Bloody Crimes (21 page)

Elizabeth Keckly, one of the few people allowed into Mary Lincoln’s room, witnessed her tortured paroxysms. “I shall never forget the scene—the wails of a broken heart, the unearthly shrieks, the
terrible convulsions, the wild, tempestuous outbursts of grief from the soul.” Keckly worried about Tad. “[His] grief at his father’s death was as great as the grief of his mother, but her terrible outbursts awed the boy into silence. Sometimes he would throw his arms around her neck, and exclaim, between his broken sobs, ‘Don’t cry so, Momma! Don’t cry, or you will make me cry too! You will break my heart.’”

Outside this room, away from the Executive Mansion, the nation was in upheaval. The assassin John Wilkes Booth had escaped, and Stanton was coordinating an unprecedented manhunt to capture him. Secretary of State Seward and his son Fred were fighting for their lives after Lewis Powell’s botched assassination attempt. Stanton suspected that numerous conspirators, their plans still secret and their strength yet unknown, might still lurk in Washington. Perhaps some of Booth’s conspirators still at large planned to commit additional bloody crimes—like the murder of Lincoln’s entire cabinet. As a precaution, Stanton assigned an around-the-clock military guard to every one of them.

Jefferson Davis was still on the run. Stanton worried that the “rebel chief,” who was not satisfied to escape Richmond with his life, had ignored General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and, from his mobile command post, was attempting to rally the South to fight on and continue the Civil War. Confederate armies were still in the field and some of its ships still at sea. Hurriedly published newspaper extras shouted the latest news several times a day. Many stories suggested that Lincoln’s murder was part of Davis’s plan to reverse the outcome of the war.

The newspapers also reported what had been done to Lincoln’s corpse. “The Body of the President Embalmed!” shouted a headline in one broadside extra. The number of deaths during the Civil War had advanced the art and social acceptance of embalming. Once a novelty viewed with distaste and even suspicion, the practice had become commonplace when the broken bodies of so many fallen
soldiers were shipped from distant battlefields back home to waiting parents and widows.

On Sunday morning, April 16, “Black Easter,” ministers across the land mounted their pulpits and, within a few hours, began to transform Abraham Lincoln from a mortal man into a secular saint. While the preachers were delivering their sermons that day, George Harrington began organizing the grandest funeral ceremonies in American history. He took pen, paper, and ink and wrote out in longhand his proposal for honoring the first American president slain by an assassin. The document was brief and only a draft. But it would, over the next three days, set in motion the intertwined actions and coordinated movements of more than one hundred thousand men. In an inspired moment, Harrington had dreamed up a grand idea out of thin air and then captured it on paper. This was his plan:

Proposed arrangements for the Funeral and disposition of the Remains of the late President, submitted for approval.

The Executive Mansion, under proper police and guards, to be thrown open during Tuesday, the 18th…for the public to show their respect,—the remains to be in the East Room, under a guard of commissioned [Harrington originally wrote “competent” but struck out that word and replaced it with “commissioned”] Officers of the Army.

On Wednesday, the procession to form at 11 o’clock, the religious ceremonies to commence at 12, and the procession to move at 2
P.M
.

The remains to be escorted to the Capitol, and there deposited in the Rotunda, to remain under a suitable guard, to be provided by the proper military authorities.

The delegation especially appointed from Illinois to receive the remains and escort them thither, to be called the “Body Guard,” to have them in official charge after they shall have been deposited in the Capitol.

The remains to be taken to the depot on Thursday morning, by military escort, a guard of honor, consisting of such Senators and Members of the House of Representatives as may be designated for that purpose by those bodies respectively, and also such other civilians as the Cabinet may determine to accompany the remains to their final resting place. The whole to be accompanied by such military escort as the proper authorities may designate.

