The presidential election of 1856 happens mere days after the Booths return. Kansas remains awash in blood and Senator Sumner has been almost killed in a beating on the Senate floor, and still the level of violence in Baltimore shocks the country. Hours of riot and mayhem leave some thirty people dead, another three hundred injured. The O’Laughlens, coming with raisin cakes to welcome the Booths back, warn them to stay inside on Election Day.

Which is what they do. After all, only Edwin is eligible to vote and he’s no Know-Nothing.

When the election is over, the first-ever presidential candidate for the new Republican Party, John C. Frémont, has been defeated despite carrying most of the North. Democrat James Buchanan sweeps the South and Frémont’s own state of California. The American Party nominee, ex-president, ex-Whig Millard Fillmore, takes only one state. That state is Maryland.

—

Fillmore has one supporter in the Lincoln household. Not Lincoln, himself—of course, Lincoln supported Frémont. But Mary Todd Lincoln writes to her half-sister, “My weak woman’s heart was too Southern in feeling to sympathise with any but Fillmore. I have always been a great admirer of his, he made so good a President & is so just a man & feels the necessity of keeping foreigners, within bounds. If some of you Kentuckians, had to deal with the ‘wild Irish,’ as we housekeepers are sometimes called upon to do, the South would certainly elect Mr. Fillmore next time . . .”

She is anxious that Lincoln not be mistaken for an abolitionist. Nothing could be further from the truth, she says.

—

One year later, Baltimore braces for another municipal election. This time the rioting is mostly contained in the Eighth Ward—that Irish and German district known as Limerick—though some of it spills over into the Fifth and a number of Plug Uglies and Rip Raps travel into DC to menace the voters there.

Large numbers of Baltimoreans have simply stopped trying to vote. “I thought my life of more consequence than voting,” says David C. Piquett, a Democratic candidate for office, who was chased through the streets and shot at. The death count on Election Day is down, but a policeman is murdered. Twenty-four gang members are arrested and charged. They all stand trial. None are found guilty.

Baltimore is one of the last remaining bastions of Know-Nothing power. The national party has collapsed over the issue of slavery. Henry Winter Davis, the man John and Asia had gone to hear in Churchville, now a congressman, argues that slavery is so very divisive, the best way to deal with it is never to mention it.