Bloody Times

by James L. Swanson

  Even in the rain, thousands of onlookers 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 platform. Lincoln was on view until midnight, and again at 7:00 A.M. the next morning, Saturday, April 22. The coffin was closed at 9:00 A.M. At 10:00 A.M., as a band played, drums beat, and soldiers marched or rode their horses, a hearse carried Lincoln back to the train.

  On April 22, while Abraham Lincoln was on the move, Jefferson Davis had still not left Charlotte, North Carolina. Lincoln’s murder had placed Davis in greater peril, but the Confederate president didn’t rush to escape. Davis acted as a man making a careful retreat, not fleeing for his life.

  Davis was not the only one who wanted to keep fighting. General Wade Hampton wrote to him again on April 22, encouraging 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,” he told Davis. “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.”

  Lincoln’s funeral train left Harrisburg forty-five minutes early. At every station, and along the railroad tracks between them, people gathered to watch the train pass by. For miles before Philadelphia, unbroken lines of people stood and watched along both sides of the tracks.

  The train arrived in Philadelphia before 5:00 P.M. on Saturday, April 22. As soon as the engine rolled into the station, a single cannon shot announced to the city that Lincoln had arrived. Townsend sent off a telegram to Stanton: “We have arrived here safely. Everything is in good order.” The crowd was immense.

  President Lincoln’s hearse in Philadelphia.

  At 5:15 P.M. the hearse, drawn by eight black horses, got under way. The huge procession took almost three hours to reach Independence Hall. The square in front of the hall shone with red, white, and blue lights. As guns fired and bells tolled, Abraham Lincoln’s body was carried into the building where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution had been debated. He was laid at the foot of the Liberty Bell.

  The inside of Independence Hall was draped with black cloth. It hung everywhere: from the walls, from the chandelier over the coffin, and from most of the paintings. A white marble statue of George Washington remained uncovered, and it stood out like a ghost in the blackened room.

  Candles burned among twenty-five vases of rare flowers. “A delicious perfume stole through every part of the Hall,” one observer wrote. But no one mentioned the practical purpose the sweet-smelling flowers served. Abraham Lincoln had been dead a week. Fragrant flowers would hide the odor of his slowly decaying flesh.

  At midnight the public came in. They entered by temporary stairs that had been made through two windows and exited through a second set of stairs through two more windows. The coffin was closed at 2:00 A.M. on Sunday, April 23, and would be reopened at 6:00 A.M. Many people in line stood outside Independence Hall the rest of the night so that they could be sure of getting in when the doors reopened in several hours. After the long wait, mourners were given only a few seconds to view Lincoln.

  The vast crowds had become dangerous, and the newspaper reported accidents. “Hundreds of persons were seriously injured from being pressed in the mob,” one story read, “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 Sunday, April 23, while the crowds of Philadelphia filed past Lincoln’s coffin, Jefferson Davis went to church in Charlotte. The minister gave an angry sermon criticizing Lincoln’s murder that seemed aimed at the Confederate president. “As Mr. Davis walked away,” Burton Harrison remembered, “he said, with a smile, ‘I think the preacher directed his remarks at me; and he really seems to fancy that I had something to do with the assassination.’”

  The same day the president wrote to Varina. It was a long, thoughtful letter. 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. If Lee had not surrendered, he told her, or if his soldiers had been willing to come back to the fight, all might still have been well. “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.” Now he was struggling to decide what was best to do.

  “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. . . . 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. [Mississippi] 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.”

  In Philadelphia, Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession left Independence Hall at 1:00 A.M. on Monday, April 24. 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 informed: “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, headed for New York City.

  Thousands of people lined the tracks on the journey. The train reached Jersey City, New Jersey, at 9:00 A.M. on Monday, April 24. There the presidential car was set loose from the train and rolled onto a ferryboat. At 10:00 A.M. Lincoln’s ferry landed in Manhattan and the procession to City Hall began.

  In New York Lincoln’s hearse was fourteen feet long and fifteen feet wide, drawn by sixteen gray horses. Draped in black cloth with silver fringe, it had an empty “temple of liberty” on top to symbolize the nation without the president to lead it. Above the temple was a large golden eagle with outstretched wings.

  City Hall had been transformed beyond recognition. Everything was draped in black cloth. Even the windows were covered with black curtains, so that the light was dim and somber. A square platform had been prepared for the coffin; an arch rose over it, with another eagle perched above a bust of Lincoln himself.

  The extravagant New York City funeral hearse. On the right, City Hall is draped in mourning.

  In ceremonies at Union Square, the famous speaker George Bancroft gave a long speech. “The President of the United States has fallen by the hands of an assassin,” he declared. “The wailings of the millions attend his remains as they are borne on solemn procession over our great rivers, along the seaside, beyond the mountains, across the prairie, to their final resting place. . . . Happy was his life, for he was the restorer of the Republic; 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.”

