Chapter 9
The Call of the Ages
Golgotha, 1865
“The joy of our heart is ceased;
our dance is turned into mourning.”
Lam. 5: 15
Monday, April 10, 1865, the first day following the surrender of General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, found the soldiers of the Prescott family preparing to depart from their battle camps. William, with Humphreys’ Second Corps, was under orders to move back at once to Burkeville. On that day the corps commander distributed the following communiqué:
HEADQUARTERS SECOND ARMY CORPS
Major-General Commanding,
April 10, 1865
OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS OF THE SECOND ARMY CORPS:
I congratulate you on the glorious success that has attended the operations just closed.
While awaiting the expressions of approbation from the country, from the commander of the armies and of the Army of the Potomac, for the manner in which you have performed your part in the general plan, I cannot refrain from expressions of admiration at the noble spirit that has animated you throughout, at the brilliant exhibition of those soldierly qualities for which the Second Corps has been conspicuous. The rapid manner in which you pressed the pursuit, from the moment the enemy was discovered in retreat, driving him before you, by constant combat, over an unknown country, through dense undergrowth and swamp, from positions which his advanced troops had entrenched, has, I believe, been unexampled.
Being in direct pursuit the opportunities for large captures were not yours; but spite the disadvantages you labored under, the results to the corps have been the capture of 35 guns, 15 flags, and 5,000 prisoners, and the capture or destruction of 400 wagons, with their contents, besides tents, baggage, and other material, with which the road was strewn for miles. In addition you have contributed eminently to the general success, and to captures made by other corps, by hemming in the enemy and preventing his escape, and have done your full share in the grand closing scene.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
While enjoying the satisfaction of having done your duty to your country, it is a source of intense gratification to us all‑-that the greatest military feat of the country was reserved as a fitting climax to the great deeds of that army of which this corps has always formed a part‑-the Army of the Potomac.
- A. HUMPHREYS,
Major-General, Commanding.
Horace, with Wright’s Sixth Corps, was at Nottoway Court House. This corps, too, was alerted to be ready to proceed to Burkeville. For the next several days, Horace tended to the necessary chores: washing and mending his clothes; cleaning the horses, harnesses, and guns; preparing the Government property to be turned in and his personal property to be taken home. On the 11th of April, the men of the battery were ordered to fall in. An order was read, announcing the surrender of Lee:
By Telegram from Headquarters Appomattox Court House.
April 9, 1865. 8 P.M.
To Col. Loring, Chief of Staff:
Gen. Lee this afternoon surrendered his entire army to Lieut. Gen. Grant. Officers and privates to retain private horses, arms and baggage. Officers and men to be permitted to return to their homes, but not to be disturbed by U. S. authorities so long as they observe the laws where they reside. All public property to be turned over to the ordnance and quartermaster’s depots. remnant about thirty thousand men.
April 10. Surrender is complete; this morning munitions of war, etc., turned over to the U. S., and Gen. Grant leaves for City Point this morning.
Signed, ____ TENNYMAN,
- A. Adj. Gen.
On that day, the 10th of April, Lewis’ regiment of cavalry began its march to the east, camping that night at Prospect Station. The next day the regiment served as escort to General Grant and reached Burkeville that evening. After a day’s layover, the boys marched to Nottoway Court House and went into camp and remained there for several days as guard mount.
Asa left Grant’s Appomattox headquarters on April 10, and accompanied Lewis’ 1st Maine as far as Burkeville. He then went by rail to City Point, and from there by steamer, reaching the White House late in the afternoon of April 11.
The city of Washington was wild with joy. All over the city bells rang, their silvery peals announcing the glad news of peace. The cannons that ringed the city’s defense perimeter boomed and roared, adding their ominous sound to the victory salute. Flags flew from all the government buildings and from many private residences and places of business. Red-white-and-blue bunting hung from windows and doorways of innumerable buildings. The tidings of victory had spread all across the land, and the Dionysian paean of triumph was enacted in all the northern cities, villages, and farm hamlets.
President Lincoln had promised the people who had gathered on the grounds of the White House on the evening of the 10th of April that he would speak to them the following evening. During the greater part of the day, he worked on his paper, which would deal with the matter of southern reconstruction. He wanted to state publicly his own general view of that question, so as to lay the groundwork for the great work that lay ahead.
Lincoln stood on a second-floor balcony overlooking the main entrance to the Executive Mansion. A night-mist draped its gauze curtain over the city. Off to the east the newly-built dome of the Capitol floated in the air and threw soft, flickering streams of light through the haze. Across the Potomac, on the Virginia side, the windows of Arlington House, the old home of Robert E. Lee, glowed with a light that could be seen from Washington. Bands played, banners of freedom were raised in the night air, and the people shouted, cheered, and sang. Tonight was the formal celebration of the end of the war.
Then the President read:
We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He, from Whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten. A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part gives us the cause of rejoicing be overlooked. Their honors must not be parcelled out with others. I myself, was near the front, and had the high pleasure of transmitting much of the good news to you; but no part of the honor, for plan or execution, is mine. To Gen. Grant, his skilful officers, and brave men, all belongs. The gallant Navy stood ready, but was not in reach to take active part.
By these recent successes the re-inauguration of the national authority‑-reconstruction‑-which has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed much more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike the case of a war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat with. No one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must begin with, and mould from, disorganized and discordant elements.
