddlebags and they feared that he “would leave us all in the lurch.” Shaken by their doubts, Pinkerton went to bed that night filled with dread, “and fully satisfied in my own mind that I was not born to become a detective.”

By the following morning, however, he had formed a plan of action. For three days, he devoted “very little attention to my casks and barrels” and gave himself over entirely to “a good deal of nervous plotting and planning.” Having learned a bitter lesson at the church in Elgin, Pinkerton anticipated that Craig would arrange matters in Chicago so that no incriminating bills would be found in his hands. “Circumstances and my own youth and inexperience were against me,” Pinkerton admitted, but he was determined to atone for his earlier failure. At last, on the appointed day, Pinkerton saddled a horse and rode into Chicago.

The Sauganash, Chicago’s first hotel, was a whitewashed log structure at Wolf Point, where the main stem of the Chicago River divides into its north and south branches. Described by one early visitor as a “vile two-storied barrack,” the Sauganash featured a tavern on the ground floor, where traders and other visitors were known to gather. Arriving well ahead of time, Pinkerton made a few final arrangements with a pair of Chicago constables. He positioned one of the officers inside the tavern, where the meeting was to take place, while the second would keep watch outside the building for any unexpected arrivals or departures. Satisfied, Pinkerton took a seat in the hotel’s front room and waited.

At the appointed hour, John Craig entered the room and “sauntered about for a time,” apparently in no rush to acknowledge Pinkerton. Finally, he snatched up a newspaper and dropped into an adjacent seat, pretending to be absorbed in reading. Without taking his eyes off the paper, he asked in a lowered voice if Pinkerton had managed to bring the money. Pinkerton, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead, acknowledged that he had. Craig instructed him to pass it over, promising that a package of bills would be in his hands “in the course of an hour.” Pinkerton was ready for this. Drawing a deep breath, he said that the friend who had loaned him the money, a man named Boyd, was having second thoughts. Boyd insisted on seeing the merchandise in advance, Pinkerton explained, and had accompanied him to Chicago in order to supervise the transaction. In fact, Pinkerton said, he expected Boyd to appear at any moment. The man was a lawyer, and a “stickler for form.”

Craig appeared deeply unsettled by this development. He insisted “with some warmth” that he did not want an outsider complicating matters. Pinkerton answered in a tone that suggested the matter was out of his hands. “You know I would trust you with ten times this sum,” he said, “but I’ve placed myself in this damned lawyer’s power, and he insists like an idiot on having the thing done only in one way.”

As Craig’s objections mounted, Pinkerton admitted to himself that his chances of success were now “beginning to look a little misty.” The two men adjourned to the hotel’s tavern, where Craig knocked back a fortifying drink as Pinkerton continued to plead his case. After a few moments, Craig took himself off to consider the matter in private. Pinkerton later learned, from the constable posted outside, that the older man passed the next half hour walking aimlessly in various directions, making sudden stops and turns, and looking frequently over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. After a time, he drew up short, as though he had come to an abrupt decision, and made his way back to the hotel.

Seeing Craig reappear in the hotel’s front room, Pinkerton at once stepped forward. “Well, Craig, are you going to let me have the money?” he asked. The older man looked back at him with an air of polite surprise, as if Pinkerton were a total stranger.

“What money?” Craig asked.

Pinkerton hadn’t expected this. At a stroke, all his careful planning appeared to be undone. “The money you promised me,” he stammered.

Craig remained unflappable. “I haven’t the honor of your acquaintance, sir,” he said coolly, “and therefore cannot imagine to what you allude.”

Pinkerton was utterly dumbfounded. “If the Sauganash Hotel had fallen upon me,” he would later say, “I could not have been more surprised.”

Staggered as he was, Pinkerton knew that he had to take action. His entire scheme depended on apprehending Craig in the act of selling the forged bills. Now, with the older man feigning ignorance of Pinkerton and his designs, the would-be detective had no evidence that would stand up in court. Craig, he knew, was far too slippery to allow himself to be apprehended with counterfeit money in his pockets. If the case came before a judge, it would come down to one man’s word against another’s. The situation appeared hopeless, but Pinkerton felt obligated to follow through with his plans. Otherwise, Craig would simply slip away and return to his home in Vermont, out of the jurisdiction of the local authorities, carrying Hunt and Bosworth’s money off with him.

