Bloody Crimes

by James L. Swanson

  After a brief stop at Annapolis Station, where Governor A. W. Bradford joined the entourage, the train arrived at Baltimore’s Camden Station at 10:00 a.m. Townsend telegraphed Stanton promptly: “Just arrived all safe. Governor Bradford and General E. B. Tyler joined at Annapolis Junction.” The once unruly city showed no signs of trouble. No lurking secessionists uttered verbal insults against Lincoln or the Union. Instead, thousands of sincere mourners, undeterred by a heavy rain, surrounded the station and awaited the president. The honor guard carried the coffin from the car, placed it in the hearse parked on Camden Street, and the procession got under way, marching to the rotunda of the Merchants’ Exchange. Brigadier General H. H. Lockwood commanded the column, and a number of army officers, including Major General Lew Wallace, who would soon serve as a judge on the military tribunal convened to try Booth’s accomplices, brought up the rear.

  The hearse, drawn by four black horses, was designed for the ideal display of its precious passenger. According to a contemporary account, “The body of this hearse was almost entirely composed of plate glass, which enabled the vast crowd on the line of procession to have a full view of the coffin. The supports of the top were draped with black cloth and white silk, and the top of the car was handsomely decorated with black plumes.”

  It took three hours for the head of the procession to reach Calvert Street. The column halted, the hearse drove to the southern entrance of the exchange, and Lincoln’s bearers carried him inside. There they laid the coffin beneath the dome, upon a catafalque, around which, Townsend observed, “were tastefully arranged evergreens, wreaths, calla-lilies, and other choice flowers.” Flowers, heaps of flowers, a surfeit of striking and fragrant fresh-cut flowers, would become a hallmark of the funeral journey. Soon, the lilac, above all other flowers, would come to represent the death pageant for Lincoln’s corpse.

  The catafalque was made especially for Lincoln. City officials had studied newspaper accounts of the White House funeral two days earlier, and they paid special attention to the descriptions of the extravagant decorations and grand bier. On April 20, while mourners in Washington viewed the remains at the U.S. Capitol, carpenters and other tradesmen in Baltimore built a catafalque to rival the one in the East Room. A contemporary account recorded every detail:

  It consisted of a raised dais, eleven feet by four feet at the base, the sides sloping slightly to the height of about three feet. From the four corners rose graceful columns, supporting a cornice extending beyond the line of the base. The canopy rose to a point fourteen feet from the ground, and terminated in clusters of black plumes. The whole structure was richly draped. The floor and sides of the dais were covered with black cloth, and the canopy was formed of black crepe, the rich folds drooping from the four corners and bordered with silver fringe. The cornice was adorned with silver stars, while the sides and ends were similarly ornamented. The interior of the canopy was of black cloth, gathered in fluted folds. In the central point was a large star of black velvet, studded with thirty-six stars—one for each State in the Union.

  In Baltimore there would be no official ceremonies, sermons, or speeches; there was no time for that. Instead, as soon as Lincoln’s coffin was in position, and after the military officers and dignitaries from the procession enjoyed the privilege of viewing him first, guards threw the doors open and the public mourners filed in. Over the next four hours, thousands viewed the remains. The upper part of the coffin was open to reveal Lincoln’s face and upper chest. Lincoln’s enemies could have masqueraded as mourners and come to gloat over his murder, but the crowd would have torn them to pieces.

  In Baltimore, Edward Townsend established two rules that became fixed for every stop during the thirteen-day journey. “No bearers, except the veteran guard, were ever suffered to handle the president’s coffin,” he declared. Whenever Lincoln’s corpse needed to be removed from the train, loaded or unloaded from a hearse, or placed upon or removed from a ceremonial platform or catafalque, his personal military guard would handle the coffin.

  Each city would furnish a local honor guard to accompany the hearse and to keep order while the public viewed the body, but these men did not lay hands upon the coffin. Townsend also forbade mourners from getting too close to the open coffin, touching the president’s body, kissing him, or placing anything, including flowers, relics, or other tokens, in the coffin. Any person who violated these standards of decency would be seized at once and removed.

  At about 2:30 p.m., with thousands of citizens, black and white, still waiting in line to see the president, local officials terminated the viewing, and Lincoln’s bearers closed the coffin and carried it back to the hearse. A second procession delivered the remains to the North Central Railway depot in time for the scheduled 3:00 p.m. departure for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The orderly scene in the Monumental City, as Baltimore was called, was a good omen for the long journey ahead. The first stop had gone well. General Townsend dispatched a telegram to Stanton: “Ceremonies very imposing. Dense crowd lined the streets; chiefly laboring classes, white and black. Perfect order throughout. Many men and women in tears. Arrangements admirable. Start for Harrisburg at 3 p.m.”

