The 14th of April--Celebration at Fort Sumter--Last Cabinet
Meeting--Lincoln's Attitude toward Threats of Assassination--Booth's
Plot--Ford's Theater--Fate of the Assassins--The Mourning Pageant
Mr. Lincoln had returned to Washington, refreshed by his visit to City
Point, and cheered by the unmistakable signs that the war was almost
over. With that ever-present sense of responsibility which distinguished
him, he gave his thoughts to the momentous question of the restoration
of the Union and of harmony between the lately warring sections. His
whole heart was now enlisted in the work of "binding up the nation's
wounds," and of doing all which might "achieve and cherish a just and
lasting peace."
April 14 was a day of deep and tranquil happiness throughout the United
States. It was Good Friday, observed by a portion of the people as an
occasion of fasting and religious meditation; though even among the most
devout the great tidings of the preceding week exerted their joyous
influence, and changed this period of traditional mourning into an
occasion of general thanksgiving. But though the Misereres turned of
themselves to Te Deums, the date was not to lose its awful significance
in the calendar: at night it was claimed once more by a world-wide
sorrow.
The thanksgiving of the nation found its principal expression at
Charleston Harbor, where the flag of the Union received that day a
conspicuous reparation on the spot where it had first been outraged. At
noon General Robert Anderson raised over Fort Sumter the identical flag
lowered and saluted by him four years before; the surrender of Lee
giving a more transcendent importance to this ceremony, made stately
with orations, music, and military display.
In Washington it was a day of deep peace and thankfulness. Grant had
arrived that morning, and, going to the Executive Mansion, had met the
cabinet, Friday being their regular day for assembling. He expressed
some anxiety as to the news from Sherman which he was expecting hourly.
The President answered him in that singular vein of poetic mysticism
which, though constantly held in check by his strong common sense,
formed such a remarkable element in his character. He assured Grant that
the news would come soon and come favorably, for he had last night had
his usual dream which preceded great events. He seemed to be, he said,
in a singular and indescribable vessel, but always the same, moving with
great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore; he had had this dream
before Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. The cabinet
were greatly impressed by this story; but Grant, most matter-of-fact of
created beings, made the characteristic response that "Murfreesboro was
no victory, and had no important results." The President did not argue
this point with him, but repeated that Sherman would beat or had beaten
Johnston; that his dream must relate to that, since he knew of no other
important event likely at present to occur.
Questions of trade between the States, and of various phases of
reconstruction, occupied the cabinet on this last day of Lincoln's firm
and tolerant rule. The President spoke at some length, disclosing his
hope that much could be done to reanimate the States and get their
governments in successful operation before Congress came together. He
was anxious to close the period of strife without over-much discussion.
Particularly did he desire to avoid the shedding of blood, or any
vindictiveness of punishment. "No one need expect that he would take any
part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them." "Enough
lives have been sacrificed," he exclaimed; "we must extinguish our
resentments if we expect harmony and union." He did not wish the
autonomy nor the individuality of the States disturbed; and he closed
the session by commending the whole subject to the most careful
consideration of his advisers. It was, he said, the great question
pending--they must now begin to act in the interest of peace. Such were
the last words that Lincoln spoke to his cabinet. They dispersed with
these sentences of clemency and good will in their ears, never again to
meet under his wise and benignant chairmanship. He had told them that
morning a strange story, which made some demand upon their faith, but
the circumstances under which they were next to come together were
beyond the scope of the wildest fancy.
The day was one of unusual enjoyment to Mr. Lincoln. His son Robert had
returned from the field with General Grant, and the President spent an
hour with the young captain in delighted conversation over the campaign.
He denied himself generally to the throng of visitors, admitting only a
few friends. In the afternoon he went for a long drive with Mrs.
Lincoln. His mood, as it had been all day, was singularly happy and
tender. He talked much of the past and future; after four years of
trouble and tumult he looked forward to four years of comparative quiet
and normal work; after that he expected to go back to Illinois and
practise law again. He was never simpler or gentler than on this day of
unprecedented triumph; his heart overflowed with sentiments of gratitude
to Heaven, which took the shape, usual to generous natures, of love and
kindness to all men.
