Bloody Times: The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Manhunt for Jefferson Davis

by James L. Swanson

  Other cavalry units also hoped to ride to Davis’s side, not to protect him, but to kill or capture him. Now that the manhunt for Booth had ended, Stanton could focus on Jefferson Davis. On Wednesday, April 27, one day after the actor was shot and killed, Stanton telegraphed an order to do whatever was necessary to capture the Confederate president and the gold he was rumored to be carrying. “[S]pare no exertion to stop Davis and his plunder. Push the enemy as hard as you can in every direction,” Stanton ordered.

  Meanwhile, the funeral train rode on in the darkness of the night through New York State. “The night journey of the 27th and 28th was all through torches, bonfires, mourning drapery, mottoes, and solemn music,” Townsend remembered. At 12:10 A.M., Friday, April 28, the train passed through Dunkirk on the shore of Lake Erie. There, thirty-six young women, one for each state of the Union, appeared on the railway platform. Each was dressed in white, with a broad black scarf resting across one shoulder and holding in her right hand a national flag.

  The train stopped at 1:00 A.M. in Westfield. In 1861, when Lincoln had been on his way to Washington, he had stopped here to speak to Grace Bedell, a little girl who had written him a letter encouraging him to grow a beard. Now, four years later, a delegation of five women led by Grace’s mother, whose husband had been killed in the war, came aboard the train with a wreath of flowers and a cross. Sobbing, they approached Lincoln’s coffin and were allowed, as a special privilege, to touch and kiss it.

  The train crossed the Pennsylvania state line and continued into Ohio.

  On April 28 Davis and his entourage stopped at Broad River, South Carolina, to rest and eat lunch. They began talking of how the war had destroyed all that they owned. Most of their homes and property had been burned or taken by the Union armies.

  Jefferson Davis was no exception. Two years ago, in 1863, an officer had brought word to Davis that his beloved plantation, Brier Field, would soon fall into the hands of Union soldiers. Friends urged Davis to order Confederate soldiers to rush to his plantation to rescue his slaves and other property and move them somewhere safe. Although he hated to lose Brier Field, Davis was outraged at the suggestion. “The President of the Confederacy cannot employ men to take care of his property,” he said. Later, when Union forces threatened his other house in Jackson, Mississippi, Davis again refused to send soldiers to protect his home.

  On April 28 Varina Davis, then in Abbeville, replied to her husband’s most recent letter. He had accused himself of bringing her to ruin. She reminded him that she had never expected a life of privilege and ease. “You must remember that you did not invite me to a great Hero’s home, but to that of a plain farmer,” she told him. “I know there is a future for you.” But not, she thought, in South Carolina, Georgia, or Florida. Varina advised him to give up the cause east of the Mississippi River. “I have seen a great many men who have gone through [Abbeville]—not one has talked fight—A Stand cannot be made in this country.” She advised him to try to relocate the fighting west of the Mississippi.

  Continuing on the road, Jefferson Davis gave away his last gold coin. John Reagan, the Confederate postmaster general, watched him do it. “On our way to Abbeville, South Carolina, President Davis and I . . . passed a cabin on the roadside, where a lady was standing in the door. He turned aside and requested a drink of water, which she brought. While he was drinking, a little baby hardly old enough to walk crawled down the steps. The lady asked whether this was not president Davis.” On hearing that he was, “she pointed to the little boy and said, ‘He is named for you.’ Mr. Davis took a gold coin from his pocket and asked her to keep it for his namesake. It was a foreign piece, and from its size I supposed it to be worth three or four dollars. As we rode off he told me that it was the last coin he had. . . .”

  The president of the Confederacy was now penniless. Yes, he was traveling with half a million dollars in gold and silver, but that money belonged to the Confederate government, not its president. Davis would not use it for himself.

