Watchismo has the incredible story of an apocryphal anti-slavery message that a watchmaker hid inside Abraham Lincoln's pocketwatch at the outbreak of the civil war:
Dillon, working in a D.C. watch repair shop in 1861, told family members that he — by incredible happenstance — had been repairing Lincoln's watch when news came that Fort Sumter had been attacked in South Carolina. It was the opening salvo of what became the Civil War.Dillon told his children (and, half a century later, a reporter for the New York Times) that he opened the watch's inner workings and scrawled his name, the date and a message for the ages: "The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try."
Secret Message in Abraham Lincoln's Pocket Watch
