Bloody Times (21 page)

“Make a chain, for the land is full of Bloody Crimes.”

Confederacy

Judah Benjamin
: Confederate secretary of state

John C. Breckinridge
: Confederate secretary of war

Constance Cary
: a young woman living in Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War; married to Burton Harrison after the war

Jefferson Davis
: president of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865

Jefferson (Jeff) Davis, Jr.
: son of Jefferson and Varina Davis; eight years old in 1865

Margaret (Maggie) Davis
: daughter of Jefferson and Varina Davis; ten years old in 1865

Varina Davis
: wife of Jefferson Davis

Wade Hampton
: Confederate cavalry general, under the command of General Joseph Johnston

Burton Harrison
: Jefferson Davis’s private secretary; engaged to Constance Cary

Joseph Johnston
: Confederate general of the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida and the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia

Jim Jones
: Jefferson Davis’s coachman

Robert E. Lee
: general of the Army of Northern Virginia

Frank Lubbock
: former governor of Texas

Stephen R. Mallory
: Confederate secretary of the navy

William Parker
: Confederate naval captain, in charge of guarding the Confederate treasure train

John Reagan
: postmaster general

Phineas Taylor (P. T.) Barnum
: owner of the American Museum in New York City, and later, of the Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth circus

Dr. Charles Brown
: embalmer

John Brown
: leader of a raid on a government arsenal, or place where weapons were stored, at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. He hoped to use the weapons to arm slaves in a rebellion against their owners. He was captured, tried, and executed.

William Clarke
: a boarder at the Petersen house in Washington, D.C.

Charles Crane
: assistant surgeon general

Elizabeth Dixon
: friend of Mary Lincoln

George Francis
: a boarder at the Petersen house in Washington, D.C.; husband of Huldah Francis

Huldah Francis
: a boarder at the Petersen house in Washington, D.C.; wife of George Francis

Benjamin Brown French
: commissioner of public buildings and grounds in Washington, D.C.

Ulysses S. Grant
: general of the Armies of the United States

George Harrington
: United States assistant secretary of the treasury; in charge of organizing Lincoln’s funeral in Washington, D.C.

Clara Harris
: fiancée of Henry Rathbone

Elizabeth Keckly
: dressmaker, friend of Mary Lincoln

Charles A. Leale
: army surgeon

Abraham Lincoln
: president of the United States, 1861–1865

Edward (Eddie) Lincoln
: son of Abraham and Mary Lincoln; died in 1850 at the age of three

Mary Lincoln
: wife of Abraham Lincoln

Robert Lincoln
: son of Abraham and Mary Lincoln; twenty-one years old in 1865

Thomas (Tad) Lincoln
: son of Abraham and Mary Lincoln; twelve years old in 1865

William (Willie) Lincoln
: son of Abraham and Mary Lincoln; died in 1862 at the age of eleven

David Dixon Porter
: rear admiral, U.S. Navy

Benjamin D. Pritchard
: United States lieutenant colonel in command of the Fourth Michigan Cavalry unit that captured Jefferson Davis

Alfred Purington
: United States lieutenant serving in the Fourth Michigan Cavalry unit that captured Jefferson Davis

Henry Rathbone
: United States army major, married to Clara Harris after the war

Henry Safford
: a boarder at the Petersen house in Washington, D.C.

Frank Sands
: undertaker

William Seward
: United States secretary of state

William T. Sherman
: One of Lincoln’s top three generals, along with Grant and Sheridan, and known for “Sherman’s March” through the deep South to the sea

Edwin M. Stanton
: United States secretary of war

Edward Townsend
: United States brigadier general; in command of Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train

Gideon Welles
: United States secretary of the navy

Mary Jane Welles
: wife of Gideon Welles

Janvier Woodward
: doctor; participated in the autopsy on Lincoln’s body

abolitionist
: someone who opposes slavery and works to end it

bier
: a table or platform on which a coffin is laid

cabinet
: a group of the most important officials in a government and advisers to the president

carbine
: lightweight rifle with a short barrel

cavalry
: soldiers mounted on horseback

choice
: fine, special

Confederate
: belonging to or connected with the Confederate States of America, the independent country that the South of the United States attempted to create during the Civil War

conscripts
: soldiers who have been drafted or forced to fight

Constitution
: the ultimate law of the United States. All laws made by Congress must abide by what is written in the Constitution.

coveted
: strongly wanted or desired

crepe
: a lightweight, fine fabric. When black, it was often used to symbolize death or mourning.

