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.”

April 24, 1865--- ~ THE NATION MOURNS ~

APRIL 24, 1865:       

“I cannot feel myself a beaten man” --- Jefferson Davis

  

I

Ulysses S. Grant met with William T. Sherman outside Goldsboro, North Carolina. 

It is a private meeting between the two men, for Grant came to deliver a tongue-lashing to his friend and subordinate. Given that “Grant stood by Sherman when he was crazy and Sherman stood by Grant when he was drunk” the exchange between the two men was probably relatively mild. Still, Grant had to deliver the bad news that Sherman’s peace terms as set forth in his “Memorandum, or Basis of Agreement” of April 18^th were thoroughly unacceptable to the Johnson Cabinet.

Sherman no doubt wondered out loud whether the U.S. Government really wanted peace.

Grant surely answered undoubtedly, but then reminded Sherman that the reasonable and compassionate voice of Abraham Lincoln had been stilled.

The two men condoled one another for certain, but then Grant explained the tenor and tone of the Cabinet meeting of the 21^st. Sherman grasped immediately how close he had come to ruin --- even death.  Grant grimly reminded him that this was not the same Administration that had set forth terms at City Point. It was a far angrier Government, bent on retribution, hoping the Confederacy would fight, hoping it would draw the last life’s-blood from the South. 

And then Grant mentioned the memorandum of March 3^rd, the Memorandum that limited battlefield generals to accepting only battlefield surrenders.

Sherman possibly looked puzzled when Grant produced President Lincoln’s memo.

If I had known about this, he said, I would never have negotiated those terms. 

A little acidly, Sherman added that he could not understand why every barkeep in the District of Columbia seemed to know more Military Intelligence than the Generals in the field.

Grant was taken aback. He realized that Sherman had been left out of the loop --- inadvertently --- and that the same problem might reoccur.

You must offer Johnston the selfsame terms that I granted Lee at Appomattox. No more. No less. That is what the Cabinet and the President all want. Just that.

Good friend that he was to Sherman, Grant fell on his sword upon his return to Washington, explaining that Sherman had negotiated with Johnston in good faith but with incomplete information. He took the blame for not forwarding President Lincoln’s March memorandum. Nobody really wanted to lambaste the Hero of Appomattox, so the matter was dropped. And Grant forwarded Lincoln’s terms --- the Appomattox terms --- to all his subcommanders. When the Civil War finally ended, everyone would have the same expectations.

Sherman was left with a conundrum. If Johnston did not accept the terms given to Lee, the war was set to resume on April 26^th.  And Sherman had no doubt it would.

II

Abraham Lincoln’s body left Philadelphia at 4:00 A.M., and reached Trenton, New Jersey at 6:00 A.M. for only a thirty minute stop. Crowds thronged the railroad station, hoping to get a glimpse of the fallen President in his coffin. Oddly enough, Trenton was the only State capital where Lincoln’s body did not lie in state --- in fact it was not even removed from the train, and people had to content themselves with gazing at the President through the windows of the hearse car. 

At 10:50 A.M. the Funeral Train reached Jersey City. Lincoln’s body (and Willie’s body) was ferried across the Hudson to New York City (there were no Hudson River crossings as there are today).

Once on the New York shore, a vast procession accompanied the President’s body to City Hall.  The building was draped with a huge banner reading THE NATION MOURNS.

At 1:00 P.M. the President’s body was placed in City Hall for viewing. At least 500,000 mourners passed by the casket.

New York’s leadership made an error in judgement. The President had never been especially popular in New York, with its Copperhead tendencies, and so they expected a relatively small turnout. To view the body, mourners were required to climb a set of stairs in City Hall, pass the coffin, and descend. This caused an unprecedented bottleneck, since only two lines of mourners could pass by at a time, and no one could linger. For every person that passed the casket, two never made it inside the building.

It was in New York that the only photographs were taken of Lincoln lying in state. Edwin Stanton was outraged by what he called “ghoulishness,” and Federal agents seized the glass negatives and smashed them. Only one, kept by Stanton as a keepsake, was known to have survived and it was published finally in 1952. 

III

After spending the night at the Lucas cabin, John Wilkes Booth and David Herold forced Charlie Lucas, the son of the owner of the cabin, to drive them south at gunpoint.  At the town of Port Conway, they asked to be ferried across the Rappahannock River. The ferryman, William Rollins agreed to take them across, but not until he set his fish traps.  While they waited, several Confederate soldiers released from Mosby’s Rangers arrived at the ferry landing. Herold engaged them in conversation.

