April 25, 1865---Requiem For A President: Abraham Lincoln's New York Funeral

APRIL 25, 1865:      

“I would like to go home” --- David Herold

I

  
Early morning April the 25th still found mourners lined up on the steps of New York’s City Hall, waiting in hope of viewing Lincoln's remains before the grand funeral procession scheduled for 2:00 P.M. Few of the people who stood waiting would get their chance. 

 Like most events in the nation’s largest city, Lincoln’s funeral procession dwarfed all the others that had been planned. Almost 100,000 people marched in the funeral parade, and the number of people viewing the event may well have been a million or more. 

The funeral procession was led by phalanxes of mounted police. Several Generals came next, accompanied by their staffs.  Eleven thousand blue-clad soldiers in flawless ranks, rifles on their shoulders, kept step to the sound of muffled drumbeats. Foreign dignitaries in mess dress came next, their glittering medals and colorful garb adding a splash of color to the somber black and dark blue of the lines. The banners of the city’s various ethnic societies --- Irish, German, Jewish, Slavic, Italian, and more --- flew over their representatives, many of them weeping afresh at the sadness and grandeur of the moment. They were followed by schoolchildren with their teachers, various Workingmen’s Societies, the Masons, other Fraternal Orders, mummers, and 100 brass bands. A body of three hundred African-Americans, whom the organizers had tried to exclude, fought their way into the processional by order of Edwin Stanton himself. 

The march was punctuated by cannonades and church bells which rang throughout Manhattan and in the City of Brooklyn.  All in all, it took four hours for the funeral procession to pass any given point.  The parade continued for hours, long after Lincoln’s body had been placed on the train to Albany.

In the midst of the somber cacophony came Lincoln’s hearse. Like everything else in the New York funeral it was both magnificent and immense, measuring 14 feet long by 7 feet wide. The hearse was so massive that sixteen matching gray horses were needed to pull it along the procession route, each with its own groom.

As the funeral moved down fashionable Union Square with its townhomes draped in black bunting, two young boys --- aged six and five --- watched the event from an upstairs window of their grandparents’ home. 

Miraculously, their curious little faces were captured by a photographer. 

And so we have evidence of the presence of  Confederate spymaster James Dunwoody Bulloch’s nephews Theodore “Teedie” Roosevelt --- who would become the 26th President of the United States in 1901 --- and his younger brother Elliott “Ellie” Roosevelt --- who would become the father of Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady to the 32nd President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt --- at the funeral of Abraham Lincoln. 

II

Whit-chew whit-chew whit-chew . . . 

--- Shut up, goddamn you bird!

--- You shut up. I’m trying to sleep.

--- You might as well get up. You’ll have plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead.

--- What are you talking about?

--- Word’s come down from Uncle Billy, this was late last night, that the war is on again. Or will be, once the cease-fire runs out tomorrow.

---  #@&!

--- Not that there aren’t a lot of fellows willing to take a shot at a Reb for what they done to Old Abe. The Rebs deserve more than a thrashing for that. They deserve to wiped off the earth. Just like the damned Seceshers in South Carolina. But still, let’s tell the truth. And the truth is that we’re tired. Hell, the Army of The Tennessee has been campaigning for a scratch year. I’ve been in the thick of it the whole time. Fighting and marching, and burning and looting, and when is it all going to end? When?

 --- And Johnny Reb, hey, he can still put up a good fight, like he did at Averasboro and Bentonville, and if there’d been more of him both scraps might have been a lot closer. No, maybe not, but damn it all, we’re tired.

--- Yeah, I heard about them Rebs coming across the picket lines last night. Johnston’s boys. A whole swarm of them. Maybe a thousand, maybe more. They even swore allegiance to the Union, ‘cept they asked not to be put in the fighting. See? Even they know there’s going to be more fighting.

--- There shouldn’t be any more shooting. I talked to that new fella, he’d been at Appomattox, said Grant and Lee had a real big ceremony with salutes and flags, and the Rebs put down their guns and went home. He asked me what the hell he was doing in North Carolina. Said he’d seen the war end, he doesn’t want another.  The coffee tastes awful this morning.

--- Maybe you just got a bad taste in your mouth.  

--- What happened to the cease-fire?

--- Hell, I heard that that goddamn Stanton and Andy Johnson near took Uncle Billy’s hide off for that. They sent Grant to do it. Wouldn’t do it themselves. They didn’t like the terms. Terms. Lett them come down here and pick up a rifle. I’ll give them terms. 

--- Uncle Abe would’ve let us go home. Us and the Rebs both. But, hell, they had to go shoot him. I guess they’ll get what they deserve. But I am damn tired.

III

General Joseph Eggleston Johnston C.S.A. has been awake all night. Deeply troubled by the breakdown in peace negotiations, he has ordered his scattered troops (encamped in a splatter pattern of a dozen isolated locations) into better defensive positions, and this morning, a fife and drum corps has led some thousands of men through Greensboro. His men did not look happy. 

It would have brought Johnston no relief to know that General William Tecumseh Sherman U.S.A. had also spent a sleepless night, and that Sherman’s men do not look any happier. Sherman has more than 80,000 men under his command, including reserves that are still arriving from Grant’s Army of The Potomac. Sherman’s Army of The Tennessee can afford its grousers.