Declaration of Independence
: the statement of the United States’ freedom from England and its existence as an independent country

dirge
: sad music played at a funeral

dormant
: not active, but able to become active later

embalmer
: someone who preserves a body for viewing before burial

extricate
: take out, remove

fatigue
: the state of being tired or exhausted

fortitude
: strength, endurance

guerrilla warfare
: war fought by sabotage and secret attacks rather than conflict on the battlefield between armies

haversack
: backpack

illumination
: celebration during which buildings are lit up with lamps, lanterns, or candles

malaria
: a disease caused by the bite of a mosquito. An infected person often suffers from chills and fevers.

motto
: brief phrase or statement, often written on a banner or flag

neuralgia
: severe pain that occurs from time to time in a particular part of the body

reconstruction
: the process of rebuilding something that has been destroyed or damaged

subsistence
: food or supplies, just enough to keep someone or something alive

treasury
: place where a government’s money is stored

uniform
: regular, unchanging

Union
: belonging to or connected with the northern part of the United States during the Civil War, which wanted to keep the country together and not divide it into two separate countries

United States Congress
: the part of the government that makes laws for the United States. The Congress has two parts, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

United States Senate
: one of the two bodies that make up the U.S. Congress

utterance
: speech

venerable
: respected, honored

There are thousands of books about Abraham Lincoln, and even more about the Civil War. Here are a few titles for anyone who would like to pursue the stories of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in more detail. Readers of
Bloody Times: The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Manhunt for Jefferson Davis
who want to learn more about the Lincoln funeral and Davis manhunt can move up to the adult book upon which is it based,
Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln’s Corpse
.
Bloody Crimes
also contains an extensive bibliography for further reading. For the story of the Lincoln assassination and the hunt for John Wilkes Booth, see my young adult book
Chasing Lincoln’s Killer
, or its adult version,
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer
.

There are no completely satisfactory biographies of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis for young adults. Their stories are almost too detailed and complex to reduce them to short books that can only highlight the most important themes. The moment a young reader is ready to tackle an adult biography on Lincoln, I recommend Benjamin Thomas’s classic work,
Abraham Lincoln
. For the best illustrated books on the Lincoln assassination, see T
wenty Days: A Narrative in Text and Pictures of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
by Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., and my full-color book
Lincoln’s Assassins: Their Trial and Execution
. The best general photographic history is Lloyd Ostendorf’s
Lincoln’s Photographs: A Complete Album
.

To find all of Abraham Lincoln’s letters, speeches, and other writings, the best source is the multivolume set edited by Roy P. Basler,
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
. For the multivolume collected works of Lincoln’s opponent, see Lynda Lasswell Crist’s
The Papers of Jefferson Davis
. The best adult biography of Jefferson Davis is William J. Cooper’s
Jefferson Davis, American
. The ultimate book on Lincoln is Michael Burlingame’s magnificent two-volume biography,
Abraham Lincoln: A Life
. Too detailed and expensive for the home bookshelves of young readers, Burlingame’s work is an invaluable, encyclopedic library resource for anyone researching the Lincoln story.

Today you can visit many of the places that you have read about in
Bloody Times
. In Washington, D.C., Ford’s Theatre still stands on Tenth Street, and looks exactly like it did on April 14, 1865, the night Abraham Lincoln was shot. Go inside the theater, and while you listen to a talk by a National Park Service ranger, look up at the box where John Wilkes Booth shot the president and then leaped to the stage below. Be sure to visit the splendid museum in the basement and view, among the treasured relics there, Booth’s compass, revolvers, knives, and carbine, and even the very derringer pistol he used to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Do not leave Tenth Street without visiting the Petersen House, where the president died on the morning of April 15.

In Washington you can walk up Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the U.S. Capitol, the same route followed by Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession on April 19, 1865. Along the way, you will pass Mathew Brady’s old photography studio, which Lincoln visited many times to pose for pictures. At the U.S. Capitol, if you stand at the center of the rotunda, directly below the Great Dome, you will be in the exact spot where Abraham Lincoln’s coffin once rested, and where tens of thousands of mourners passed by to view his body. Nearby, in Statuary Hall, see if you can find the large, bronze sculpture of Jefferson Davis, former United States senator from Mississippi. There is a fine Lincoln exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and, near Ford’s Theatre at the National Portrait Gallery, in a building where Lincoln held his second inaugural ball, you will find an excellent display on the Civil War.