Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) was the sixteenth, and first Republican, president of the United States, having been elected during the climax of nearly forty years of sectional conflict over the future of slavery in the United States. Lincoln successfully led the United States through the U.S. Civil War, which is considered one of the nation’s central constitutional and moral crises, abolished slavery, increased the authority of the federal government, and later planned the reconstruction of the Southern Confederate states. These achievements increased in significance on April 14, 1865, when Abraham Lincoln became the first president to be assassinated. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Lincoln’s assassination was part of a larger conspiracy that aimed to kill the president, Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William Seward, and Union general Ulysses S. Grant. After being shot, Lincoln was moved from the theater to Petersen House and attended by army surgeon Dr. Charles Leale until he died from his wounds on April 15, 1865.
Preparations for Lincoln’s funeral services, procession, and funeral train took four days to complete and were directed by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. The procession was designed to emphasize the historical importance of the fallen president to the country, assert his moral authority, and portray him as a martyr and savior of the nation. The route and grandeur of Lincoln’s funeral train were also designed to affirm Republican ideals, reiterate American values, and promote national solidarity. To ensure the success of these plans and to guarantee the security of Lincoln’s body, the railways used by Lincoln’s funeral train were placed under military control. Lincoln’s funeral train traveled from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, traversing over 1,600 miles and passing through more than 400 communities in seven states between April 21 and May 3, 1865. The train was limited to nine cars, including one engine, six mourning coaches for government officials and relatives, one coach for the honor guard, and one coach for Lincoln’s funeral hearse. Before departure, Lincoln’s portrait was fastened to the front of each carriage, despite different locomotives being used en route. The funeral train was instructed to travel at limited speeds to avoid any accidents and was preceded by a separate locomotive, traveling ten minutes ahead to ensure that the track remained unobstructed.
Lincoln’s funeral proceedings began on April 19, 1865, when six hundred invited guests, including government officials, military officers, and relatives, arrived at the White House to view the president’s body and mourn in the East Room. Notably, Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of the former president, was unable to attend given her emotional state. Following the service at two o’clock, the honor guard carried Lincoln’s coffin from the White House to be placed on a horse-drawn, black-draped hearse, which was to be taken past thousands of mourners to the Capitol building. Subsequently, he would lie in state in the Rotunda for two days.
Early on the morning of April 21, 1865, Lincoln’s coffin was escorted from the Capitol Building’s Rotunda through Washington, D.C. to the waiting funeral train, which was scheduled to carry the president’s remains to Springfield, Illinois, for burial. Lincoln’s coffin, along with the exhumed body of his son William Wallace Lincoln, was loaded into the president’s private rail car, named The United States, which had been modified into a funeral carriage for the journey. At 8:00 a.m. the funeral train carrying Abraham Lincoln left Washington, D.C. for Baltimore, Maryland, the first scheduled stop.
Formal state funerals were held in a dozen or more cities through which the funeral train passed including Washington, Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York City, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Michigan City, and Chicago, before finally concluding its journey in Springfield, Illinois, on May 3. The progress of the train was followed by newspapers nationwide, which referred to it as The Lincoln Special, and soon began presenting Lincoln as a national martyr. As a result of the extensive coverage of events by newspapers, the degree of public mourning across the country was unprecedented. It is estimated that more than thirty million people watched the train, viewed Lincoln’s body in state, or attended funeral ceremonies along the route. At major stops Lincoln’s coffin would be removed from the train accompanied by a military honor guard, and taken by a horse-drawn hearse throughout the community to be displayed for public viewing in prominent locations such as Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. When Lincoln’s body arrived in Springfield, Illinois, his horse, Old Bob, followed the procession, which started the tradition of having a riderless horse in attendance at presidents’ funerals. Abraham Lincoln was buried on May 4, 1865, at Oak Ridge Cemetery. Unfortunately, the presidential rail carriage that had carried Lincoln’s body from Washington to Springfield was later destroyed in a fire near Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1911.
The scope and pageantry of Lincoln’s funeral train and accompanying services quickly became ingrained in American political culture and are now key aspects of presidential ceremony. Lincoln’s funeral train was in many ways the first national ceremonial commemoration of a president and was the first by rail route. It was also the first in which technology, namely the telegraph, newspapers, and magazines such as Harper’s Weekly, were used to spread news of the president’s assassination and subsequent funeral train across the continent, thereby encouraging people to mourn Lincoln as a national figure and ingraining the proceedings into the country’s cultural heritage as the archetype for future presidential funerals.
William Henry Harrison had been the first president to die in office in 1841, and Zachary Taylor the second in 1850, but neither of their deaths were commemorated on the same scale as Lincoln’s. Instead, both lay in state at the White House for brief periods, and their bodies were privately transported to their final places of rest. While eight presidents have died in office, it is the ceremony established by Lincoln’s funeral train, immortalized by the national press and public sentiment of the period, which has shaped subsequent presidential funerals.
Folklorist S. E. Schlosser recorded an upstate New York legend that featured a ghostly appearance of a death train. According to the story, a railroad worker toiling late into the night felt a rushing wind that blew out his lantern. The night air turned chilly and he noticed the rails glowing blue. Soon a headlight appeared down the rail line, and then a driverless steam engine pulling several flat cars rolled past. The worker spotted a black crepe-draped coffin on one of the cars. Soon the sounds of a funeral dirge were heard; the worker turned to find a skeleton orchestra playing in honor of the deceased. Then a skeleton army dressed in Union blue emerged and saluted the train. The whole affair was over in a few minutes. The next morning the railroad’s clocks were behind by six minutes, which the stationmaster explained was the amount of time it took for Lincoln’s funeral train to pass during the night (Schlosser 2007, 45–48).
Sean Morton
See also Kennedy, John F., Assassination of; Lincoln, Abraham, Assassination of; Scary Stories
Further Reading
Kunhardt, Dorothy, and Philip Kunhardt. 1965. Twenty Days: A Narrative in Text and Pictures of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Harper & Row.
Power, J. C. 1872. Abraham Lincoln: His Great Funeral Cortege, from Washington City to Springfield, Illinois with a History and Description of the National Lincoln Monument. Springfield, IL: n.p.
Schlosser, S. E. 2007. Spooky Campfire Tales: Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Supernatural Lore. Guilford, CT: Insider’s Guide.
Searcher, Victor. 1965. The Farewell to Lincoln. New York: Abingdon Press.