From the very beginning of his presidency, Mr. Lincoln had been
constantly subject to the threats of his enemies. His mail was infested
with brutal and vulgar menace, and warnings of all sorts came to him
from zealous or nervous friends. Most of these communications received
no notice. In cases where there seemed a ground for inquiry, it was
made, as carefully as possible, by the President's private secretary, or
by the War Department; but always without substantial result. Warnings
that appeared most definite, when examined, proved too vague and
confused for further attention. The President was too intelligent not to
know that he was in some danger. Madmen frequently made their way to the
very door of the executive office, and sometimes into Mr. Lincoln's
presence. But he had himself so sane a mind, and a heart so kindly, even
to his enemies, that it was hard for him to believe in political hatred
so deadly as to lead to murder.
He knew, indeed, that incitements to murder him were not uncommon in the
South, but as is the habit of men constitutionally brave, he considered
the possibilities of danger remote, and positively refused to torment
himself with precautions for his own safety; summing the matter up by
saying that both friends and strangers must have daily access to him;
that his life was therefore in reach of any one, sane or mad, who was
ready to murder and be hanged for it; and that he could not possibly
guard against all danger unless he shut himself up in an iron box, in
which condition he could scarcely perform the duties of a President. He
therefore went in and out before the people, always unarmed, generally
unattended. He received hundreds of visitors in a day, his breast bare
to pistol or knife. He walked at midnight, with a single secretary, or
alone, from the Executive Mansion to the War Department and back. He
rode through the lonely roads of an uninhabited suburb from the White
House to the Soldiers' Home in the dusk of the evening, and returned to
his work in the morning before the town was astir. He was greatly
annoyed when it was decided that there must be a guard at the Executive
Mansion, and that a squad of cavalry must accompany him on his daily
drive; but he was always reasonable, and yielded to the best judgment of
others.
Four years of threats and boastings that were unfounded, and of plots
that came to nothing, thus passed away; but precisely at the time when
the triumph of the nation seemed assured, and a feeling of peace and
security was diffused over the country, one of the conspiracies,
apparently no more important than the others, ripened in the sudden heat
of hatred and despair. A little band of malignant secessionists,
consisting of John Wilkes Booth, an actor of a family of famous players;
Lewis Powell, alias Payne, a disbanded rebel soldier from Florida;
George Atzerodt, formerly a coachmaker, but more recently a spy and
blockade-runner of the Potomac; David E. Herold, a young druggist's
clerk; Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlin, Maryland secessionists and
Confederate soldiers; and John H. Surratt, had their ordinary rendezvous
at the house of Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, the widowed mother of the last
named, formerly a woman of some property in Maryland, but reduced by
reverses to keeping a small boarding-house in Washington.
Booth was the leader of the little coterie. He was a young man of
twenty-six, strikingly handsome, with that ease and grace of manner
which came to him of right from his theatrical ancestors. He had played
for several seasons with only indifferent success, his value as an actor
lying rather in his romantic beauty of person than in any talent or
industry he possessed. He was a fanatical secessionist, and had imbibed
at Richmond and other Southern cities where he played a furious spirit
of partizanship against Lincoln and the Union party. After the
reëlection of Mr. Lincoln, he visited Canada, consorted with the rebel
emissaries there, and--whether or not at their instigation cannot
certainly be said--conceived a scheme to capture the President and take
him to Richmond. He passed a great part of the autumn and winter
pursuing this fantastic enterprise, seeming to be always well supplied
with money; but the winter wore away, and nothing was accomplished. On
March 4 he was at the Capitol, and created a disturbance by trying to
force his way through the line of policemen who guarded the passage
through which the President walked to the east front of the building.
His intentions at this time are not known; he afterward said he lost an
excellent chance of killing the President that day.
His ascendancy over his fellow-conspirators seems to have been complete.
After the surrender of Lee, in an access of malice and rage akin to
madness he called them together and assigned each his part in the new
crime which had risen in his mind out of the abandoned abduction scheme.
This plan was as brief and simple as it was horrible. Powell, alias
Payne, the stalwart, brutal, simple-minded boy from Florida, was to
murder Seward; Atzerodt, the comic villain of the drama, was assigned to
remove Andrew Johnson; Booth reserved for himself the most conspicuous
rôle of the tragedy. It was Herold's duty to attend him as page and aid
him in his escape. Minor parts were given to stage-carpenters and other
hangers-on, who probably did not understand what it all meant. Herold,
Atzerodt, and Surratt had previously deposited at a tavern at
Surrattsville, Maryland, owned by Mrs. Surratt, but kept by a man named
Lloyd, a quantity of arms and materials to be used in the abduction
scheme. Mrs. Surratt, being at the tavern on the eleventh, warned Lloyd
to have the "shooting-irons" in readiness, and, visiting the place again
on the fourteenth, told him they would probably be called for that
night.
