How the Civil War Started: Lincoln, Early Battles, and America’s Deadliest Turning Point

In February 1861, a young man from New Orleans named Harry Davis sat across from Otis Hillard at a Baltimore restaurant. The two had become fast friends weeks earlier, bonding over their shared passion for Southern white supremacy and their hatred of Abraham Lincoln. Over dinner, Hillard shared thrilling news: a secretive group of pro-Southern revolutionaries he belonged to planned to kill the president-elect. Hillard looked Davis in the eye and admitted that if granted the task of pulling the trigger, "I would do it willingly." Two days later, in the candlelit drawing room of a secret house, a Corsican barber named Cipriano Ferrandini addressed twenty men. He held a long knife over his head and declared, "Gentlemen, this hireling Lincoln shall never, never be president." The men drew ballots from a box—whoever drew the one marked in red would be the assassin. On their way to the saloon afterward, Davis opened his ballot. It was blank. But Hillard told him not to worry: Ferrandini had placed eight red-marked ballots in the box to ensure someone would pull the trigger. Davis then bid Hillard goodnight and went to a large office building on South Street—the headquarters of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Harry Davis was not a Southern revolutionary. He was an undercover agent.