CHAPTER SEVEN
“The Cause Is Not Yet Dead”
When Jefferson Davis rode into Charlotte on April 19, its citizens were not happy to see him. North Carolina had sent more men into action in the battle at Gettysburg than any Confederate state but Virginia—they suffered heavy casualties in Pickett’s Charge—and the people of Charlotte no longer felt the enthusiasm for the Confederacy that the state’s valiant sons had demonstrated at Gettysburg two years earlier. Only one man, Lewis F. Bates, a transplanted Yankee, would allow Davis to set foot in his home.
An officer explained to Burton Harrison the reason for this embarrassing lack of Southern hospitality. While the people were willing to offer shelter to Davis’s entourage, they were afraid that anyone who offered refuge to the president would later have his house burned down by Union cavalry raiders.
Harrison was dubious of Davis’s would-be host, but “there seemed to be nothing to do but to go to the one domicile offered. It was on the main street of the town, and was occupied by Mr. Bates, a man said to be of northern birth, a bachelor of convivial habits, the local agent of the Southern Express Company, apparently living alone with his negro servants, and keeping with them a sort of ‘open house,’ where a broad, well equipped sideboard was the most conspicuous feature of the situation—not at all a seemly place for Mr. Davis.” Davis would come to regret his stay with Mr. Bates.
Not long after he arrived in Charlotte, Davis gave a speech to an audience that included a number of Confederate soldiers in the city:
My friends, I thank you for this evidence of your affection. If I had come as the bearer of glad tidings, if I had come to announce success at the head of a triumphant army, this is nothing more than I would have expected; but coming as I do, to tell you of a very great disaster; coming, as I do, to tell you that our national affairs have reached a very low point of depression; coming, I may say, a refugee from the capital of the country, this demonstration of your love fills me with feelings too deep for utterance. This has been a war of the people for the people, and I have been simply their executive; and if they desire to continue the struggle, I am still ready and willing to devote myself to their cause. True, General Lee’s army has surrendered, but the men are still alive, the cause is not yet dead; and only show by your determination and fortitude that you are willing to suffer yet longer, and we may still hope for success. In reviewing my administration of the past four years, I am conscious of having committed errors, and very grave ones; but in all that I have done, in that I have tried to do, I can lay my hand upon my heart and appeal to God that I have had but one purpose to serve, but one mission to fulfill, the preservation of the true principles of constitutional freedom, which are as dear to me to-day as they were four years ago. I have nothing to abate or take back; if they were right then, they are right now, and no misfortune to our arms can change right into wrong. Again I thank you.
At the conclusion of the speech, somebody handed Davis a telegram just received from John C. Breckinridge. Davis read the words in silence: “President Lincoln was assassinated in the theatre in Washington on the night of the 11th inst. Seward’s house was entered on the same night and he was repeatedly stabbed and is probably mortally wounded.” Breckinridge had the date wrong, and Seward had survived. But Abraham Lincoln was dead.
John Reagan was there when Davis received the news: “At Charlotte…we received the melancholy news of the assassination of President Lincoln. [Davis] and members of the Cabinet, with one accord, greatly regretted the occurrence. We felt that his death was most unfortunate for the people of the Confederacy, because we believed that it would intensify the feeling of hostility in the Northern States against us, and because we believed we could expect better terms from Lincoln than from Johnson, who had shown a marked hostility to us, and was especially unfriendly to President Davis.”
Stephen Mallory, Davis’s secretary of the navy, was not present when Davis received the message, but they spoke about it a few minutes later. Mallory told Davis he did not believe it. The president said it sounded like a canard, but in revolutionary times events no less startling occurred constantly. Then Mallory expressed to Davis his “conviction of Mr. Lincoln’s moderation, his sense of justice, and [Mallory’s] apprehension that the South would be accused of instigating his death.”
Davis replied, Mallory wrote, in a sad voice: “I certainly have no special regard for Mr. Lincoln; but there are a great many men of whose end I would much rather have heard than his. I fear it will be disastrous to our people, and I regret it deeply.”
The myth took hold that Davis rejoiced at the news. Several weeks later, at the trial of Booth’s accomplices, Lewis Bates swore under oath that Davis read Breckinridge’s telegram aloud and then announced to the crowd: “If it were to be done, it were better it were well done.” But it was a lie. Then Bates said that when Breckenridge and Davis met in his house a day or two later, and Breckenridge expressed regret at Lincoln’s death, Davis disagreed: “Well, General, I don’t know, if it were to be done at all, it were better that it were well done; and if the same had been done to Andy Johnson, the beast, and to Secretary Stanton, the job would then be complete.” Bates’s falsehoods dogged Davis for the rest of his life.
On April 19, when Varina wrote to Jefferson from Abbeville, she mentioned the “fearful news” that “fills me with horror”—but she wasn’t referring to Lincoln’s death, which she still didn’t know about, but instead about the recent Confederate military disasters, which included the disbanding of General Lee’s army and the surrender of General Longstreet’s corps. Then she turned her attention to her husband and his well-being. “Where are you—how are you—What ought I to do with these helpless little unconscious charges of mine are questions which I am asking myself always. Write to me of your troubles freely for mercy’s sake—Do not attempt to put a good face upon them to the friend of your heart, I am so at sea…”
On April 19, General Wade Hampton wrote to President Davis from Hillsborough, North Carolina, encouraging him to continue the fight from Texas. “Give me a good force of cavalry and I will take them safely across the Mississippi, and if you desire to go in that direction it will give me great pleasure to escort you. My own mind is made up as to my course. I shall fight as long as my Government remains in existence…If you will allow me to do so, I can bring to your support many strong arms and brave hearts—men who will fight to Texas, and who, if forced from that State, will seek refuge in Mexico rather than in the Union.”
The crowds standing before the East Front of the Capitol would have to wait outside all night before they could see Lincoln. No visitors would be allowed to enter the rotunda until morning. As at the White House the night before the public viewing there, Lincoln would rest alone. Only his honor guard watched over him. Townsend described the scene: “At night the jets of gas concealed in the spring of the dome were lighted up, so that their bright reflection upon the frescoed walls hurled masses of burning light, like marvelous haloes, upon the little box where so much that we love and honor rested on its way to the grave. And so through the starry night, in the fane of the great Union he had strengthened and recovered, the ashes of Abraham Lincoln, zealously guarded, are now reposing.”
If the doors to the rotunda had been thrown open that night, thousands of people would have poured in to see him. Lincoln’s private, silent night in the rotunda was an intermission to the great drama, a pause that allowed the tension to build. For those thwarted by the long lines at the White House, the morning of April 20 would be their last chance to see him. Many onlookers who had crowded the East Front to watch Lincoln’s coffin ascend the stairs did not leave the grounds once it vanished inside. Determined to keep an all-night vigil to guarantee their entry to the Capitol the next morning, thousands of people lined up on East Capitol Street.