The President then dismissed as irrelevant the question, being then vigorously debated, as to whether or not the seceded states were any longer states:
We all agree that the seceded states, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union; and that the sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to those states is to again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe it is not only possible, but in fact, easier, to do this, without deciding, or even considering, whether these states have been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these states and the Union; and each forever after, innocently indulge his own opinion whether, in doing the acts, he brought the states from without, into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out of it.
He then warned against applying some abstract principle of reconstruction that overlooked the differences among the several southern states:
And yet so great peculiarities pertain to each State, and such important and sudden changes occur in the same State, and withal so new and unprecedented is the whole case that no exclusive and inflexible plan can be prescribed as to detail and collateral. Such exclusive and inflexible plan would surely become a new entanglement. Important principles may and must be inflexible. In the present situation, as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering, and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action will be proper.
After the reading, there was a restrained, but respectful, round of applause. It was not quite the speech the crowd had expected. Rather, it was a disquisition on the President’s view of government policy toward the South.
One person in the crowd turned to his comrade and said, “That’s the last speech he will ever make.” His name was John Wilkes Booth.
A short time after he finished reading the paper, Lincoln put on his coat and hat, and turned to Asa. “I’m going over to the War Department to see if anything has come in at the Telegraph Office. I’m anxious to learn of any news from General Sherman and the surrender of General Johnston. Why not walk with me?”
As the two walked the short distance, Asa remarked to the President, “Before he left for Richmond, Marshall Lamon said that he hoped that you would not go out at night. Perhaps he’s right; there are those who have designs on your life.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve got over eighty assassination threats filed in an envelope placed in a pigeon hole in my desk. I’ve shown some of them to you. But Hill is something of a monomanic on the subject of my safety. I can hear him or hear of his being around, at all times of the night, to prevent somebody from murdering me. He thinks I shall be killed; and we think he is going crazy. What does any body want to assassinate me for? If anyone wants to do so, he can do it any day or night, if he is ready to give his life for mine. It is nonsense.”
“Yet the people among whom Hill is thrown,” Asa replied, “provide him with more information about this than we can obtain. He believes that there are even now ominous assassination plots.”
“That may very well be,” the President continued. “I know that I am in danger, but I can’t be confined to a state of complete inactivity. I have my work to do, and must be up and about. It may be that I shall be assassinated, but I must continue on and hope that I shall live to carry on this work of the Union.”
“Do you really believe in dreams, Mr. President?”
“Yes, if they are properly interpreted. The plain people, the children of nature‑-and I’m one of them‑-find some basis of truth in them. I know what you’re driving at. I have had very strange and ominous dreams of impending personal disaster. I’m sure that Marshall Lamon has mentioned this to you.”
“Yes, he has, Mr. President,” Asa said. “Do you care to tell me about it?”
“It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day, and there had been a great ‘hurrah, boys!’ so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest, throwing myself upon a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it, and looking at that glass I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On laying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer, if possible than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler‑-say five shades‑-than the other. I got up and the thing melted away, and I went off, and, in the excitement of the hour, forgot all about it‑-nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up and give a little pang, as though something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home I told my wife about it, and a few days after I tried the experiment again, when, sure enough, the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing it back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was worried about it somewhat. She thought it was a ‘sign’ that I was to be elected a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.”
“This was not a dream, though,” Asa said. “But it certainly was a dream-like vision. Do you give it any significance?”
“I’m not sure,” was the reply. Then with a profound note of sadness: “I shall never be glad any more. The springs of life are wearing away, and I shall not last. I do feel a presentiment that I shall not outlast the rebellion. When it is over, my work will be done.”
There was no news from Sherman, and soon the two men returned to the White House. Asa retired to his room, a great sorrow settling into the depths of his heart. “He knows,” Asa said to himself. “He knows what is coming.” But it was a realization of which Asa could not yet speak. He would remain silent, harboring in his deepest consciousness the fateful secret.
Later that evening, the President and his wife entertained a few friends in the Executive Mansion. Mrs. Lincoln remarked to the President that, in the midst of such joy, he nevertheless seemed sad and melancholy. Then, perhaps prompted by his recent conversation with Asa, Lincoln told about his latest dream.
“It seems strange how much there is in the Bible about dreams. There are, I think, some sixteen chapters in the Old Testament and four or five in the New in which dreams are mentioned; and there are many other passages scattered throughout the book which refer to visions. If we believe the Bible, we must accept the fact that, in the old days, God and his angels came to men in their sleep and made themselves known in dreams. Nowadays dreams are regarded as very foolish, and are seldom told, except by old women and by young men and maidens in love.”
“Why,” Mrs. Lincoln remarked, “you look dreadfully solemn. Do you believe in dreams?”
“I can’t say that I do,” Mr. Lincoln replied, “but I had one the other night which has haunted me ever since. After it occurred, the first time I opened the Bible, strange as it may appear, it was at the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis, which relates to the wonderful dream Jacob had. I turned to other passages, and seemed to encounter a dream or a vision wherever I looked. I kept on turning the leaves of the old book, and everywhere my eye fell upon passages recording matters strangely in keeping with my own thoughts‑-supernatural visitations, dreams, visions, etc.”
“You frighten me,” Mrs. Lincoln gasped. “What is the matter?”
“I’m afraid,” the President responded, “that I have done wrong to mention the subject at all. But somehow, the thing has gotten possession of me, and, like Banquo’s ghost, it will not down.”
Lincoln tried to turn the conversation to other subjects, but his wife, her curiosity now aroused, insisted that he tell the dream.
“About ten days ago I retired very late. I had been waiting up for important dispatches. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a deathlike stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs.