Upon discovering that the men were from Mosby’s command, Herold asked them if they ever knew Lewis Powell (who was a former Ranger). Believing he was safe territory, he bragged to the three Confederate soldiers that Booth was the assassin of President Lincoln. Ultimately, this admission, made in the hearing of the ferryman, proved to be his and Booth’s undoing.   

After crossing the river, William Jett, one of the Rangers escorted Booth and Herold to the Peyton family house in Port Royal, Virginia, but the spinster sisters who lived there refused to give Booth and Herold shelter, insisting that it would be unseemly to have two single men alone with them in the house.  A frustrated Jett, at this point no doubt sorry he has involved himself with the two fugitives, led them to the Garrett farm near the crossroads of Bowling Green. A drained Booth, using the name of “Boyd,” rested at the Garrett farm while Herold and the Confederates traveled into Port Royal to get drunk. Later, much too intoxicated to return to the Garrett farm, Herold spent the night away from Booth, in Port Royal.     

On this same day, the 16^th New York Cavalry is dispatched into southern Maryland to find John Wilkes Booth. 

IV

Jefferson Davis writes to his wife Varina in Abbeville, South Carolina, advising her to move further south. He also tells her of Lincoln’s death. Varina later wrote:

“I burst into tears of sorrow . . . for the family of Mr. Lincoln and a thorough realization of the inevitable results for the Confederates.”

Varina is also convinced that the death of Lincoln will put a price on Davis’ head.

While Davis is writing to Varina he receives a copy of Sherman’s “Memorandum, or Basis of Agreement” from Johnston. Looking it over, he shakes his head, telling John C. Breckinridge that not even Lincoln would agree to such terms. He is certain that Johnson and Stanton will reject them out of hand.

Nevertheless, the gathered Confederate Cabinet urges Davis to sign off on the terms. Davis balks --- his signature will mean surrender. “I cannot feel myself a beaten man,” he tells his fellow Confederates.  Davis’ back is stiffened by General Wade Hampton C.S.A. who is present, and swearing a blue streak that he, for one, will never surrender to the Yankees. Hampton reminds Davis that 40,000 unfought troops still remain in the Trans-Mississippi. (In fact, Hampton has no real clue what is happening in that Military Department).

“We cannot reasonably hope for the achievement of independence,” retorts John H. Reagan, the Confederate Postmaster-General. Other voices agree.

Davis finally signs off on the Memorandum, deciding that the war will go on if Johnson and Stanton in the North reject Sherman’s terms. He tells his Cabinet that rejection of the terms is a certainty.

A bare hour after Johnston receives Davis’ signed copy, a messenger from Sherman advises him the deal is off.  The cease-fire clock begins to tick. On the afternoon of the 26^th, 48 hours from now, the killing will begin again. 

April 23, 1865---Booth flees South

APRIL 23, 1865:  

“Panic has seized the country” --- Jefferson Davis

I

The body of President Lincoln remained on view in Philadelphia. 

II

Captain Silas Soule of the First Colorado Cavalry, who testified against Colonel John Chivington at the Sand Creek Massacre Hearings, is murdered on the street in Denver, Colorado.

Stoneman’s Raid reaches Hendersonville, North Carolina, and has a major skirmish --- almost big enough to qualify as a “Last Battle of the Civil War” --- with local militia before despoiling the town.

A large “action” --- again, just not quite big enough to qualify as a “Last Battle of the Civil War” --- occurs at Munford’s Station, Alabama, between Confederate and Federal troops.

The Confederate “Florida Blues” enter into an armistice with Federal troops at St. Augustine. Armed resistance in north central Florida comes to an end. The “Blues” were a force made up of Minorcans, Spaniards, Sicilians, Italians, and Greeks, many the descendants of Sephardic Jews. Formed in 1860, even before Florida’s secession, units of the “Blues” fought at  Atlanta, Jonesboro and Bentonville, under General Joseph E. Johnston C.S.A..

III

John Wilkes Booth and David Herold managed to cross the Potomac River this day. 

