On the night before arriving in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (February 20, 1861), president-elect Abraham Lincoln received word of an assassination plot planned for his expected journey through Baltimore. Harrisburg resident Simon Cameron, Lincoln's future Secretary of War, entrusted the president's safety to his coachman, Jacob Compton. In a matter of an hour, Compton swiftly escorted Lincoln and his family from their lodgings at the Jones House to a covert train bound for his inauguration in Washington, D.C. The whisking away of Abraham Lincoln was remembered for decades to come.
Lincoln's escort, Jacob Tilford Compton (Cumpton), was born on August 3, 1836, in Williamsport, Maryland, to Rebecca and Ezekiel Compton. Although his father was enslaved, his mother was free, which gave him the legal status of a Freeman. A year after his parents died of cholera in 1854, Compton left Williamsport after allegations surfaced that he had helped two men, George and John Butler, escape to Harrisburg. He reached Harrisburg, where he spent much of the rest of his life.
In Pennsylvania's capital city, Compton found employment first in a brickyard, where he once warded off an abduction attempt. Soon he met U.S. Senator Simon Cameron, who hired him as his personal coachman. It was through this connection that Compton later met the president-elect, who was journeying in 1861 from Illinois to Washington, D.C.
When Lincoln's aides learned of the plot to assassinate Lincoln in Baltimore, they made arrangements for a secret train to carry him to Washington, D.C. Lincoln agreed to the plan but only after honoring his commitment to attend the events planned by Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin. Lincoln’s first stop was the Jones House, a hotel overlooking Market Square (later known as the Commonwealth Hotel), where he gave a speech to the residents of Harrisburg. He then addressed the state legislature at the Pennsylvania Capitol and returned to the Jones House. Although Lincoln had intended to spend the night at the hotel, Governor Curtin, Chicago police detective Allan Pinkerton, and Pennsylvania Senator Simon Cameron devised a plan that allowed the president-elect to make an earlier exit.
Cameron called on his personal carriage driver, Jacob Compton, to help. Compton drove one of the two carriages that secretly transported Lincoln and Colonel Ellsworth, another man traveling with Lincoln, from the Jones House to a Pennsylvania Railroad station at Second and Vine. According to the Harrisburg Telegraph, Compton would later recall that "all the way to the station Mr. Lincoln protested against the secrecy, ridiculed the idea of great danger and with difficulty was persuaded to be guided by the counsel of his escort."
Compton is best known today for spiriting the Lincolns out of Harrisburg, but his transport of the presidential family was only a short moment in an influential life that would continue for nearly half a century more. Most notably, Compton enlisted in the 100th Pennsylvania United States Colored Troops on July 18, 1864, and subsequently served as a corporal and then a sergeant for Company D of the 24th Infantry Regiment of the USCT, which guarded the nation's capital. Compton's seventeen months of military service to the Union cause demonstrated his commitment to freedom. Clearly he was proud to serve: he marched in the USCT Grand Review parade on November 13, 1865.
After the war, Compton remained an active member of Harrisburg’s community. He resided on South Street, two blocks away from the State Capitol, and operated a restaurant at the Bolton Hotel. He was extensively involved in the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, a congregation that assisted new voters in registration after the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. Compton was also an outstanding musician who played the cornet for the Harrisburg Keystone Band. He assisted with music programs at Bethel A.M.E. Zion Church and starred in Excelsior, Harrisburg’s most popular all-Black musical group. Compton also directed the choirs of the city's A.M.E. Zion churches and taught Sunday school music lessons. He was a prominent member of his local chapter of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows Friendly Society, a fraternal group that focused on charity and community service; and he served as Trustee of Brotherly Love Lodge #896, which met on Cowden Street in the Eighth Ward.
During the final ten years of his life, Compton and his wife Lucretia lived in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a coachman for a local attorney and a doctor. Newspaper reports from the late nineteenth century show him serving in the Bethel A.M.E. Church, singing in the church choir, organizing the Fred Douglass Literary Society, and coordinating a parade for the Odd Fellows.
Jacob Compton passed away on September 6, 1905, at age sixty-nine. Newspaper articles about him in later years described him as friendly, gentle, curious, and well-regarded by many in Harrisburg and Wilkes-Barre. According to an obituary published in the Harrisburg Telegraph, Compton was one of the city’s oldest Black residents of the time. He was buried in block F of the Lincoln Cemetery, a historically African American cemetery in Harrisburg. Numerous obituaries hailed Compton as a hero who drove Lincoln’s carriage during his escape and recognized his work with musical groups, church communities, the Freemasons, and the United States Colored Troops. Compton’s commitment to civic service, civil rights, and serving his community and country makes him an important historical figure to remember.
The site of the Jones House itself serves as a living reminder of Compton’s bravery and his assistance to the Lincoln family, signifying the beginning of the escape. While a marker at the site of the Jones House memorializes Lincoln’s flight, it does not mention Compton’s role in transporting the president-elect. Compton's numerous accomplishments demonstrate both his resilience and his selfless service to Harrisburg — traits that should be remembered when memorializing the Old Eighth Ward. The new bronze statue of Jacob Compton in the monument group known as "A Gathering at the Crossroads" offers a fitting legacy to a man who made a local difference, leaving rippling effects across the country.
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