Maryland was a slave state, part of what was considered the border South, and Baltimore, its principal city, seethed with secessionist zeal. Pinkerton and Felton agreed that it was during that transfer between trains, in a slaveholding city sympathetic to disunion, that Lincoln would be most vulnerable. Moreover, the city’s chief of police, George P. Kane, was an avowed secessionist who made it clear that he had no intention of deploying officers to help protect Lincoln as he traversed the city.