  New York had outdone all other cities on the funeral route so far. To anyone in the streets of Manhattan on April 24, 1865, it didn’t seem possible that any other city along the route could do anything more magnificent to honor Lincoln than what New York had done.

  The coffin was closed at 11:00 A.M. on Tuesday, April 25. At 12:30 P.M. the hearse, this time drawn by sixteen white horses, took Lincoln to the station of the Hudson River Railroad. One hundred twenty-five thousand people had viewed the corpse. Five hund
red thousand stood along the procession route. “A time for weeping, But vengeance is not sleeping” read one of the signs that the hearse passed by.

  The memorial arch above the tracks at Sing-Sing, New York.

  At 3:00 P.M. the head of the procession arrived at the railroad station. It took another half hour for Lincoln’s hearse to arrive. General Townsend telegraphed the secretary of war:

  NEW YORK CITY, April 25, 1865

  Hon. E. M. STANTON:

  The ceremonies and procession have been most complete and imposing. Everything passed off admirably. I have examined the remains and they are in perfect preservation. We start for Albany at 4.15 p.m.

  E. D. TOWNSEND,

  Assistant Adjutant-General.

  The engine steamed north along the Hudson River. General Townsend was surprised at how many people he saw when he looked out the window. “The line of the Hudson River road seemed alive with people,” he remembered. At 6:20 P.M., the train stopped across the river from the United States Military Academy at West Point. The corps of cadets assembled to honor their fallen commander in chief. They passed through the funeral car and saluted. Then the train moved on.

  After darkness fell, the train passed through the town of Hudson. The people there had prepared a scene, almost a little play. There was a coffin on a platform, with a woman dressed in white mourning over it, and a soldier and a sailor standing at either end. “While a band of young women dressed in white sang a dirge,” Townsend wrote later, “two others in black entered the funeral-car.” The women laid an arrangement of flowers on Lincoln’s coffin. Then they “knelt for a moment of silence, and quietly withdrew.”

  At 1:30 A.M. on April 26, Lincoln’s coffin was placed in the assembly chamber of the State Capitol in Albany and the viewing began. It was the middle of the night, but seventy mourners per minute came to see Lincoln’s corpse, more than four thousand an hour.

  But something else happened at Albany—a telegram from Edwin Stanton caught up with Edward Townsend. While the funeral train had been in New York City, a photograph had been taken of Lincoln’s corpse. This was the first picture that had been taken of Lincoln since he had died. Stanton had learned of it by reading the newspapers. He sent off a furious message.

  WAR DEPARTMENT,

  Washington City, April 25, 1865—11.40 p.m.

  Brigadier-General TOWNSEND,

  Adjutant General, New York:

  I see by the New York papers this evening that a photograph of the corpse of President Lincoln was allowed taken yesterday at New York. I cannot sufficiently express my surprise and disapproval of such an act while the body was in your charge. You will report what officers of the funeral escort were or ought to have been on duty at the time this was done, and immediately relieve them and order them to Washington. You will also direct the provost-marshal to go to the photographer, seize and destroy the plates and any pictures and engravings that may have been made, and consider yourself responsible if the offense is repeated.

  EDWIN M. STANTON,

  Secretary of War

  Stanton probably assumed that close-up images had been made of Lincoln’s face. By the time Lincoln was photographed in New York, he had been dead for nine days. There was only so much the undertakers could do. Stanton no doubt feared that pictures of Lincoln’s face in a state of gruesome decay would be distributed to anyone who wanted to buy them.

  Townsend received the telegram in Albany, New York. He knew his boss well, including his temper. Once Stanton learned the full story, Townsend feared, he would be completely enraged—because it was Townsend, and no one else, who had allowed Lincoln’s corpse to be photographed. In fact, Townsend had posed in the picture, standing beside the coffin.

  Townsend decided, before others could report what he had done, to confess.

  He sent a telegram to Stanton. “The photograph was taken while I was present,” he wrote. “I regret your disapproval, but it did not strike me as objectionable under the circumstances as it was done.” He would transmit the order about destroying the plates and the photographs. Who, he asked, should be in charge of the funeral train if he obeyed Stanton’s orders and returned the person responsible—himself—to Washington?

  When Stanton learned that it was Townsend who had allowed the photographs to be made, he decided not to take away his command. The train was on the move, and there was nobody else available to take charge. But Stanton was still not happy. “The taking of photographs was expressly forbidden by Mrs. Lincoln,” he told Townsend. He worried “that her feelings and the feelings of her family will be greatly wounded.”

  “I was not aware of Mrs. Lincoln’s wishes,” Townsend responded, “or the picture would not have been taken.” He added, “It seemed to me the picture would be gratifying, a grand view of what thousands saw and thousands could not see.”

