So great was the growing love for Lincoln that many mourners simply would not accept the fact that a mere mortal had died. Surely all heaven and earth would acknowledge the passing of such a great and good man. When no earthquakes, eclipses, comets, or other natural phenomena were forthcoming, well-meaning mourners invented them. The torrential spring rains that marred most of the funeral ceremonies were interpreted by many as the sadness of heaven. “God is weeping,” insisted citizens of Cleveland.23 During the rare bouts of blue sky and sunshine, “the Lord was looking kindly down.”
Just as some were quick to transform the natural into the supernatural, others were just as quick to turn the mundane into the mystical. During the New York funeral procession, a Saint Bernard supposedly bolted from his master and ran beneath the moving hearse. Despite all attempts to call him back, the huge canine continued to walk solemnly along under the vehicle the entire length of the route, hidden from view by the trailing black cloth. The dog, so the rumors ran, had known and loved Lincoln and had been petted by the president only the day before his death. All in all, reported the New York Tribune soberly, it was a “curious performance.”24
Given the mania of the public mind, the need to take away something tangible from the martyrdom of Abraham Lincoln was almost insatiable. Whether they were simple souvenir-hunters or devout pilgrims seeking holy relics, the results were the same.
“Hundreds daily call at the house to gain admission to my room,” wrote William Clark, in whose room the president died. “Everybody has a great desire to obtain some memento from my room, so that whoever comes in has to be closely watched for fear they will steal something.”25 Among other items, Clark himself had a lock of Lincoln’s hair, carefully framed, as well as a piece of the president’s brain.26
On the funeral train itself, surrounded by millions of clamorous people, the demand for keepsakes was overwhelming. Ran a typical account:
It was necessary to set a strong guard around the car, arch and catafalque, to prevent them from being torn to pieces. Ladies eagerly picked up the leaves of the flowers which had been strewn on the coffin, and put them carefully in paper for preservation. Scissors were pulled out to clip pieces from the drapery, and positive roughness had to be used in many cases to prevent the complete demolition of everything.27
Without alert, eagle-eyed guards nearby, the crowds, as many observers later admitted, would have quickly reduced the coffin to splinters, then snipped away all the clothes and hair from the corpse.
For those unable to pluck something momentous, a whole array of hucksters waited on the edge of every large crowd ready to hawk mourning badges and ribbons, flags, jewelry, rings, even books hot off the press detailing the life and death of Lincoln.28 Photos and sketches of the dead president were also much-coveted souvenirs, as were images of the assassin. This last item incensed many. “People cannot pass along without seeing the unblushing countenance of the fiend who inflicted the blow,” raged one furious viewer.29
Ubiquitous profiteers were also on hand, ready, willing, and able to turn calamity into cash. In some cities, windows overlooking the funeral procession rented for as much as one hundred dollars each.30 One unscrupulous individual in Philadelphia charged a toll of twenty-five cents for every person who used his gate while fleeing the mobs around Independence Hall.31 With the inventory of most stores long since exhausted of anything black, “sacrilegious wretches” slipped through darkened streets at night stealing cloth and crape from homes and businesses, then with the dawn resold the material at marked-up prices.32 Railed one editor:
We have heard of mean men—men who would steal chickens, rob graves of their contents, live on the earnings of prostitutes, abstract pennies from dead men’s eyes, or pilfer acorns from a blind swine . . . but the meanest of all low thieves is the person who will go about the streets at the dead of night and steal the habiliments of mourning.33
Another scourge was pickpockets. Following the fall of Richmond and Lee’s surrender, these sly criminals lifted thousands upon thousands of dollars from exuberant and distracted Northern crowds.34 Now, whenever the funeral train passed through cities great and small, the nimble-fingered thieves were sure to be prowling. Though some were caught, most were not, and given the incredible density of crowds, the situation was every pickpocket’s dream. In some cases, notably Philadelphia and New York, much of the terrible crush was caused by thieves relieving valuables from wedged and almost helpless victims.35 Like wolves trailing a herd of buffalo, organized gangs of pickpockets and burglars followed the funeral train west. When the cars reached Columbus, police received a tip that a band of New York criminals would soon arrive to work the crowds in the Ohio capital. As the gang’s train pulled into the station, the doors to their coach were quickly bolted. At their leisure, police thereupon arrested eleven suspects.36
When the funeral train left Columbus, it passed through towns that few on board had even heard of. And yet, in many cases thousands, even tens of thousands, were dutifully on hand to greet the cars. At little Piqua, Ohio, ten thousand people gathered at midnight. Across the border in Richmond, Indiana, upwards of fifteen thousand more were waiting at 3 A.M.
