Mourning Lincoln

by Martha Hodes

  For primary accounts of the events in and around Ford’s Theatre and Petersen House, see Charles F. Conant to “Hattie,” Washington, D.C., Apr. 15, 1865, ML; Albert Daggett to “Julie,” Apr. 15, 1865, in Timothy S. Good, We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), 45–47; James S. Knox to father, Washington, D.C., Apr. 15, 1865, ser. 3: General Correspondence, Abraham Lincoln Papers, LC, available at memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/alser.html; Charles A. Sanford to Edward Payson Goodrich, Washington, D.C., Apr. 15, 1865, in “Two Letters on the Event of April 14, 1865,” Bulletin of the William L. Clements Library of American History 47 (Feb. 12, 1946), facsimile, n.p.; Frederick A. Sawyer, “Account of what I saw of the Death of Mr. Lincoln written April 15, 1865,” in “An Eyewitness Account of Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination,” ed. Ronald D. Rietveld, Civil War History 22 (1976), 62–68; George B. Todd to Henry P. Todd, Washington, D.C., Apr. 15, 1865, McClellan Lincoln Collection, Brown; Gideon Welles diary, Apr. 15, 1865, Welles Papers, LC; W. R. Batchelder to mother, Washington, D.C., Apr. 16, 1865, NYHS; Augustus Clark to S. M. Allen, Washington, D.C., Apr. 16, 1865, accompanying scrap of bloodstained towel used for Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre, Special Collections, MHS; Helen A. Du Barry to mother, Washington, D.C., Apr. 16, 1865, in “Eyewitness Account of Lincoln’s Assassination,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 39 (1946), 366–69; R. B. Milliken to “Friend Byron,” Washington, D.C., Apr. 16, 1865, #54, Lincoln Room Miscellaneous Papers, HLH; Julia Adelaide Shepard to father, near Washington, D.C., Apr. 16, 1865, in “Lincoln’s Assassination Told by an Eye-Witness,” Century Magazine 77 (1909), 917–18; and Clara Harris to “Mary,” Washington, D.C., Apr. 25, 1865, NYHS.

  2. I hope: Henry Gawthrop diary, Apr. 8, 1865, with addition from 1914–15, DHS.

  For rationales for avoiding memoirs, see William A. Dobak, Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867 (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 2011), 507; J. Tracy Power, Lee’s Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), xiv–xv; and James M. McPherson, What They Fought For, 1861–1865 (1994; reprint, New York: Doubleday, 1995), 69; see also Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), xliii–liv.

  3. deeper: Joseph A. Prime, “Sermon Preached in the Liberty Street Presbyterian Church (Colored),” in A Tribute of Respect by the Citizens of Troy to the Memory of Abraham Lincoln (Troy, N.Y.: Young and Benson, 1865), 155; swept, sea: “The Great Calamity,” Apr. 16, 1865, Sacramento Daily Union, published May 17, 1865, in Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks, ed. Michael Burlingame (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 187, 192; universal feeling: Lucretia Hale to Charles Hale, Brookline, Mass., June 2, 1865, box 50, Hale Family Papers, SSC; North & South: Mary Peck to Henry J. Peck, Jonesville, N.Y., Apr. 16, 1865, Peck Correspondence, NYSL; bitter: F. J. Douglass to George Whipple, Eliot, Jamaica, Apr. 25, 1865, #F1-3837-40, reel 231, AMA; even: William L. Avery to U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Cape Town, South Africa, June 13, 1865, Letters Received Relating to Judges and Arbitrators of Mixed Courts at New York, Cape Town, and Sierra Leone, Records of the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to the Suppression of the African Slave Trade and Negro Colonization, M160, roll 7, RG48, NARA; everyone: Elizabeth Gaskell to Charles Eliot Norton, London, Apr. 28, 1865, in Letters of Mrs. Gaskell and Charles Eliot Norton, 1855–1865, ed. Jane Whitehill (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), 122; join: Philip Alexander Bell et al., [no title], San Francisco Elevator, Apr. 21, 1865, #4828, BAP.

  4. For Albert Browne’s work, see Albert Gallatin Browne Papers, MHS; shrewd, beg: William T. Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1875), 2:231; now: Brenda Stevenson, ed., The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 443 (Jan. 31, 1863, entry).