The preparations for the final blow were made with feverish haste. It
was only about noon of the fourteenth that Booth learned that the
President was to go to Ford's Theater that night to see the play "Our
American Cousin." It has always been a matter of surprise in Europe that
he should have been at a place of amusement on Good Friday; but the day
was not kept sacred in America, except by the members of certain
churches. The President was fond of the theater. It was one of his few
means of recreation. Besides, the town was thronged with soldiers and
officers, all eager to see him; by appearing in public he would gratify
many people whom he could not otherwise meet. Mrs. Lincoln had asked
General and Mrs. Grant to accompany her; they had accepted, and the
announcement that they would be present had been made in the evening
papers; but they changed their plans, and went north by an afternoon
train. Mrs. Lincoln then invited in their stead Miss Harris and Major
Rathbone, the daughter and the stepson of Senator Ira Harris. Being
detained by visitors, the play had made some progress when the President
appeared. The band struck up "Hail to the Chief," the actors ceased
playing, the audience rose, cheering tumultuously, the President bowed
in acknowledgment, and the play went on.
From the moment he learned of the President's intention, Booth's every
action was alert and energetic. He and his confederates were seen on
horseback in every part of the city. He had a hurried conference with
Mrs. Surratt before she started for Lloyd's tavern. He intrusted to an
actor named Matthews a carefully prepared statement of his reasons for
committing the murder, which he charged him to give to the publisher of
the "National Intelligencer," but which Matthews, in the terror and
dismay of the night, burned without showing to any one. Booth was
perfectly at home in Ford's Theater. Either by himself, or with the aid
of friends, he arranged his whole plan of attack and escape during the
afternoon. He counted upon address and audacity to gain access to the
small passage behind the President's box. Once there, he guarded against
interference by an arrangement of a wooden bar to be fastened by a
simple mortise in the angle of the wall and the door by which he had
entered, so that the door could not be opened from without. He even
provided for the contingency of not gaining entrance to the box by
boring a hole in its door, through which he might either observe the
occupants, or take aim and shoot. He hired at a livery-stable a small,
fleet horse.
A few minutes before ten o'clock, leaving his horse at the rear of the
theater in charge of a call-boy, he went into a neighboring saloon, took
a drink of brandy, and, entering the theater, passed rapidly to the
little hallway leading to the President's box. Showing a card to the
servant in attendance, he was allowed to enter, closed the door
noiselessly, and secured it with the wooden bar he had previously made
ready, without disturbing any of the occupants of the box, between whom
and himself yet remained the partition and the door through which he had
made the hole.
No one, not even the comedian who uttered them, could ever remember the
last words of the piece that were spoken that night--the last Abraham
Lincoln heard upon earth. The tragedy in the box turned play and players
to the most unsubstantial of phantoms. Here were five human beings in a
narrow space--the greatest man of his time, in the glory of the most
stupendous success of our history; his wife, proud and happy; a pair of
betrothed lovers, with all the promise of felicity that youth, social
position, and wealth could give them; and this handsome young actor, the
pet of his little world. The glitter of fame, happiness, and ease was
upon the entire group; yet in an instant everything was to be changed.
Quick death was to come to the central figure--the central figure of the
century's great and famous men. Over the rest hovered fates from which a
mother might pray kindly death to save her children in their infancy.
One was to wander with the stain of murder upon his soul, in frightful
physical pain, with a price upon his head and the curse of a world upon
his name, until he died a dog's death in a burning barn; the wife was to
pass the rest of her days in melancholy and madness; and one of the
lovers was to slay the other, and end his life a raving maniac.
The murderer seemed to himself to be taking part in a play. Hate and
brandy had for weeks kept his brain in a morbid state. Holding a pistol
in one hand and a knife in the other, he opened the box door, put the
pistol to the President's head, and fired. Major Rathbone sprang to
grapple with him, and received a savage knife wound in the arm. Then,
rushing forward, Booth placed his hand on the railing of the box and
vaulted to the stage. It was a high leap, but nothing to such an
athlete. He would have got safely away but for his spur catching in the
flag that draped the front of the box. He fell, the torn flag trailing
on his spur; but, though the fall had broken his leg, he rose instantly
and brandishing his knife and shouting, "Sic Semper Tyrannis!" fled
rapidly across the stage and out of sight. Major Rathbone called, "Stop
him!" The cry rang out, "He has shot the President!" and from the
audience, stupid at first with surprise, and wild afterward with
excitement and horror, two or three men jumped upon the stage in pursuit
of the assassin. But he ran through the familiar passages, leaped upon
his horse, rewarding with a kick and a curse the boy who held him, and
escaped into the night.
