Last night, the History Channel actually showed a program about history. Not only that, it happened to be one of my favorite programs, about the various trials and tribulations faced by the corpse of Abraham Lincoln. I know this sounds odd. You would think that after he was assassinated, Lincoln was simply taken to his grave and left to rest there for eternity. If only that were the case.
First, a couple of interesting notes about Lincoln. Lincoln suffered from bouts of depression. Some of these were natural, simply based on his personality. Others came from the various family tragedies he was forced to face. When his son Willie died in 1862, the body was not burried, but placed in a mausoleum. There are recorded instances of Lincoln visiting the mausoleum at night and sitting with the body for hours.
Lincoln also had premonitions about his own death. In one story, while looking into a mirror, Lincoln saw two candles. One was lit, one was not. When asked by his wife Mary what this meant, Lincoln replied that he interpreted it as meaning that he would be elected to 2 terms but only serve one.
But my favorite Lincoln premonition story involves a dream he had a short time before his death. I'll let Lincoln explain it:
"About ten days ago, I retired late. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along.
"It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me, but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully.
" ‘Who is dead in the White House?’, I demanded of one of the soldiers.
" ‘The President’, was his answer, ‘He was killed by an assassin.’
"Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since."
The Funeral
Lincoln's funeral train
At 7 a.m. on Friday, April 21, the coffin was taken to the funeral car @ the train depot. It was accompanied by Edwin M. Stanton, Gideon Welles, Hugh McCulloch, John Palmer Usher, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, and Montgomery C. Meigs. The train departed @ 8 a.m. At least 100,000 people wsaw the train depart from Washington.
Now, for most people, even politicians, the body would simply be taken to it's burial place and laid to rest. But this was Abraham Lincoln, the man who'd won the Civil War. Such a simple trip was not enough for him. Lincoln's body was viewed by citizens in Washington, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
"The Greatest Funeral in the History of the United States" consisted of nine cars, including a baggage and hearse car. One of the cars was the President's car, which had been built for use by the president and other officials. This car contained a parlor, sitting room, and sleeping apartment, and it had been draped in mourning and contained the coffins of Lincoln and his Willie.
The War Department designated the route, and railroads over which the remains passed were declared "military roads" under the control of brevet Brigadier General Daniel McCallum, the director and superintendent of United States Military Railroads. Only those authorized by the War Department were allowed on the train, and the train never moved at speeds of more than 20 miles an hour so as to avoid accidents.
Five men were appointed to accompany the funeral train: David Davis, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; Lincoln's brother-in-law, Ninian Wirt Edwards; C.M Smith; Brigadier General John Blair Smith Todd, a cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln; and Charles Alexander Smith, the brother of C. M. Smith. An honor guard accompanied the train that consisted of: Union Army Major General David Hunter; brevet Major General John G. Barnard; Brigadier Generals Edward D. Townsend, Charles Thomas Campbell, Amos Beebe Eaton, John C. Caldwell, Alfred Terry, George D. Ramsey, and Daniel McCallum; Union Navy Rear Admiral Charles Henry Davis and Captain William Rogers Taylor; and Marine Corps Major Thomas H. Field.
Four more men accompanied the train in an official capacity: Captain Charles Penrose, as quartermaster and commissary of subsistence; Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln's longtime bodyguard and friend and U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia; and Dr. Charles B. Brown and Frank T. Sands, embalmer and undertaker. Governor Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, Governor John Brough of Ohio, and Governor William M. Stone of Iowa accompanied the train with their aides.
Before the body could be buried though, there had to be a decision on where to bury it. Congress wanted the body burried under the capitol building, in a tomb that had been constructed originally for the body of George Washington. This idea was quickly nixed by the family. Shortly after Lincoln's death, a delegation of Illinois citizens asked Mrs. Lincoln to return her husband's remains to Springfield for burial. She agreed, selected a centrally located, hilltop site known as Mather Block for the grave site. A temporary receiving vault was built there. However, Mrs. Lincoln selected Oak Ridge Cemetery for her husband's burial. Despite repeated attempts by the Society to change the location of the burial to Mather Block, she remained firm in her decision.
A funeral was held in Springfield on May 4, 1865. Lincoln's remains, along with those of his son William, were interred in a public receiving vault at Oak Ridge Cemetery. Mary Todd Lincoln remained in Washington, DC, too distraught to accompany her husband's remains on the funeral train or attend the funeral in Springfield. Construction of the final tomb began in 1868. In 1871, prior to completion of construction, the remains of Lincoln were removed from the temporary vault and placed in crypts within the unfinished tomb, along with the remains of his three deceased sons, Edward, Willie, and Tad. When the tomb was completed in 1874, Lincoln's remains were removed from the crypt and placed in a white marble sarcophagus. Seemingly, this would be the end of the story. But, sadly, this is not the case.