In Charlotte, Davis tried to fathom all the implications of Lincoln’s murder. He must have recalled the many wartime rumors of Yankee plots to kidnap or murder Davis in Richmond. Now it had happened to Lincoln. But who had killed him, and why? What did this news mean for his retreat and for his plans to continue the war? Davis had not heard about the assassination until five days after it happened and he did not know about the funeral and procession that had started Lincoln’s transformation into an American saint. Lincoln’s death had made Davis’s cause even more difficult to sustain. Davis could not imagine the intensity of emotions unleashed by the assassination. But had he sensed it in any way, he might have increased the speed and urgency of his journey south.
Close to midnight on the day of Lincoln’s White House funeral, Edwin Stanton telegraphed Major General Dix in New York City and told him that the route of the death pageant was now set. “It has been finally concluded,” Stanton wrote, “to conform to the original arrangements made yesterday for the conveyance of the remains of the late President Abraham Lincoln from Washington to Springfield, viz, by way of Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago to Springfield.”
The doors to the Capitol were thrown open on the morning of April 20. People passed between two lines of guards on the plaza, entered the rotunda via the East Front, split into two lines that passed on either side of the open coffin, and exited through the West Front. The experience was quick. Visitors were not allowed to linger, and they walked through the rotunda at the rate of more than three thousand an hour. At 10:00 a.m. a heavy rain soaked more than ten thousand people waiting in line. The mourners did not include the Lincoln family but did include Petersen house boarders George and Huldah Francis: “We saw him the last time in the Capitol the day before he was carried away…” In the dimly lit rotunda only the sound of rustling dresses and hoopskirts broke the silence. At 6:00 p.m. the doors were closed and the public viewing ended. The people, if permitted, would have kept coming all through the night.
Jefferson Davis awoke on the morning of April 20 with continued resolve. For him, Lincoln’s death had changed nothing. Indeed, in Davis’s mind, the ascendancy of Andrew Johnson made it more imperative to stave off defeat. If the South surrendered to Johnson, his vengeance would be more terrible than any suffered under Lincoln. Davis had made his decision: The Civil War would go on as long as he lived. But he must have also known that Lincoln’s murder placed his life in greater danger. If he came under the hand of Union troops, he might be fated to join Lincoln in death.
While Lincoln lay in state in the Capitol rotunda, Stanton received a telegram from Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania, regarding Mary Lincoln:
HARRISBURG,
April 20, 1865.
Hon. E. M. STANTON,
Secretary of War:
I am as yet unadvised as to whether Mrs. Lincoln will accompany the remains. In case she does, will you oblige me by presenting my compliments to her, and say that I will of course expect herself and her family to make my house her home during her melancholy sojourn here. May I beg the favor of an answer?
A. G. CURTIN
Governor Curtin did not know Mary Lincoln’s condition. Overwrought, she had still not left her room, or viewed the president’s remains, and had not attended the White House funeral. She had refused almost all visitors, even close associates of the president from Illinois, including Orville Browning, and high officials of her husband’s administration. She had already begun her final mental descent into postwar instability without the president to save her from drifting away.
Stanton replied quickly to Curtin’s inquiry:
Washington City,
April 20, 1865.
Governor CURTIN,
Harrisburg:
Your kind and considerate message will be immediately communicated to Mrs. Lincoln. By present arrangements neither she nor her sons will accompany the funeral cortege, she being unable to travel at present.
EDWIN M. STANTON,
Secretary of War.
Just nineteen hours before the train was scheduled to leave Washington, Stanton received a request to add Pittsburgh to the route. He replied to this, and all other last-minute requests, “The arrangements already being made cannot be altered…” Stanton did not announce his choice of men to travel on the train with the remains until April 20, the day before they were scheduled to depart. He also released two dramatic and historic documents. Their content could not have been more different. The first was the key order to Assistant Adjutant General Townsend establishing the protocols for the train that would transport the president’s remains. Stanton was a stickler for detail, and the elaborate process he laid out left nothing to chance.
WAR DEPARTMENT,
Washington City,
April 20, 1865.
Bvt. Brig. Gen. E.D. Townsend,
Assistant Adjutant-General, U.S. Army:
SIR: You will observe the following instruction in relation to conveying the remains of the late President Lincoln to Springfield, Ill. Official duties prevent the Secretary of War from gratifying his desire to accompany the remains of the late beloved and distinguished President Abraham Lincoln from Washington to their final resting place at his former home in Springfield, Ill., and therefore Assistant Adjutant-General Townsend is specifically assigned to represent the Secretary of War, and to give all necessary orders in the name of the Secretary as if he were present, and such orders will be obeyed and respected accordingly. The number of general officers designated is nine, in order that at least one general officer may be continually in view of the remains from the time of departure from Washington until their internment.
The following details, in addition to the General Orders, No. 72, will be observed:
1. The State executive will have the general direction of the public honors in each State and furnish additional escort and guards of honor at places where the remains are taken from the hearse car, but subject to the general command of the departmental, division, or district commander.
2. The Adjutant-General will have a discretionary power to change or modify details not conflicting with the general arrangement.
3. The directions of General McCallum in regard to the transportation and whatever may be necessary for safe and appropriate conveyance will be rigorously enforced.
4. The Adjutant-General and the officers in charge are specially enjoined to strict vigilance to see that everything appropriate is done and that the remains of the late illustrious President receive no neglect or indignity.
5. The regulations in respect to the persons to be transported on the funeral train will be rigorously enforced.
6. The Adjutant-General will report by telegraph the arrival and departure at each of the designated cities on the route.
7. The remains, properly escorted, will be removed from the Capitol to the hearse car on the morning of Friday, the 21st, at 6 a. m., so that the train may be ready to start at the designated hour of 8 o’clock, and at each point designated for public honors care will be taken to have them restored to the hearse car in season for starting the train at the designated hour.
8. A disbursing officer of the proper bureau will accompany the cortege to defray the necessary expenses, keeping an exact and detailed account thereof, and also distinguishing the expenses incurred on account of the Congressional committees, so that they may be reimbursed from the proper appropriations.
EDWIN M. STANTON,
Secretary of War.
Stanton did not order Townsend to draft and telegraph back to Washington detailed reports of the funeral ceremonies in each city. Townsend would have his hands full commanding the funeral train, with little time to spare for preparing detailed narratives of all the ceremonies unfolding along the route. It would be enough if he informed the War Department that the train was running on schedule and reported whenever he arrived in or departed from a city. Stanton would rely on other sources, including the journalists traveling on the train, and stories published in the Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York newspapers, for detailed coverage of the obsequies in each city.
