Lincoln’s first recorded visit to Philadelphia occurred while he was an attendee at the 1848 Whig National Convention. “In my anxiety for the result,” he wrote, “I was led to attend the Philadelphia convention.”83 The convention met at the Chinese Museum at Ninth and Sansom Streets. On Friday, June 9, 1848, the delegates selected General Zachary Taylor, the hero of the Mexican War, as its presidential candidate, and as vice presidential candidate Millard Fillmore, then comptroller for New York. That evening, convention delegates massed in Independence Square, the area immediately behind Independence Hall between Chestnut and Walnut Streets, for a campaign rally that party leaders called a ratification meeting. Lincoln was a probable attendee.84
The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a call to action for Lincoln, and from then onward, the Declaration of Independence became his call to action. Lincoln won the presidency in 1860, running on a party platform that supported the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
In February 1861, in the midst of a national crisis and even death threats, Lincoln as president-elect traveled east from Springfield, Illinois, on his way to Washington, D.C., to his inauguration. At the invitation of the city councils and mayor, his train arrived in Philadelphia at 3:45 p.m. on Thursday, February 21, 1861, at the Kensington Station of the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad, Front and Montgomery Streets. Nearly 100,000 people turned out on that cold February day to welcome the newly elected leader as he rode three miles in an open barouche from the depot to the Continental Hotel on the southeast corner of Ninth and Chestnut Streets. Lincoln and his procession reached the hotel only three blocks west of Independence Hall just after 5:00 p.m.85
Flag Raising by Lincoln at Independence Hall. A lithograph from Harper’s Weekly showing the scene at Independence Hall when Lincoln raised the flag with the first star for Kansas on February 22, 1861, prior to his inauguration. GAR Museum Collection.
In 1861, the Continental Hotel was one of the finest in the United States. The ornate hotel had opened one year earlier and could host one thousand guests in its seven hundred rooms. It boasted an elevator, a freestanding stairway from the lobby to the second floor and a 165-foot second-floor promenade that opened to a second-floor balcony. Lobby, shops, private rooms and dining rooms occupied the first two floors. Clearly Philadelphians expected the president-elect, a man born in humble surroundings, to stay in a place appropriate to his high station.86
Immediately after his arrival at the hotel, Lincoln and the mayor of Philadelphia, a Lincoln supporter, appeared on the hotel balcony to address the crowd that filled the street below. The mayor officially welcomed the president-elect to the city. One newspaper later reported that as Lincoln responded, he held his hat in front of him with both hands, and from time to time he elbowed the onlookers who overflowed on the balcony in order to maintain his place. Lincoln spoke of Independence Hall and the Declaration of Independence. “I shall do nothing inconsistent with the teachings of those holy and most sacred walls…All my political warfare has been in favor of the teachings coming forth from that sacred hall. May my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if ever I prove false to those teachings.” Lincoln declared, “There is no need of bloodshed in war…the government will not use force unless force is used against it.”
That evening at the hotel, Allan Pinkerton and Frederick W. Seward separately informed Lincoln that there was a plot to kill him when he passed through Baltimore the next day. On January 30, 1861, President Samuel M. Felton, of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company, invited Pinkerton, a well-known detective of Chicago, to Philadelphia and engaged his services to assist in safeguarding the railroad against threats of sabotage in Maryland. Pinkerton placed a number of his men along the line. One of these detectives, Timothy Webster, joined a disloyal company of cavalry at Ferryman’s, Maryland. It was through this source that Pinkerton learned the details of the proposed murder of Lincoln while en route through Baltimore. After President-elect Lincoln arrived at Philadelphia, a messenger summoned Norman B. Judd, of his party, to a conference with Pinkerton. Later in the evening, Pinkerton was introduced to Lincoln and told him of the plot. It was difficult to convince Lincoln that the danger was real. He insisted upon proceeding, with his entourage, to Harrisburg at once after the ceremony of raising the flag at Independence Hall early the following morning.
The next morning, on Washington’s Birthday, February 22, 1861, Lincoln and his seven-year-old son, Tad, rode in an open carriage three blocks down Chestnut Street to Independence Hall. The First City Troop, National Guards militia, Washington Grays, Garde Lafayette, minutemen and other militia units accompanied and escorted the presidential party. An unfortunate incident was the refusal of General Robert Patterson, commander of a division of Pennsylvania militia to participate, due to his political opposition to Lincoln. Patterson was a staunch Democrat. At 7:00 a.m., after more than nine years of rhetoric imbued with the words of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln entered the Assembly Room of Independence Hall.
The room was a patriotic shrine that had been redecorated by the city. The Liberty Bell sat in the corner on an octagonal pedestal that was decorated with flags and the names of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. A sculpture of George Washington stood near the center of the east wall, flanked by portraits of William Penn and the Marquis de Lafayette. A chair said to have been used by John Hancock during the signing of the Declaration of Independence and a block allegedly used for the first reading of the Declaration stood along the outer walls.