  Now the only riches he possessed were the love and goodwill of the people. He hoped that, in the days ahead, as he pushed deeper into the South, the people there would show him better hospitality than he had received in Greensboro and Charlotte, North Carolina. His aides assured him that it would be so. In South Carolina and Georgia, they promised, the people still loved him and believed in the cause of the South.

  Lincoln’s train arrived at Cleveland on the morning of Friday, April 28. Thirty-six cannons fired a salute. There was not one public building or hall in all of Cleveland big enough to hold all the people who would want to view the president’s body, so the citizens built an outdoor pavilion. They could make it look like a Chinese pagoda. No one would forget that.

  The hearse took Lincoln’s coffin to the public square where the pagoda had been erected. The wooden structure, fourteen feet high, was covered with canvas, silk, cloth roses, golden eagles, and “immense plumes of black crepe.” Inside it was full of flowers. Evergreens covered the walls, and thick matting carpeted the floor to muffle the sound of footsteps. Over the roof, stretched between two flagpoles, was a streamer that read, in Latin, “Dead, he will be loved the same.”

  The embalmer opened the coffin to check on the body. Lincoln’s face was turning darker by the day, which the embalmers tried to conceal by coating the skin with chalk-white potions.

  All through the day and night, in a steady rain, the people came, one hundred thousand of them. The coffin was closed at 10:10 P.M. and was carried to the hearse. Just then the rain turned into a downpour. The storm lasted for most of the night as the train steamed through Ohio from Cleveland to the state capital, Columbus.

  In Cleveland, crowds wait to view Lincoln’s corpse in the celebrated “pagoda” pavilion.

  The foul weather did not stop the people from turning out along the tracks. Bonfires and torches burned. Buildings were draped in black cloth. Bells tolled and flags were lowered to half-staff. Five miles from Columbus, the passengers on the train noticed a heartfelt tribute that stood out among all the official processions and ceremonies.

  They saw “an aged woman bare headed . . . tears coming down her furrowed cheeks, holding in her right hand a sable scarf and in her left a bouquet of wild flowers, which she stretched imploringly toward the funeral car.” Her gesture was simple and touching. Abraham Lincoln would have noticed her. She might have reminded him of his stepmother, who had been waiting long years for him to return. “I knowed when he went away he’d never come back alive,” she had said when she’d heard of his murder.

  The train pulled into Columbus at 7:30 A.M., Saturday, April 29. Again there was a procession and a viewing in yet another building draped with black and overflowing with flowers. The hearse drove off and, as usual, left behind on the train a coffin that had accompanied Lincoln from Washington. In newspaper stories of the funeral train, little mention was made of Willie Lincoln. His small coffin was never unloaded from the train. But in Columbus Willie Lincoln was not forgotten. General Townsend recalled: “While at Columbus I received a note from a lady,” he wrote, “accompanying a little cross made of wild violets. The note said that the writer’s little girls had gone to the woods in the early morning and gathered the flowers with which [they] had wrought the cross. They desired it might be laid on little Willie’s coffin, ‘they felt so sorry for him.’”

  On April 29 Jefferson Davis crossed the Saluda River in South Carolina. Federal soldiers were having a difficult time picking up his trail. One Yankee cavalryman complained, “The white people seemed to be doing all they could to throw us off Davis’ trail and impart false information to their slaves, knowing the latter would lose no time in bringing it to us.”

  The Union general in charge of the manhunt for Davis did not know exactly where to look—but it didn’t really matter. He expected Davis to head for Georgia, or perhaps make it all the way to Florida, and so he planned to blanket the entire region with troops. If Davis went south, someone would find him.r />
  Railroads ran special trains to the cities where Lincoln’s body lay in state.

  At 8:00 P.M. tolling bells signaled the train’s departure from Columbus. It steamed west and crossed into Indiana in the middle of the night. At 7:00 A.M. on Sunday, April 30, the train arrived in Indianapolis. In the rain, a hearse fourteen feet high and fourteen feet long drew the president to the dome of the state capitol, where he would lie in state for more than fifteen hours and be seen by more than a hundred thousand people.

