Blood on the Moon

by Edward , Jr. Steers

  1. For a listing of fifty-five persons whose presence can be documented see George J. Olszewski, “House Where Lincoln Died: Furnishing Study,” Division of History, Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation, National Park Service, U.S. Department of Interior, April 15, 1967, pp. 24–26. In addition to the fifty-five listed by Olszewski, Drs. Robert K. Stone and William Notson are known to have visited, bringing the total to fifty-seven.

  2. As best can be determined the twelve were Joseph Barnes, Charles Leale, Robert Stone, William Notson, Edwin Stanton, Gideon Welles, Maunsell Fields, Phineas Gurley, Charles Sumner, Robert Lincoln, James Tanner, and Major Almon F. Rockwell.

  3. Maunsell B. Field, Memories of Many Men and of Some Women (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1875), p. 326.

  4. There is no evidence to place Vincent or Rutherford in the room at the instant of death although they were in the house, presumably in the parlor where Stanton had held his investigation.

  5. Beale, ed., Welles Diary, 2:288. Present were Stanton, Welles, Usher, Dennison, and Speed. Absent were McCullough and Seward.

  6. Field, Memories, p. 326.

  7. Mose Sandford to John Beatty, April 17, 1865, private collection, xero-graphic copy in Surratt House and Museum Library, Clinton, Maryland. Sandford writes: “General Rucker came immediately to our Shop and had a Common pine box made to bring him from 10th St to the White House in.”

  8. Baltimore Clipper, April 15, 1865, Saturday afternoon, p. 1, col. 1.

  9. Dixon letter, 4.

  10. Baltimore Clipper, April 15, 1865, Saturday afternoon, p. 1, col. 1.

  11. Edward Curtis, quoted in Dorothy Merserve Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Twenty Days (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1965), p. 95.

  12. For a detailed account of the autopsy findings for Lincoln and Kennedy see John K. Lattimer, Kennedy and Lincoln: Medical and Ballistic Comparisons of Their Assassinations, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980).

  13. Albany Times and Courier, April 20, 1865, p. 2, col. 4.

  14. Kunhardt and Kunhardt, Twenty Days, p. 120.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 14.

  17. Kunhardt and Kunhardt, Twenty Days, p. 122.

  18. Ibid, p. 125.

  19. John 11:25–26.

  20. The Lincolns were married by an Episcopal priest according to the Episcopal “Book of Common Prayer.” Although Mary Todd was a Presbyterian, she agreed to the Episcopal service out of deference to her benefactors, the Edwardses, in whose home the marriage took place. Wayne C. Temple, Abraham Lincoln: From Skeptic to Prophet (Mahomet, I11.: Mayhaven Publishing, 1995), pp. 28–32.

  21. Edward Steers Jr., “Was Mistah Abe Babsized?” Lincoln Herald 101, no. 4 (winter 1999): 164–73; Steers, “A Question of Faith,” North and South 2 no. 7 (1999): 30–35.

  22. Chesebrough, “No Sorrow like Our Sorrow,” p. xiv.

  23. Temple, From Skeptic to Prophet, p. 330.

  24. There were a total of twelve soldiers assigned to accompany the coffin. See Temple, From Skeptic to Prophet, p. 335.

  25. For complete listing of the three company-grade officers and twenty-five enlisted men (all sergeants) from the Veteran Reserve Corps who served as Lincoln’s honor guard, see Temple, From Skeptic to Prophet, p. 365.

  26. Kunhardt and Kunhardt, Twenty Days, p. 131.

  27. H.L. Scott, Military Dictionary Comprising Technical Definitions; Information on Raising and Keeping Troops; Actual Service, Including Makeshifts and Improved Materiel; and Law, Government, Regulation, and Administration Relating to Land Forces (1864; reprint, Yuma, Ariz.: Fort Yuma Press, 1984), p. 424.

  28. Albany Times and Courier, April 20, 1865, p. 3, col. 1.

  29. Victor Searcher, The Farewell to Lincoln (New York: Abingdon Press, 1965), pp. 79–80. Hereafter referred to as Searcher, Farewell.

  30. Albany Times and Courier, April 20, 1865, p.2, col. 4.

  31. Searcher, Farewell, p. 85.

  32. Wayne Wesolowski and Mary Cay Wesolowski, The Lincoln Train Is Coming . . . (Lisle: Illinois Benedictine College, 1995), pp. 5–8.

  33. H. Robert Slusser, Mr. Lincoln’s Railroad Car, Alexandria Archeology Publications, Number 76 (Alexandria: Office of Historic Alexandria, 1996), p. 10. There is no record indicating that Lincoln had accepted the invitation to inspect the car.