“There was only one thing to do,” Pinkerton concluded, “and that was to make Mr. Craig my prisoner.” Pinkerton signaled the constable across the room, who hurried over to make the arrest. Craig, still pretending ignorance of both Pinkerton and his accusations, loudly protested his innocence. A large crowd gathered, and “considerable sympathy was expressed for the stately, gray-haired man who was being borne into captivity by the green-looking countryman cooper from Dundee.” Pinkerton’s first big case—which he would one day recount under the heading of “How I Became a Detective”—ended with a swarm of bystanders raining insults on his head.

As it happened, Pinkerton’s flimsy evidence was never tested in court. Although Craig was duly arrested and locked up to await trial, it was discovered one morning that he had mysteriously vanished from his jail cell—leaving, it was said, at least one jailer considerably richer. The episode taught Pinkerton a valuable lesson in what he would call “the perfidy of officials.” A second, more personal lesson had already been taken to heart. Writing of the episode many years later, Pinkerton reflected on a moment at the church in Elgin when he found himself lingering over Craig’s bundle of fifty ten-dollar bills: “For a moment the greatest temptation of my life swept over me,” he admitted. “A thousand thoughts of sudden wealth and a life free from the grinding labor which I had always known, came rushing into my mind. Here in my hands were five hundred dollars, or what professed to be, every one of them as good as gold, if I only chose to use it.” He would resist the temptation, but Pinkerton never forgot it. Throughout his career, he claimed that he could never look on those who had fallen prey to greedy impulses without “a touch of genuine human sympathy.”

Returning to Dundee, Pinkerton found that his latest exploit brought him even more notice than the Bogus Island adventure. “The country being new, and great sensations scarce, the affair was in everybody’s mouth,” he wrote, “and I suddenly found myself called upon, from every quarter, to undertake matters requiring detective skill.” Before long, Pinkerton was offered the post of deputy sheriff of Kane County. The duties were not terribly demanding, mostly serving court papers and chasing down an occasional horse thief, but his days as a country cooper were coming to an end—“all of which,” he later admitted, “I owe to Old John Craig.”

CHAPTER THREE

ARDENT SPIRITS

Against Lincoln the Democrats put up Peter Cartwright, a famous and rugged old-fashioned circuit rider, a storming evangelist, exhorter and Jackson Democrat. [Lincoln] went to a religious meeting where Cartwright in due time said, “All who desire to give their hearts to God, and go to heaven, will stand.” A sprinkling of men, women and children stood up. The preacher exhorted, “All who do not wish to go to hell will stand.” All stood up—except Lincoln. Then Cartwright in his gravest voice: “I observe that many responded to the first invitation to give their hearts to God and go to heaven. And I further observe that all of you save one indicated that you did not desire to go to hell. The sole exception is Mr. Lincoln, who did not respond to either invitation. May I inquire of you, Mr. Lincoln, where you are going?”

Lincoln slowly rose: “I came here as a respectful listener. I did not know that I was to be singled out by Brother Cartwright. I believe in treating religious matters with due solemnity. I admit that the questions propounded by Brother Cartwright are of great importance. I did not feel called upon to answer as the rest did. Brother Cartwright asks me directly where I am going. I desire to reply with equal directness: I am going to Congress.”

—CARL SANDBURG, on Lincoln’s 1846 congressional race

IN THE SPRING OF 1847,
a letter appeared in the
Western Citizen,
a Kane County newspaper, accusing Allan Pinkerton of being an “unrepining atheist.” The denunciation appeared over the signature of M. L. Wisner, the pastor of the Dundee Baptist Church, and signaled that the town cooper had become persona non grata in the community.

Pinkerton was not a religious man. In Glasgow, he recalled, his parents had been “obliged to take their children to church to be baptized, but otherwise they never went to church; they were what is called Atheists.” Pinkerton, too, had taken his firstborn son to be baptized at Wisner’s church in Dundee, but he saw himself in much the same light as his parents. Nevertheless, for the sake of fitting in as a member of the community, he dutifully hitched up a farm wagon each week and drove with Joan to Sunday services.