  Later Townsend sent yet another telegram, describing the photograph. It was not, as Stanton probably feared, a close-up view of Lincoln’s face, but a picture of the coffin, draped in black and surrounded by flags, as it had been viewed by thousands of New Yorkers. “The effect of the picture would be general,” Townsend assured Stanton, “taking in the whole scene, but not giving the features of the corpse.”

  Stanton did not punish Townsend for what he had done. But he did order the photographs and the glass plate negatives seized. To this day no one knows what became of them. Perhaps Stanton destroyed the prints and smashed the glass negatives. Perhaps he stored them somewhere no one has ever found them.

  But Stanton could not resist saving for himself at least one image of Lincoln’s corpse. Almost a century after Lincoln’s death, a sole surviving photograph made from one of the negatives was discovered, stored with Stanton’s personal files. Perhaps Stanton saved it for history. Or perhaps he intended that it should never be seen, and that it remain for his eyes only, a vivid reminder of the death of Abraham Lincoln.

  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.

  Chapter Eleven

  On April 26 two events took place far from New York that were each much more important than a photograph of a coffin. On that day, before dawn, at a farm near Port Royal, Virginia, soldiers caught up with Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, surrounded him in a barn, and killed him. Also on that day Jefferson Davis, still in Charlotte, North Carolina, learned that Confederate General Joseph Johnston had surrendered his army. It was now vital that Davis leave the state and cross the border into South Carolina.

  Before Jefferson Davis left Charlotte, he wrote to General Wade Hampton: “If you think it better you can, with the approval of General Johnston, select now . . . the small body of men and join me at once.”

  Then, in haste, Davis wrote a letter to Varina. “The Cavalry is now the last hope,” he told her. “I will organize what force of Cavalry can be had. [General] Hampton offers to lead them, and thinks he can force his way across the Mississippi. The route will be too rough and perilous for you and children to go with me. . . . Will try to see you soon.”

  The funeral train left Albany at 4:00 P.M., Wednesday, April 26. Mile by mile, the crowds got thicker wherever the train was scheduled to pass. At Schenectady railroad signalmen waved small flags bordered with black. The train stopped briefly in Little Falls, where a band played a dirge while women presented flowers for the coffin.

  At 11:15 P.M., the train made a short stop at Syracuse, where soldiers paid honors, a choir sang hymns, and a little girl handed a small bouquet to a congressman on the train. A note attached to the flowers read: “The last tribute from Mary Virginia Raynor, a little girl of three years of age.”

  The train arrived in Rochester at 3:20 A.M. on April 27, and the former president of the United States, Millard Fillmore, got on board for the next stop, Buffalo. Three and a half hours later, tolling bells and booming cannons awoke the citizens of Buffalo who had not already assembled at the r
ailroad station. Abraham Lincoln had arrived.

  At 8:00 A.M. a procession, which included President Fillmore, went with the hearse to St. James Hall. Under a simple canopy of drooping black crepe, they laid the coffin on a platform while a musical group sang “Rest, Spirit, Rest.” Women from the Unitarian church placed an anchor of white camellias at the foot of the coffin. For more than ten hours, thousands of people, including many Canadians who had crossed the border for the occasion, viewed Lincoln’s body. It was during that day that Townsend and the others in Buffalo learned that John Wilkes Booth had been captured and killed.

  * * *

  As Lincoln’s train pulled out of Buffalo, Jefferson Davis spent the night at Yorkville, South Carolina. He was taking his time. His journey south was more like a farewell procession than a speedy flight.

  On the night of April 27, General Wade Hampton wanted to lead his cavalry to the president’s side. But he was worried about what to do. His commander, General Johnston, had surrendered. This meant that Hampton was supposed to surrender, too. But he had already promised to come to Jefferson Davis’s aid. Whatever he did, he would risk dishonor. Hampton wrote a letter to General Johnston: “By your advice I went to consult with President Davis. . . . A plan was agreed on to enable him to leave the country. . . . On my return here I find myself not only powerless to assist him, but placed myself in a position of great delicacy. . . . If I do not accompany him I shall never cease to reproach myself, and if I go with him I may go under the ban of outlawry. I choose the latter, because I believe it to be my duty to do so. . . . I shall not ask a man to go with me. Should any join me, they will . . . like myself, [be] willing to sacrifice everything for the cause. . . .”

  Other cavalry units also hoped to ride to Davis’s side, not to protect him, but to kill or capture him. Now that the manhunt for Booth had ended, Stanton could focus on Jefferson Davis. On Wednesday, April 27, one day after the actor was shot and killed, Stanton telegraphed an order to do whatever was necessary to capture the Confederate president and the gold he was rumored to be carrying. “[S]pare no exertion to stop Davis and his plunder. Push the enemy as hard as you can in every direction,” Stanton ordered.