Bloody Times (12 page)

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 hundred 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.”