After welcoming remarks by the president of the select council, Lincoln was expected to address those in attendance. Lincoln was exhausted by the past eleven days of travel, the crowds, the pushing, shoving and chaos. His right hand was swollen and partially dysfunctional from shaking so many hands. He had only just learned of a plot to assassinate him, and in the meantime, he had had little sleep. He had not known that he would be called upon to speak inside the hall. His words were extemporaneous but based on years of oratory and thought. His voice was low and barely audible.87
I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing here in the place where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which we live…All the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn…from the sentiments which originated, and were given to the world from this hall in which we stand. I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here and adopted that Declaration of Independence—I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army, who achieved that Independence. I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother land; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time…If this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle—I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it…My friends, this is a wholly unprepared speech. I did not expect to be called upon to say a word when I came here—I supposed I was merely to do something towards raising a flag. I may, therefore, have said something indiscreet, but I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, in the pleasure of Almighty God, die by.88
The president-elect walked out of Independence Hall through the Chestnut Street door, mounted the wooden platform and faced a huge crowd assembled on Chestnut Street. Lincoln stood, bareheaded, holding his top hat in his left hand, while Tad Lincoln stood to his left. Abraham Lincoln addressed the crowd in brief remarks and then raised a large thirty-four-star flag, the first to honor the admission of Kansas to the Union. Later, some realized that the flag was a last-minute addition and had the incorrect number of stars at thirty-five. This flag was reported to have been made by sailors aboard the USS Hartford, docked at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. As the flag rose above Independence Hall, it caught a breeze and unfurled to the wind.
Later that day at the state capitol building in Harrisburg, Lincoln told the Pennsylvania legislature that the success of the flag-raising ceremony that morning in Philadelphia augured well for the Union. “When, according to the arrangement, the cord was pulled and it flaunted gloriously to the wind without an accident, in the bright flowing sunshine of the morning, I could not help hoping that there was in the entire success of that beautiful ceremony at least something of an omen of what is to come.”89
At the conclusion of the reception at the state capitol, a meeting was held at the hotel, where Agent Pinkerton urged Lincoln and his advisers to abandon the Northern Central Railroad train, scheduled to travel to Baltimore, and alter his plans by returning to Philadelphia. In a carefully planned ruse, Governor Curtin called at the hotel in a carriage, ostensibly to carry Mr. Lincoln to his residence. This was a decoy. The only member of his traveling party who entered the carriage was Colonel Ward H. Lamon. Unobserved, the president-elect boarded a special train, which was hurried back to Philadelphia at night. At the same time, employees of the telegraph company drove two miles out of the city and grounded the wires of the telegraph line. No dispatches went out of Harrisburg that night. Under these precautions, Lincoln’s special train reached the West Philadelphia station late in the evening, but too soon for immediate connection with the train for Washington.
The funeral cortege of Lincoln in Philadelphia on April 22, 1865, as it processed up Broad Street on its way to Independence Hall for a lying in state. GAR Museum Collection.
The closed carriage containing Mr. Lincoln and Colonel Lamon, together with Allan Pinkerton and Superintendent H.F. Kenny of the PW & B Railroad, sitting with the driver, proceeded down Market Street, up Nineteenth Street to Vine Street and thence down Seventeenth Street to the depot at Broad and Washington (then called Prime Street). Chairs for the party had been arranged by “Mrs. Warne,” one of Pinkerton’s agents. It was reported to the conductor that one of the passengers was an “invalid gentleman” who should be admitted to the rear of the coach and have a chair. The other seats were occupied by Pinkerton and his agents. Officials of the company, including George Stearns (later a U.S. Army colonel), remained on guard throughout the night. So carefully were the plans executed that none of the train employees from either line was aware that Mr. Lincoln was on board. Colonel Thomas A. Scott, waiting anxiously through the night at Harrisburg in company with Colonel Alexander K. McClure, was overjoyed to receive, soon after 6:00 a.m. on February 23, a dispatch from Washington assuring him of the safe arrival of the president-elect.90
Colonel Thomas A. Scott, who was then vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, acted at the time as a staff officer of Governor Curtin. On April 27, 1861, he was appointed, by the secretary of war, superintendent of railways and telegraphs, his immediate duties being the restoration of transportation between Annapolis and Washington.91
Finally, and tragically, in April 1865, Abraham Lincoln was brought a final time to Independence Hall after his assassination. His funeral train arrived at the Broad and Prime station just before 5:00 p.m. on Saturday evening, April 22, 1865. The procession that met his funeral cortege wound through the streets of Philadelphia until it reached the Walnut Street gate of Independence Square at 8:00 p.m. Sixty red, white and blue calcium lights illuminated the area. A military band played funeral dirges as muffled bells tolled throughout the city and minute guns boomed from various locations. After the catafalque came to a halt, the honor guard carried the casket into the south entrance of Independence Hall from Walnut Street. Members of the Union League with whom Lincoln had a special relationship lined the walk on both sides. The white-gloved men, dressed in black with mourning bands on their left arms, removed their hats.92
A copy of the poster from the Union League that announced the death of Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865, and preparations for his funeral. GAR Museum Collection.
In the Assembly Room where the Declaration of Independence had been signed eighty-eight years earlier, Lincoln’s body lay in state amidst the elegant trappings of mourning, including flowers, black crepes and wreaths. One of the cards on a wreath spoke of Lincoln’s dream that he had mentioned at his last cabinet meeting one week earlier, on April 14, 1865. Lincoln interpreted his dream as an omen that great news would soon come. The card read, “Before any great national event I have always had the same dream. I had it the other night. It is of a ship sailing rapidly.” And in a symbolic gesture, Philadelphians placed the Liberty Bell at Lincoln’s head so that all who passed by could read its inscription: “Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof.”93