The President scarcely moved; his head drooped forward slightly, his
eyes closed. Major Rathbone, not regarding his own grievous hurt, rushed
to the door of the box to summon aid. He found it barred, and some one
on the outside beating and clamoring for admittance. It was at once seen
that the President's wound was mortal. A large derringer bullet had
entered the back of the head, on the left side, and, passing through the
brain, lodged just behind the left eye. He was carried to a house across
the street, and laid upon a bed in a small room at the rear of the hall
on the ground floor. Mrs. Lincoln followed, tenderly cared for by Miss
Harris. Rathbone, exhausted by loss of blood, fainted, and was taken
home. Messengers were sent for the cabinet, for the surgeon-general, for
Dr. Stone, Mr. Lincoln's family physician, and for others whose official
or private relations to the President gave them the right to be there. A
crowd of people rushed instinctively to the White House, and, bursting
through the doors, shouted the dreadful news to Robert Lincoln and Major
Hay, who sat together in an upper room. They ran down-stairs, and as
they were entering a carriage to drive to Tenth Street, a friend came up
and told them that Mr. Seward and most of the cabinet had been murdered.
The news seemed so improbable that they hoped it was all untrue; but, on
reaching Tenth Street, the excitement and the gathering crowds prepared
them for the worst. In a few moments those who had been sent for and
many others were assembled in the little chamber where the chief of the
state lay in his agony. His son was met at the door by Dr. Stone, who
with grave tenderness informed him that there was no hope.
The President had been shot a few minutes after ten. The wound would
have brought instant death to most men, but his vital tenacity was
remarkable. He was, of course, unconscious from the first moment; but he
breathed with slow and regular respiration throughout the night. As the
dawn came and the lamplight grew pale, his pulse began to fail; but his
face, even then, was scarcely more haggard than those of the sorrowing
men around him. His automatic moaning ceased, a look of unspeakable
peace came upon his worn features, and at twenty-two minutes after seven
he died. Stanton broke the silence by saying:
"Now he belongs to the ages."
Booth had done his work efficiently. His principal subordinate, Payne,
had acted with equal audacity and cruelty, but not with equally fatal
result. Going to the home of the Secretary of State, who lay ill in bed,
he had forced his way to Mr. Seward's room, on the pretext of being a
messenger from the physician with a packet of medicine to deliver. The
servant at the door tried to prevent him from going up-stairs; the
Secretary's son, Frederick W. Seward, hearing the noise, stepped out
into the hall to check the intruders. Payne rushed upon him with a
pistol which missed fire, then rained blows with it upon his head, and,
grappling and struggling, the two came to the Secretary's room and fell
together through the door. Frederick Seward soon became unconscious, and
remained so for several weeks, being, perhaps, the last man in the
civilized world to learn the strange story of the night. The Secretary's
daughter and a soldier nurse were in the room. Payne struck them right
and left, wounding the nurse with his knife, and then, rushing to the
bed, began striking at the throat of the crippled statesman, inflicting
three terrible wounds on his neck and cheek. The nurse recovered himself
and seized the assassin from behind, while another son, roused by his
sister's screams, came into the room and managed at last to force him
outside the door--not, however, until he and the nurse had been stabbed
repeatedly. Payne broke away at last, and ran down-stairs, seriously
wounding an attendant on the way, reached the door unhurt, sprang upon
his horse, and rode leisurely away. When surgical aid arrived, the
Secretary's house looked like a field hospital. Five of its inmates were
bleeding from ghastly wounds, and two of them, among the highest
officials of the nation, it was thought might never see the light of
another day; though all providentially recovered.
The assassin left behind him his hat, which apparently trivial loss cost
him and one of his fellow conspirators their lives. Fearing that the
lack of it would arouse suspicion, he abandoned his horse, instead of
making good his escape, and hid himself in the woods east of Washington
for two days. Driven at last by hunger, he returned to the city and
presented himself at Mrs. Surratt's house at the very moment when all
its inmates had been arrested and were about to be taken to the office
of the provost-marshal. Payne thus fell into the hands of justice, and
the utterance of half a dozen words by him and the unhappy woman whose
shelter he sought proved the death-warrant of them both.