  At midnight the train set off again for Chicago.

  Around the same time, Varina wrote a letter to her husband. “I have given up hope of seeing you but it is not for long,” she told him. She hoped to “take a ship or what else I can . . . still think we will make out somehow. May the Lord have you in his holy keeping I constantly, and earnestly pray. . . . The children have been more than good, and talk much of you. . . .”

  The funeral train reached Chicago on May 1 at 11:00 A.M. Guns fired to announce its arrival. Tens of thousands of people had been waiting in the streets for hours. One spectator wrote that “every window was filled with faces, and every door-step . . . filled with human beings.” A newspaper even suggested that the rough waters of Lake Michigan “suddenly calmed from their angry roar into solemn silence” as if they, too, mourned for Lincoln.

  At the train station a huge funeral arch had been set up. Lincoln’s coffin was laid near it, and thirty-six high school girls, each dressed in white and wearing a black sash, placed a flower on the coffin. Then the honor guard placed the coffin in the hearse, and the procession to the courthouse began. Ten thousand children marched in line behind groups of soldiers and city officials. More than 120,000 people took part in or witnessed the procession. One of them, Daniel Brooks, had, as a sixteen-year-old boy, taken part in George Washington’s funeral procession in 1799.

  The Chicago funeral arch.

  The hearse stopped at the courthouse, and the coffin was carried inside and laid upon a platform. Over the platform was a canopy of heavy cloth into which had been cut thirty-six stars. The light shone through the stars and fell on the coffin below.

  The public viewing began at 5:00 P.M., and by midnight more than forty thousand people had seen Lincoln’s corpse.

  Jefferson Davis had spent a quiet night in Cokesbury, South Carolina. He left there on May 2 before daylight, and at about 10:00 that morning he rode into Abbeville. The townspeople were happy to see him. Captain William Parker, the officer safeguarding the Confederate treasure wagon train, had arrived before Davis. Parker turned the gold over to John Reagan and allowed the young cadets who had been guarding the treasure to leave for home.

  Then Parker called on Davis. “I never saw the President appear to better advantage than during these last hours of the Confederacy,” remembered Parker. “He showed no signs of despondency. His air was resolute; and he looked, as he is, a born leader of men.”

  When Davis heard that Parker had dismissed his band of cadets, he said, “Captain, I am very sorry to hear that,” and repeated the words several times. Still hopeful that he could rally the troops, Davis was unhappy about the loss of even a single soldier from the Confederate forces. Parker explained that the secretary of the navy had given the order. “I have no fault to find with you,” said Davis, “but I am very sorry Mr. Mallory gave you the order.”

  Davis suggested that they remain in Abbeville for four days, but Parker warned him that if he stayed that long he would be captured. Davis replied that he would never desert the Southern people. He rose from his chair and began pacing the floor, repeating several times that he would “never abandon his people.”

  Parker spoke frankly: “Mr. President, if you remain here you will be captured. . . . You will be captured, and you know how we will all feel that.” Parker told his president, “It is your duty to the Southern people not to allow yourself to be made a prisoner.” He advised Davis on how to escape: “Leave now with a few followers and cross the Mississippi.”

  Parker was not the only one giving that advice to Davis. On the same day Varina wrote to her husband, worried for his safety. “Do not try to meet me,” she told him. “I dread the yankees getting news of you so much, you are the countrys only hope. . . . Why not cut loose from your escort? Go swiftly and alone with the exception of two or three. . . . May God keep you, my old and only love, As ever Devotedly, your own Winnie.”

  After Davis talked with Parker, he received more bad news. He met with several cavalry officers and asked them about the “condition and spirit” of their men. Were they able and willing to go on fighting?

  The answer was discouraging. The officers told him frankly that “they could not depend upon their men for fighting, that they regarded the struggle as over.” Davis was again urged by his advisers to make his way quickly to Florida or across the Mississippi, but he still refused. “The idea of personal safety, when the country’s condition was before his eyes, was an unpleasant one to him,” remembered Stephen Mallory. He was not yet willing to flee for his own life.