Because of a terrible, prolonged rainstorm, the grand demonstration planned for Indianapolis was canceled. With soaked flags hanging limp, and with black dye from the decorations streaming down buildings and onto the sidewalks, the elements visibly reduced the number of visitors. One man took advantage of the smaller crowds to view Lincoln’s body three times. All the same, though fewer mourners were on hand than in other stops, Indianapolis was still packed with people.37
“Tremendous crowds in the city,” John Jefferson jotted in his journal after making the trip up from Louisville, Kentucky, that morning. “Fell into a dense column & wended my way to the State House where I looked upon the uncovered face of Abraham Lincoln.”38
What Jefferson and others saw when they gazed upon the president’s face sixteen days after his death depended upon what they wanted to see. Some insisted that Lincoln looked natural, like one at rest; “certainly very sweet [and] amiable,” wrote one viewer.39 Others recoiled at the sight. Many thought Lincoln looked less like a man than a shriveled, shrunken mummy. Because of serious decomposition and blackening, embalmers at each halt had to apply heavier amounts of powder and rouge. The result was a waxy, artificial look. Fortunately, the tons and tons of flowers delivered to the funeral car and the floral arrangements at the various ceremonies mostly masked the increasingly foul odor.
“To me,” said one revolted woman, “there was something shocking in parading the poor decomposing remains through so many towns to be gazed at by crowds.”40
In addition to the undignified and drawn-out display of the body, many more were quietly upset by the tremendous cost to the country and the various cities involved. Already deeply in debt because of the war, the United States, grumbled one critic, was now “pouring out money like water in showing its sympathy.”41 The silver and mahogany coffin alone cost an estimated fifteen hundred dollars, and the spectacular ceremonies themselves involved enormous expenditures.42
At 10 P.M. April 30, the funeral train left rainy Indianapolis and steamed north. A short time later, the alert crew of the pilot engine spotted something unusual on the track ahead. Upon investigation, the men discovered and carefully removed a “torpedo,” or land mine, designed to blow up the cars.43
Late the following morning, May 1, the funeral train pulled slowly into the station at Chicago. While the coffin was being taken from the car to the waiting hearse, bystanders noted how “oppressively” solemn and sad the crowds were. Wrote a witness:
Every one was anxious—expectant—but there was no rush, not even the attempt at disorder. Every one in that vast crowd kept place—not a soul stirred, or spoke; the dropping of a pin might almost have been heard in the midst of the throng. The figures were immovable, almost as if placed on canvass.44
More than any other stop on the long journey thus
far, Chicago claimed Lincoln as its own. “Illinois clasps to her bosom her slain and glorified son”; “The heart of Israel is slain upon high places”; “We mourn our loss”—just a few of the heartfelt inscriptions among the sea of banners that covered Chicago.45
“Many before had lost a father, brother or son,” explained one eulogist. “Now we have all lost our noblest son, our bravest brother, our kindest father. Our cup is drained. The sacrifice is ended. . . . The memory of the last great martyr is embalmed forever in the hearts of the American people.”46
Scenes witnessed elsewhere were repeated in the prairie metropolis. Chicago, with a normal population of 300,000, saw its size more than double with visitors, despite the same miserable conditions that had plagued the entire trip. An estimated 150,000 people viewed the remains during their rainy stay, and many thousands more took part in the ceremonies.47
Although the greater number of days allowed organizers more time to plan than in other cities, and although the advance notice was used wisely, the ceremony in Chicago was not without mishap. In addition to the hordes of thieves and sharpers preying upon the crowds, authorities also had to be especially alert to foil determined souvenir-seekers, many of whom came equipped with scissors, razors, and knives.48 Also, as the remains were passing solemnly through the torchlit streets the following evening for the last leg of the journey home, an elevated sidewalk, overflowing with spectators, suddenly collapsed. With the exception of a child who received severe head injuries, most escaped with only cuts and bruises. A few moments later, though, another such passageway also crashed under the weight, hurling over one hundred viewers onto the jagged rocks and glass below. Scores of victims suffered broken bones and deep lacerations.49
Chicago was by far the most emotional ceremony of the entire trip. When the train finally pulled away from the lights of the city and slipped into the darkness, bound for its last stop in Springfield, there was a genuine and palpable sense of sadness left behind.
“[N]ow that the form is forever departed, and naught save the memory of the man remains,” wrote one reflective journalist, “now comes the blank desolation and sorrow. . . . Lincoln has been identified with Chicago as no other President. He was peculiarly ours. . . . He was our President in every sense of the word.”50
CHAPTER THIRTY
DUST TO DUST
LATE ON THE NIGHT OF APRIL 27, Lafayette Baker and his cousin Luther stepped from a small boat near the Old Arsenal in Washington. With the help of several men waiting by the river’s edge, oarsmen quietly gathered up an ungainly bundle and placed it onto a waiting cart. Silently, the procession moved off through the pitch-black darkness toward the nearby prison.1
Throughout the day, the two Bakers had engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with the public. Following the autopsy on Booth—in which a section of his injured vertebrae had been removed—the Secret Service chief was ordered by Edwin Stanton to take charge of the corpse.2
“The secretary of war wishes me to dispose of Booth’s body,” explained the elder Baker as he asked Luther for help. “He says he don’t want the Rebs to get it and make an ado over it. He does not care where it is put, only let it be where it won’t be found until Gabriel blows his last trumpet.”3
After the body had been ostentatiously placed in a gig earlier that day, a heavy ball and chain were noisily dropped into the craft that the thousands of curious ears on shore might hear. Shortly after 2 P.M. the party cast off from the Montauk.4
“A few touches of the oars and we had parted company with the gun boat and were half rowing, half drifting down the river,” recalled Luther Baker. “Crowds of people were all along the shore. It went from lip to lip that we had with [us] a heavy ball and chain and that, of course, we were going to sink the body. Many followed as far as they could.”5
After two or three miles, and when they were lost to the crowds, the men eased the craft into a hidden cove and awaited darkness.6 Finally, when Lafayette Baker was certain that the moonless, starless night would cloak their return back up the Potomac to the arsenal, the men cast off again.
