Saturday, June 3, 2017

Diary of John Hay: May 13, 1864

. . . . Jim Lane came into my room this morning and said the President must now chiefly guard against assassination. I pooh-poohed him, and said that while every prominent man was more or less exposed to the attacks of maniacs, no foresight could guard against them. He replied by saying that he had, by his caution and vigilance, prevented his own assassination when a reward of a hundred thousand dollars had been offered for his head. . . . .

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 194; see Michael Burlingame & John R. Turner Ettlinger, Editors, Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 195-6 for the full diary entry.

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