“There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room. No living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me, but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break?
“I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived in the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully.
“‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers.
“‘The President,’ was the reply. ‘He was killed by an assassin.’
“Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream. I slept no more that night, and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.”
“That is horrid,” Mrs. Lincoln exclaimed. “I wish you had not told it. I am glad that I don’t believe in dreams, or I should be in terror from this time forth.”
“Well, it is only a dream, Mary. Let us say no more about it, and try to forget it.”
On Friday morning, April 14, the President had breakfast with his son, Robert, who told his father about the final days of the Appomattox campaign. He also gave the President a picture of the southern commander, Robert E. Lee. Examining the picture closely, Lincoln remarked, “It is a good face. I’m glad that the war is over at last.”
Lincoln received several callers during the morning. One of the visitors was Senator John Creswell of Maryland, who was one of the men responsible for keeping his State from seceding. The President greeted him,
“Creswell, old fellow, everything is bright this morning. The war is over. It has been a tough time, but we have lived it out‑-or some of us have. But it is over. We are going to have good times now, and a united country.”
The Cabinet met at 11:00 that morning. General Grant, who had arrived in Washington the previous morning, was invited to attend the Cabinet meeting. The Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, had not yet arrived. The President turned to Grant and asked if there was any news from Sherman in regard to Johnston’s army. Grant said that there was none. Lincoln then said that he thought there would be news before the day ended. He had had a dream, he said, and started to tell it, when Stanton arrived. The subject of the dream was dropped and the Cabinet turned its attention to official matters.
The first item discussed was the subject of trade between the states. The next item concerned the reestablishment of civil government in the South. During the proceedings, messengers tiptoed quietly into and out of the room. There was still no news from Sherman, although at that very moment he was in another room away to the south conducting surrender negotiations with Johnston. The President then recalled his dream, and assured the members of the Cabinet that everything would be satisfactory.
“What kind of a dream was it?” the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, asked.
“It refers to your element, the water,” Lincoln replied. “I seemed to be in some indescribable vessel and I was moving with great rapidity toward an indefinite shore. I had this dream preceding Sumter, and Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Stone River, Vicksburg and Wilmington.”
“Stone River was certainly no victory,” Grant interjected. “Nor can I think of any great results following it.”
Lincoln agreed, but yet insisted that the dream was a portent of good news. “I had this strange dream again last night, and we shall, judging from the past, have great news very soon. I think it must be from Sherman. My thoughts are in that direction.”
The discussion then turned to the question of the leaders of the Confederacy and what to do with them.
“I suppose, Mr. President,” said one member, “that you would not be sorry to have them escape the country.”
“Well, I should not be sorry to have them out of the country, but I should be for following them up pretty close, to make sure of their going.”
The President then remarked that the general outlines of reconstruction could be formulated and put into effect before Congress met in session later in the year.
Speaking from his heart, he voiced his hope: “I hope that there will be no persecution, no bloody work after the war is over. No one need expect me to take any part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them. Frighten them out of the country,” he said, throwing up his hands as if to scare sheep, “open the gates, let down the bars, scare them off, enough lives have been sacrificed.”
Mrs. Lincoln had arranged for a theater party to attend an evening performance of the play, Our American Cousin, at Ford’s Theater. She had invited General and Mrs. Grant to accompany her and the President.
The Washington Evening Star carried the announcement:
Ford’s Theatre‑-“Honor to our Soldiers.” A new and patriotic song and chorus has been written by Mr. H. B. Phillips, and will be sung this evening by the Entire Company to do honor to Lieutenant General Grant and President Lincoln and Lady, who visit the Theatre in compliment to Miss Laura Keene, whose benefit and last appearance is announced in the bills of the day. The music of the above song is composed by Prof. W. Withers, Jr.
Mrs. Grant, however, decided not to attend the play. Instead, she planned to go to her home in Burlington, New Jersey, and see her children. Earlier that day, before the Cabinet meeting, Grant, having finished some work at the War Department, told Stanton that he had decided against attending the theater. He did not want to offend the President and did not know how to turn down the presidential invitation. Stanton suggested that the General inform the President after the Cabinet meeting. The President would not be offended, Stanton assured Grant. Mrs. Lincoln would get another couple to accompany her and the President. But, Stanton went on to say, he hoped that Grant could dissuade Lincoln himself from going. Washington was full of intrigue, Stanton continued, and he was fearful of the President’s life and had asked him repeatedly not to attend public gatherings.
Later that afternoon, sometime after 4 o’clock, the President walked over to the War Department, accompanied by his guard, Thomas Crook. After passing some unruly men, Lincoln surprised Crook by bringing up, as he had never before done, the subject of assassination.
“Crook, do you know, I believe there are men who want to take my life. And I have no doubt they will do it.”
“Why do you think so, Mr. President?”
“Other men have been assassinated.”
“I hope you are mistaken, Mr. President.”
“I have perfect confidence in those who are around me. In every one of you men. I know no one could do it and escape alive. But if it is to be done, it’s impossible to prevent it.”
Secretary Stanton again urged the President not to attend the theater. The President and his guard were returning to the White House.
“It has been advertised that we will be there and I cannot disappoint the people. Otherwise, I would not go. I do not want to go.” At the White House door, the President turned to Crook and said “Goodbye, Crook.”
The guard remained at the door, startled and puzzled. The President’s parting words had always been, “Goodnight, Crook.”
