Bloody Crimes (36 page)

RAILROADS RAN SPECIAL TRAINS TO THE CITIES WHERE LINCOLN’S BODY LAY IN STATE.

the farm-houses were decorated, and their inmates had gathered in clusters, and by a light of bonfires caught a glimpse of the train that was bearing from their sight the remains.”

At 7:00 a.m. the train arrived at Union Depot in Indianapolis. In the rain, a hearse fourteen feet long, fourteen feet high, covered with black velvet and decorated with white plumes, silver stars, and a striking silver eagle, drew the president to the rotunda of the Indiana State House. At the Washington Street entrance, the hearse passed under another massive arch, which featured pillars surmounted by busts of Washington, Webster, Clay, and, of course, Lincoln. The coffin was placed on a catafalque over which was suspended a pagoda-like, black canopy studded with silver stars. A bust of Lincoln, wearing a laurel wreath, was placed at the head of the coffin. The public viewing began at 9:00 a.m., and the mourners included a contingent of black Masons displaying a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation and banners bearing the mottoes “Colored Men, Always Loyal” and “Slavery Is Dead.” By 10:00 p.m., more than a hundred thousand people had viewed the remains. City officials had planned a grand procession to escort Lincoln’s body back to the railroad station, but heavy rain forced its cancellation.

“At midnight the route was resumed for Chicago,” Townsend reported. “While the darkness prevailed, the approach to every town was made apparent by bonfires, torches, and music, while crowds of people formed an almost unbroken line.”

At 8:30 a.m. on May 1, the train stopped briefly at Michigan City, Indiana, where decorations again made a deep impression on Townsend: “A succession of arches, beautifully trimmed with white and black, with evergreens and flowers, and with numerous flags and portraits of the President, was formed over the railway track.” He took particular notice of the mottoes painted on two signs: “Abraham Lincoln, the noblest martyr of freedom, sacred thy dust; hallowed thy resting place” and “The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail.”

Near the arches Townsend spotted, through the darkness and illuminated by fires, sixteen young “maidens” dressed in white and black and singing “Old Hundred,” a popular Civil War song set to a mournful tune. Another group of women attired in white, each carrying a small Union flag, stood on a flower-laden platform, encircling a woman who posed in a motionless tableau as the figure of America. Another sixteen ladies entered the funeral car and reenacted a now familiar ritual—in tears, they placed flowers on Lincoln’s coffin.

On one of the arches, a motto spelled with flowers read: “Our guiding-star has fallen.” In 1861, Lincoln’s election won him the nickname “The star of the west, or the comet of 1861.” Now, Walt Whitman called him “O powerful, western fallen star.”

T
hat same morning, Varina wrote another letter to Jefferson.

Washington

9 O’Clock –

Monday morning [May 1, 1865]

My Dearest Banny,

…I shall wait here this evening until I hear from the courier we have sent to Abbeville—I have given up hope of seeing you but it is not for long—Mr Harrison now proposes to go in a line between Macon and Augusta, and to avoid the Yankees by sending some of our paroled escort on before, and to make towards Pensacola—and 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—I look upon the precious little charge I have, and wonder if I shall it with you soon again—The children are all well Pie [infant daughter Varina Anne] was vaccinated on the road side, as I heard there was small pox on the road—she is well so far—the children have been more than good, and talk much of you…

Oh my dearest precious Husband, the one absorbing love of my whole life, may God keep you free from harm.

Your devoted wife.

Not knowing when she would see Jefferson again, Varina had to make a number of decisions by herself to protect her children. Before reaching the Savannah River, her party heard rumors of a smallpox epidemic. Burton Harrison described how Varina reacted: “We started the morning of the second day after I arrived in Abbeville, and had not reached the Savannah River when it was reported that small-pox prevailed in the country. All the party had been vaccinated except one of the President’s children.” Harrison revealed a telling detail absent from Varina’s account: “Halting at a house near the road, Mrs. Davis had the operation performed by the planter, who got a fresh scab from the arm of a little negro called up for the purpose.”

I
n Chicago, minute guns fired to announce the 11:00 a.m. arrival of the funeral train. The cortege pulled into a temporary station at Park Row, one mile north of the railroad depot. Tens of thousands of people had been waiting in the streets for hours. Others observed from buildings. According to one account, “every window was filled with faces, and every door-step and piazza filled with human beings, while every tree along the route was eagerly climbed by adventurous juveniles.”

Mourners filled Lake Park, the big stretch of land east of Michigan Avenue, from the street to the shore of Lake Michigan. At the train station, ten thousand children massed behind military units and city officials. The
Chicago Tribune
suggested that upon Lincoln’s arrival the waters of Lake Michigan, “long ruffled by storm, suddenly

THE CHICAGO FUNERAL ARCH.

calmed from their angry roar into solemn silence, as if they, too, felt that silence was an imperative necessity of the mournful occasion.” A huge, triple-peaked Gothic funeral arch had been erected at the center of Park Place. Lincoln’s coffin was laid near the arch, and thirty-six high school girls, each dressed in white and wearing a black crepe sash, placed a flower on the coffin.