  5. household: U.S. federal census, Salem, Essex County, Mass., 1860; house: photograph, fol. 108, BFP; Albert Jr.: Report of the Harvard Class of 1853 … Issued on the Sixtieth Anniversary for the Use of the Class and Its Friends, Commencement 1913 (Cambridge, Mass.: University Press, 1913), 46–51.

  6. Albert Jr.: Report of the Harvard Class of 1853, 46–47; Forten: Stevenson, Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké, 157 (June 18, 1856, conservative), 98 (Sept. 3, 1854, insulting), 369 (July 6, 1862, pariah), 140 (Sept. 12, 1855, kind), 139–40 (Sept. 12, 1855, Nellie), 141 (Sept. [n.d.], 1855, society), 173 (Dec. 16, 1856, lonesome), 196 (Feb. 25, 1857, sorry). Nellie’s full name was Sarah Ellen Browne, and Forten referred to her as “Sarah Brown,” without the e (Forten also wrote about a friend named Nellie, but her last name began with A).

  7. U.S. federal census and slave schedules, Jacksonville, Duval County, Fla., 1850, 1860; see also Frank Mortimer Hawes, “New Englanders in the Florida Census of 1850,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 76 (1922), 49. In the U.S. federal census, Jacksonville, Duval County, Fla., 1860, the census-taker ticked off the box for “Married within the year,” though no one else was listed in Dorman’s household; in the U.S. federal census, Jacksonville, Duval County, Fla., 1880, Dorman claimed the status of single, rather than married, widowed, or divorced. I have located no marriage record for Rodney Dorman or Stephen Rodney Dorman, as his name appears in his birth records. See also Stephen Rodney Dorman, listed in Wilbraham, Town and City Clerks of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Town and Vital Records, Ancestry.com.

  8. home: Thomas Frederick Davis, History of Early Jacksonville Florida (Jacksonville, Fla.: H. and W. B. Drew, 1911), 105 (map), 108–9 (Pine Street).

  9. many: Christopher Looby, ed., The Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 109 (Mar. 13, 1863, entry); bitterly: Susie King Taylor, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers (1902; reprint, New York: Arno Press and New York Times, 1968), 23. Dorman diary, Feb. 7, 1864 (Higginson’s). See also Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “The reoccupation of Jacksonville, Florida, in 1863,” undated ms., #19, Higginson Additional Papers, HLH; “Report of Col. T. W. Higginson, First South Carolina Infantry (Union),” onboard Ben De Ford, Feb. 1, 1863, U.S. War Department, War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. 1, 53 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1898), 14:195–98; “Our Port Royal Correspondence,” New York Times, Mar. 25, 1863; “The Negro Troops in Florida,” New York Times, Apr. 21, 1863. Daniel L. Schafer, Thunder on the River: The Civil War in Northeast Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), 137, notes that a significant number of volunteers were between the ages of forty and sixty.

  10. withdrawal: Stevenson, Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké, 466 (Mar. 26, 1863, entry); claim: “Statement and Schedule of Losses” and “Schedule of property of Rodney Dorman at Jacksonville Florida stolen & destroyed & burned by the enemy in March 1863,” July 3, 1863, Rodney Dorman, Citizens File, Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, RG109-NARA, available at Fold3.com. See also correspondence between Dorman and the U.S. tax collector L. D. Stickney, Mar. 24, Apr. 23, May 7, 1866, copied into Dorman diary, vol. 3, “Note B, page 164,” 607–15; “The Ruins of Jacksonville, (Fla.),” Daily National Intelligencer, Apr. 27, 1863.

  11. Dorman diary, Apr. 29, May 20, 23, 1864, Apr. 16, 1865 (oath), May 23, 1864 (pass).

  heaps: George Heimach, “For the Christian Recorder,” near Jacksonville, Fla., Apr. 1, 1864, Christian Recorder, published Apr. 16, 1864; mistresses, hospitals: Rufus Sibb Jones, “Florida Expedition,” Jacksonville, Fla., Apr. 16, 1864, Christian Recorder, published May 7, 1864; glad: Abraham Lincoln to David Hunter, Washington, D.C., Apr. 1, 1863, War of the Rebellion, ser. 1, 14:435–36.

