26. The Lax Attitude Towards Presidential Protection
The overly-relaxed attitude to presidential security in the nineteenth century was nearly universal. Abraham Lincoln was, himself, quite cavalier about his personal safety – despite numerous threats and copious hate mail. In 1861, a plot was uncovered that sought to murder the then-recently-elected President Lincoln in Baltimore, on his way to take office in Washington, DC. In 1864, as Lincoln rode at night unguarded, an unknown sniper fired a rifle shot that missed his head by inches, and pierced his hat.
Despite that close call, the knowledge that many wished him ill in the worst way possible, and reports of numerous plots against his life, Lincoln often went about unescorted. The tall, bearded, gangly, and quite easily identifiable president sometimes walked alone at night from the White House to the War Department. He often attended church or went to the theater without bodyguards, and generally disliked the fuss of a military escort. On the fateful night of April 14, 1865, he was assigned a bodyguard – but an inept one.
