Where was presidential security 150 years ago? Author tackles timely topic
Bob O’Connor, in costume as Abraham Lincoln’s bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, pauses beside a portrait of the 16th president at the West Virginia Statehood Museum in Wheeling in May 2013.
Bob O’Connor provided this photo of the pass from President Lincoln that allowed Ward Hill Lamon to travel from Washington to Richmond and back.
Abraham Lincoln survived the Civil War in Washington, D.C., a city that was perilously close to the Confederacy, only to be assassinated five days after the end of hostilities by a Southern sympathizer. With the 150-year anniversary of Lincoln’s murder approaching, and with the issue of presidential security still making the news, a history-minded author offers a glimpse into the security lapses that led to Lincoln’s death.
When he’s dressed in his top hat, embroidered vest and Victorian-style frock coat, bearded author Bob O’Connor is often mistaken for someone who’s doing a presentation on President Lincoln. But O’Connor isn’t dressing up as the 16th president. He’s in character as Ward Hill Lamon, a U.S. marshal who considered himself to be Lincoln’s bodyguard. Even though Lamon had a dark beard, O’Connor isn’t applying any dye to his distinguished grays, because a swarthy beard would make him look even more like Honest Abe, the first United States president to be assassinated.
As one of 15 presenters with the West Virginia Council on the Humanities’ “History Alive!” program, O’Connor seeks to shed some light on a long-ago era.
When he takes questions from his audience, whether they be school children or adults, a common question O’Connor fields is, “Where was the Secret Service?”
People are surprised to learn that in April 1865, when Lincoln was assassinated, there was no Secret Service. As a division of the Department of the Treasury, the Secret Service was created in July of that year to investigate counterfeiting cases. Agents didn’t actually start guarding the president full time until Teddy Roosevelt became president after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, although the Secret Service website notes it began informal, part-time protection of President Grover Cleveland in 1894.
Today, Americans regard security surrounding the nation’s early presidents lax or nonexistent. People could wait in line at the official residence and speak directly to the chief executive, as depicted in Stephen Spielberg’s movie, “Lincoln.”
“Access to the public was part of his job,” O’Connor said.
In 1865, it was unthinkable that at Ford’s Theater an actor would assassinate a U.S., even though someone had tried to kill President Andrew Jackson 30 years earlier.
The nation’s capital was heavily guarded against an invading army coming to town, but the attitude toward the president’s personal security could be considered cavalier.
Historians count up to five attempts on Lincoln’s life before he went to Ford’s Theater to watch the play, “Our American Cousin.”
A musket ball pierced his stove pipe hat in 1864 when he was riding to the Soldiers Home in Washington, D.C., but the incident was passed off as an accident due to a stray shot. “He joked about it,” O’Connor said. The president was “pretty loose about having a bodyguard. He thought it was up to divine intervention if he would be safe or not.” After that, Lincoln no longer rode alone to or from the Soldiers Home.
Ward Hill Lamon is an obscure figure. Sometimes he’s mentioned in a half-sentence in Lincoln books. They often mention him as being a fellow attorney or someone taken to Washington to be Lincoln’s bodyguard.
“He was the person closest to Lincoln, except for the last few days of (Lincoln’s) life,” O’Connor said of Lamon. “It’s interesting that historians have always said he was not a credible source because he bragged. If I was close to Abe Lincoln, I’d probably be still bragging about it.”
Lamon was born in 1828 in Summit Point, Va., – now West Virginia – just a few miles from O’Connor’s home in Charles Town in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle. O’Connor tried digging up some information about Lamon in Summit Point, but “nobody knew much about him,” the author said.
Lamon and Lincoln practiced law together in Danville, Ill., from 1852 to 1856. “Lamon mostly did research. Lincoln did the actual defending in the courtroom,” although he preferred to settle cases out of court, O’Connor said.
In 1860, Lincoln was running for president as a candidate for the fledgling Republican Party. Lamon was in Chicago, O’Connor said, “as part of a committee that helped run some of the hospitality suites and twist a few arms to try to get people to vote for their candidate.”
For his efforts, Lamon hoped to be named consul (ambassador) to France with an assignment in Paris that would please his wife.
Lincoln, however, had other plans for Lamon. “He only took three men from Illinois to Washington, Lamon, private secretary John George Nicolay and assistant private secretary John Hay.”