  On passes, see also Justus M. Silliman to brother
, Volusia, Fla., May 16, 1864, in A New Canaan Private in the Civil War: Letters of Justus M. Silliman, 17th Connecticut Volunteers, ed. Edward Marcus (New Canaan, Conn.: New Canaan Historical Society, 1984), 68. For Orloff Dorman, see U.S. federal census, Saint Johns County, Saint Augustine, Fla., 1860; Orloff Mather Dorman, U.S. Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861–1865, Ancestry.com; Matthew Pinsker, Lincoln’s Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers’ Home (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 34, 208n31; Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds., Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 145 (Jan. 20, 1864, entry), 300n37.

  12. Dorman diary, May 7, 1864 (raid); Sarah Browne diary, Apr. 25–May 9 (Jacksonville), Apr. 26, 1864 (havoc), May 1, 1865 (mementoes), BFP. For correspondence between Rodney Dorman and L. D. Stickney, see n10, above.

  Chapter 1. Victory and Defeat

  1. Sarah Browne diary, Apr. 3, 4 (wild), 5 (rebels), 6 (Sheridan), 7, 8 (joy), 1865, BFP.

  2. Sarah Browne diary, Apr. 10, 11, 12 (disappointed), 13, 1865, BFP.

  3. Albert Browne to “Dear Ones,” Charleston, S.C., Apr. 16, 1865 (fast); Albert Browne to “Dear Ones,” Hilton Head Island, S.C., Apr. 12, 1865 (grand, glorious, man), both BFP.

  4. Albert Browne to “Dear Ones,” Charleston, S.C., Apr. 15 (grand, unspeakable), 16 (sights), 1865, BFP.

  5. Dorman diary, Apr. 16, 29 (conditions), 22 (nonsensical), 16 (defeat, blacker, if North), 20 (negro, thunder bolt), 1865.

  6. Dorman diary, Apr. 20, 25 (Carthage, Irish), 16 (summer), 1865.

  7. Dorman diary, Apr. 22, 1865.

  newspapers: Justus M. Silliman to mother, Jacksonville, Fla., Apr. 20, 1865, in A New Canaan Private in the Civil War: Letters of Justus M. Silliman, 17th Connecticut Volunteers, ed. Edward Marcus (New Canaan, Conn.: New Canaan Historical Society, 1984), 99.

  8. Babylon: Thomas Day Seymour to Nathan Seymour, Richmond, Va., Apr. 3, 1865, Seymour Family Papers, Yale-Sterling; at last: Chester dispatch, Richmond, Va., Apr. 4, 1865, in Thomas Morris Chester: Black Civil War Correspondent—His Dispatches from the Virginia Front, ed. R. J. M. Blackett (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), 290; slavery: Frederick Douglass, “Nemesis,” Douglass’ Monthly, May 1861, in Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, ed. Philip S. Foner and Yuval Taylor (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999), 451; sold, violence: Emmeline Yelland to Albert Yelland, Galena, Ill., May 29, 1865, Yelland Family Correspondence, Duke.

  Countless sources convey the joyous crowds of African Americans; see, e.g., John C. Brock, “A Soldier’s Letter,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 29, 1865, and Allen H. Babcock diary, Apr. 4, 1865, Babcock Papers, NYSL.

  9. Norfolk classroom: Hope R. Daggett to George Whipple, Norfolk, Va., Apr. [n.d.], 1865, #H1-7058; Annie C. Woodbury to George Whipple, Norfolk, Va., Apr. [n.d.], 1865, #H1-7060; Mary E. Watson [mislabeled Hope R. Daggett] to George Whipple, Norfolk, Va., May 1, 1865, #H1-7070, reel 210, AMA; songs: Irwin Silber, ed., Songs of the Civil War (New York: Bonanza Books, 1960), 17–19, 320–21; American Song Sheets, Duke, available at library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/songsheets; “‘A Jubilee of Freedom’: Freed Slaves March in Charleston, South Carolina, March, 1865,” History Matters, American Social History Project, Center for Media and Learning (Graduate Center, CUNY) and Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, available at historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6381.

  10. Richmond: Chester dispatches, Richmond, Va., Apr. 6, 9, 1865, in Blackett, Thomas Morris Chester, 294–300 (citizens, 296); “The Richmond Freedmen: Their Visit to the President,” New York Daily Tribune, June 17, 1865; Garland H. White, “Letter from Richmond,” City Point, Va., Apr. 12, 1865, Christian Recorder, published Apr. 22, 1865.

  11. thought: Annie G. Dudley Davis diary, Apr. 10, 1865, HL.

  12. hats, shoes: Narrative of Appomattox Campaign, Apr. 9, 1865, in The Civil War Letters of General Robert McAllister, ed. James I. Robertson Jr. (1965; reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), 608; jove: Charles S. Brown to mother and “Etta,” near Haywood, N.C., Apr. 18, 1865, Brown Papers, Duke; muskets, cannons: Edward W. Benham to Jennie Benham, Goldsboro, N.C., Apr. 9, 1865, ts., Benham Papers, Duke; cheers, firecrackers, music: Theodore St. John to Jane Harries, New Bern, N.C., Apr. 12, 1865, St. John Papers, LC; 9 a.m.: Rufus Mead Jr. to “Dear Folks at Home,” near Goldsboro, N.C., Apr. 7, 1865, and Rufus Mead Jr. diary, Apr. 6, 1865, Mead Papers, LC; jump, dance, music, whiskey: Peter Eltinge to Edmund Eltinge, Morehead City, N.C., Apr. 7, 1865, ts., Eltinge-Lord Family Papers (Peter Eltinge Papers), Duke; liquor: William C. McLean diary, Apr. 8, 1865, ts., McLean Family Papers, NYSL, and Thomas Day Seymour to Nathan Seymour, Richmond, Va., Apr. 3, 1865, Seymour Family Papers, Yale-Sterling; glory: Lyman P. Spencer diary, Apr. 3, 1865, Spencer Papers, LC; cannon: “Lydia” to “Anna,” Clarksville, Tenn., Apr. 7, 1865, “Miscellaneous letters and fragments,” Adam C. Higgins Papers, HL; pain: Annie G. Dudley Davis diary, Apr. 3, 1865, HL.

  13. wild: countless sources invoke this word; see, e.g., Wesley Talley diary, Apr. 3, 1865, DHS; crazy: Thomas Francis Johnson diary, Apr. 5, 1865, Johnson Family Papers, MDHS; agog: Ellis Hughes diary, Apr. 3, 1865, Hughes-Gray Family Papers, Duke; Wilmington: Samuel Canby diary, Apr. 3, 1865, DHS; Anna M. Ferris diary, Apr. 3, 1865, Ferris Family Papers, FHL; Wesley Talley diary, Apr. 3, 1865, DHS; New York: Julia Anna Hartness Lay diary, Apr. 3, 1865, NYPL; Cincinnati: “Maggie!”: Maggie Lindsley’s Journal, Nashville, Tennessee, 1864, Washington, D.C., 1865 (Southbury, Conn.: Muriel Davies Mackenzie, 1977), 82 (Apr. 11, 1865, entry); Chicago: Stephen Thurston Farwell diary, Apr. 3, 1865, Farwell Collection, Princeton; Sacramento: Frederick G. Niles diary, Apr. 5, 6, 1865, HL; crowds: John Thayer to Lorin Low Dame, Dedham, Mass., Apr. 5, 1865, Dame Papers, MHS; classroom: Sarah Hale to Charles Hale, Brookline, Mass., Apr. 7, 1865, box 11, Hale Family Papers, SSC; Washington: Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 2:272–73 (Apr. 3, 1865, entry); Charles T. Cotton diary, Apr. 3, 5, 1865, Columbia; Simon Newcomb diary, Apr. 3, 1865, Newcomb Papers, LC; Elizabeth Blair Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, Washington, D.C., Apr. 4, 1865, in Wartime Washington: The Civil War Letters of Elizabeth Blair Lee, ed. Virginia Jean Laas (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 489; Benjamin Brown French, Witness to the Young Republic: A Yankee’s Journal, 1828–1870, ed. Donald B. Cole and John J. McDonough (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1989), 468 (Apr. 6, 1865, entry); James Thomas Ward diary, Apr. 3, 1865, Ward Papers, LC; resplendent, tiers: Mary Henry diary, Apr. 5, 1865, Smithsonian Institution Archives, available at siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits/stories/end-civil-war-april-3-10-1865.

  14. Richmond: Emilie Davis diary, Apr. 3, 1865, HSP and davisdiaries.villanova. edu; New Year’s: Margaret B. Howell diary, Apr. 3, 1865, HSP; for Philadelphia, see also Mary Dreer diary, Apr. 3, 1865, Edwin Greble Papers, LC; Nicholas B. Wainwright, ed., A Philadelphia Perspective: The Diary of Sidney George Fisher …, 1834–1871 (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1967), 490 (Apr. 5, 1865, entry); boys: Lucy Pierce Hedge to Charlotte Hedge, Brookline, Mass., Apr. 4, 1865, Poor Family Papers, SL; Susan Heath diary, Apr. 3, 1865, Heath Family Papers, MHS; legislature: John Wolcott Phelps commonplace book, Apr. 10, 1865, Phelps Papers, NYPL; Weaverville: Franklin Augustus Buck to Mary Sewall Bradley, Weaverville, Calif., Apr. 27, 1865, Buck Papers, HL; handshaking: William Dean Howells to William Cooper and Mary Dean Howells, Venice, Apr. 27, 1865, 1784.13(15), Howells Family Papers, HLH.

  15. corner stone: John Prentiss journal, Apr. 8, 1865, Prentiss Papers, AAS; great truth: Alexander H. Stephens, “Cornerstone Address,” in Southern Pamphlets on Secession: November 1860–April 1861, ed. Jon L. Wakelyn (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 406.

  16. entire: Diary of Gideon Welles, 2:273 (Apr. 3, 1865, entry); yankeedom: Henry Robinson Berkeley diary, Apr. 4, 1865, Berkeley Papers, s
er. A, reel 2, VHS-CMM; sour: “Sanford” to Mary Peck, near Petersburg, Va., Apr. 7, 1865, Peck Correspondence, NYSL; Confederates: Chester dispatches, Richmond, Va., Apr. 4, 6, 1865, in Blackett, Thomas Morris Chester, 289, 296; heavy, followed: Michael Bedout Chesson and Leslie Jean Roberts, eds., Exile in Richmond: The Confederate Journal of Henri Garidel (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 368, 370 (Apr. 3, 4, 1865, entries); contemptable: Malcolm Canfield to Harriett Canfield, New York, Apr. 5, 1865, Canfield Papers, NYSL.

  For Copperhead sentiment, see also Caroline Dunstan diary, Apr. 8, 1865, NYPL, and Mary Jane Church to Dennis Church, New York, Apr. 5, 1865, Church Letters, Cornell.

  17. world: Creed Thomas Davis diary, Apr. 2, 1865, ser. A, reel 13, VHS-CMM; blues: Amanda (Edmonds) Chappelear diary, Apr. 7, 1865, Chappelear Papers, ser. D, part 3, reel 9, VHS-SWF; Yankee glee: Nimrod Porter diary, Apr. 3, 1865, Porter Papers, SHC; will not: Emma F. LeConte diary, Apr. 13, 1865, reel 22, SHC-AWD-South; fool: Samuel A. Harrison journal, Apr. 4, 1865, MDHS.

  18. isn’t so: Henry M. Whitney to “Al,” City Point, Va., Apr. 4, 1865, Whitney Correspondence, MHS; Fitzhugh: Abram Verrick Parmenter diary, Apr. 7, 8, 1865, Parmenter Papers, LC; Wilmington: Anna M. Ferris diary, Apr. 7, 1865, Ferris Family Papers, FHL; bogus: Anna Cabot Lowell diary, Apr. 8, 1865, MHS; heartsickening: Henry Robinson Berkeley diary, Apr. 9, 1865, Berkeley Papers, ser. A, reel 2, VHS-CMM; Lee: William Williston Heartsill, Fourteen Hundred and 91 Days in the Confederate Army, ed. Bell Irvin Wiley (1876; reprint, Jackson, Tenn.: McCowat-Mercer, 1954), 240 (Apr. 20, 1865, entry), ACWLD.