Booth had been recognized by dozens of people as he stood before the
footlights and brandished his dagger; but his swift horse quickly
carried him beyond any haphazard pursuit. He crossed the Navy-Yard
bridge and rode into Maryland, being joined very soon by Herold. The
assassin and his wretched acolyte came at midnight to Mrs. Surratt's
tavern, and afterward pushed on through the moonlight to the house of an
acquaintance of Booth, a surgeon named Mudd, who set Booth's leg and
gave him a room, where he rested until evening, when Mudd sent them on
their desolate way south. After parting with him they went to the
residence of Samuel Cox near Port Tobacco, and were by him given into
the charge of Thomas Jones, a contraband trader between Maryland and
Richmond, a man so devoted to the interests of the Confederacy that
treason and murder seemed every-day incidents to be accepted as natural
and necessary. He kept Booth and Herold in hiding at the peril of his
life for a week, feeding and caring for them in the woods near his
house, watching for an opportunity to ferry them across the Potomac;
doing this while every wood-path was haunted by government detectives,
well knowing that death would promptly follow his detection, and that a
reward was offered for the capture of his helpless charge that would
make a rich man of any one who gave him up.
With such devoted aid Booth might have wandered a long way; but there
is no final escape but suicide for an assassin with a broken leg. At
each painful move the chances of discovery increased. Jones was able,
after repeated failures, to row his fated guests across the Potomac.
Arriving on the Virginia side, they lived the lives of hunted animals
for two or three days longer, finding to their horror that they were
received by the strongest Confederates with more of annoyance than
enthusiasm, though none, indeed, offered to betray them. Booth had by
this time seen the comments of the newspapers on his work, and bitterer
than death or bodily suffering was the blow to his vanity. He confided
his feelings of wrong to his diary, comparing himself favorably with
Brutus and Tell, and complaining: "I am abandoned, with the curse of
Cain upon me, when, if the world knew my heart, that one blow would have
made me great."
On the night of April 25, he and Herold were surrounded by a party under
Lieutenant E.P. Doherty, as they lay sleeping in a barn belonging to one
Garrett, in Caroline County, Virginia, on the road to Bowling Green.
When called upon to surrender, Booth refused. A parley took place, after
which Doherty told him he would fire the barn. At this Herold came out
and surrendered. The barn was fired, and while it was burning, Booth,
clearly visible through the cracks in the building, was shot by Boston
Corbett, a sergeant of cavalry. He was hit in the back of the neck, not
far from the place where he had shot the President, lingered about three
hours in great pain, and died at seven in the morning.
The surviving conspirators, with the exception of John H. Surratt, were
tried by military commission sitting in Washington in the months of May
and June. The charges against them specified that they were "incited
and encouraged" to treason and murder by Jefferson Davis and the
Confederate emissaries in Canada. This was not proved on the trial;
though the evidence bearing on the case showed frequent communications
between Canada and Richmond and the Booth coterie in Washington, and
some transactions in drafts at the Montreal Bank, where Jacob Thompson
and Booth both kept accounts. Mrs. Surratt, Payne, Herold, and Atzerodt
were hanged on July 7; Mudd, Arnold, and O'Laughlin were imprisoned for
life at the Tortugas, the term being afterward shortened; and Spangler,
the scene-shifter at the theater, was sentenced to six years in jail.
John H. Surratt escaped to Canada, and from there to England. He
wandered over Europe, and finally was detected in Egypt and brought back
to Washington in 1867, where his trial lasted two months, and ended in a
disagreement of the jury.
Upon the hearts of a people glowing with the joy of victory, the news of
the President's assassination fell as a great shock. It was the first
time the telegraph had been called upon to spread over the world tidings
of such deep and mournful significance. In the stunning effect of the
unspeakable calamity the country lost sight of the national success of
the past week, and it thus came to pass that there was never any
organized expression of the general exultation or rejoicing in the North
over the downfall of the rebellion. It was unquestionably best that it
should be so; and Lincoln himself would not have had it otherwise. He
hated the arrogance of triumph; and even in his cruel death he would
have been glad to know that his passage to eternity would prevent too
loud an exultation over the vanquished. As it was, the South could take
no umbrage at a grief so genuine and so legitimate; the people of that
section even shared, to a certain degree, in the lamentations over the
bier of one whom in their inmost hearts they knew to have wished them
well.