Stealing Lincoln's Body
In 1876, two counterfeiters, Jack Hughes and James "Big Jim" Kennally, attempted to steal Lincoln's body and hold it for ransom. They conceived this brilliant plot at a Chicago tavern called The Hub. Their plan was to ransom the body in return for the release from prison of their supplier of counterfeit bills by hiding the body 200 miles away in the Indiana Dunes until the ransom was paid. Fortunately, the local sheriff was tipped off about the plan, and a Secret Service informant was able to infiltrate the group. As the group of aspiring grave robbers rode to Springfield by train, a group of lawmen sat just a few rows away from them. Another group of lawmen waited in the antechamber of the tomb as the criminals made their attempt to steal the body. The plan was allowed to proceed until the tomb was entered and Lincoln's coffin was removed from its sarcophagus. After a signal from the informant, the waiting lawmen approached the burial chamber. However, their noise alerted the criminals and they escaped. They were later arrested at The Hub.
At first, Americans knew nothing about the robbery attempt. The reason comes from the one smart decision made by the criminals. They decided to attempt this crime on the same day as what turned out to be the closest Presidential election up to that point. American history. Samuel J. Tilden of New York defeated Ohio's Rutherford B. Hayes in the popular vote, and had 184 electoral votes to Hayes' 165, with 20 votes uncounted. These 20 electoral votes were in dispute, as in three states (Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina), each party reported its candidate had won the state. In Oregon one elector was declared illegal (as an "elected or appointed official") and replaced. Americans were consumed with worry and questions about who would be their next President. Rutherford B. Hayes would eventually be named President after a clandestine deal made with Senate Democrats that involved removing Federal troops from FL, LA, & SC, but that's another diary for another day. Once this drama was dealt with, the truth about the attempt to steal Lincoln's body came to light, and Americans were disgusted. How could someone attempt to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln? How could they come so close to succeeding.
An honor guard was formed in Springfield with the sole purpose of guarding the remains of the 16th President. But they soon discovered one important fact: the sarcophagus had been damaged during the attempted robbery, and the body was not safe lying in it. So, in perhaps the greatest indignity of the story, Lincoln's body was burried in the ground floor of the tomb, underneath a pile of lumber and trash. The body of arguably the greatest President in American history lied here for nearly 25 years, with virtually no one in America aware of it.
The original tomb was in constant need of repair. It had deteriorated significantly due to construction on unsuitable soil. In 1900, a complete reconstruction of Lincoln's tomb was undertaken. In August 1901, upon completion of the reconstruction, Robert Todd Lincoln visited the tomb. He was unhappy with the disposition of his father's remains. It is said that he feared his father's "friends" just as much as any possible thieves. Robert decided that, in order to prevent theft and other disturbances, it was necessary to build a permanent crypt for his father. Lincoln's coffin would be placed in a steel cage 10 feet deep and encased in concrete in the floor of the tomb.
Lincoln's body was exhumed on September 26, 1901, so that it could be re-interred in the newly built crypt. However, those present (23 people total) feared that his body might have been stolen in the intervening years. What if the press had lied, and the thieves had actually been successful? So, naturally, they decided to open the coffin and confirm that the body inside was that of Abraham Lincoln.
It was said that a harsh choking smell arose when the casket was opened. Those gathered in that dank tomb were amazed at what they saw. There was the 16th President of the United States, the great emancipator, perfectly recognizable more than thirty years after his death. His face was a bronze color thanks to unhealed bruises brought about by the fatal gunshot wound that shattered the bones in his face and damaged the tissue. His hair, beard and mole were all perfectly preserved, as though he had passed away just yesterday. On Lincoln's chest, the men could see small bits of red fabric, remnants of the American flag with which Lincoln had been buried. The flag itself had disintegrated by this time. It was theorized that Lincoln had been embalmed so many times on board his funeral train, while he was shuttled from viewing to viewing, that his body had been practically mummified.
In the years since Lincoln's death, his coffin has been moved 17 times, mainly due to the reconstructions to the tomb and security, and has been opened six times. During the 17 removals, Lincoln's coffin was opened and his body viewed 6 times: Dec 21, 1865; Sept 19, 1871; Oct 9, 1874; Nov 20, 1878; April 14, 1887 and Sept 26, 1901. The coffin was never completely opened. Only a piece was cut out of the top of Lincoln's lead-lined coffin, so that his head and shoulders were visible.
Thanks to Compost on the Weeds, who provided this link, which provides much more information on the funeral of Abraham Lincoln.