  Mallory decided that there was nothing more he could do to help Davis. At Abbeville he gave up his job as secretary of the navy. His family needed him, he said, and he did not want to flee the country and abandon them. But he agreed to remain with Davis’s party for a few more days.

  On May 2 President Andrew Johnson offered a reward of one hundred thousand dollars for Jefferson Davis’s capture. The announcement of it accused Davis of being involved in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

  The first reward poster for Jefferson Davis.

  By noon on May 2, the line of people in Chicago waiting to view Lincoln’s body stretched nearly a mile. They came all day, and when the doors to the courthouse were shut at 8:00 P.M., the thousands of people still waiting in line had to be turned away. This was a city that felt a special relationship with Abraham Lincoln. He had worked here as a lawyer in the courts; his most famous campaign debates had been held here; and five years ago here he had accepted the nomination to become president. And now, the Chicago Tribune newspaper wrote, “he comes back to us, his work finished.”

  The funeral train left Chicago at 9:30 P.M. The excitement aboard the train increased. This was the last night. In the morning the funeral train would complete its journey, and Lincoln’s body would return to Springfield. As the train passed through a town called Lockport, a sign was seen on a house. It read, “Come home.”

  During the night of May 2 and through the early morning hours of May 3, the residents of Springfield were restless. They had been getting ready for Lincoln’s homecoming since they heard news of his death. Now they had finished hanging the decorations and painting the signs. Crepe and bunting blackened the town. Lincoln’s own two-story house was a decorated masterpiece of mourning. Over the front door of his law office hung a sign that read, “He Lives in the Hearts of His People.”

  They had waited eighteen days since Lincoln’s death and thirteen days since the train had left Washington. Beginning tomorrow, over the next two days of May 3 and 4, Springfield would show the nation that no town loved Abraham Lincoln more.

  Chapter Twelve

  That night, more of Jefferson Davis’s advisers begged him to flee with a small escort of three officers and make a run for the coast of Florida. Davis, once again, refused. But he did agree to leave Abbeville that night, instead of staying several days.

  Davis wrote to Burton Harrison about his plans. The letter was not a happy one, and Davis even expressed his low opinion of the Confederate soldiers and his worry about the Union soldiers hunting for him. “I think all their efforts are directed for my capture and that my family is safest when furthest from me—I have the bitterest disappointment in regard to the feeling of our troops, and would not have any one I loved dependent upon their resistance against an equal force,” he wrote.

  At 11:00 P.M. Davis left Abbeville. The wagons carrying the Con-federate treasury followed, watched over by Secretary of State Benjamin.

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  On the morning of May 3, Lincoln arrived in Springfield. His journey was complete.

  Edward Townsend sent his usual matter-of-fact telegram to Stanton: “The funeral train arrived here without accident at 8.40 this morning. The burial is appointed at 12 p.m. to-morrow, Thursday.”

  Townsend had done it. Under his command, the funeral train had taken the corpse of Abraham Lincoln 1,645 miles from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, Illinois, and it had arrived on schedule. During its thirteen-day journey, the train never broke down, suffered an accident, or left one city a minute late.

  At every stop along the way, the soldiers of the honor guard had performed perfectly. Not once did they falter in their handling of the heavy coffin. Whenever they carried the president, whether on level ground, up and down steep winding staircases, or onto a ferryboat, whether in daylight or darkness, in sunshine or a driving rain, the veteran Union army soldiers never made a misstep. Now, in Springfield, they would carry the president of the United States upon their shoulders for the last time.

  Lincoln was home, back at the Great Western Railroad Depot where his journey began four years ago, on February 11, 1861. When he left for Washington that morning, he realized that he might never return. He stood in the last car of the train, looked at the faces of his neighbors, and spoke:

  My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feelings of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young man to an old one. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of the Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To his care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.