Jacob Thompson reported to Judah Benjamin that nearly every Confederate schemed hatched in Canada was a failure.
"The bane and curse of carrying out anything in this country is the constant surveillance under which we act. Detectives or those ready to give information, stand at every street corner. Two or three cannot interchange ideas without a reporter."

Even when a trained agent like Thomas Nelson Conrad of the Confederate Signal Corps or Service, who got permission from the Confederate War Department to try and pull off an abduction of Lincoln, just like Booth's plan, it came a cropper. His team waited for Lincoln along Seventh St. When his carriage came by, it was guarded by cavalry. Lincoln had never been that closely guarded before.

...Conrad, Confederate Spy, 69-75. In tis Conrad says that the sudden vigilance was due to a security leak of one of Mosby's men he was using. He got this story from William H. Crook, an unreliable source who called himself a friend and bodyguard to the president.