  The train stopped at the Pennsylvania state line, and Governor Andrew Curtin; his staff; U.S. Army general Cadwalader, commander of the military department of Pennsylvania; and assorted officers came aboard. Maryland governor A. W. Bradford received them in the first car. En route to Harrisburg the train stopped briefly at York, where the women of the city had asked permission to lay a wreath of flowers upon Lincoln’s coffin. Townsend could not allow dozens of emotional mourners to wander around inside the train and hover about the coffin. He offered a compromise: He would permit a delegation of six women to come aboard and deposit the wreath. While a band played a dirge and bells tolled, they approached the funeral car in a ceremonial procession, stepped inside, and laid their large wreath consisting of a circle of roses and, at the center, alternating parallel lines of red and white flowers. The women wept bitterly as they left the train. Soon, at the next stop, their choice flowers would be shoved aside in favor of new ones.

  The train arrived at Harrisburg at 8:20 p.m. Friday, April 21, and Townsend reported to his boss: “Arrived here safely. Everything goes on well. At York a committee of ladies brought a superb wreath and laid it on the coffin in the car.” Here too, as in Baltimore, no funeral services or orations were on the schedule. To the disappointment of the crowds waiting at the station, a reception for the remains had to be canceled. “A driving rain and the darkness of the evening,” General Townsend noted, “prevented the reception which had been arranged. Slowly through the muddy streets, followed by two of the guard of honor and the faithful sergeants, the hearse wended its way to the Capitol.”

  Undeterred by the severity of the storm, thousands of onlookers joined the military escort of 1,500 men who had been standing in the rain for an hour and followed the hearse to the state house. To the boom of cannon firing once a minute, the coffin was carried inside and laid on a catafalque in the hall of the house of representatives. Lincoln was placed on view until midnight. Viewing resumed at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday. For the next two hours, double lines of mourners streamed through the rotunda. The coffin was closed at 9:00 a.m., and at 10:00 a.m. a procession began to escort the hearse back to the railroad depot. This became the grand march the public had hoped to witness the previous night.

  A military formation led the way. Then came the hearse, accompanied by the guard of honor from the train plus sixteen local, honorary pallbearers. There followed a cavalcade of passengers from the funeral train, including the governor of Pennsylvania, various generals and officers, elected officials, fire and hook and ladder companies, and various fraternal groups including Freemasons and Odd Fellows.

  On April 22, Jefferson Davis was still in Charlotte. Lincoln’s murder had put his life in great danger, but he still considered the cause more important than personal safety. Indeed, the idea of “escape” was anathema to h
im. In his mind, he was still engaged in a strategic retreat, not a personal flight.

  Davis was not alone in his desire to continue the fight. Wade Hampton wrote to him again from Greensborough and encouraged him to make a run for Texas. “If you should propose to cross the Mississippi River I can bring many good men to escort you over. My men are in hand and ready to follow me anywhere…I write hurriedly, as the messenger is about to leave. If I can serve you or my country by any further fighting you have only to tell me so. My plan is to collect all the men who will stick to their colors, and to get to Texas.”

  Varina Davis, safe in Abbeville, South Carolina, wondered where her husband was. On April 22 she wrote to him via courier that she had not received any communication from him since April 6, when he was still in Danville, Virginia. “[I] wait for suggestions or directions…Nothing from you since the 6th…the anxiety here intense rumors dreadful & the means of ascertaining the truth very small send me something by telegraph…the family are terribly anxious. God bless you. Do not expose yourself.”

  The funeral train was scheduled to leave Harrisburg at noon on April 22, but the hearse arrived at the station almost an hour early. General Townsend telegraphed Stanton from the train depot shortly before pulling out: “We start at 11.15 [a.m.] by agreement of State authorities. It rained in torrents last night, which greatly interfered with the procession, but all is safe now.”

  On the way from Harrisburg and Philadelphia, the train passed through Middletown, Elizabethtown, Mount Joy, Landisville, and Dillersville. At Lancaster twenty thousand people, including Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and Lincoln’s predecessor, former president James Buchanan, paid tribute. The train pushed north through Penningtonville, Parkesburg, Coatesville, Gallagherville, Downington, Oakland, and West Chester. At every depot, and along the railroad tracks between them, people gathered to watch the train pass by. For miles before Philadelphia, unbroken lines of people stood along both sides of the tracks and watched as the train went by them.

  When the train arrived at Broad Street Station in Philadelphia at 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 22, it was greeted by an immense crowd. The Philadelphia Inquirer explained the reason: “No mere love of excitement, no idle curiosity to witness a splendid pageant, but a feeling far deeper, more earnest, and founded in infinitely nobler sentiments, must have inspired that throng which, like the multitudinous waves of the swelling sea, surged along our streets from every quarter of the city, gathering in a dense, impenetrable mass along the route…for the procession.”

  A military escort, including three infantry regiments, two artillery batteries, and a cavalry troop, had arrived at the depot by 4:00 p.m. in preparation. A vast crowd had assembled along the parade route, and as soon as the engine rolled into the depot, a single cannon shot announced to the city that Lincoln had arrived. Minute guns began to fire.

