By summer of 1868 Lafayette Baker was back home in Philadelphia with his wife Jenny, a gentle woman who never inquired into her husband’s activities and his long absences. She merely appreciated the times he was with her. While he had told his associates that removing Edwin Stanton from the post of Secretary of War was enough justice, Baker now sat in his house without a job and with time to contemplate the situation.
He decided that Stanton had not suffered enough. Baker’s mind focused on a new crusade to punish the old asthmatic monster. But how? Every newspaper, magazine and publishing house in America would demand facts to substantiate each accusation. Questionable testimony from unreliable witnesses was precarious at best. Baker then remembered Colburn’s United Service Magazine published by a London printing house. The magazine published collections of memoirs of retired military personnel from around the world. Respectable journalists knew Colburn’s editors did not quibble over the accuracy of accounts as long as the grammar was reasonably sound. Baker determined this periodical would be the perfect platform for his new account on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
In his report, Baker claimed he first learned of the presidential murder plot on April 10, 1865. “I did not know the identity of the assassin, but I knew most all else when I approached Edwin Stanton about it,” he wrote. “Stanton told me I was a party to it too but ordered me not to do anything to stop it but to see what came of it and then we would know better how to handle it. He showed me a forged document that purported Andrew Johnson had authorized me to kidnap the President.” Most of this was fabrication—a code, he told himself–which the cleverest of the world’s detectives could decipher in years to come. He also claimed the plot included members of Congress, Army and Naval officers, a governor, bankers, newspapermen and industrialists, all of whom paid a total of $85,000 to have Lincoln killed. Baker added that only eight people knew all the details of the conspiracy, and that he feared for his life.
After the completion of the document, he carefully read it, and for a brief moment considered that he was going mad. Even his wife Jenny worried about his mental stability. He walked through the house each night, stopping to peer out of every window to see if anyone lurked in the shadows. He even cancelled hunting trips with his brother-in-law Wally Pollock and other close friends, outings that always had lifted his spirits long ago, before he was stricken with a conscience. Who knows what could happen, he explained to Jenny. Wally could accidentally shoot him, or a stranger could be stalking him in the woods. Jenny wrapped her arms around him. He’d worked himself into a delusion that he was about to be murdered, she supported her husband. Patting his tousled red hair, she whispered that she knew he had committed horrible crimes during the war but a desire to save his country had motivated him, not greed or evil intent.
“I know what will make you happy,” she announced with a sympathetic smile. “I’ll contact my sister Mary and her husband Wally to go out to dinner. You’ve always enjoyed a good meal in a pleasant restaurant. Then Mary and I will go home and you and Wally will make a round of bars to drink each other under the table.”
Baker shook his head. “No, no. That will just draw attention to me. He’ll spot me and kill me. I know he will.”
“Exactly who do you think would want to kill you?” Jenny asked, cocking her head.
“No one, really.” He tried to laugh away his outburst. “Actually, I have finished a new article for Colburn’s United Service Magazine. I’ll take it by the Post Office this afternoon, and then celebrate by myself. You won’t mind, will you, Jenny? You understand, my sweet?”
Philadelphia’s taverns huddled around the old financial district. Baker frequented all of the saloons. Each one drew a distinct clientele, all the way from wealthy businessmen and elite lawyers to actors, boxers and farmers. On this particular night, he drifted first to Paddy Carroll’s on Ridge Avenue just above Wood Street. Dog fighters gathered there. Baker had indulged in betting on the dogs while busting unions in San Francisco before the war. He liked the dog fighters. He understood how they justified in their own minds their way of making money while dogs bled to death.
Paddy himself tended bar. “Ah, Mr. Baker, ‘tis been awhile since ye have crossed me threshold. What will be ye pleasure?”
“The best whiskey you have.” He collapsed on a stool and folded his hands in front of his mouth. “I’m celebrating. I’ve sent off an article to a British magazine about Mr. Lincoln’s assassination. When it’s published, the whole world will know the truth.”
“De truth, Mr. Baker?” Paddy said with a laugh as he filled a shot glass. “I t’ought ye told de truth with your book last year?”
In one swift gulp, he downed the whiskey and pushed the glass back. “Another. There’s more damn truth about that business than can ever be told in a single lifetime.”
“And each time ye tell de truth, you become a richer man,” Paddy joked, putting the second round in front of Baker.
“I’m not telling the truth for money,” he growled as he sipped on his refilled shot glass . “There’s not enough money in the world to pay for the truth I know.”
“Of course, Mr. Baker, of course. As long as ye share some of dat money with me, ye can tell any kind of truth ye want.”