The Plot To Assassinate The President

For a long time it was believed that an Italian barber of Baltimore was the Orsini who undertook to slay President Lincoln on his journey to the Capital in February, 1861, and it is possible he was one of the plotters; but it has come out on a recent trial of a man named Byrne, in Richmond, that he was the captain of the band that was to take the life of Mr. Lincoln.  This Byrne used to be a notorious gambler and leading Democrat of Baltimore, and emigrated to Richmond shortly after the 19th of April, of bloody memory. – He was recently arrested in Jeff. Davis’s capital on a charge of keeping a gambling house and of disloyalty to the chief traitor’s pretended Government.  Wigfall testified to Byrne’s loyalty to the rebel cause, and gave in evidence that Byrne was the captain of the gang who were to kill Mr. Lincoln, and upon this evidence, it appears he was let go.  Of course, to be guilty of such an intended crime is a mantle large enough to cover up all other sins against society and the Divine law.  So Wigfall has revealed the Baltimroe Orsini at last.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 5, 1862, p. 2