In five short paragraphs, Harrington had his template—even if the arrangements raised as many questions as they answered. For how many hours should the White House be kept open for the public to view the remains? How many people per hour could squeeze through the doors—and how many thousands more would try? Who should receive invitations to the funeral? The East Room was the biggest chamber in the White House, but it could never hold everyone who would demand the right to attend. Without even calculating the dimensions and square footage, Harrington knew the room could hold fewer than a thousand people at a standing reception, and the funeral guests would be seated, thus consuming additional, scarce space. And where would he get all those chairs? The entire Executive Mansion did not contain enough furniture to seat hundreds of people. And when arranging the chairs, Harrington would have to be careful to reserve enough space for the catafalque, and for aisles. That was just for the White House events. After the funeral, who would march in the procession to the Capitol? How would this procession be organized? Who would keep order in the streets? George Harrington needed help.

It was one thing to sketch an outline of the funeral events on a piece of paper but quite another to fill in all the details and then execute them. Harrington knew that Lincoln’s funeral ceremonies would be the largest and most elaborate series of public events ever held in the nation’s capital, and possibly the entire nation. He could
not possibly organize all of them himself—a public viewing at the White House on April 18; a private White House funeral attended by hundreds of dignitaries on April 19, followed immediately by a grand, synchronized, and incomparable procession from the White House to the U.S. Capitol; a lying in state and public viewing in the Capitol rotunda under the Great Dome on April 20; and the departure of the president’s remains from Washington on April 21. Only one institution in the country possessed the men, command structure, and logistical experience to conduct such an event—the U.S. Army.

That afternoon, Harrington called a crucial meeting at the Treasury Department for 5:00
P.M.
, and he summoned by messenger several of the most important army officers in Washington, including Major General and Chief of Staff Henry W. Halleck, Major General and commander of the military district of Washington C. C. Augur, and Assistant Adjutant General and skilled War Department administrator William A. Nichols. Harrington also invited Benjamin Brown French to attend.

“I had agreed to meet Assist. Secretary Harrington at the Treasury Dept. at 5, to aid in making the programme of Arrangements for the funeral,” French recalled, “so I remained at the President’s until that hour, then went to the Treasury Dept.”

One by one, messengers arrived at Harrington’s office bearing responses. Among the acceptances were those from W. A. Nichols, assistant adjutant general: “I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of this date, stating that the Sec’y of War had designated me as one, on part of the Army, to confer in relation to the funeral ceremonies of the late President. As requested I will be present at the meeting fixed at the hour of 5 o’clk
P.M
. to-day”; from H. W. Halleck, army chief of staff: “I was notified by the Secy of War to meet you at 7 o.c. this evening & so wrote to Genl Augur, but will meet you as soon after 5 as I can”; and from C. C. Augur, commander of the military district of Washington: “I have received your note, and will be at the place you indicate at 5.
P.M
. today.”

W
hen Harrington’s chosen men convened at the Treasury Department next door to the White House, the footsteps of their heavy boots echoed through the marble-paved halls. They had much work to do and little time. Gathered around Harrington’s desk, they had just sixty-eight hours to plan Abraham Lincoln’s state funeral.

They met for an hour, adjourned at 6:00
P.M.
, and agreed to reconvene in one hour. “[We] agreed,” French wrote in his diary, “to return at 7 to meet with several Senators, Members of the House & Military officers.” When the commissioner of public buildings returned he found, among others, two assistant secretaries of the Treasury, George Harrington and Maunsell B. Field (who had been at the Petersen house); Senator Solomon Foot of Vermont; Richard Yates, former Illinois congressman, Civil War governor, and now U.S. senator; former congressman Isaac N. Arnold from Illinois; Governor Richard J. Oglesby; Major Generals Henry W. Halleck and C. C. Augur; Brigadier General George W. Nichols from the adjutant general’s office; Admiral William B. Shubrick; and Lawrence A. Gobright, longtime Associated Press correspondent in Washington. They spent another hour talking about the arrangements and agreed to meet again the next day at 2:00
P.M
.