ASSISTANT ADJUTANT GENERAL EDWARD D. TOWNSEND, COMMANDER OF LINCOLN’S FUNERAL TRAIN.
Stanton’s second historic order that day was a public proclamation, signed by him, offering an unprecedented $100,000 reward for the capture of the assassin John Wilkes Booth and of his coconspirators John Surratt and David Herold. Six days after the assassination, the murderer was still at large. And anyone who dared help Booth during his escape from justice would be punished with death. Large broadsides announcing the reward went up on walls all over Washington and New York City.
Jefferson Davis would enjoy his liberty a while longer; he was fortunate that Stanton’s fearsome proclamation did not yet implicate him as an accomplice to Lincoln’s murder or offer a cash reward for his capture. But if Stanton was not prepared to accuse Davis of Abraham Lincoln’s murder, the newspapers were.
On the same day that Stanton issued the reward, Davis, writing from Charlotte to General Braxton Bragg, wondered if Lincoln’s murder might help his cause: “Genl. Breckinridge…telegraphs to me, that Presdt. Lincoln was assassinated in the Theatre at Washington…It is difficult to judge of the effect thus to be produced. His successor is a worse man, but has less influence…[I] am not without hope that recent disaster may awake the dormant energy and develop the patriotism which sustained us in the first years of the War.”
Davis busied himself with other military correspondence, including dispatches to General Beauregard on April 20 indicating a scarcity of supplies. “General Duke’s brigade is here without saddles. There are none here or this side of Augusta. Send on to this point 600, or as many as can be had.” In another dispatch Davis asked for cannons and more men, but the replies he received did not indicate that there were any to be sent.
Things were breaking down elsewhere, too. On the evening of April 20, Breckinridge wrote from Salisbury, North Carolina: “We have had great difficulty in reaching this place. The train from Charlotte which was to have met me here has not arrived. No doubt seized by stragglers to convey them to that point. I have telegraphed commanding officer at Charlotte to send a locomotive and one car without delay. The impressed train should be met before reaching the depot and the ringleaders severely dealt with.”
Davis replied promptly: “Train will start for you at midnight with guard.”
In Richmond, Robert E. Lee was at home as a private citizen. He still wore the Confederate uniform and posed in it when Mathew Brady showed up to take his photograph, but he had no army to command. He knew that Davis was still in the field, trying to prolong the war. Lee disagreed with that plan. Any further hostilities must, he believed, degenerate into bloody, lawless, and ultimately futile guerilla warfare. Better an honorable surrender than that. Lee and Davis had enjoyed a good wartime partnership, and he knew the president valued his judgment. On April 20, General Lee composed a remarkable letter to his commander in chief, urging him to surrender.
Mr. President:
The apprehension I expressed during the winter, of the moral condition of the Army of Northern Virginia, have been realized. The operations which occurred while the troops were in the entrenchments in front of Richmond and Petersburg were not marked by the boldness and decision which formerly characterized them. Except in particular instances, they were feeble; and a want of confidence seemed to possess officers and men. This condition, I think, was produced by the state of feeling in the country, and the communications received by the men from their homes, urging their return and the abandonment of the field…I have given these details that Your Excellency might know the state of feeling which existed in the army, and judge of that in the country. From what I have seen and learned, I believe an army cannot be organized or supported in Virginia, and as far as I know the condition of affairs, the country east of the Mississippi is morally and physically unable to maintain the contest unaided with any hope of ultimate success. A partisan war may be continued, and hostilities protracted, causing individual suffering and devastation of the country, but I see no prospect by that means of achieving a separate independence. It is for Your Excellency to decide, should you agree with me in opinion, what is proper to be done. To save useless effusion of blood, I would recommend measures be taken for suspension of hostilities and the restoration of peace.
I am with great respect, yr obdt svt
R. E. Lee
Genl
In the confusion after Appomattox, Davis never received the letter. If he had, its sentiments would have failed to convince him to end the war. Even if Davis had received it, and if he agreed with Lee’s view that resistance east of the Mississippi was futile, he still had faith in a western confederacy on the far side of the Mississippi. Yes, he agreed with Lee on the impropriety of fighting a dishonorable guerilla war. He would not scatter his forces to the hills and sanction further resistance by stealth, ambush, and murder. But Davis, unlike Lee, still believed he could prevail with conventional forces.
Davis and Lee did not communicate again until after the war was over. Indeed, the arrival in Charlotte that very day of several cavalry units gave Davis new hope. According to Mallory:
No other course now seemed open to Mr. Davis but to leave the country, as he had announced his willingness to do, and his immediate advisers urged him to do so with the utmost promptness. Troops began to come into Charlotte, however…and there was much talk among them of crossing the Mississippi and continuing the war. Portions of Hampton’s, Duke’s, Debrell’s, and Fergusson’s commands of the cavalry were hourly coming in. They seemed determined to get across the river and fight it out, and whenever they encountered Mr. Davis they cheered and sought to encourage him. It was evident that he was greatly affected by the constancy and spirit of these men, and that he became indifferent to his own safety, thinking only of gathering together a body of troops to make head against the foe and so arouse the people to arms.
On Friday, April 21—one week after the assassination—Edwin Stanton, Ulysses S. Grant, Gideon Welles, Attorney General James Speed, Postmaster General William Dennison, the Reverend Dr. Gurley, several senators, members of the Illinois delegation, and various army officers arrived at the Capitol at 6:00 a.m. to escort Lincoln’s coffin to the funeral train. Soldiers from the quartermaster general’s department, commanded by General Rucker, the officer who had led the president’s escort from the Petersen house to the White House,
A CONGRESSMAN’S TICKET TO RIDE ABOARD THE LINCOLN FUNERAL TRAIN.
removed the coffin from the catafalque in the rotunda and carried it down the stairs of the East Front. The statue of Freedom atop the Capitol looked down upon the scene from her omniscient perch.
Four companies of the Twelfth Veteran Reserve Corps stood by to escort the hearse to the train. This was not supposed to be a grand or official procession. There were no drummers, no bands, and no cavalcade of thousands of marchers. It was just a short trip from the East Front plaza to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad station at First Street and New Jersey Avenue, a few blocks north of the Great Dome. But that did not deter the crowds.
Several thousand onlookers lined the route and surrounded the station entrance. Although this last, brief journey in the capital—Lincoln’s third death procession in Washington—was not part of the official public funeral events, Stanton supervised it himself to ensure that the movement of Lincoln’s body from the Capitol to the funeral train was conducted with simplicity, dignity, and honor.
