Day 45. April 14, 1862.
45
ordered them shot down like dogs….
Monday 14 1862
Quite cool this morning and has appearance of a fine day and the boys are all enjoying themselves very well today. Gen [illeg. looks like Rosenerage] left town today for Woodstock. There was 20 ambulances gone out towards Woodstock. They must expect a battle soon
Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 54
“7a.m. 48; 2p.m. 68; 9p.m. 54.”
Note: Full Moon & Supermoon tonight at 02:58:45p.m. (moonposition.com)
Note: Added 4/19/25 above photos (except for not the first one of Springfield, obv) posted with permission & courtesy of KianGaf from Dublin who took them all, while I, a lazy American, have still never laid eyes on this theatre, much less been inside this tiny place. Look at how small it is from the perspective where Lincoln’d have sat. Holy crap.
Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology 1809-1865 Volume III: 1861-1865 C. Percy Powell P. 329
“April 14, 1865: Capt. Robert Lincoln arrives in Washington from scene of Gen. R.E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Va., in time for 8A.M. breakfast with President. Receives many members of Congress who call to congratulate him on successful conclusion of war. Writes Gen. Van Alen: “I thank you for the assurance you give me that I shall be supported by conservative men like yourself, in the efforts I may make to restore the Union, so as to make it, to use your language, a Union of hearts and hands as well as of States.” Visits cipher room of War Dept., tells Gen. Thomas T. Eckert of plans to attend theater, and invites him to come along. Grant reports to cabinet on surrender of Confederate forces at Appomattox, and Sec. Stanton presents draft of plan for reestablishing authority in Confederate States. President tells several cabinet members about his recurring dream of ship “moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore,” that presages Union victories. Cabinet meeting lasts from 11A.M. To 2P.M. Informal discussion relative to what should be done about President Davis and other leaders of Confederacy. Mrs. Nancy Bushrod, Negro woman, pushes by guards and sees President regarding husband’s pay. In late afternoon President and Mrs. Lincoln go for drive. They stop at Navy Yard to view three monitors, damaged in Fort Fisher, N.C., engagement. President talks of time when they can return to Illinois and live quietly. AT 8P.M. former Cong. Ashmun (Mass.) sees President regarding cotton claim against government. President gives him appointment as follows: “Allow Mr. Ashmun & friend to come in at 9A.M. to-morrow.” President exchanges few words with former Cong. Arnold (Ill.) while getting in carriage to go to theater. At approximately 8:30P.M. President and Mrs. Lincoln, accompanied by Clara Harris and Maj. Henry R. Rathbone, enter Ford’s Theatre for performance of “Our American Cousin” featuring Laura Keene. [Exact time of assassination is not agreed upon. After extensive research Otto Eisenschiml wrote:] “It is therefore safe to say that Booth fired his first shot at or close to 13 minutes past 10P.M.” Shortly afterward President, completely insensible, is moved across street to house of William Petersen, 453 10th St. NW., and placed upon bed in small room near rear of hall on ground floor. Mrs. Lincoln stays near her husband. Robert Lincoln and John Hay come from White House. Dr. Stone tells Robert there is no hope. Family and others whose official or private relations to President give them right to be present begin their long night wait for death to overtake him.”
Note: YouTube has a 1956 episode of “I’ve Got a Secret,” where you can meet Samuel J. Seymour, whose secret was “I saw John Wilkes Booth shoot Abraham Lincoln.” By 1956 he was the only living witness to the assassination. Back in 1865, “Sammy” was 5, & had been “scared to death” since arriving in D.C. to watch the play. His caretaker that night at the theatre kindly ensured that Sammy saw Lincoln: “When he finally did come in, she lifted me up high so I could see. He was a tall, stern-looking man. I guess I just thought he looked stern because of his whiskers, because he was smiling and waving to the crowd.” Then Sammy saw Lincoln “slumped forward in his seat” but was worried for “the poor man who fell down” over the balcony. “Only a few people noticed the running man, but pandemonium broke loose in the theatre, with everyone shouting “Lincoln’s shot! The President’s dead!” That night, Sammy dreamed he was “shot fifty times,” & says now, as “an old codger,” he sometimes relives “the horror” while “dozing in my rocker.”