The President and Mrs. Lincoln were returning from a carriage ride when he noticed two old friends from Illinois. They were the new governor of Illinois, Dick Oglesby, and the new senator from Illinois, Dick Yates. He invited them in. He wanted to read them the latest eruption from his favorite satirist, “Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby.” While he was usually the object of the satire, the President thoroughly enjoyed the witticism. He once said, “I am going to write Petroleum to come down here, and I intend to tell him if he will communicate his talent to me, I will swap places with him.”
Lincoln read the piece to his cronies, at times breaking out into laughter and slapping his knee.
I survived the defeet uv Mickellan (who wuz, trooly, the nashen’s hope and pride likewise) becoz I felt assoored that the rane of the Goriller Linkin wood be a short wun; that in a few months, at furthest, Ginral Lee wood capcher Washington, depose the ape, and set up constooshnal guverment, based upon the great and immutable trooth that a white man is better than a nigger.
The Confederates had “consentratid” and had lost Richmond. Linkin rides into Richmond! A Illinois rale splitter, a buffoon, a ape, a goriller, a smutty joker, sets hisself down in President Davis’s cheer and rites dispachis! . . . This ends the chapter. . . . The Confederasy hez at last consentratid its last concentrate. It’s ded. It’s gathered up its feet, sed its last words, and deceest. . . . Linkin will serve his term out‑-the tax on whiskey wont be repeeled‑-our leaders will die uv chagrin, and delerium tremens and inability to live so long out uv offis, and the sheep will be scattered. Farewell, vane world.
John Wilkes Booth, a Marylander, was a mediocre actor who played, among other places, at Ford’s Theater in Washington. Soon after Lincoln’s reelection, Booth enlisted a few co-conspirators in his plan to capture the President and hold him in ransom as exchange for southern war prisoners. This would, he reasoned, benefit the South, whose supply of eligible soldiers was seriously depleted. Lee’s surrender, however, rendered this scheme obsolete. Instead, Booth decided to kill the President when the opportunity to do so presented itself.
On the afternoon of Thursday, April 13, the actor learned that Lincoln would be in the Presidential Box at Ford’s Theater on the following evening, watching the comedy, Our American Cousin. Booth immediately finalized his plan for murder. He would assassinate the President, while two others of his group would kill Andrew Johnson, the Vice-President, and William H. Seward, the Secretary of State.
In late afternoon of Friday, April 14, Booth entered Ford’s Theater. He went upstairs and walked along a corridor leading to the State Box. He tried the door, which opened easily. He next cut a niche in the rear wall of the box and fitted a pine board between the wall and the door. This would prevent anyone from entering the box from the corridor. He took the board down and placed it in a corner by the door. The sofas and chairs were arranged. Lincoln’s chair was a rocker. He located the position from which he would fire the fatal shot. He saw that he could readily escape by jumping from the box to the stage and exiting through the wings. His final preparation for his night’s work was to bore a small hole through the door of the box, through which to view the President’s shoulders and head before entering the box and firing the pistol. He scooped up the few grains of shavings and put them in his pocket. Satisfied that all was in readiness, he then left the theater and went to his room in the National Hotel to eat and rest.
A few minutes after 8 o’clock that evening, President and Mrs. Lincoln stepped into the carriage that was to carry them to Ford’s Theater, located on Tenth Street between E and F. A betrothed couple, Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancee, Miss Clara Harris, were already seated inside. At 8:25 the carriage pulled up beside the wooden ramp in front of the main entrance. As the party walked down the aisle, the audience stood and applauded and the band struck up “Hail to the Chief.” The members of the party were soon seated in the Presidential Box, and the play, which had been in progress, resumed.
Shortly after 10 o’clock Booth entered the theater. The ticket taker, John Buckingham, although he knew Booth, held out his hand for the price of the ticket. “You will not want a ticket from me,” Booth said. “No,” Buckingham replied, “courtesy of the house.” In a few moments the actor reached the corridor leading to the State Box. The chair by the door was empty! The guard had left his position and had taken a seat from where he could watch the performance. The assassin now realized that he had easy access to his victim. Peering through the hole in the door, he saw the President in his chair, his head in plain view above the high back of the rocker.
The play is about an American, Mr. Trenchard, who lights his cigar with an old will, which is consumed by the flames, and thus loses a fortune of $400,000. Mrs. Mountchessington has just learned that he is penniless and is no “catch” for her daughter, Augusta.
“No heir to the fortune, Mr. Trenchard?”
“Oh, no,” he replied.
“What!” Augusta cried. “No fortune!”
“Nary red. It all comes from their barking up the wrong tree about the old man’s property.”
Mrs. Mountchessington: “Augusta, to your room!”
“Yes, ma. The nasty beast.”
“I am aware, Mr. Trenchard,” Mrs. Mountchessington said with an icy glare, “that you are not used to the manners of good society‑-”
“Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? . . . ,” Trenchard replied.
The two ladies left the stage; now Trenchard was alone. Booth’s moment had arrived. He turned the knob of the door and walked stealthily within five feet of the President. The assailant held a knife in his left hand. He raised his right arm and aimed the derringer in line with his victim’s head. “Wal, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, you sockdologizing old mantrap!” These were the last words heard by the President. Booth held the derringer just behind the President’s head, between the left ear and the spine. The culprit squeezed the trigger. There was a muffled sound. The President stopped rocking. His head fell on his chest.