Johnston isn’t even sure how many men he himself has --- the Army of Tennessee has maybe 20% of Sherman’s numbers.

Johnston’s one advantage is that his scattered forces can attack the Union lines from multiple directions at once. Or, he could follow the Orders of his President. Johnston, who had written to Davis the night before, later explained:

The reply, dated eleven o’clock P.M., was received early in the morning of the 25th; it suggested that the infantry might be disbanded, with instructions to meet at some appointed place, and directed me to bring off the cavalry, and all other soldiers who could be mounted by taking serviceable beasts from the trains, and a few light field-pieces. I objected immediately, that this order provided for the performance of but one of the three great duties then devolving upon us—that of securing the safety of the high civil officers of the Confederate Government; but neglected the other two—the safety of the people and that of the army. I also advised the immediate flight of the high civil functionaries under proper escort.

In other words, fight on. Davis is still thinking in terms of guerrilla warfare --- or a mobile insurgency, which will amount to much the same thing. Johnston knows that if he follows orders the war will go on for weeks, months, or even years. He also knows that Davis’ vision will mean that the Confederacy will exist only where the army is. The Confederate States of America will be reduced to isolated pockets of military resistance, to be encircled and crushed one at a time.

Johnston knows that he can still put up a good fight. Wade Hampton’s South Carolinians are looking for a brawl, as are some scores of Mosby’s men who have entered the lines, and a handful of Deep South Regiments from Alabama and Mississippi. 

But desertions are thinning the ranks. Most of the Virginians and virtually all the North Carolinians have vanished from the army.

Then something made up Johnston’s mind for him:

Perhaps it was an updated report of the relative strengths of the two opposing armies.

Possibly it was the morning’s figures on desertions.

Maybe it was the news of a mild mutiny in the ranks --- hundreds of men who’d convinced themselves that the cease-fire meant a permanent peace simply refused to pick up their rifles this morning, and instead of handling the matter directly, Johnston’s subordinates helplessly reported it to him.

It could have been the last message Johnston sent to President Davis, the one that came back undeliverable since the Confederate Government had chosen to move southward without informing its senior military commander.

Or maybe it was just because Johnston saw a way to pay Davis back for years of disrespect and vitriol.

Johnston later reflected on Davis’ order to continue the fight:

[These instructions] would have given the President an escort too heavy for flight, and not strong enough to force a way for him; and would have spread ruin over all the South, by leading the three great invading armies in pursuit. In that belief, I determined to do all in my power to bring about a termination of hostilities.

Late in the afternoon of April 25^th, with one eye on the clock, Johnston sends a message to Sherman. Strictly against orders and well into the realm of insubordination, he asks for another meeting. 

IV

John Wilkes Booth woke up after a sound sleep at the Garrett farmhouse. Still set on playing the role of “James W. Boyd” a soldier wounded at Petersburg, he informed the Garretts of President Lincoln’s assassination, a fact they had not heard before. They were shocked. Booth casually, if foolishly, mentioned that he was aware of a sizeable reward for anyone who found the perpetrator. Richard Garrett answered that he could certainly use the money. While Booth chatted with the Garrets, David Herold burst in to the farmhouse breathlessly, with news of Union troops in Port Royal. Herold’s obvious upset and Booth’s tense reaction made the Garretts very suspicious of their sudden guests, especially after talk of the reward money. 

 

Things worsened when Herold made up a barefaced lie about having been in a particular Virginia Regiment and Company. By sheer chance, Herold named the one that the Garretts’ son Jack had been in, and when the young men protested that he’d never seen Herold before, the atmosphere in the farmhouse grew ugly.

*** 

While Booth playacted for the Garretts, the New York 16^th Cavalry was scouring the countryside for Booth. There were rumors of him everywhere; at least there were unconfirmed sightings of a “lame man.” The Federal search party finally hit pay dirt when they came to the Rappahannock Ferry. William Rollins the ferryman readily told them of crossing Booth and Herold over the river the day before (though he did not know their names, Booth fit the “lame man” description Rollins was given), and he added to the story the fact that Herold had bragged about the killing of President Lincoln. 

 

Unfortunately, Rollins had no idea where the two fugitives went, other than the fact that they were in the company of William Jett, the former Mosby’s Ranger, who lived down in the Port Royal area. The Federals rode off at a clip to find Jett.   

***

At the Garrett house things deteriorated quickly. Richard Garrett was increasingly convinced that “Boyd” and his companion were the wanted men they themselves had described as Lincoln’s killers, and he wanted nothing more to do with them. After a tirade, he ordered the two men to leave. Mrs. Garrett, however, was fearful of them, and for the sake of the family’s safety --- for Booth had retrieved his pistols and knife --- convinced her husband to let the two men sleep in the Garretts’ tobacco barn for the night.  The war had interrupted the Garretts’ tobacco farming, and the barn was full of bric-a-brac hidden away from Yankees and road agents.

“I would like to go home,” a disconsolate, disheveled Herold told Booth. “I am sick of this way of living.”