Earlier that morning, another hearse had arrived at the station before the president’s. It had come from Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown, where they had unlocked the iron gates of the Carroll vault. When the soldiers carried Abraham Lincoln aboard his private railroad car at 7:30 a.m., Willie was already there, waiting for him. Lincoln had planned to collect the boy himself and take his coffin home. Now two coffins shared the presidential car.
The railroad car used to transport Lincoln’s body was not built as a funeral car. Constructed over a period of two years at the U.S. Military Rail Road car shops in Alexandria, Virginia, the car, named the United States, was built as a luxurious vehicle intended for use by the living Lincoln. Although the presidential car had been completed in February prior to Lincoln’s 1865 inauguration, he never rode in it or even saw it. The elegant interior, finished with walnut and oak, and upholstered with crimson silk, contained three rooms—a stateroom, a drawing room, and a parlor or dining room. A corridor ran the length of the car and gave access to each room. The exterior was painted chocolate brown, hand-rubbed to a high sheen, and on both sides of the car hung identical oval paintings of an eagle and the coat of arms of the United States. As soon as Stanton knew that Lincoln’s body would be carried home to Illinois by railroad, he authorized the U.S.M.R.R. to modify the car, decorate it with symbols of mourning, and build two catafalques so that it could accommodate the coffins of the president and his son.
Willie would have enjoyed calculating the railroad timetable for this trip. He used to delight his father by calculating accurate timetables for imaginary railroad journeys across the nation.
Members of the honor guard took their places beside Lincoln’s coffin. Under the protocols established by Stanton and Edward Townsend, the president of the United States was never to be left alone. “There was never a moment throughout the whole journey,” Townsend recalled, “when at least two of this guard were not by the side of the coffin.”
The hearse and horses that had carried Lincoln’s body down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capitol, and from there to the train station, were not being boarded onto the train. Instead, in every city where the train was stopping for funeral services, local officials were required to provide a suitable horse-drawn hearse to transport the coffin from the train to the site of the obsequies.
At 7:50 a.m. Robert Lincoln boarded the train, but he planned to leave it after just a while and return to Washington to wrap up his father’s affairs. Mary Lincoln did not come to the station to see her husband off—nor did she permit Tad to go. He should have gone to the station and then ridden with his father and brother all the way back to Illinois.
After Willie’s death, Tad and Abraham were inseparable. Sometimes Tad fell asleep in the president’s office, and Lincoln lifted the slumbering boy over his shoulder and carried him off to bed. Tad loved to go on trips with his father and had relished their recent visit to City Point and Richmond. He loved to see the soldiers, and he enjoyed wearing—and posing for photos in—a child-size Union army officer’s uniform, complete with a tiny sword, that Lincoln had given him. Tad would have marveled at the sights and sounds along the 1,600-mile journey. And he would have been proud of, and taken comfort from, the tributes paid to his father.
A pilot engine departed the station ten minutes ahead of the funeral train to inspect the track ahead. At 7:55 a.m., with five minutes to spare, Lincoln’s secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, arrived from the White House and boarded the train to ensure that all was in order. In all, about 150 men were on the train that morning. The manifest included the twenty-nine men—twenty-four first sergeants and four officers—from the Veteran Reserve Corps who would serve as the guard of honor; nine army generals, one admiral, and two junior officers also serving in the guard of honor; a number of senators, congressmen, and delegates from Illinois; four governors; seven newspaper reporters; David Davis, an old friend of Lincoln’s and a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court; and Captain Charles Penrose, who had accompanied Lincoln to Richmond.
With so many dignitaries present at the station, the crowd failed to recognize two of the most important men on the passenger manifest. In the days to come, the success or failure of this vital mission would turn in large part upon their work. To accomplish it, they alone would have unfettered access to the president’s corpse at any time of the day or night. These were the body men, embalmer Dr. Charles Brown and undertaker Frank Sands. For the next thirteen days, it was their job to keep at bay death’s relentless companion, the decomposing flesh of Abraham Lincoln.
At exactly 8:00 a.m. the wheels of the engine Edward H. Jones began to revolve and the eight coaches it pulled began to move.
When Lincoln’s train left Washington, the special funeral duties of Benjamin Brown French were done. It had been the most incredible seven days he had ever witnessed during his long tenure in Washington.
LINCOLN’S FUNERAL CAR.
He wanted to retrieve a souvenir as a tangible link to the historic week in which he had played an important part. He wrote a letter to Quartermaster General Meigs:
It is my intention to have the mausoleum, intended for the remains of Washington, beneath the crypt of the Capitol, thoroughly cleaned & properly fitted, and to place in it the catafalco on which the body of our late beloved President lay in the rotunda, there to be preserved as a memento.
The cloth which covered it—made and trimmed by the hands of my wife—was taken with the remains. I should be very glad, when it has done all its duty, that it may be returned to me, to be placed upon that sacred memorial. Will you be pleased, if you conveniently can, to have it so ordered.
While Lincoln’s funeral train moved north without incident, the Confederate trains continued to experience difficulties. John C. Breckinridge had more railroad problems and communicated them to Davis in Charlotte at 9:00 a.m. on the twenty-first: “Paroled men and stragglers seized my train at Concord. Operator reports that engine and tender escaped, and will be here presently. I have telegraphed General Johnston to guard the bridges and organize these men to receive subsistence and transportation…”
But train troubles were the least of his worries. General Joe Johnston had lost all interest in prolonging the war. At this point two things occupied Johnston’s mind: how to negotiate the surrender of his army to General Sherman, and how to get his hands on some of the Confederate gold. On April 21 he asked Breckinridge for money: “I have heard from several respectable persons that the Government has a large sum of gold in its possession. I respectfully and earnestly urge the appropriation of a portion of that sum to the payment of the army, as a matter of policy and justice. It is needless to remind you that the troops now in service have earned everything that the Government can give them, and have stood by their colors with a constancy unsurpassed—a constancy which enables us to be now negotiating with a reasonable hope of peace on favorable terms.”
Lincoln’s train would reach Baltimore in four hours, and in the days ahead, the train was scheduled to stop many times for official honors, processions, ceremonies, and viewings, but, for the most part, those plans were just dry words, miles, and timetables printed on paper. These documents said nothing of other things to come: spontaneous bonfires, torches, floral arches, hand-painted signs, banners, and masses of people assembled along the way at all hours of the day or night. No government official in Washington had ordered these public manifestations. Stanton did not expect the train itself to take on a life of its own and to become a venerated symbol in its own right.