A bluish cloud of sulphurous smoke engulfed the State Box. The conspirator rushed between the stricken President and his wife. Major Rathbone attempted to stop him, but was seriously cut on the arm by the assailant’s knife. Raising his bloody knife, he turned toward the audience and shouted the Virginia State motto, the words of Brutus as he thrust the dagger into Caesar, “Sic temper tyrannis“‑-“thus be it ever of tyrants.” At the box rail, he turned his back to the audience and let himself down the side. His right foot caught in the folds of a flag draped from the box, causing him to break a bone in his left leg. But he limped rapidly across the stage to the wings and escaped out the back door of the building.
By now the dazed occupants of the Presidential Box realized that the President had been attacked. Miss Harris called from the box for water. Then a piteous scream was heard by the audience. It was the cry of Mrs. Lincoln. People were assembled before the door of the box, trying to force the door. Major Rathbone succeeded in removing the board that held the door shut. He shouted for a surgeon. A young man in the back of the crowd said he was a surgeon. He was Dr. Charles Leale, an assistant surgeon of United States Volunteers.
“Oh, Doctor! Is he dead?” Mrs. Lincoln cried piteously. “Can he recover? Will you take charge of him? Oh, my dear husband! My dear husband!”
“I will do what I can,” the surgeon said.
Lincoln was placed on the floor. The surgeon examined the body for knife wounds, but found none. He ran his hand behind the President’s head and discovered the bullet wound. After making an examination, he said to those around him, “His wound is mortal. It is impossible for him to recover.”
The President was carried across the street to the home of William Peterson. He was placed on a bed in a small room underneath the stairs leading to the second floor of the house. Across a narrow hall, and at the front of the house, was a parlor. A sitting room was located just behind the parlor. Here, in these rooms, the people‑-family and government officials‑-assembled to undergo the death watch.
At about the same time, 10:15, that the President was shot, a second conspirator, Lewis Paine, attempted to slay the Secretary of State. A few days previously, Mr. Seward had been injured when his carriage overturned. His jaw had been broken. On this night, he was stabbed several times about the face and neck, but the iron frame that had been placed over his jaw saved his life. The person, George Atzerodt, whom Booth detailed to slay Vice-President Johnson, did not even attempt to carry out his instructions. The Vice-President was not harmed.
By 11 o’clock, forty-five minutes after the shooting, all of the members of the Cabinet, with the exception of Seward, were at the stricken President’s bedside. Secretary of War Stanton took charge, virtually running the government for the next eight hours. He convened a court of inquiry to gather information from those who witnessed the assassination. Convinced that there was a wide-spread southern attempt to overthrow the government of the United States, he issued a series of orders to prevent that eventuality. He notified General Grant, who was on his way to Burlington, New Jersey, of Lincoln’s pending death and made arrangements with the railroad to speed the general back to the Capitol.
The President’s eldest son, Robert, was in the White House visiting with Asa and John Hay when he received the news of his father’s condition. The three men immediately took a carriage to Tenth Street. The street was so packed with humanity that the carriage could not proceed. Soldiers attempted to turn the carriage away.
“It’s my father! My father! I’m Robert Lincoln,” Robert shouted. The three left the carriage and went to the house on foot. At the sight of his father, Robert burst into tears.
It was now after midnight. Good Friday was over. It began to rain, and the death room was oppressive. The President’s breathing was now more laborious, indicating that the end was near. Secretary Stanton asked Attorney General James Speed to draw up a formal note advising the Vice-President to be ready to assume the Presidency. He did not fill in the time of Lincoln’s death. When the note was written, Stanton read it aloud. Mrs. Lincoln, who was standing in the entry of the room, heard Stanton’s voice, and exclaimed, “Is he dead? Oh, is he dead?” The Secretary tried to explain that he was preparing for an eventuality. Asa, who was near the First Lady, soothed her and led her back to the front parlor. Sometime later, she was at the dying President’s bedside. She had her cheek against her husband’s cheek, when a sudden expulsion of his breath so overwrought her that she fainted. Stanton heard the commotion, and, seeing what had occurred, shouted in exasperation, “Take that woman out and do not let her in again.” Asa, who knew her well, said that he would look after her, and led her back into the parlor. He was at her side during the remainder of the early morning hours, with the exception of short, and recurring, visits to the death chamber.
The death messenger had now arrived. Although the President looked relaxed, his heart action was more faint and his breathing more difficult. His legs were as cold as marble. The intervals between spasms of breathing grew longer and longer. The attending physicians took out their watches to mark the time of death. Then it came, at 7:22 on the cold, rainy morning of April 15, 1865.
“Now,” Stanton said, “he belongs to the ages.”
The body was wrapped in the United States flag, placed in a coffin, and carried on foot the few blocks to the White House.
By midmorning the news of Lincoln’s death had been flashed by telegraph to the major cities of the North. Soon thereafter the news reached the smaller towns and rural villages. Banners heralding the end of the war were replaced with the black crepe of mourning. The bells that had just rung out the glad tidings of victory now solemnly tolled their somber lament of catastrophe. Men wandered aimlessly through the streets of the great cities, their places of business closed. Farmers left their plows in the ground and returned to their homes to console their loved ones and to converse with their neighbors. The nation was brought to a standstill. Its people were trying to assimilate the dreadful event. But the news was intentionally withheld from the South, in the event that it might aid any conspiracy instigated by the Confederacy.