Aware of the moment’s historic significance, Dr. George Porter was on hand as the cart carried the body toward the prison:
Not a word was spoken by a member of our party. The only sounds to disturb the stillness of the night were the crunching of the wheels, the shuffling of our feet and the fall of the horse’s hoofs on the gravel road. As we followed the body of the assassin in that midnight march, I realized . . . its awe and solemnity . . . [N]othing was lacking to complete the dramatic closing of the “Tragedy of the Nation,” and the historic ending of the event, the place, the circumstances, the time.7
Without ceremony, the body was removed from the wagon and placed in a large room once reserved for felons. Concludes Lafayette Baker:
The stone slab which covered the floor had been lifted and a grave dug under it, and down into the black, dismal hole; into that unhonored grave we lowered the once proud, aristrocratic [sic], but now despised and hated J. Wilkes Booth. The stone was replaced and we turned shudderingly from a sepulchre on which no tear of sympathy could ever fall.8
For good reason did the federal government stage the elaborate subterfuge. As the curious thousands who watched from shore all day had illustrated, a morbid fascination for the assassin’s remains was gaining momentum. Rightly fearing that a grave would become a magnet for sightseers, or worse, a shrine of rebel pilgrimage, many in the government, and many out of it, favored dismembering the body and dumping the parts at sea. “Certainly,” argued the Chicago Tribune, “it should not be permitted to be buried on any soil over which the Federal flag waves. Equally certain is it that we have no right to thrust it upon any other people, or permit it to pollute in honorable exile any foreign country. There, remains, only the sea and the dissecting room.”9
Adding stock to the reports of a sea burial, planted government liars sold their voices and pens. More than a few “eyewitnesses” soon came forward to claim that they had been members of the party that had sunk Booth’s body far down the Potomac.10 That public demand to view the assassin’s corpse was great became clear in the days following his burial, when ambitious entrepreneurs were seen dragging the river.11 Concern that Booth’s grave might become a rebel memorial was also well warranted. Tens of thousands in the South now venerated his name and viewed the actor as a martyr to the Lost Cause. “Poor Booth,” a sad woman wrote in her diary from Texas, “to think that he fell at last. Many a true heart at the South weeps for his death.”12 And even in the North, those who felt that their birthrights had been trampled into the dust over the past four years secretly revered the assassin’s photo and wreathed it in laurel.13
For every individual longing to honor Booth, though, two more were determined that his name would forever remain entombed in infamy.
“It was a dog’s death—dog that he was, and fitted him well,” insisted one Northern editor.14
“I think he had too easy a death,” offered another, “he ought to have been tortured to death.”15
Meanwhile, as Booth’s body was being reviled and cast into a criminal’s grave, that of his victim was being gently escorted to martyrdom and immortality.
Slowly, at 9 A.M. on May 3, the black train rolled into Springfield for its last stop of the long journey. Because the arrival was an hour late, anticipation among the huge crowd was correspondingly high. Even though the streets surrounding the station were crammed for blocks and all the windows and rooftops were covered with people, when the cars finally screeched to a halt, there was only a “breathless silence” among the crowd.16 Stirred by the scene, one witness touchingly wrote:
In the mellow air and bright sunlight of this May morning sweetened by the rain of last night, when those prairies are clothed in flowers, and the thickets of wild fruit trees, and blossoming orchards are jubilant with birds, he comes back. His friends and neighbors are here to receive him, not with banners and triumphal music, not with congratulations and graspi
ng of hands, as they had hoped to do, not so, but in mourning. And his oldest and dearest friends come to meet him to be the pallbearers at his funeral.17
With a degree of sadness and loss unlike any other stage of the journey, the coffin bearing Abraham Lincoln was ever so carefully transferred to a waiting hearse. As six black horses topped by white plumes led the way, the procession passed slowly through the crowds of silent onlookers until it reached the capitol. Here the body would lie in state. Around the square and on the capitol itself, all was profusely decorated in crape and cloth of black and white.18
“Ours in life; the Nation’s in death,” read one of the many banners.19
As elsewhere, the condition of the corpse was cause for concern. With the doors scheduled to open at 10 A.M., undertaker Thomas Lynch was horrified at how utterly black the president’s face had become. Dashing across the street to a drug store, Lynch returned in haste with amber and rouge. Realizing the severity of the case, the desperate official was forced to apply the coloring so thickly as to almost paint a face on Lincoln. Even so, there was simply no way to hide the fact that the president’s body was rapidly decaying. Nevertheless, at promptly ten o’clock, the public was allowed to enter.20
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