Once on “friendly” Virginia soil they both expected greater aid and comfort. However, after Herold slogged an hour across swampy land to reach the property of the Confederate underground agent Mrs. Elizabeth Quisenberry (whose “safe house” had been recommended by Thomas Jones) Mrs. Quisenberry refused to aid the two fugitives. She refused their offer of Jones’ boat in trade, refused payment for a horse, refused to shelter them, and sent Herold on his way back to Booth (who, with his broken leg had stayed near their landfall at Gambo Creek). At the last minute, perhaps looking with a motherly eye at the woebegone boyish Herold, she did provide them food.

She also contacted one Thomas Harbin. Harbin was another Confederate agent who happened to be an acquaintance of Dr. Samuel Mudd. Harbin and Booth had met before, in late 1864.  

Harbin was willing to help the President’s assassin. Harbin hired a horse, wagon and driver to take Booth and Herold to “Cleydahl,” the estate home of Dr. Richard Stuart. 

 

 

Doubtless, Booth expected some medical attention from Stuart, but other than feeding Booth and Herold, Stuart ordered them gone. There is no direct evidence that he knew who they were, but the doctor undoubtedly had read the papers and knew there was a Federal manhunt underway for a “lame man.”

Booth and Herold went off, at his direction, to the cabin of the Lucas family, free blacks.

Evicting William Lucas and his family from their own home at knifepoint and gunpoint, the two exhausted conspirators holed up for the remainder of that day and overnight. The Lucases, fearing that Booth would kill them as he’d threatened (unsurprisingly, he hated blacks, and hated the fact that he was in a black home), did not report the two men to passing Federal authorities. 

April 22, 1865---Requiem For A President: Abraham Lincoln's Philadelphia Funeral

APRIL 22, 1865:       

“I prefer peace to war” --- General William Tecumseh Sherman

I

In the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) Pro-Union “Free Riders” clash with Confederate bushwhackers under the command of William Quantrill.

In Kansas, bushwhackers fight jayhawkers at Fort Zarah.

In western North Carolina, Stoneman’s Raid reaches Howard’s Gap after the burning of Rutherfordtown on the 21^st.

In Alabama, the Union occupies Talladega.

Brigadier General James Dearing C.S.A. and Colonel Francis Washburn U.S.A. both die of the wounds they inflicted on each other at the Battle of High Bridge. They are the last senior Commissioned Officers to die in the Civil War.

Dearing (top) and Washburn

   

II

General William Tecumseh Sherman, once Provost (President-in-fact) of what would become Louisiana State University writes to an old friend, D.L. Swain, President of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill:

HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI, IN THE FIELD, RALEIGH, N. C., April 22, 1865.

Hon. D. L. Swain, Chapel Hill, N. C.:

MY DEAR SIR:

Yours of April nineteenth was laid before me yesterday, and I am pleased that you recognize in General Atkins a fair representative of our army.

The moment war ceases, and I think that time is at hand, all seizures of horses and private property will cease on our part. And it may be that we will be able to spare some animals for the use of the farmers of your neighborhood. There now exists a species of truce, but we must stand prepared for action; but I believe that in a very few days a definitive and general peace will be arranged, when I will make orders that will be in accordance with the new state of affairs.

I do believe that I fairly represent the feelings of my countrymen—that we prefer peace to war; but if war is forced upon us, we must meet it; but if peace be possible, we will accept it, and be the friends of the farmers and working classes of North-Carolina, as well as actual patrons of churches, colleges, asylums, and all institutions of learning and charity. Accept the assurances of my respect and high esteem.

I am, truly yours, W. T. SHERMAN,

Major-General Commanding. 

III

President Lincoln’s funeral train leaves Harrisburg, Pennsylvania at 9:00 A.M. and arrives at Philadelphia at 4:50 P.M.  The President’s body is moved to Independence Hall, where he is laid out in the same room where the Declaration of Independence was signed. A two day public viewing commences. 300,000 mourners pass by the catafalque.

 

 

The stop is not without incident. A specially-arranged “private viewing” for Philadelphia’s civil leaders and Main Liners causes tremendous resentment among the crowds of ordinary people. Given the vastness of the throngs, people begin to fear that they will not get to see the President. Emotions run high, and street fights erupt. The Philadelphia papers are critical of the City Fathers, blaming them for the unrest, stating that Lincoln “the Champion of the People” would not have given preference to the rich and powerful; most likely, they are right. The lesson is learned. All subsequent “private viewings” are cancelled for the remainder of the journey.