The next day, Sunday, was Easter, the day of resurrection. Somehow, the dark night of Good Friday must lead to the bright day of national resurrection. Thousands of sermons, prepared earlier, were laid away, as pastors throughout the land spoke new words of meaning and hope. The most eloquent of them all, Henry Ward Beecher, spoke poignantly to the sorrow of the people:
Even he who now sleeps, has, by this event, been clothed with a new influence. Dead, he speaks to men who now willingly hear what before they refused to listen to. Now his simple and weighty words will be gathered like those of Washington, and your children, and your children’s children, shall be taught to ponder the simplicity and deep wisdom of utterances which, in their time, passed, in party heat, as idle words. Men will receive a new impulse to patriotism for his sake and will guard with zeal the whole country which he loved so well.
I charge you, on the altar of his memory, to be more faithful to the country for which he has perished. They will, as they follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery against which he warred, and which, in vanquishing him, has made him a martyr and a conqueror. I charge you, by the memory of this martyr, to hate slavery with an unappeasable hatred. They will admire and imitate the firmness of this man, his inflexible conscience for the right; and yet his gentleness, as tender as a woman’s, his moderation of spirit, which not all the heat of party could inflame nor all the jars and disturbances of his country shake out of place. I charge you to emulate his justice, his moderation, and his mercy.
The orator then pictured a triumphal death march of an immortal:
Pass on, thou that has overcome! Your sorrows, oh people, are his peace! Your bells and bands, and muffled drums, sound triumph in his ear. Wail and weep here; God made it echo joy and triumph there. Pass on!
Four years ago, oh, Illinois, we took from your midst an untried man, and from among the people. We return him to you a mighty conqueror. Not thine any more, but the nation’s; not ours, but the world’s.
Give him place, oh, ye prairies! In the midst of this great continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to the myriads who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism.
Ye winds that move over the mighty places of the West, chant his requiem! Ye people, behold a martyr whose blood, as so many articulate words, pleads for fidelity, for law, for liberty!
The dead President lay in an upper chamber of the White House until Tuesday morning, when he was placed under a magnificent catafalque in the center of the East Room. All that day the people filed by the casket in two columns, paying their last respect to their fallen leader.
The next morning, Wednesday, April 19, clergymen, Cabinet members, Supreme Court Justices, other important public officials, and foreign Ministers, assembled in the East Room for the funeral service. Mrs. Lincoln was too distraught to attend, but Robert and Tad were present for the occasion.
Lincoln’s friend, Bishop Matthew Simpson of the Methodist Episcopal Church and Mrs. Lincoln’s pastor, Reverend Dr. Phineas D. Gurley, conducted the service. Passages from the Psalms were read:
Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with thee, and sojourner, as all my fathers were. . . . For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down and withereth.
Verses from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians made the lesson for the day.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
Bishop Simpson then offered a moving prayer that sorrowing hearts might be strengthened and comforted, that the people of the land might be relieved from further sacrifices:
We bless Thee that no tumult has arisen, and in peace and harmony our Government moves onward; and that Thou hast shown that our Republican Government is the strongest upon the face of the earth. . . . Hear us while we unite in praying with Thy Church in all lands and ages. . . . Around the remains of our beloved President may we covenant together by every possible means to give ourselves to our country’s service until every vestige of this rebellion shall have been wiped out, and until slavery, its cause, shall be forever eradicated.
He then closed by reciting the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors . . . deliver us from evil . . . Amen.”
Dr. Gurley gave the funeral address:
His way is in the sea, and His path in the great waters; and his footsteps are not known. . . . We bow, we weep, we worship. . . . We will wait for His interpretation . . . He may purify us more in the furnace of trial, but He will not consume us.
The Reverend Dr. E. H. Gray, chaplain of the United States Senate, closed the service with prayer:
O God, let treason, that has deluged our land with blood, and devastated our country, and bereaved our homes, and filled them with widows and orphans, and has at length culminated in the assassination of the nation’s chosen ruler‑-God of justice, and avenger of the nation’s wrong, let the work of treason cease, and let the guilty author of this horrible crime be arrested and brought to justice. O hear the cry, and the prayer, and the tears now rising from a nation’s crushed and smitten heart, and deliver us from the power of all our enemies, and send speedy peace unto all our borders, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
It was now 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The services were over, announced by the booming of cannon and the tolling of bells. For the last time, the mortal shape of the President was carried from the White House and placed in a large hearse drawn by six gray horses. The procession moved along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, regimental bands playing a dead march and units of the armed services marching with reversed arms and muffled drums. Thousands of spectators lined the one-mile long route. The procession halted at the east front of the Capitol, and the body of the slain President was borne across the portico from which he had given his second inaugural address, explaining his policy of reconstruction:
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan‑-to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves and with all nations.
The coffin, draped in black, was carried into the rotunda of the Capitol and placed on a great catafalque under the dome. After a simple service, the coffin was left there alone, with the exception of soldiers who paced back and forth at its head and foot.
At 10 o’clock on Thursday morning, April 20, the doors of the Capitol were opened. First came the wounded soldiers from the city hospitals, to pay their last respects to their fallen chief. Then came the public, sometimes as many as three-thousand during an hour, and by midnight some twenty-five thousand.
One reporter, George Alfred Townsend, recalled his impression:
All that we see of Abraham Lincoln, so cunningly contemplated in his splendid coffin, is a mere shell, an effigy, a sculpture. He lies in a sleep, but it is the sleep of marble. All that made this flesh vital, sentient, and affectionate, is gone forever.
Earlier, Dr. Gurley had said the same thing in his prayer:
For what is our life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time and then vanishes away. . . . We commit its decaying remains to their kindred elements, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
There were those that day who remembered the living President, when he spoke the lines of a favorite poem:
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
As the young and the old, the low and the high,
Shall crumble to dust and together shall lie. . . .