The train’s progress fed not just on firewood and water but on human passions to animate its momentum. At each stop it took aboard the tone and temper of each town and its people. The moving train was like a tuning fork, or an amplifier. The more time it spent on the road, and the greater distance it traveled, the more it picked up the sympathetic vibrations of the nation’s pride and grief. It intensified and harmonized the emotions of the people. It became more than the funeral train for one dead man. It evolved into something else. What happened was not decreed. Nor could it be resisted.
Somewhere between Washington and Springfield, the train became a universal symbol of the cost of the Civil War. It came to represent a mournful homecoming for all the lost men. In the heartbroken and collective judgment of the American people, an army of the dead—and not just its commander in chief—rode aboard that train.
In every city where the train stopped—or even just passed through—the people knew it was coming and had read newspaper accounts of the events that had occurred in other cities that preceded it up the line. This built excitement into a fever pitch and created a desire to outdo the honors already rendered in other cities. General Townsend felt the change. Parents held out their sleepy-eyed infants and even uncomprehending babes in their arms, so that one day they could tell their children, “You were there. You saw Father Abraham pass by.”
MOURNING RIBBON WORN BY MEMBERS OF THE U.S. MILITARY RAIL ROAD.
Baltimore was a strange but necessary destination. Maryland had remained in the Union, but it was anti-Lincoln and pro-Confederate. Four years earlier, when president-elect Lincoln passed through the city, he had to do so secretly in order to avoid assassination. The threats from the Baltimore conspiracy were real. A gang of dozens of men had sworn to kill Lincoln. Disloyal, rioting mobs would soon attack and kill Union soldiers in the street. Lincoln arrived in the city in the middle of the night and had to change trains, which involved uncoupling his car from one train, using horses to pull it one mile along the tracks to another station, and then coupling it to a second train. This was the moment of maximum danger. His enemies did not know he had gained safe passage through Baltimore until after he was gone and had arrived in Washington.
Lincoln’s escape in Baltimore led to public ridicule and false charges: The president had adopted a disguise; he was a coward who had abandoned his wife and children to pass through the city on another train. Cartoonists caricatured Lincoln sneaking through town wearing a plaid Scotch cap and even kilts. Later, he regretted skulking into Washington. It was not an auspicious way to begin a presidency.
Baltimore was home ground for John Wilkes Booth, and he recruited some of his conspirators there. Indeed, a letter found in Booth’s trunk on the night of April 14 suggested that he had multiple conspirators in the city and that he might have sought sanctuary there. It might have been considered obscene to stop the train there, to carry Lincoln’s murdered body into the city that had wished him so much ill and that might revel in his assassination.
Before leaving Washington, General Townsend had sent a telegram to General Morris, who was in command there, giving him advance warning to prepare for the president’s arrival in Baltimore on April 21 and to receive the remains in person.
After a brief stop at Annapolis Station, where Governor A. W. Bradford joined the entourage, the train arrived at Baltimore’s Camden Station at 10:00 a.m. Townsend telegraphed Stanton promptly: “Just arrived all safe. Governor Bradford and General E. B. Tyler joined at Annapolis Junction.” The once unruly city showed no signs of trouble. No lurking secessionists uttered verbal insults against Lincoln or the Union. Instead, thousands of sincere mourners, undeterred by a heavy rain, surrounded the station and awaited the president. The honor guard carried the coffin from the car, placed it in the hearse parked on Camden Street, and the procession got under way, marching to the rotunda of the Merchants’ Exchange. Brigadier General H. H. Lockwood commanded the column, and a number of army officers, including Major General Lew Wallace, who would soon serve as a judge on the military tribunal convened to try Booth’s accomplices, brought up the rear.
The hearse, drawn by four black horses, was designed for the ideal display of its precious passenger. According to a contemporary account, “The body of this hearse was almost entirely composed of plate glass, which enabled the vast crowd on the line of procession to have a full view of the coffin. The supports of the top were draped with black cloth and white silk, and the top of the car was handsomely decorated with black plumes.”
It took three hours for the head of the procession to reach Calvert Street. The column halted, the hearse drove to the southern entrance of the exchange, and Lincoln’s bearers carried him inside. There they laid the coffin beneath the dome, upon a catafalque, around which, Townsend observed, “were tastefully arranged evergreens, wreaths, calla-lilies, and other choice flowers.” Flowers, heaps of flowers, a surfeit of striking and fragrant fresh-cut flowers, would become a hallmark of the funeral journey. Soon, the lilac, above all other flowers, would come to represent the death pageant for Lincoln’s corpse.
The catafalque was made especially for Lincoln. City officials had studied newspaper accounts of the White House funeral two days earlier, and they paid special attention to the descriptions of the extravagant decorations and grand bier. On April 20, while mourners in Washington viewed the remains at the U.S. Capitol, carpenters and other tradesmen in Baltimore built a catafalque to rival the one in the East Room. A contemporary account recorded every detail:
It consisted of a raised dais, eleven feet by four feet at the base, the sides sloping slightly to the height of about three feet. From the four corners rose graceful columns, supporting a cornice extending beyond the line of the base. The canopy rose to a point fourteen feet from the ground, and terminated in clusters of black plumes. The whole structure was richly draped. The floor and sides of the dais were covered with black cloth, and the canopy was formed of black crepe, the rich folds drooping from the four corners and bordered with silver fringe. The cornice was adorned with silver stars, while the sides and ends were similarly ornamented. The interior of the canopy was of black cloth, gathered in fluted folds. In the central point was a large star of black velvet, studded with thirty-six stars—one for each State in the Union.
In Baltimore there would be no official ceremonies, sermons, or speeches; there was no time for that. Instead, as soon as Lincoln’s coffin was in position, and after the military officers and dignitaries from the procession enjoyed the privilege of viewing him first, guards threw the doors open and the public mourners filed in. Over the next four hours, thousands viewed the remains. The upper part of the coffin was open to reveal Lincoln’s face and upper chest. Lincoln’s enemies could have masqueraded as mourners and come to gloat over his murder, but the crowd would have torn them to pieces.
In Baltimore, Edward Townsend established two rules that became fixed for every stop during the thirteen-day journey. “No bearers, except the veteran guard, were ever suffered to handle the president’s coffin,” he declared. Whenever Lincoln’s corpse needed to be removed from the train, loaded or unloaded from a hearse, or placed upon or removed from a ceremonial platform or catafalque, his personal military guard would handle the coffin.
Each city would furnish a local honor guard to accompany the hearse and to keep order while the public viewed the body, but these men did not lay hands upon the coffin. Townsend also forbade mourners from getting too close to the open coffin, touching the president’s body, kissing him, or placing anything, including flowers, relics, or other tokens, in the coffin. Any person who violated these standards of decency would be seized at once and removed.