There was one exception to the general grief too remarkable to be passed
over in silence. Among the extreme radicals in Congress, Mr. Lincoln's
determined clemency and liberality toward the Southern people had made
an impression so unfavorable that, though they were naturally shocked at
his murder, they did not, among themselves, conceal their gratification
that he was no longer in the way. In a political caucus, held a few
hours after the President's death, "the feeling was nearly universal,"
to quote the language of one of their most prominent representatives,
"that the accession of Johnson to the presidency would prove a godsend
to the country."
In Washington, with this singular exception, the manifestation of public
grief was immediate and demonstrative. Within an hour after the body was
taken to the White House, the town was shrouded in black. Not only the
public buildings, the shops, and the better residences were draped in
funeral decorations, but still more touching proof of affection was seen
in the poorest class of houses, where laboring men of both colors found
means in their penury to afford some scanty show of mourning. The
interest and veneration of the people still centered in the White House,
where, under a tall catafalque in the East Room, the late chief lay in
the majesty of death, and not at the modest tavern on Pennsylvania
Avenue, where the new President had his lodging, and where Chief-Justice
Chase administered the oath of office to him at eleven o'clock on the
morning of April 15.
It was determined that the funeral ceremonies in Washington should be
celebrated on Wednesday, April 19, and all the churches throughout the
country were invited to join at the same time in appropriate
observances. The ceremonies in the East Room were brief and simple--the
burial service, a prayer, and a short address; while all the pomp and
circumstance which the government could command was employed to give a
fitting escort from the White House to the Capitol, where the body of
the President was to lie in state. The vast procession moved amid the
booming of minute-guns, and the tolling of all the bells in Washington
Georgetown, and Alexandria; and to associate the pomp of the day with
the greatest work of Lincoln's life, a detachment of colored troops
marched at the head of the line.
As soon as it was announced that Mr. Lincoln was to be buried at
Springfield, Illinois, every town and city on the route begged that the
train might halt within its limits and give its people the opportunity
of testifying their grief and reverence. It was finally arranged that
the funeral cortege should follow substantially the same route over
which he had come in 1861 to take possession of the office to which he
had given a new dignity and value for all time. On April 21, accompanied
by a guard of honor, and in a train decked with somber trappings, the
journey was begun. At Baltimore through which, four years before, it was
a question whether the President-elect could pass with safety to his
life, the coffin was taken with reverent care to the great dome of the
Exchange, where, surrounded with evergreens and lilies, it lay for
several hours, the people passing by in mournful throngs. The same
demonstration was repeated, gaining continually in intensity of feeling
and solemn splendor of display, in every city through which the
procession passed. The reception in New York was worthy alike of the
great city and of the memory of the man they honored. The body lay in
state in the City Hall, and a half-million people passed in deep silence
before it. Here General Scott came, pale and feeble, but resolute, to
pay his tribute of respect to his departed friend and commander.
The train went up the Hudson River by night, and at every town and
village on the way vast waiting crowds were revealed by the fitful glare
of torches, and dirges and hymns were sung. As the train passed into
Ohio, the crowds increased in density, and the public grief seemed
intensified at every step westward. The people of the great central
basin were claiming their own. The day spent at Cleveland was unexampled
in the depth of emotion it brought to life. Some of the guard of honor
have said that it was at this point they began to appreciate the place
which Lincoln was to hold in history.
The last stage of this extraordinary progress was completed, and
Springfield reached at nine o'clock on the morning of May 3. Nothing had
been done or thought of for two weeks in Springfield but the
preparations for this day, and they had been made with a thoroughness
which surprised the visitors from the East. The body lay in state in the
Capitol, which was richly draped from roof to basement in black velvet
and silver fringe. Within it was a bower of bloom and fragrance. For
twenty-four hours an unbroken stream of people passed through, bidding
their friend and neighbor welcome home and farewell; and at ten o'clock
on May 4, the coffin lid was closed, and a vast procession moved out to
Oak Ridge, where the town had set apart a lovely spot for his grave, and
where the dead President was committed to the soil of the State which
had so loved and honored him. The ceremonies at the grave were simple
and touching. Bishop Simpson delivered a pathetic oration; prayers were
offered and hymns were sung; but the weightiest and most eloquent words
uttered anywhere that day were those of the second inaugural, which the
committee had wisely ordained to be read over his grave, as the friends
of Raphael chose the incomparable canvas of the Transfiguration to be
the chief ornament of his funeral.