The saint who enjoyed the communion of Heaven,
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and the just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust . . . .
‘Tis the wink of an eye; ’tis the draught of a breath
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud;
O, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
The next morning, Friday, April 21, six days after Lincoln’s death, President Johnson, General Grant, and Cabinet members, watched while the coffin was placed aboard a special car at the Washington depot. The funeral train, comprising nine cars, soon left the station, to begin the seventeen-hundred mile journey to Springfield, Illinois, where the lifeless body of the President was to be entombed.
The route over which the funeral train proceeded was almost identical to that which the President had taken in 1861 when he made the trip from Springfield to Washington. The route and time schedule had been made public, so that the people might have the opportunity to pay their respects to their beloved late President. The route led through Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Chicago to Springfield. In these large cities, the President’s coffin was placed in a public building, where the people by the thousands filed by to view their departed leader. In the smaller cities and across the open country, people stood alongside the tracks to watch the slow-moving train pass on its way west.
The train reached Philadelphia at noon on Saturday, the 21st of April. A half-million people waited at the station for its arrival. The coffin, enveloped in the American flag and draped with flowers, was taken to Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed. The body rested on a platform in the center of the hall, the head near the pedestal on which the old Independence bell stood. The walls of the hall were adorned with mottoes. Near the head of the coffin was a cross composed of flowers, artistically intertwined, which bore the words: “To the memory of our beloved President, from a few ladies of the United States Sanitary Commission.”
The funeral cortege reached New York on the morning of April 24. The coffin was borne into the rotunda of the City Hall, and, amid the solemn chanting of eight-hundred voices, was placed on a tastefully decorated catafalque. All that day and night, countless numbers passed by the coffin to take a last look at the remains of the martyred President. At midnight the German musical societies of New York, numbering a thousand voices, performed a requiem in the rotunda of the hall. The next day, April 25, the coffin was taken to the Hudson River Railroad to resume its interrupted journey. Meanwhile, a memorial service was conducted in Union Square. The funeral oration was delivered by George Bancroft. Its closing lines:
For the Union, Abraham Lincoln has fallen a martyr. His death, which was meant to sever it beyond repair, binds it more firmly than ever. From Maine to the Southwestern boundary of the Pacific, it makes us one. The country may have needed this imperishable grief, to touch its inmost feelings. The grave that receives the remains of President Lincoln, receives a martyr to the Union, and the monument which rises over his body will bear witness to the Union. His enduring memory will assist, during countless ages, to bind the States together, and to incite a love for our indivisible country. Peace to the departed friend of his country and his race. Happy was his life, for he was a restorer of the Republic, and he was happy in his death, for the manner of his end will plead forever for the Union of the States “and the freedom of man.”
Rabbi Issacs, of the Jewish Synagogue, read a portion of scripture and offered a prayer. A poem written by William Cullen Bryant, “Ode for the Burial of Abraham Lincoln,” was read:
Oh slow to smite and swift to spare,
Gentle, and merciful, and just,
Who, in the fear of God, didst bear
The sword of power, a nation’s trust.
In sorrow by thy bier we stand,
Amid the awe that hushes all,
And speak the anguish of a land
That shook with horror at thy fall.
Thy task is done; the bond are free;
We bear thee to an honored grave,
Whose noblest monument shall be
The broken fetters of the slave.
Pure was thy life; its bloody close
Hath placed thee with the sons of light,
Among the noble host of those
Who perished in the cause of right.
Now Lincoln’s murderer was dead. On the morning of April 26, he was cornered in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia. He refused to surrender, so the barn was set on fire. He was shot through the neck, dragged from the burning building and placed under a tree, where he died three hours later.
On the route beyond Albany, New York, the train reached a station at supper time. The depot was elaborately and tastefully draped in mourning. A bounteous supper had been prepared, to be served in the depot. Twenty-four young ladies, dressed in white with black velvet badges, waited on the tables. After supper, these young ladies entered the hearse car and placed a wreath of flowers on the coffin.
At Little Falls, New York, the train paused long enough for a wreath of flowers, in the shape of a shield and a cross, to be laid on the coffin. It bore the words:
The ladies of Little Falls, through their committee, present these flowers. The shield, as an emblem of the protection which our beloved President has ever proved to the liberties of the American people. The cross, of his ever faithful trust in God, and the wreath, as a token that we mingle our tears with those of our afflicted nation.
In western New York State, the train arrived in a small city, where the depot was decorated with mourning drapery and festoons of evergreens. On the platform was a group of thirty-six young ladies, representing the states of the Union, and dressed in white, with black scarfs draping their shoulders. When the train stopped, the young ladies entered the funeral car and placed a wreath of evergreens on the coffin. Minute guns were fired, bells were tolled, and the band played a requiem.
All along the way, funeral arches were constructed above the track. Written upon the arches were inscriptions expressive of the people’s sorrow. They varied in their content, but coalesced in common sentiment:
His deeds have made his name immortal.
Let others hail the rising sun,
We bow to him whose race is won.
A glorious career of service and devotion,
is crowned with a martyr’s death.
On other arches, Lincoln’s own words were inscribed:
The heart of the nation throbs
heavily at the portals of the tomb.
Let us resolve that the martyred dead
shall not have died in vain.