Harrington appeared strained under the burden. Before Easter evening was over, he wrote a letter to his patron, former Treasury secretary William Pitt Fessenden, updating him on various events but ending by saying, “What shadows we are and what shadows we pursue…the whole charge of the funeral fixed for Wednesday has been put on me. Heavens I have enough to do without this.”

Although Harrington complained privately about his duties, he knew, at least, that they would end once the Washington ceremonies concluded. As soon as Lincoln’s corpse was ready to depart the national capital, his work would be done. Stanton had taken upon himself the responsibility for the next stage of the president’s journey.

The next day, Monday, April 17, Harrington was overwhelmed
by letters, telegrams, and personal visitors who hounded him and beseeched him, seeking advantage. Some sought tickets to the funeral, others the right to march in the procession. Some wanted a license to sell mourning goods to the government, while others alerted him to special deliveries of flowers and asked him to confirm their arrival. Some supplicants did not wait for invitations and simply announced that they were coming.

The War Department sent over a document laying out the military’s role in the procession, but the draft was blank where the civic portion of the parade would be described. Ward Hill Lamon would organize and lead that, and Harrington had one day to get the information to Nichols so the War Department could publish a printed handbill with the order of march for both the military and civic processions.

Harrington lamented that so much was still left undone: “Nothing has been done to provide for the admission of persons who are to be at the President’s House, and to have a right to places in the carriages. Of course those who have cards to the Green & East Rooms will pass but it is important that all of them can get into the carriages—Nor has any arrangement been made as to the
number of carriages
to be admitted into the President’s grounds—nor for the admission of the delegations from Illinois and Kentucky. Who has charge of the carriages for the procession?”

On April 17, Stanton requested an interview with Mary and Robert Lincoln to ascertain the family’s wishes for the final disposition of the remains. Would they be laid to rest in Washington, Illinois, or some other place? Some federal officials, including Benjamin Brown French, argued in favor of entombment in the U.S. Capitol. From Kentucky came an urgent telegram imploring consideration of Lincoln’s birthplace as a suitable final resting place. Chicago, where Lincoln had practiced law in the federal courts, and where he received the Republican nomination for the presidency, put in a bid. The Illi
nois congressional delegation, acting via telegraph with officials back home, lobbied hard for burial in Springfield. Some of them, without the Lincoln family’s consent, had already begun an extravagant scheme to purchase an entire city block and erect a stupendous monument on the site.

Mary was appalled when she discovered what she thought was a hometown conspiracy to hijack the martyr’s remains and wrest control of her husband’s body from her. She threatened to thwart her former neighbors’ grandiose plans, and emotional telegrams went back and forth between Springfield and Washington. Influential Illinoisans in the national capital, including Orville Hickman Browning, sought to lobby Mary in person, but she refused to receive them at the White House. President Lincoln would be buried wherever she, and no one else, designated. Perhaps, she hinted, it might be Washington. Or perhaps Chicago. Or maybe somewhere else.

Stanton had to find out. If Lincoln’s body was to travel to some distant place, it would be the War Department’s and the United States Military Railroad’s job to transport him there. Such a journey would take time to plan, and the Washington funeral was just two days away. Mary and Robert could feud with Springfield all they wanted; Stanton need not involve himself in that dispute. He only needed to know where he had to send the train. The Lincolns agreed to receive Stanton and told him they had decided on Illinois. And it would be Springfield, not Chicago.

Now the secretary of war could plan the route and devise the timetables. The train
could
proceed directly to Illinois on the shortest and most direct route, stopping along the way only to replenish water for the steam engine and fuel for the fire. But the most efficient route might not be the most desirable one. Lincoln had established a precedent four years earlier when he journeyed east as president-elect. Instead of a hurried run to Washington, D.C., he took a circuitous route through several of the major Northern states that had elected
him so that he could see the American people, and they could see him. Lincoln hoped to reassure the country, sustain support for the Union and the Constitution, and avoid civil war.