  At 5:15 p.m. the hearse, drawn by eight black horses, got under way. With the military escort leading the way, the huge procession took almost three hours to reach the Walnut Street entrance on the southern side of Independence Square. There, members of the Union League Association had assembled to receive the coffin and guide its bearers to the catafalque inside Independence Hall. According to one account, “the Square was brilliantly illuminated with Calcium Lights, about sixty in number, composed of red, white and blue colors, which gave a peculiar and striking effect to the melancholy spectacle.”

  As minute guns continued firing and the bells of Philadelphia tolled, Lincoln’s body was carried into the sacred hall of the American

  PRESIDENT LINCOLN’S HEARSEIN PHILADELPHIA.

  Revolution and placed on a platform with his feet pointing north. The entire interior of Independence Hall was shrouded with black cloth. It hung everywhere: from the walls, from the chandelier over the coffin, and from most of the historical oil paintings. The white marble statue of George Washington remained uncovered, and it stood out like a ghost in the blackened room.

  Honor guards pulled back the American flag that had covered the coffin during the procession and the undertakers removed the lid to reveal Lincoln’s face and chest. Looming near the president’s head was a monumental metal object, the most renowned and beloved symbol of the American Revolution. They had laid the slain president at the foot of the Liberty Bell. It was a patriotic gesture that stunned the crowd.

  On February 22, 1861, ten days before taking the oath of office, president-elect Lincoln told a Philadelphia audience: “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the Declaration of Independence…that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance…Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis?…If it can’t be saved upon that principle…if this country cannot be saved without giving up on that principle…I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it.”

  A contemporary writer described the memorial scene:

  On the old Independence bell, and near the head of the coffin, rested a large and beautifully made floral anchor, composed of the choicest [japonicas and jet-black] exotics…Four stands, two at the head and two at the foot of the coffin, were draped in black cloth, and contained rich candelabras with burning tapers; and, again, another row of four stands, containing candelabra also, making in all eighteen candelabras and one hundred and eight burning wax tapers.

  Between this flood of light, shelving was erected, on which were placed vases filled with japonicas, heliotropes, and other rare flowers. These vases were twenty-five in number.

  A delicious perfume stole through every part of the Hall, which, added to the soft yet brilliant light of the wax tapers, the elegant uniforms of the officers on duty, etc., constituted a scene of solemn magnificence seldom witnessed.

  Newspaper accounts failed to describe the practical purpose of the sweet-smelling flowers, but they were there for a reason. Lincoln had been dead a week, and the embalmers were fighting a ticking clock. They had slowed but could not stop the decay of his flesh. Fragrant flowers would mask the odor.

  Dignitaries viewed Lincoln first, from 10:00 p.m. until midnight. Then the public surged in, entering via temporary stairs through two windows and exiting, via a second set of stairs, through the windows facing Independence Square. The coffin was closed at 2:00 a.m. on Sunday, April 23. Many of those who failed to glimpse the president stood outside Independence Hall for the rest of the night to be sure they would be admitted when the doors reopened in several hours. Beginning at 6:00 a.m. Sunday, authorities had announced, the public would be admitted until 1:00 a.m. Monday.

  By late morning on Sunday, the line of mourners extended as far west as the Schuylkill River and east to the Delaware River. “After a person was in line,” reported the Philadelphia Inquirer, “it took from four to five hours before an entrance into the Hall could be effected.” After the long wait, mourners were given only a few seconds to view Lincoln: “Spectators were not allowed to stop by the side of the coffin, but were kept moving on, the great demand on the outside not permitting more than a mere glance at the remains.”

  The vast crowds had become dangerous and the Inquirer reported alarming incidents: “Never before in the history of our city was such a dense mass of humanity huddled together. Hundreds of persons were seriously injured from being pressed in the mob, 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 that Sunday, April 23, Jefferson Davis and his entourage attended church in Charlotte. The minister’s fire-and-brimstone sermon, which according to Burton Harrison denounced “the folly and wickedness” of Lincoln’s murder, seemed to be aimed at Davis. “I think,” Davis said with a smile, “the preacher directed his remarks at me; and he really seems to fancy that I had something to do with the assassination.” Despite his predicament, the president had not lost his
sense of humor.

  Later that day, Davis wrote a long, thoughtful letter to Varina that revealed his state of mind twenty-one days since he had left Richmond. Sanguine, 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.

  My Dear Winnie

  I have asked Mr. Harrison to go in search of you and to render such assistance as he may…

  The dispersion of Lee’s army and the surrender of the remnant which had remained with him destroyed the hopes I entertained when we parted. 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…Panic has seized the country…

  The loss of arms has been so great that should the spirit of the people rise to the occasion it would not be at this time possible adequately to supply them with the weapons of War…

  The issue is one which is very painful for me to meet. On one hand is the long night of oppression which will follow the return of our people to the “Union”; on the other the suffering of the women and children, and courage among the few brave patriots who would still oppose the invader, and who unless the people would rise en masse to sustain them, would struggle but to die in vain.

  I think my judgement is undisturbed by any pride of opinion or of place, I have prayed to our heavenly Father to give me wisdom and fortitude equal to the demands of the position in which Providence has placed me. 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. How are they to be saved from degradation or want…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. 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. Once more, and with God’s favor for a short time only, farewell—