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Train after train near the port of New Orleans had broken down just in time to fail to take assigned cargo northward. While a string of such accidents seemed barely plausible, no one could be completely sure it was sabotage, nor could they identify a saboteur. I entered the city with the New Year of 1861 and had not yet left by February. The city itself was lovely, elegant buildings lining every narrow street, the sweet smell of pralines and beignets wafting across the Vieux Carré. But I was uneasy.
All during January, one after another, Southern states had announced their secession from the Union; Texas’s declaration on the first day of February had brought the total to seven. With each state, I grew more desperate and more sure we would never be able to turn the tide.
And I was exhausted. All the women to talk to and deceive, all the detailed dispatches to write, all the secrets to keep. I was undercover as Miss Filgate, the role I found most exhausting, as she was so fired up about everything, there was never any rest. She advocated violence against Yankees and darkies alike, and my own stomach turned at some of the things that came out of her—my—mouth.
Miss Filgate celebrated with the other citizens of the Crescent City when it was announced that the seceded states—South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas—had formed a new nation, the Confederate States. She brandished her fists from an iron balcony high above Royal Street, whooping with joy. She shouted her enthusiasm for the new President Jefferson Davis and told anyone who would listen that she prayed for his strength and wisdom to guide us into a new age.
Inside, I wept.
The next day, I stopped by the telegram office, which I had also done on the other thirty-nine days I’d been in New Orleans.
“Anything for Miss Filgate?” I asked as I always did, my mind already on the next conversation I would have back at the St. Charles that afternoon. Should I push Mrs. Jennings harder today? Should I only listen? Should I ask for an introduction to her husband and try to pry information from him directly? Such risk, no matter which way I turned.
But the clerk surprised me. “Here you go.”
I took the paper from his hand and sat on a bench to open it, making sure there were no eyes near to see.
The telegram had only two words:
COME HOME
I engaged a hackman for the station and was on the next train.
Hour after hour, we moved smoothly through the night, rolling north. Around midnight, I got the irrational sense that something was going to go terribly wrong. After all, half a dozen Pinkerton agents had been assigned to investigate the possibility of railroad sabotage, including me. The train I was on would make a perfect target. Full of Northerners returning to a stronghold of liberalism. Our deaths would send a clear signal.
I walked the train the rest of the night, passing through every car, looking for suspicious characters. After the third time I passed the engineer, he took me aside and asked what I was up to. Given the choice to reveal my true identity or give up my efforts, I simply told him that I had a nervous stomach, and he offered me a zinc tablet. I thanked him warmly and returned to my seat. I imagined myself revealing the truth, telling him to be on the lookout, but there were too many possibilities—I couldn’t be sure, but I thought his voice had a slight softness around the vowels, like the accents I’d heard in western Tennessee. He could be part of any conspiracy just as easily as he could be the savior who would foil it.
The night was long, long, long.
Day found me in Chicago at last, and when I walked in the door of the office, I almost cried at the pleasant familiarity. Men bustling about. Cabinets of case files. The empty garments of the costume closet, the shapes of arms and legs hanging hollow, waiting to be filled. The right kind of flag, posted in the waiting room. Here was home.
And here was the boss, reaching his hand out to shake mine, equally welcome.
“Warne,” said Pinkerton warmly.
I shook his hand with all the energy left in my body after the long train ride. “Boss. You said come home.”
“I did.”
“And here I am.”
“It’s good to see you, Warne. Even if the occasion…” He sighed heavily. I was already worried about what he might say, and his reticence concerned me even more.
“I assumed it isn’t good news.”
“Not at all,” he said, instantly somber.
I arranged my skirts, tried to ignore the inch-thick coating of coal dust smeared against my sweaty neck, and waited for the story.
“You know we have our ear to the ground for the railroad,” he began.
“Of course.”
“Well, what we hear isn’t always about the tracks themselves. And this time, we’ve heard something that concerns us a great deal.”
“Don’t give me the story, Boss,” I said. “Give me the facts.”
“Lincoln. They plan to kill him.”
For once, I wished there had been more story.
He sketched out the plan for me with a bare minimum of fuss. Maryland was against Lincoln and against the North. By a quirk of geography, it was also the best approach to Washington, DC, and Lincoln was slated to pass through it two days before his inauguration. Two rail companies had laid track to Baltimore at different times, so travel through the city required an overland switch. Lincoln couldn’t merely pass through and wave from a moving train; he would have to dismount one train and ride via coach to another. That, said Pinkerton, was where they'd surround him and do him in. Rail lines couldn't be laid overnight. There was no way to get him through Baltimore without the overland switch.
“So what are we going to do?”