WASHINGTON

Dread

FEBRUARY

GENERAL SCOTT’S TROOPS AND CANNON WERE VISIBLE THROUGHOUT the city, a potent symbol of the Army’s resolve to ensure that the electoral count and certification of Lincoln’s election, set for February 13, would occur without disruption. One of the most common rumors held that the biggest threat came from Baltimore, where six thousand men were reputed to be armed and prepared to act. As the date of the count neared, one hundred police officers from New York and Philadelphia converged on Washington to further ensure its successful completion.

The city lay below the Mason-Dixon Line within marching range of Virginia and Maryland, and many residents were sympathetic to the South. New defections from the government seemed to take place every day. Half of its 4,470 civil and military employees came from states “where the revolutionary movement was openly advocated and urged,” said Senator Seward. “Disaffection lurked, if it did not openly avow itself, in every department and every bureau, in every regiment and in every legation and consulate from London to Calcutta.”

Jeremiah Black, secretary of state, wrote to Buchanan that although no hard evidence had yet been discovered of a conspiracy to seize Washington, it was clear “that the possession of this city is absolutely essential to the ultimate design of the secessionists.”

To Black, a Democrat loyal to the Union, the underlying logic was itself probative. “If they can take it and do not take it,” Black wrote, “they are fools.”