United States General-in-chief Winfield Scott was in charge of security for the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln on March 4, 1861. Of the 650 soldiers Scott recruited to protect the President-elect, some marched in front of Lincoln's open carriage and some on the side. An infantry company marched behind.
Scott placed sharpshooters on top of buildings all along Pennsylvania Avenue and in the windows of the Capitol itself. Scott watched the proceedings from a nearby rise, an artillery battery at his rear. He pledged to "blow to hell any secessionist who showed a head."
Colonel Charles Stone, riding alongside Lincoln's carriage, was ordered by Scott to spur his horse all along the route so as to make his horse buck and thus disrupt anyone getting an accurate shot at Lincoln. After Lincoln was sworn in, Scott said, "Thank God, we now have a government."
Douglas Egerton, Year of Meteors, p. 323.
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