Note: 1865:
Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the Civil War (1962) Edmund Wilson P. 128-129 (Note: William Henry Herndon, 1818-1891, was Lincoln’s law partner & biographer)
“….Lincoln’s recurrent dream of a ship on its steady way to some dark and indefinite shore, which seemed to prophesy that the war would be going well, since it had always been followed by a victory; his ominous hallucination, after the election of 1860, when, lying exhausted on a sofa, he saw in a mirror on the wall a double reflection of his face, with one image paler than the other, which his wife had taken as a sign that he would be elected to a second term but that he would not live to complete it. He repeated this story to John Hay and others the night of his second election, and a few days before his death he had spoken of a more recent dream, in which he had seen a crowd of people hurrying to the East Room of the White House and, when he followed them, found his own body laid out and heard voices saying, “Lincoln is dead.” Herndon tells us that in the early days in Springfield, Lincoln would say to him, “Billy, I fear that I shall meet with some terrible end.” But although he had been shot at in ’62 when he was riding in the streets of Washington, he would not have a bodyguard; he explained that he wanted the people to know that “I come among them without fear.” He would take walks in the middle of the night alone. It was only in the November 1864 that four plain-clothesmen were posed at the White House.
The night before Lincoln was murdered, he dreamed again of the ship approaching its dark destination.”
Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years Carl Sandburg 1954 P. 700
“On the calendar it was Holy Week and April 14 was Good Friday. Some were to say they had never before this week seen such a shine of beneficence, such a kindling glow, on Lincoln’s face. He was down to lean flesh and bone, 30 pounds underweight, his cheeks haggard, yet the inside of him moved to a music of peace on earth and good will to men. He let it come out in the photograph Gardner made this holy week.
The schedule for this day as outlined beforehand was: office business till eight; breakfast and then interviews till the Cabinet meeting at 11; luncheon, more interviews, a late afternoon drive with Mrs. Lincoln; an informal meeting with old Illinois friends; during the day and evening one or more trips to the War Department; another interview, then to the theater with Mrs. Lincoln and a small party. Such was the prepared docket for this Good Friday.”
Note: I found no photograph of Lincoln taken in April, 1865. The last known photo of Lincoln I believe was taken 3/6/65 by Henry F. Warren. The traditionally termed “last photograph of Lincoln from life” Sandburg refers to above was actually taken by Gardner on 2/5/65, not 4/10/65. It can be seen at www.loc.gov/item/2009630692. The dead Lincoln photo is stored in the Lincoln Presidential Library; the story of that photo can be read at the abrahamlincolnonline.org, “The Magnificent Find.”
The story goes on & on. It’s said Lincoln has, thus far, been moved seventeen times since originally entombed. His coffin has been opened 5 times according to https://rogerjnorton.com/Lincoln13.html: December 21, 1865, September 19, 1871, October 9, 1874, April 14, 1887, and September 26, 1901, a factoid sourced from Abraham Lincoln Fact Book and Teacher’s Guide by Gerald Sanders, P. 61.
In 1876, someone attempted to steal his body for ransom. In 1901, his body was “exhumed and viewed.” Lincoln is, right now, anyway, buried 10 feet deep in a cage that is encased with 4,000 pounds of cement. Before all that weight, the men gathered in 1901 had to have a final look (that’s for now… just wait another century or two):
https://rogerjnorton.com/Lincoln13.html
Used with 2021 permission of the kind Roger Norton. Go to his site for the narrative of all this, plus all the pictures. This story is really something, & worth further exploration for what it says about Americans, the whole digging up thing. (Hi Roger! Thanks again! I appreciate your stopping by the site. Drop me a line anytime!)
“Finally, on September 26, 1901, all was ready. Because of the permanency of this burial, a discussion arose among those present as to whether the coffin should be opened. Some people argued that the remains should be identified due to rumors around the country that Mr. Lincoln was not the body in the box. Other people thought opening the casket would be a violation of privacy. In the end, it was decided to open the coffin.
Two plumbers, Leon P. Hopkins and his nephew, Charles L. Willey, chiseled an oblong piece out of the top of the lead-lined coffin. The piece these two men cut out was just over Mr. Lincoln’s head and shoulders. When the casket was opened, a harsh, choking smell arose. 23 people slowly walked forward and peered down. Mr. Lincoln’s features were totally recognizable. His face had a melancholy expression, but his black chin whiskers hadn’t changed at all. The wart on his cheek and the coarse black hair were obvious characteristics of Mr. Lincoln’s. The biggest change was that the eyebrows had vanished. The president was wearing the same suit he wore at his second inauguration, but it was covered with yellow mold. Additionally there were some bits of red fabric (possibly the remnants of an American flag buried with Mr. Lincoln). All 23 people were unanimous in their agreement that the remains were indeed those of Abraham Lincoln.”