Townsend remembered the biggest arch of the entire journey: “A magnificent arch spanned the street where the coffin was taken from the car, and under this the body rested while a dirge was sung by a numerous band of ladies dressed in white, with black scarves.” The honor guard placed the coffin in the hearse, and the procession to the courthouse began.

The hearse, eighteen feet long and fifteen feet high, with a white satin sunburst mounted on black velvet at the head of the coffin, and
drawn by ten black horses, moved west on Park Row to Michigan Avenue, then north on Michigan past Randolph Street, then west on Lake Street to the Courthouse Square at Clark Street. The
Chicago Tribune
estimated that more than 120,000 people marched in or witnessed the procession. One of them, Daniel Brooks, a guest of the Chicago Board of Trade, had, as a sixteen-year-old, taken part in George Washington’s funeral procession in 1799.

Now Townsend observed “nearly every building on Michigan Avenue…was dressed in mourning, and many displayed touching mottoes.” One man, Townsend recalled, “who had accompanied the train from Washington, telegraphed to have conspicuously laced on the front of his residence—‘Mournfully, tenderly bear him to his rest.’ He told me these words were suggested by the really tender care with which the Veteran sergeants—always the bearers—lifted and carried their charge.” The hearse stopped at the south door of the courthouse, and the coffin was carried inside and laid upon a catafalque at the center of the rotunda.

The chamber was a confection of black, white, and silver crepe, fabric, velvet, metallic fringe, and more. Other cities had done that. Chicago boasted of an extra “new and solemn” decorative effect: “The roof of the catafalque…was a plain flat top of heavy cloth, in which were cut thirty-six stars. Over these were placed a layer of white gauze, and over this several brilliant reflectors, which caused the light to shine through the stars, upon the body below, with a softened, mellow radiance.” One of the banners in the room read: “He left us sustained by our prayers; He returns embalmed in our tears.”

Public viewing began at 5:00 p.m., and by midnight more than forty thousand people had viewed Lincoln’s corpse.

J
efferson Davis spent an uneventful night in Cokesbury, South Carolina, at the home of General Martin Witherspoon Gary. 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 Willaim Parker, the naval officer safeguarding the Confederate treasure wagon train, had arrived before Davis. Parker turned the gold over to John Reagan, and released his young naval cadets from service. Parker called on Davis and found him alone at the home of Colonel Armistead Burt. They conferred in private for an hour.

“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 Parker revealed that he had disbanded his command of naval cadets, Davis said, “Captain, I am very sorry to hear that,” and repeated the words several times. Davis regretted the loss of a single soldier. Parker explained that Mallory had given the order. “I have no fault to find with you, 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 gave me to understand,” recalled Parker, “that he would not take any step which might be construed into inglorious flight. The mere idea that he might be looked upon as fleeing seemed to arouse him.”

Davis rose from his chair and began pacing the floor, repeating several times that he would “never abandon his people.” Davis’s attitude emboldened Parker to speak frankly: “Mr. President, if you remain here you will be captured. You have about you only a few demoralized soldiers, and a train of camp followers three miles long. You will be captured, and you know how we will all feel that.” Parker delivered almost an ultimatum: “It is your duty to the Southern people not to allow yourself to be made a prisoner.” The naval officer told him how to escape: “Leave now with a few followers and cross the Mississippi…and there again raise the standard.”

Davis refused, even though, Parker recalled, “I used every argument I could think of to induce him to leave Abbeville.”

In the streets outside, order was breaking down, and Davis’s presence there did nothing to deter people from breaking into government warehouses. “We witnessed,” recalled John Reagan, “the raids made on the provisions by the citizens. I was forced to the thought that the line between barbarism and civilization is at times very narrow.”

After Davis met with Parker, he conferred with several cavalry officers. “When we reached Abbeville,” reported Reagan, “we were there joined by the remnants of five brigades of cavalry. The President had a conference with their commanders, and sought to learn of their condition and spirit.”

Their flesh was weak, and their spirit was
not
willing. Davis could not motivate them to fight on. Stephen Mallory recounted the scene: “The escort was here collected, or so much of it as was left, and upon conversing with its officers, Mr. Davis was candidly apprised by some of them that they could not depend upon their men for fighting, that they regarded the struggle as over. The officers themselves, and a few men, were ready to do anything in their power to secure his safety; but he became satisfied that the escort was almost useless. He was again urged by his friends to push on south for Florida or west for the Mississippi to secure escape from the country; but the idea of personal safety, when the country’s condition was before his eyes, was an unpleasant one to him, and he was ever ready to defer its consideration.”

CHAPTER NINE
“ Coffin That Slowly Passes”

W
hile Davis dallied in South Carolina, the new president, Andrew Johnson, signed a proclamation on May 2 that offered a $100,000 reward for his capture. Johnson doubled the amount that Stanton had offered for Booth. Now Davis was the subject of the highest reward in American history. It would take days for news of the reward to reach the Deep South.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS it appears, from evidence in the Bureau of Military Justice, that the atrocious murder of the late President, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, and the attempted assassination of the Honorable WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State, were incited, concerted, and procured by and between Jefferson Davis, late of Richmond, Virginia, and Jacob Thompson, Clement C. Clay, Beverly Tucker, George N. Saunders, William
Cleary, and other rebels and traitors against the Government of the United States, harbored in Canada: