Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  Lincoln’s fitful breathing reminded Stanton of “an aeolian harp, now rising, now falling and almost dying away, and then reviving.”125 Around 7 A.M., as Mary Lincoln sat by the bedside, her husband’s breathing grew so stertorous that she jumped up shrieking, then fell to the floor. Hearing her, Stanton, who had in effect taken charge of the government, entered from an adjoining room and loudly snapped: “Take that woman out and do not let her in again.”126 As Mrs. Dixon helped her return to the front parlor, she moaned: “Oh, my God, and have I given my husband to die?” An observer told a friend that he “never heard so much agony in so few words.”127

  At 7:22 A.M., the president finally stopped breathing. “Now he belongs to the ages,” Stanton said tearfully.128

  When Gurley broke the news to Mary Lincoln, she cried out: “O—why did you not let me know? Why did you not tell me?”

  “Your friends thought it was not best,” Gurley replied. “You must be resigned to the will of God. You must be calm and trust in God and in your friends.”129

  At Stanton’s suggestion, Gurley delivered a prayer, then escorted Mary Lincoln back to the White House. On exiting the Petersen home, she glanced at Ford’s Theatre and cried: “Oh, that dreadful house!”130 Upon reaching the Executive Mansion, they were accosted by Tad, who repeatedly asked: “Where is my Pa? Where is my Pa?” Apparently, he expected that his father, though shot, would come home with Mary. “Taddy, your Pa is dead,” Dr. Gurley replied. Unprepared for those shocking words, the grief-stricken lad screamed: “O what shall I do? What shall I do? My Brother is dead. My Father is dead. O what shall I do? What will become of me? O what shall I do? O mother you will not die will you. O don’t you die Ma. You won[’]t die will you Mother? If you die I shall be all alone. O don[’]t die Ma.”131

  The next day, when Gideon Welles and James Speed called at the White House, Tad asked tearfully: “Oh, Mr. Welles, who killed my father?” Neither gentleman could offer an answer or staunch their own tears. Tad’s grief was so intensified by his mother’s that he begged her: “Don’t cry so, Mama! don’t cry, or you will make me cry, too! You will break my heart. … I cannot sleep if you cry.” The lad tried to comfort her, saying: “Papa was good and he is gone to heaven. He is happy there. He is with God and brother Willie.”132

  To a White House caller on April 16 he asked: “Do you think my father has gone to heaven ?”

  “I have not a doubt of it,” came the reply.

  “Then,” said Tad, “I am glad he has gone there, for he never was happy after he came here. This was not a good place for him!”133

  The Funeral

  On Saturday, April 15, a chilly rain fell as horrified and dumbfounded Washingtonians gathered before the White House and milled about. Among them were many blacks who, according to Welles, were “weeping and wailing their loss. This crowd did not appear to diminish through the whole of that cold, wet day; they seemed not to know what was to be their fate since their great benefactor was dead.” The navy secretary confided to his diary that “their hopeless grief affected me more than almost anything else, though strong and brave men wept when I met them.”134 The abolitionist Jane Grey Swisshelm reported that “the presence of the thousands of Freed-people who regarded Abraham Lincoln as their Moses” was striking. “With tears and lamentations they lean their faces against the iron fence around the Presidential Mansion, and groan with a feeling akin to despair lest now, that their friend is gone, they shall be returned to their old masters.” She heard a black woman exclaim: “My good President! My good President! I would rather have died myself! I would rather have given the babe from my bosom! Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus!” Mrs. Swisshelm concluded that the “mourning for President Lincoln is no mockery of woe, but the impassioned outburst of heartfelt grief; and it is touching to see, on every little negro hut in the suburbs, some respectful testimonial of sorrow. Many deprived themselves of a meal to get a yard or two of black [cloth] to hang above their poor door or window. Was ever mortal so wept by the poor?”135

  Mary Lincoln was so grief-stricken that she did not attend the obsequies for her husband. On April 18, Lincoln’s embalmed body lay in state in the East Room of the White House, where over 20,000 persons filed past the open casket to pay their last respects. Thousands of others would have done so but were deterred by the long lines and went home rather than wait hours to gain admission. Many of the teary-eyed mourners looked upon the coffin as if it contained a beloved friend or family member. Some spoke farewells to the inanimate remains. Conspicuous among them were less prosperous citizens, both white and black, who remarked: “He was the poor man’s friend.”

  On April 19, the anniversary of the first bloodshed of both the Civil and Revolutionary Wars, Lincoln’s funeral took place in that same cavernous room. Dr. Gurley delivered the sermon in which he quoted Lincoln’s statement made to him and other clergy who had called at the White House in the gloomiest days of the war: “Gentlemen, my hope of success in this great and terrible struggle rests on that immutable foundation, the justice and goodness of God, and when events are very threatening and prospects very dark, I still hope that in some way which man can not see all will be well in the end.”136

  The body was then conveyed to the Capitol, where it lay in state until the following evening. The Twenty-second U.S. Colored Infantry regiment led an immense, solemn procession past grieving multitudes lining crepe-bedecked Pennsylvania Avenue. Bringing up the rear were 4,000 blacks, including leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and various fraternal orders. Gideon Welles noted that there “were no truer mourners, when all were sad, than the poor colored people who crowded the streets, joined the procession, and exhibited their woe, bewailing the loss of him whom they regarded as a benefactor and father. Women as well as men, with their little children, thronged the streets, sorrow, trouble, and distress depicted on their countenances and in their bearing.”137 Another witness heard blacks sorrowfully declare that they “had lost their best friend.” Blacks outside the nation’s capital shared the Washingtonians’ sorrow. In Charleston, South Carolina, the black population seemed stricken upon hearing of Lincoln’s death. “I never saw such sad faces,” a journalist wrote, “or heard such heavy hearts beatings, as here in Charleston the day the dreadful news came! The colored people—the native loyalists—were like children bereaved of an only and loved parent.” One woman, “so absorbed in her grief that she noticed no one,” cried loud and long. The reporter concluded that “her heart told her that he whom Heaven had sent in answer to her prayers was lying in a bloody grave, and she and her race were left—fatherless.”138

  The gloom that pervaded the capital was broken only by some Radical Republicans and abolitionists, who opposed Lincoln’s Reconstruction policy because of its leniency toward the defeated Confederates. At a caucus, several Radicals seemed glad that Andrew Johnson, who called for harsh punishment of the Rebels, would be in charge. “I like the radicalism of the members of this caucus,” Congressman George W. Julian wrote. “Their hostility towards Lincoln’s policy of conciliation and contempt for his weakness were undisguised; and the universal feeling among radical men here is that his death is a god-send.” Julian wrote in his memoirs: “I spent most of the afternoon in a political caucus, held for the purpose of considering the necessity for a new Cabinet and a line of policy less conciliatory than that of Mr. Lincoln; and while everybody was shocked at his murder, the feeling was nearly universal that the accession of Johnson to the presidency would prove a godsend to the country.”139 Senator Zachariah Chandler believed that God “continued Mr. Lincoln in office as long as he was useful, and then substituted a better man to finish the work.”140 Ben Wade told that “better man,” Andrew Johnson: “we have faith in you. By the gods, there will be no trouble now in running the government!”141 He added: “Mr. Lincoln had too much of human kindness in him to deal with these infamous traitors, and I am glad that it has fallen into your hands to deal out justice to them.”142 Henry Winter Davis sai
d the “assassination was a great crime, but the change is no calamity. I suppose God has punished us enough by his weak rule—& ended it! I spoke to no man in Washington who did not consider the change a great blessing.”143 Jane Grey Swisshelm echoed Davis: “I do not look upon this death as a National calamity,” for she said she feared “the destruction of our Government through the leniency and magnanimity of President Lincoln.” She believed that God “removed from this important place one who was totally incapable of understanding, or believing in, the wickedness, the cruelty, and barbarism of the Southern people.”144 William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., told a friend that “Mr. Lincoln’s too great kindness of heart led him to a mistaken leniency, but Andy Johnson has fought the beasts of Ephesus on their own soil and has learned by bitter experience their implacable nature. ‘Thorough’ will be the word now. … The nation sails into new waters now and it may be providential that a new hand grasps the rudder.”145

  Several Christian clergymen also welcomed the ascension of Johnson to power. Within hours of learning that Lincoln had died, Henry Ward Beecher declared: “Johnson’s little finger was stronger than Lincoln’s loins.”146 A Presbyterian minister in Freeport, Illinois, asserted that Lincoln “had fulfilled the purpose for which God had raised him up, and he passed off the stage because some different instrument was needed for the full accomplishment of the Divine purpose in the affairs of our nation.”147 Other clergy told their flocks that God allowed the assassination because “a sharper cutting instrument” was wanted, a “man of sterner mood than the late President,” to punish the Rebels. Hence the continuation of Lincoln in office “would not have been so favorable to God’s plan as his removal.”148

  The events of April 19 impressed a Washington correspondent, who wrote: “In point of sad sublimity and moral grandeur, the spectacle was the most impressive ever witnessed in the national capital. The unanimity and depth of feeling, the decorum, good order, and complete success of all the arrangements, and the solemn dignity which pervaded all classes, will mark the obsequies of Abraham Lincoln as the greatest pageant ever tendered to the honored dead on this continent.”149

  In Lincoln’s Springfield, the mourning was especially profound. Its residents flocked instinctively to the statehouse square to share their grief with fellow townsmen. The city council, reflecting their wishes, passed resolutions calling for the president’s remains to be buried in their city. Initially, Mary Lincoln had insisted that her husband be interred in Chicago, but eventually her son Robert and David Davis persuaded her to accept Springfield, though she had been “vehemently opposed” to the Illinois capital.150

  The Funeral Train

  Stanton and other leading Republicans, fearing aftershocks from the assassination, planned to have a train convey the body back to Springfield, retracing the route taken by Lincoln in 1861. According to Illinois Congressman-elect Shelby Cullom, the country “was so wrought up no one seemed certain what was to happen; no one knew but that there would be a second and bloodier revolution, in which the Government might fall into the hands of a dictator; and it was thought the funeral trip would serve to arouse the patriotism of the people, which it did.”151 Mrs. Lincoln adamantly opposed those plans but ultimately yielded.

  So on April 21, a heavily draped, nine-car train bearing the president’s body, along with the remains of Willie Lincoln, departed Washington for Illinois. At the depot, the sight of grief-stricken black troops moved the assembled dignitaries to tears. Thirteen days later the train arrived in Springfield, having traveled 1,654 miles, retracing the route Lincoln took in February 1861 (with Pittsburgh and Cincinnati omitted and Chicago added).

  At several cities, the coffin was displayed for public viewing. In Philadelphia, enormous crowds paid a “grand, emphatic and unmistakable tribute of affectionate devotion to the memory of our martyred chief,” according to a local paper. Resembling “the multitudinous waves of the swelling sea,” they “surged along our streets from every quarter of the city.” Well before the train was due to arrive, people gathered at the depot and along the procession route, forming an “impenetrable mass.” They were so jam-packed that many were injured, and several women fainted. And yet order prevailed, for all appreciated “the great solemnity of the occasion.” Those wishing to view the remains had to wait up to five hours before being admitted to Independence Hall, where they were allowed but a brief glimpse of the open coffin.152 Similar demonstrations of widespread, profound grief took place at Baltimore, Harrisburg, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago, and Springfield.

  As the train chugged westward, people gathered at crepe-festooned depots and wherever roads crossed the tracks. Observers demonstrated their respect in various ways: doffing hats and bonnets, weeping, slowly waving flags and handkerchiefs, singing hymns as they knelt by the grading. At night, large bonfires were lit, around which children huddled. Some parents shook their youngsters awake so they could see and remember forever the sight of Lincoln’s funeral train. (In later years, the children recalled not only the passing railroad cars but also the flowing tears of the grownups, which they found deeply unsettling.) Farmers decorated their houses with flags and evergreens and paused respectfully in their fields to pay mute homage to the martyred president. Banners and arches bore touching inscriptions:

  “All joy is darkened; the mirth of the land is gone.”

  “We have prayed for you; now we can only weep.”

  “He has Fulfilled his Mission.”

  “Mournfully and tenderly bear him to his grave.”

  “Millions bless thy name.”

  “Revere his Memory.”

  “Weep, sweet country weep, let every section mourn; the North has lost its champion, the South its truest friend.”

  “He still lives in the hearts of his countrymen.”

  “How we loved him.”

  “Washington the Father and Lincoln the Saviour.”

  “A glorious career of service and devotion is crowned with a martyr’s death.”

  “There’s a great spirit gone!”

  “The heart of the nation throbs heavily at the portals of the tomb.”

  “Servant of God, well done,/ Thy race is o’er, thy victory won.”

  “Too good for Earth, to Heaven, thou art fled,/ And left the Nation in tears.”

  “We loved him, yes, no tongue can tell/ How much we loved him, and how well.”

  “The Poor Man’s Champion—The People Mourn Him.”

  “We Honor Him Dead who Honored us while Living.”

  “Behold how they loved him.”

  “We loved him much, but now we love him more.”

  “His death has made him immortal.”

  “Our guiding star has fallen; our nation mourns.”

  “Know ye not that a great man has fallen this day in Israel.”

  Quotations from Shakespeare adorned some banners:

  “Good night! and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

  “His life was gentle, and the elements/So mixed in him, that nature might stand up

  And say to all the world,/This was a man.”

  Some inscriptions were taken from Lincoln’s own public utterances:

  “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”

  “Sooner than surrender these principles, I would rather be assassinated on the spot.”

  “Upon this act, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”

  “Let us resolve that the martyred dead shall not have died in vain.”

  Among the million-plus mourners who availed themselves of the opportunity to view Lincoln’s remains were many women, some of whom tried to kiss the president’s lifeless face. When forbidden to do so, they protested loudly and refused to move on. To a Baltimore observer, that face seemed to preserve “the expression it bore in life, half-smiling, the whole face indicating the energy and humor which had characterized the living man.”153 By the time the train reach
ed New York, however, Lincoln’s face had become discolored. No matter how skillfully the undertakers administered powder, rouge, and amber, it grew frightfully pitted, hollow-cheeked, and black. As time passed, the body came to resemble a mummy. The New York Evening Post reported that the eyes had sunk, the cheeks had turned dark, and the tightly compressed lips resembled “a straight sharp line.” In sum, it was “not the genial, kindly face of Abraham Lincoln; it is but a ghastly shadow.”154

  Many blacks flocked to bid farewell to the president. At Baltimore they “were convulsed with a grief they could not control, and sobs, cries, and tears told how deeply they mourned their deliverer.”155 In Indianapolis, a procession marched carrying a large facsimile of the Emancipation Proclamation and banners reading “Colored Men, always Loyal,” “Lincoln, Martyr of Liberty,” “He lives in our Memories,” and “Slavery is Dead.” A different motto adorned the banner of black members of the Cleveland chapter of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows: “We mourn for Abraham Lincoln, the True Friend of Liberty.”156 In New York, the 5,000 blacks who had planned to join the procession were shocked when the city council forbade them to participate. The Evening Post denounced the city council’s order: “Our late President was venerated by the whole colored population with a peculiar degree of feeling; they looked upon him as the liberator of their race; and now … to be refused the privilege of paying respect to his remains is mortifying and humiliating. Besides, we have accepted the services of these citizens in the war, and it is disgraceful ingratitude to shut them out of our civic demonstration.”157 The eminent black clergyman and abolitionist J. Sella Martin protested that Lincoln’s final public speech, in which he endorsed black suffrage, left “no doubt that had he been consulted he would have urged, as a dying request, that the representatives of the race which had come to the nation’s rescue in the hour of peril, and which he had lifted by the most solemn official acts to the dignity of citizens and defenders of the Union, should be allowed the honor of following his remains to the grave.”158 The city council’s action so outraged Stanton that he fired off a telegram from Washington to the New York authorities: “It is the desire of the Secretary of War that no discrimination respecting color should be exercised in admitting persons to the general procession tomorrow. In this city a black regiment formed part of the funeral escort.”159 Discouraged by the officials’ action, most blacks abandoned their plans to march. Yet over 200 did join the procession, holding aloft banners inscribed: “Abraham Lincoln, Our Emancipator” and “To Millions of Bondsmen he Liberty Gave.”160 To protect them, the police chief, John Kennedy, provided an escort, which turned out to be unnecessary, for spectators cheered and waved handkerchiefs as the blacks passed by. One black woman between her sobs exclaimed, “He died for me! He was crucified for me! God bless him!”161