  34. Slusser, Mr. Lincoln’s Railroad Car, p. 9.

  35. R. Gerald McMurtry, ed., “The Lincoln Funeral Car,” Lincoln Lore, no. 1431 (May 1957), pp. 1–4.

  36. Slusser, Mr. Lincoln’s Railroad Car, p. 11.

  37. Searcher, Farewell, p. 90.

  38. New York Times, April 22, 1865, p. 1, col. 2.

  39. Searcher, Farewell, p. 93.

  40. New York Times, April 22, 1865, p. 1, col. 3.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Searcher, Farewell, p. 100.

  43. New York Times, April 22, 1865, p. 1, col. 4.

  44. Ibid.

  45. New York Times, April 23, 1865, p. 1, col. 6.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Richard Nelson Current, Old Thad Stevens: A Story of Ambition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1942), p. 208.

  48. The pass is in the collection of the author.

  49. New York Times, April 24, 1865, p. 8, col. 1.

  50. Kunhardt and Kunhardt, Twenty Days, p. 158.

  51. New York Times, April 25, 1865, p. 1, col. 3.

  52. Ibid.

  53. New York Times, April 24, 1865, p. 8, col. 6.

  54. New York Times, April 25, 1865, p. 1, col. 3.

  55. Ibid, p. 1, col. 5.

  56. Ibid, p. 1, col. 6.

  57. Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III, and Peter W. Kunhardt, Lincoln (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), p. 375.

  58. Ronald Rietveld, professor of history at the California State University, Fullerton, while a fifteen-year-old student was granted permission to examine the John George Nicolay papers in the Illinois State Historical Society Library where he discovered the remarkable print of Lincoln in death.

  59. New York Times, April 25, 1865, p. 1, col. 6.

  60. Kunhardt and Kunhardt, Twenty Days, p. 153.

  61. New York Times, April 27, 1865, p. 3, col. 2.

  62. Albany Times and Courier, April 27, 1865, p. 2, col. 5.

  63. Ibid.

  64. New York Times, April 26, 1865, p. 1, col. 6.

  65. Morrison Alexander to Robert Alexander, April 29, 1865, author’s collection. The special car used to carry the body back to Springfield was not the car Lincoln used on his inaugural journey to Washington.

  66. Albany Times and Courier, April 27, 1865, p. 3, col. 1.

  67. New York Times, April 28, 1865, p. 8, col. 1.

  68. Cholera morbus was a popular term during the civil war for acute gastroenteritis that was always accompanied by diarrhea, cramps, and vomiting. It often proved fatal.

  69. Rochester Daily Union and Advertiser, April 28, 1865, p. 2, col. 2.

  70. Edward Steers Jr., “A Puttin’ on (H)airs,” Lincoln Herald 91, no. 3 (1989): 86–90.

  71. Basier, ed., Collected Works, 4:129–30. Grace Bedell’s letter is reproduced along with Lincoln’s reply.

  72. New York Times, April 29, 1865, p. 1, col. 5.

  73. Rochester Daily Union and Advertiser, May 1, 1865, p. 4, col. 1.

  74. New York Times, May 1, 1865, p. 5, col. 2.

  75. Ibid, p. l, col. 2.

  76. Ibid, p. 5, col. 3.

  77. Ibid, May 2, 1865, p. 1, col. 2.

  78. Ibid, p. l, col. 3.

  79. Basier, ed., Collected Works, 4:190.

  80. Ibid.

  81. Searcher, Farewell, p. 241.

  82. New York Times, May 5, 1865, p. 1, col. 1.

  83. A detailed list of the divisions and their composition occurs in a special broadside printed at the time and distributed to the participants. The broadside is titled, “Obsequies of President Lincoln. Order of Funer
al Procession.” Collection of the author.

  84. New York Times, May 5, 1865, p. 1, col. 1.

  85. Fido, like his master, met a cruel death by assassination. One day while approaching a drunken stranger in his usual friendly style, Fido was knifed to death by the man.

  86. Sarah Bush Johnston interview by William H. Herndon in Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds, Herndon’s Informants (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), p. 108.

  87. Kunhardt and Kunhardt, Twenty Days, p. 87.

  88. Keckley, Behind the Scenes, p. 201.

  89. New York Times, May 3, 1865, p. 5, col. 3.

  90. “Obsequies of President Lincoln. Order of Funeral Procession.”

  91. Ibid.

  92. It would be the first of several interments for Lincoln.

  93. Rochester Daily Union and Advertiser, May 5, 1865, p. 4, col. 2.

  94. New York Times, May 5, 1865, p. 1, col, 3.

  95. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, ed., Jerome Loving (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 262–63.

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