Along the tracks traversing the open country, people stood, often in the rain, to watch the slow-moving funeral cortege pass by on its westward course. At night bonfires were built to light the train in its slow passage onward and to afford those lining the tracks to catch a fleeting glimpse of the car bearing their president to his last resting place. In Ohio, an old woman, her gray hair disheveled and the tears coursing down her cheeks, waved a black mourning scarf in one hand, while in the other she waved her bouquet of wild flowers, her token to the slain President.
David R. Locke, the man who wrote under the name of “Petroleum V. Nasby”‑-Lincoln’s friend and comforter, who so often lightened the President’s burden‑-wrote:
I saw him, or what was mortal of him, on the mournful progress to his last resting- place, in his coffin. The face was the same as in life. Death had not changed the kindly countenance in any line. There was upon it the same sad look that it had worn always, though not so intensely sad as it had been in life. It was as if the spirit had come back to the poor clay, reshaped the wonderfully sweet face, and given it an expression of gladness that he had finally gone “where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.” The face had an expression of absolute content, of relief, at throwing off a burden which few men could have borne. I had seen the same expression on his living face only a few times, when, after a great calamity, he had come to a great victory. It was the look of a worn man suddenly relieved.
At Richmond, Indiana, the funeral train passed under a gorgeous arch, twenty-five feet high and thirty feet wide. American flags, arranged in triangles, graced both sides of the structure. Transparencies of red, white, and blue hung from the sides. Chaplets of evergreens ascended the sides and centered at the summit in velvet rosettes. On a platform, thrown across the arch some eighteen feet from its base, stood a young lady, dressed in white, representing the Goddess of Liberty.
At 11 o’clock on Monday, May 1, the train reached the city of Chicago, Illinois. The coffin was placed on a dais beneath the central arch of a grand triple arch constructed near Lake Michigan for the occasion. Thirty-six young ladies, each dressed in white and banded with crepe, walked around the bier and deposited an immortelle on the coffin as she passed. The coffin was then placed in the funeral car and taken to the Court House. It was laid on a great catafalque in the center of the rotunda, directly beneath the dome. By midnight forty thousand people had filed by the casket and viewed the face of the dead President. At intervals during the night, solemn music, both vocal and instrumental, was performed.
The funeral train reached Springfield, Illinois, at 9 A.M. on Wednesday, May 3, 1865. Abraham Lincoln had come home. The coffin was placed in a beautiful hearse, drawn by six superb black horses, draped in mourning and wearing plumes on their heads, and taken to the State House. It was placed in Representative’s Hall, resting on a dias, within a magnificent catafalque. The doors of the hall were soon opened, and the people began filing through.
The coffin was closed at 10 o’clock the next morning, May 4, and conveyed to the hearse. A choir sang Pleyel’s Hymn: “Children of the Heavenly King.” The funeral procession then moved to Oak Ridge Cemetery, one and a half miles from the State House. While the remains were placed in the receiving tomb, the choir sang the Dead March in Saul:
Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb,
Take this new treasure to thy trust.
Reverend Albert Hale, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Springfield, offered a prayer, which was followed by a dirge sung by the choir:
Farewell, Father, Friend, and Guardian.
The funeral oration was delivered by Bishop Simpson. He reviewed the President’s life, particularly from the time he left Springfield in 1861 until the time of his death.
His moral power gave him pre-eminence. The convictions of men that Abraham Lincoln was an honest man, led them to yield to his guidance. . . . They saw in him a man whom they believed would do what was right, regardless of the consequences. It was this moral feeling which gave him the greatest hold upon people, and made his utterances most oracular.
But the great act of the mighty chieftain, on which his power shall rest long after his frame shall moulder away, is giving freedom to a race. . . . When other events shall have been forgotten; when every throne shall be swept from the face of the earth; when literature shall enlighten all minds; when the claims of humanity shall be recognized everywhere, this act shall still be conspicuous on the pages of history. And we are thankful that God gave to Abraham Lincoln the decision and wisdom and grace to issue that proclamation, which stands high above all other papers which have been penned by uninspired men.
Dr. Gurley then rose and made a few remarks. A funeral hymn, composed by him for the occasion, was sung by the choir:
Rest, noble martyr! rest in peace;
Rest with the true and the brave
Who, like thee, fell in freedom’s cause,
The nation’s life to save.
Thy name shall live while time endures,
And men shall say of thee,
He saved his country from its foes,
And bade the slave be free.
These deeds shall be thy monument,
Better than brass or stone;
They leave thy fame in glory’s light
Unrivaled and alone.
This consecrated spot shall be
To freedom ever dear;
And freedom’s sons of every race
shall weep and worship here.
O, God, before whom we, in tears,
Our fallen chief deplore,
Grant that the cause for which he died,
May live forever more.
The choir sang the doxology. Dr. Gurley pronounced the benediction. The services were closed. The crowds moved slowly, sadly away, to retire to their homes.
But Asa, who had accompanied the funeral train, was loath to leave. There he remained, to be a while longer near the man with whom he had associated since the days of Antietam. His mind was flooded with memories of his service to the President, whom he had come to love dearly. Evening came, spreading its gentle mantle of twilight over the prairie landscape. The soil, fertile as he had never before seen, yielded a rich, luxuriant carpet of green grass. The great trees of oak and maple, their high branches robed in leaves of green, towered skyward. The cloudless sky, a deep blue, began to fade, imperceptibly at first, into the somber hue of night-time. The sun, a full-orbed flame of crimson, slowly sank behind the western horizon. It was over. The land of the Illini had received her son. The light had gone out of the West.