Paula Vogel's ingenious 'Civil War Christmas' opens at Baltimore's Center Stage

Christmas Eve, 1864: Abraham Lincoln frets over the present he bought for his high-strung wife, while Mary Lincoln is in a tizzy over a tree. Not far away, John Wilkes Booth schemes to capture the president, a furious black Union soldier vows vengeance on Confederate soldiers for kidnapping his free wife and a young black girl is loose on the frigid streets of the war-weary American capital.