With the nation on the brink of Civil War in 1861, Lincoln’s trip to his first inaugural was fraught with danger. Some sources point to Lamon as the person who successfully guided Lincoln through Baltimore, Md., where would-be assassins lay in wait.
Lincoln named Lamon U.S. marshal of the District of Columbia, which O’Connor described as the only job that reported directly to Lincoln. Part of his unofficial duty was to be the bodyguard.
Although the Civil War was winding down 150 years ago today, a February 1865 peace conference in Hampton Roads, Va., was unsuccessful and Union troops would not fly their flag in Richmond, Va., the capital of the Confederacy, until April 2.
Confederate forces under Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered a week later, but Lincoln did not have much time to celebrate the Union forces’ victory.
So, where was this self-appointed bodyguard the night of April 14, 1865, while Lincoln was enjoying a performance?
Lincoln sent Lamon away. Not dismissing him, but sending him on a secret mission to Richmond, Va., the confederate capital, to set up meetings for bringing the South back into the Union, O’Connor said, producing a copy of a pass to bolster his claim.
Lincoln was adamant the reunited states should forget the horrors of war while others in the government wanted to seek retribution.
Regardless of the politics of the time, with Lamon not present in Washington to accompany the president to Ford’s Theater, the first lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, signed an order appointing John Parker, a Washington, D.C., policeman, as guard of the presidential theater party.
O’Connor regards Parker as “kind of an odd choice. He had been in trouble so many times in his career, firing a weapon in a house of ill repute when he was supposed to be on duty and missing 30 days of work without an excuse.”
Parker, who was heavily armed, was supposed to sit outside the box and guard the stairway so no one could get into the presidential box. O’Connor believes Parker left his post so he could watch the play. Other accounts place him inside a saloon.
Famous actor of the period John Wilkes Booth, armed with a pocket-pistol derringer containing a single bullet and a Bowie knife, walked up a back staircase of the theater and into the president’s box. He fired a fatal shot into Lincoln’s head and escaped from the theater.
Although Parker was charged with leaving his post, the charge was dropped and Parker was never tried.
Lamon later reflected he could have easily waylaid the slightly-built Booth before he reached the president, theorizing if the actor had only one bullet, he was not going to waste it by slaying someone who stood in his way.
“He’d have been dead before he got to the president,” O’Connor quoted Lamon.
How does O’Connor know so much about a man about whom so many know so little?
A continent’s breadth away, he found a treasure trove: Lamon’s unpublished manuscript at the Huntingdon Research Library in San Marino, Calif., in 2007.
“I went out there to look at 3,000 letters written by Ward Hill Lamon,” O’Connor said. “I wanted to find out what happened to him after Lincoln’s death. Among the letters was a 500-page typewritten document from the 1880s,” which was Lamon’s autobiography.
“He mentioned himself in the book seven or eight times,” O’Connor said. “He didn’t brag at all about himself. Thank God it was typewritten. His penmanship was terrible. He should’ve been a doctor.”
O’Connor bought the rights to self-publish the manuscript from the Huntingdon Library, writing and adding 1,700 footnotes, many of them explaining 19th century terms that are meaningless to today’s reader. “The Life of Abraham Lincoln as President” was published in 2010.
So, why did Lamon’s autobiography remain unpublished for 130 years? Lamon could have self-published his book, and O’Connor can’t figure out why this man, who was so close to Lincoln, never exercised that option.
But O’Connor has a theory about why publishers wouldn’t touch the manuscript. The president’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln, acted as a clearinghouse for projects related to his slain father, and without the son’s approval, a book by Lamon would have gone nowhere.
O’Connor also wrote in 2008 “The Virginian Who Might Have Saved Lincoln,” which won awards, including Best Book finalist for unabridged audio fiction.
Being president is a dangerous job in more ways than one. Slightly more than a third of United States presidents have either been assassinated or targeted by attempts.
Congress did not pass legislation putting the Secret Service in charge of protecting the president until after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901.
The other two assassinated presidents were James Garfield, in 1881, and John F. Kennedy, in 1963. Four other presidents – William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren Harding and Franklin Delano Roosevelt – died of natural causes while in office.
Those since Jackson who had attempts on their lives were Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford (twice), Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.