At about 2:30 p.m., with thousands of citizens, black and white, still waiting in line to see the president, local officials terminated the viewing, and Lincoln’s bearers closed the coffin and carried it back to the hearse. A second procession delivered the remains to the North Central Railway depot in time for the scheduled 3:00 p.m. departure for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The orderly scene in the Monumental City, as Baltimore was called, was a good omen for the long journey ahead. The first stop had gone well. General Townsend dispatched a telegram to Stanton: “Ceremonies very imposing. Dense crowd lined the streets; chiefly laboring classes, white and black. Perfect order throughout. Many men and women in tears. Arrangements admirable. Start for Harrisburg at 3 p.m.”
The train stopped at the Pennsylvania state line, and Governor Andrew Curtin; his staff; U.S. Army general Cadwalader, commander of the military department of Pennsylvania; and assorted officers came aboard. Maryland governor A. W. Bradford received them in the first car. En route to Harrisburg the train stopped briefly at York, where the women of the city had asked permission to lay a wreath of flowers upon Lincoln’s coffin. Townsend could not allow dozens of emotional mourners to wander around inside the train and hover about the coffin. He offered a compromise: He would permit a delegation of six women to come aboard and deposit the wreath. While a band played a dirge and bells tolled, they approached the funeral car in a ceremonial procession, stepped inside, and laid their large wreath consisting of a circle of roses and, at the center, alternating parallel lines of red and white flowers. The women wept bitterly as they left the train. Soon, at the next stop, their choice flowers would be shoved aside in favor of new ones.
The train arrived at Harrisburg at 8:20 p.m. Friday, April 21, and Townsend reported to his boss: “Arrived here safely. Everything goes on well. At York a committee of ladies brought a superb wreath and laid it on the coffin in the car.” Here too, as in Baltimore, no funeral services or orations were on the schedule. To the disappointment of the crowds waiting at the station, a reception for the remains had to be canceled. “A driving rain and the darkness of the evening,” General Townsend noted, “prevented the reception which had been arranged. Slowly through the muddy streets, followed by two of the guard of honor and the faithful sergeants, the hearse wended its way to the Capitol.”
Undeterred by the severity of the storm, thousands of onlookers joined the military escort of 1,500 men who had been standing in the rain for an hour and followed the hearse to the state house. To the boom of cannon firing once a minute, the coffin was carried inside and laid on a catafalque in the hall of the house of representatives. Lincoln was placed on view until midnight. Viewing resumed at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday. For the next two hours, double lines of mourners streamed through the rotunda. The coffin was closed at 9:00 a.m., and at 10:00 a.m. a procession began to escort the hearse back to the railroad depot. This became the grand march the public had hoped to witness the previous night.
A military formation led the way. Then came the hearse, accompanied by the guard of honor from the train plus sixteen local, honorary pallbearers. There followed a cavalcade of passengers from the funeral train, including the governor of Pennsylvania, various generals and officers, elected officials, fire and hook and ladder companies, and various fraternal groups including Freemasons and Odd Fellows.
On April 22, Jefferson Davis was still in Charlotte. Lincoln’s murder had put his life in great danger, but he still considered the cause more important than personal safety. Indeed, the idea of “escape” was anathema to him. In his mind, he was still engaged in a strategic retreat, not a personal flight.
Davis was not alone in his desire to continue the fight. Wade Hampton wrote to him again from Greensborough and encouraged him to make a run for Texas. “If you should propose to cross the Mississippi River I can bring many good men to escort you over. My men are in hand and ready to follow me anywhere…I write hurriedly, as the messenger is about to leave. If I can serve you or my country by any further fighting you have only to tell me so. My plan is to collect all the men who will stick to their colors, and to get to Texas.”
Varina Davis, safe in Abbeville, South Carolina, wondered where her husband was. On April 22 she wrote to him via courier that she had not received any communication from him since April 6, when he was still in Danville, Virginia. “[I] wait for suggestions or directions…Nothing from you since the 6th…the anxiety here intense rumors dreadful & the means of ascertaining the truth very small send me something by telegraph…the family are terribly anxious. God bless you. Do not expose yourself.”
The funeral train was scheduled to leave Harrisburg at noon on April 22, but the hearse arrived at the station almost an hour early. General Townsend telegraphed Stanton from the train depot shortly before pulling out: “We start at 11.15 [a.m.] by agreement of State authorities. It rained in torrents last night, which greatly interfered with the procession, but all is safe now.”
On the way from Harrisburg and Philadelphia, the train passed through Middletown, Elizabethtown, Mount Joy, Landisville, and Dillersville. At Lancaster twenty thousand people, including Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and Lincoln’s predecessor, former president James Buchanan, paid tribute. The train pushed north through Penningtonville, Parkesburg, Coatesville, Gallagherville, Downington, Oakland, and West Chester. At every depot, and along the railroad tracks between them, people gathered to watch the train pass by. For miles before Philadelphia, unbroken lines of people stood along both sides of the tracks and watched as the train went by them.
When the train arrived at Broad Street Station in Philadelphia at 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 22, it was greeted by an immense crowd. The Philadelphia Inquirer explained the reason: “No mere love of excitement, no idle curiosity to witness a splendid pageant, but a feeling far deeper, more earnest, and founded in infinitely nobler sentiments, must have inspired that throng which, like the multitudinous waves of the swelling sea, surged along our streets from every quarter of the city, gathering in a dense, impenetrable mass along the route…for the procession.”
A military escort, including three infantry regiments, two artillery batteries, and a cavalry troop, had arrived at the depot by 4:00 p.m. in preparation. A vast crowd had assembled along the parade route, and as soon as the engine rolled into the depot, a single cannon shot announced to the city that Lincoln had arrived. Minute guns began to fire.
At 5:15 p.m. the hearse, drawn by eight black horses, got under way. With the military escort leading the way, the huge procession took almost three hours to reach the Walnut Street entrance on the southern side of Independence Square. There, members of the Union League Association had assembled to receive the coffin and guide its bearers to the catafalque inside Independence Hall. According to one account, “the Square was brilliantly illuminated with Calcium Lights, about sixty in number, composed of red, white and blue colors, which gave a peculiar and striking effect to the melancholy spectacle.”
As minute guns continued firing and the bells of Philadelphia tolled, Lincoln’s body was carried into the sacred hall of the American
Revolution and placed on a platform with his feet pointing north. The entire interior of Independence Hall was shrouded with black cloth. It hung everywhere: from the walls, from the chandelier over the coffin, and from most of the historical oil paintings. The white marble statue of George Washington remained uncovered, and it stood out like a ghost in the blackened room.
Honor guards pulled back the American flag that had covered the coffin during the procession and the undertakers removed the lid to reveal Lincoln’s face and chest. Looming near the president’s head was a monumental metal object, the most renowned and beloved symbol of the American Revolution. They had laid the slain president at the foot of the Liberty Bell. It was a patriotic gesture that stunned the crowd.
