ABSTRACT
On February 18, 1861, the Mozart Hall Democracy and Tammany were agreed on one thing—that their members should keep off Broadway and several other streets the following afternoon. Lincoln was coming to visit the city. Tweed's Bowery Boys, and Wood's Dead Rabbits, and all other gangsters, were directed to avoid the line of march. Orders not to fly the Stars and Stripes were given to merchants and others. While the Democrats were determined on making the reception of Lincoln as cheerless as possible, they did not want any bloodshed. There was reason for fearing trouble. Early the preceding month Captain Walling and another New York detective were sent on a secret mission to Baltimore. They were to aid in preventing the culmination of a plot to assassinate Lincoln in that city before he was inaugurated. The object of the detectives’ mission was known to Tweed and every one else in an important position in the city. All feared that, if the hot-heads of gangdom were near any particularly demonstrative Lincolnites when the President-elect was passing through the streets, trouble, and possibly fatal rioting, might ensue.