On February 22, 1861, ten days before taking the oath of office, president-elect Lincoln told a Philadelphia audience: “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the Declaration of Independence…that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance…Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis?…If it can’t be saved upon that principle…if this country cannot be saved without giving up on that principle…I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it.”
A contemporary writer described the memorial scene:
On the old Independence bell, and near the head of the coffin, rested a large and beautifully made floral anchor, composed of the choicest [japonicas and jet-black] exotics…Four stands, two at the head and two at the foot of the coffin, were draped in black cloth, and contained rich candelabras with burning tapers; and, again, another row of four stands, containing candelabra also, making in all eighteen candelabras and one hundred and eight burning wax tapers.
Between this flood of light, shelving was erected, on which were placed vases filled with japonicas, heliotropes, and other rare flowers. These vases were twenty-five in number.
A delicious perfume stole through every part of the Hall, which, added to the soft yet brilliant light of the wax tapers, the elegant uniforms of the officers on duty, etc., constituted a scene of solemn magnificence seldom witnessed.
Newspaper accounts failed to describe the practical purpose of the sweet-smelling flowers, but they were there for a reason. Lincoln had been dead a week, and the embalmers were fighting a ticking clock. They had slowed but could not stop the decay of his flesh. Fragrant flowers would mask the odor.
Dignitaries viewed Lincoln first, from 10:00 p.m. until midnight. Then the public surged in, entering via temporary stairs through two windows and exiting, via a second set of stairs, through the windows facing Independence Square. The coffin was closed at 2:00 a.m. on Sunday, April 23. Many of those who failed to glimpse the president stood outside Independence Hall for the rest of the night to be sure they would be admitted when the doors reopened in several hours. Beginning at 6:00 a.m. Sunday, authorities had announced, the public would be admitted until 1:00 a.m. Monday.
By late morning on Sunday, the line of mourners extended as far west as the Schuylkill River and east to the Delaware River. “After a person was in line,” reported the Philadelphia Inquirer, “it took from four to five hours before an entrance into the Hall could be effected.” After the long wait, mourners were given only a few seconds to view Lincoln: “Spectators were not allowed to stop by the side of the coffin, but were kept moving on, the great demand on the outside not permitting more than a mere glance at the remains.”
The vast crowds had become dangerous and the Inquirer reported alarming incidents: “Never before in the history of our city was such a dense mass of humanity huddled together. Hundreds of persons were seriously injured from being pressed in the mob, and many fainting females were extricated by the police and military and conveyed to places of security. Many women lost their bonnets, while others had nearly every article of clothing torn from their persons.”
On that Sunday, April 23, Jefferson Davis and his entourage attended church in Charlotte. The minister’s fire-and-brimstone sermon, which according to Burton Harrison denounced “the folly and wickedness” of Lincoln’s murder, seemed to be aimed at Davis. “I think,” Davis said with a smile, “the preacher directed his remarks at me; and he really seems to fancy that I had something to do with the assassination.” Despite his predicament, the president had not lost his sense of humor.
Later that day, Davis wrote a long, thoughtful letter to Varina that revealed his state of mind twenty-one days since he had left Richmond. Sanguine, less hopeful, more realistic, but not beaten yet, Davis apologized to his beloved companion for taking her on the lifelong journey that had led to this fate.
I have asked Mr. Harrison to go in search of you and to render such assistance as he may…
The dispersion of Lee’s army and the surrender of the remnant which had remained with him destroyed the hopes I entertained when we parted. Had that army held together I am now confident we could have successfully executed the plan which I sketched to you and would have been to-day on the high road to independence…Panic has seized the country…
The loss of arms has been so great that should the spirit of the people rise to the occasion it would not be at this time possible adequately to supply them with the weapons of War…
The issue is one which is very painful for me to meet. On one hand is the long night of oppression which will follow the return of our people to the “Union”; on the other the suffering of the women and children, and courage among the few brave patriots who would still oppose the invader, and who unless the people would rise en masse to sustain them, would struggle but to die in vain.
I think my judgement is undisturbed by any pride of opinion or of place, I have prayed to our heavenly Father to give me wisdom and fortitude equal to the demands of the position in which Providence has placed me. I have sacrificed so much for the cause of the Confederacy that I can measure my ability to make any further sacrifice required, and am assured there is but one to which I am not equal, my Wife and my Children. How are they to be saved from degradation or want…for myself it may be that our Enemy will prefer to banish me, it may be that a devoted band of Cavalry will cling to me and that I can force my way across the Missi. and if nothing can be done there which it will be proper to do, then I can go to Mexico and have the world from which to choose…Dear Wife this is not the fate to which I invited [you] when the future was rose-colored to us both; but I know you will bear it even better than myself and that of us two I alone will ever look back reproachfully on my past career…Farewell my Dear; there may be better things in store for us than are now in view, but my love is all I have to offer and that has the value of a thing long possessed and sure not to be lost. Once more, and with God’s favor for a short time only, farewell—
Your Husband.
Back in Philadelphia, the funeral procession left Independence Hall at 1:00 a.m. on Monday, April 24. This escort—the 187th Pennsylvania infantry regiment, city troops, the honor guard, the Perseverance Hose Company, and the Republican Invincibles—was much smaller than the one that welcomed Lincoln to Philadelphia. Despite the late hour, thousands of citizens from every part of the city joined the march. It took three hours, until almost 4:00 a.m., to reach Kensington Station. Townsend kept Stanton up to date: “We start for New York at 4 o’clock [a.m.]. No accident so far. Nothing can exceed the demonstration of affection for Mr. Lincoln. Arrangements most perfect.” The funeral train departed a few minutes later, en route to New York City.
Thousands of people lined the tracks on the journey to New York City. The train encountered large crowds at Bristol, Pennsylvania, and across the New Jersey state line at Morristown. At 5:30 a.m., the train made a brief stop at Trenton before continuing through Princeton, New Brunswick, Rahway, Elizabeth City, and Newark. The train reached Jersey City, New Jersey, at 9:00 a.m. There the presidential car was uncoupled from the train and rolled onto a ferryboat.
As a young man, Lincoln had floated on a flatboat down the Mississippi River to New Orleans; now he was crossing the Hudson River in a flatboat on his way into New York. The ferry landed in Manhattan at the foot of Desbrosses Street. He was back in the city that had
helped make him president and that had given him so much trouble during the war.
This was to be the biggest test of the funeral pageant since it had left Washington. New York City had the biggest population, the greatest crowds, and the most volatile citizens in the North. New Yorkers loved a good riot, as they demonstrated on a number of occasions, including the Astor Street Shakespeare riot in the 1840s and, most recently, the Civil War draft riots. Given the strong Copperhead presence in the city, many believed that Manhattan cried crocodile tears for the fallen president. But mourning Unionists outnumbered Lincoln’s enemies on the streets of New York in April 1865.
The procession went from Hudson Street to Canal, to Broadway, and then to City Hall.
The hearse, which was photographed as it rolled through Manhattan, beggared description. According to one published account,
it was fourteen feet long at its longest part, eight feet wide and fifteen feet one inch in height. On the main platform, which was five feet from the ground, was a dais six inches in height, at the corners of which were columns holding a canopy, which, curving inward and upward toward the centre, was surmounted by a miniature temple of liberty. The platform was entirely covered with black cloth, drawn tightly over the body of the car, and reaching to within a few inches of the ground, edged with silver bullion fringe…At the base of each column were three American flags, slightly inclined, festooned, covered with crape. The columns were black, covered with vines of myrtle and camellias. The canopy was of black cloth, drawn tightly, and from the base of the temple another draping of black cloth fell in graceful folds over the first; while from the lower edges of the canopy descended festoons, also of black cloth, caught under small shields. The folds and festoons were richly spangled and trimmed with bullion. At each corner of the canopy was a rich plume of black and white feathers.
The Temple of Liberty was represented as being deserted, having no emblems of any kind in or around it save a small flag on top, at half-mast. The inside of the car was lined with white satin, fluted, and from the centre of the roof was suspended a large gilt eagle, with outspread wings, covered with crape, bearing in its talons a laurel wreath, and the platform around the coffin was strewn with laurel wreaths and flowers of various kinds.
The car was drawn by sixteen gray horses, with coverings of black cloth, trimmed with silver bullion, each led by a colored groom, dressed in the usual habiliments of mourning, with streamers of crape on their hats.
The richness, extravagance, and exaggeration of the sight overwhelmed the senses. New York had outdone all other cities on the funeral route. To anyone in the streets of Manhattan that day, it seemed unimaginable that any city following New York could rival the magnificence of this day.
One newspaper noted that every public place within sight of the procession was crammed with people: “The police, by strenuous exertions, kept the streets cleared, but the sidewalks and the Park were filled with men, women and children, while the trees in the Park were loaded with adventurous urchins.”
A self-congratulatory New York Herald piece swelled with typical Manhattan pride. “The world never witnessed so grand a collection of well-dressed, intelligent, and well-behaved beings, male and female, as thronged the streets of New York yesterday and gathered around the bier of the leader of the nation.”
City Hall had been transformed beyond recognition.
“There was no trace of the interior architecture to be seen on the rotunda of the City Hall,” recalled the main chronicler of the New York funeral.
Niche and dome, balustrade and paneling were all veiled…The catafalque graced the principal entrance to the Governor’s Room. Its form was square, but it was surmounted by a towering gothic arch, from which folds of crape, ornamented by festoons of silver lace and cords and tassels, fell artistically over the curtained pillars which gave form and beauty to the structure.
The arch seemed lost in the vast labyrinths from which it rose. A spread eagle was perched above it. Beneath this aerial guardian was a bust of the dead President in sable drapery. Then came a ubiquitous display of black velvet, studded with beautiful silver stars in filigree lace, which reflected light over the suits of woe and gloom of which they were the national ornaments…
Beneath the canopy, near the honored dead, were busts of Washington, Jackson, Webster and Clay—all resting on high pedestals. The vicinity of the catafalque was also the scene of elaborate and artistic mourning. All the furniture, the statues and the portraits of the Governor’s room were in character with the sad scenes around them [and all] were covered with crape. The statue of George Washington, near which Mr. Lincoln received his friends four previous years, was elaborately draped, and the chandeliers were covered with black cloth.
For the most part New Yorkers behaved well and respected Lincoln’s remains. Some, however, could not control their emotions. One report observed: “The deportment of the people was very different from that of the crowds which usually assemble in great cities. No gladsome laugh, no familiar greeting, no passing jests. Grief was denoted on every countenance. Many would have pressed close to the coffin, if but to touch it with their fingers, were they permitted. Frequent attempts were made by ladies to kiss the placid lips of the corpse.”
During the viewing at City Hall, some people tried to do more than touch Lincoln. Some actually wanted to place mementos in the coffin. Captain Parker Snow, a commander of polar expeditions, presented to General Dix some relics of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated expedition. They consisted of a tattered leaf of a prayer book, on which the first word legible was “martyr,” and a piece of fringe and some portions of uniform. These relics were found in a boat lying under the head of a human skeleton. What possible connection did these bizarre relics have to Abraham Lincoln? They did not belong in the coffin, and Dix refused to place them there. Such practices, if tolerated, would have turned Lincoln’s coffin into a traveling gypsy cart overflowing with antiquarian oddities that would have weighed more than Lincoln’s corpse.
The coffin was closed at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday: “With practiced fingers,” wrote one eyewitness, “the undertaker, Mr. F. G. Sands,
THE NOTORIOUS GURNEY IMAGE, TAKEN INSIDE NEW YORK CITY HALL. EDWARD D. TOWNSEND STANDS AT THE FOOT OF THE COFFIN IN THE ONLY SURVIVING PHOTOGRAPH OF LINCOLN IN DEATH.
and his assistant, Mr. G. W. Hawes, removed the dust from the face and habiliments of the dead…and the lid was silently screwed down without form or ceremony, and with none but a few officers and orderlies and a couple of reporters as witnesses. The…bearers, eight in number, sergeants of the Veteran Reserve, stationed themselves on each side of the coffin, and remained there motionless as statues awaiting further orders.”
At 12:30 p.m. the hearse, drawn by sixteen white horses, began traveling uptown to the depot of the Hudson River Railroad on Twenty-ninth Street. One hundred and twenty-five people had viewed the corpse. Five hundred thousand stood along the procession route.
A TIME FOR WEEPING, BUT VENGEANCE IS NOT SLEEPING, read one of the signs posted along the parade route.
The hearse stopped for an oration at Union Square, and by 3:00 p.m., the head of the procession arrived at the Hudson River Railroad depot. But it took another half hour for the hearse to reach the embarkation point.
The spectacular events in New York City outdid all previous public honors for the late president, even those conducted in the national capital. The New York Times congratulated the people of Gotham: “As a mere pageant, the vast outpouring of the people, the superb military display, the solemn grandeur and variety thrown into the procession by the numberless national, friendly, trade and other civic societies; the grand accomplishment of music; and, above all, the subdued demeanor of the countless multitude of onlookers, made the day memorable beyond the experience of the living generation.”