Make Me a Map of the Valley: The Civil War Journal of Stonewall Jackson’s Topographer Jedediah Hotchkiss P. 20, 22, 23
(Excerpts of letter to wife)
“Monday, April 14th. The rainy weather continues, the mud and the high water forcing inaction.
What a set of cowards they must be to want any more troops to oppose our small army.
We get the papers here every day and the news often comes here, from over the Ridge, by pony express.
Kiss the little darlings for papa.”
Note: The same Fort Sumter flag that Major Anderson lowered April 13, 1861 (in order to surrender the fort to Rebels a year ago today), he will carry to Union Square for the April 20, 1861 https://loc.gov/resource/stereo.1s02499/ gathering of around 200k– possibly the largest public gathering ever at that time in U.S. history– & it will fly atop a statue of George Washington on his horse, with his right arm straight out in a position that is part greeting & part halt. Thereafter, the flag will be used in mock auctions across the country to raise war funds.
Remaining on display at the National Park Service Museum at Ft. Sumter, the original 33 star flag’s white stars are cocked– not straight up with star peaks to the sky like on the current U.S. flag– but cocked on their sides, tipped as if drunk. Anderson will keep the flag; upon his death, his children will give it to Secretary of War William Taft, who will put it on display at the War Department, later at the Pentagon, until it’s transferred to Ft. Sumter in 1954. For the flag(s) flown at Ft. Sumter preservation backstory, including the effect of climactic conditions on the fibers, see: mccrone.com/case-studies/preserving-fort-sumter-flags/
Flag: https://www.nps.gov/fosu/learn/news/fort-sumter-flags-2007.htm https://www.centennialjourney.com/fort-sumters-33-star-flag/
William H. Taft, 27th President, in tophat. Dapper.
Back to 1865: President Lincoln will, 500 miles to the North, go to Ford’s Theatre this evening to see Our American Cousin, a play about an American who visits England regarding a family estate.
Playbill: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/our-american-cousin-play-bill-fords-theatre.html?product=poster
Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Edited by Harold Holzer P. 42 Editor’s note
“Under an order from Secretary Stanton, the same flag that was lowered, April 14, 1861, was raised again over Sumter, by Major (then General) Anderson, on April 14th, 1865, the day President Lincoln was shot. Of Major Anderson’s former officers, Generals Abner Doubleday and Norman J. Hall and Chaplain Matthias Harris were present. The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher delivered an oration, and other prominent anti-slavery men attended the ceremony. –Editors.”
Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War Elizabeth R. Varon P. 410
(Writing of Reverend Henry Ward Beecher’s keynote address on April 14, 1865 at the raising flag ceremony at Fort Sumter)
“I charge the whole guilt of this war upon the ambitious, educated, plotting political leaders of the South.” These aristocratic conspirators “suborned their own common people with lies, with sophistries, with cruel deceits and slanders, to fight for secret objects which they abhorred, and against interests as dear to them as their own lives.” They “renewed the plagues of Egypt, not that the oppressed might go free, but that the free might be oppressed. But for the people misled, for the multitudes drafted and driven into this civil war, let not a trace of animosity remain. The moment the willing hand drops the musket, and they return to their allegiance, then stretch out your honest right hands to greet them….Our hearts wait for their redemption.’”
Note: 1865:
Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War Jonathan W. White P. 151-153
“‘I had this strange dream again last night,” Abraham Lincoln told his Cabinet on April 14, 1865—just hours before his assassination—“and we shall, judging from the past, have great news very soon.” Lincoln said that this was “the usual dream” he had had “preceding nearly every great and important event of the war.” The president was upbeat about the omen. “Generally the news had been favorable which succeeded the dream,” he stated, “and the dream itself was always the same.” Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles asked Lincoln about the nature of this “remarkable dream,” to which the president replied that it “related to the water.” Lincoln then described his dream in some detail: He was on a ship—“some singular, indescribable vessel”—that was “moving with great rapidity [towards an indefinite shore].” (Welles later added the words “towards an indefinite shore” to the diary entry.) Lincoln told the Cabinet that he’d had this dream before the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, as well as preceding the battles of Bull Run Antietam, Gettysburg, Stones River, Wilmington, and the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863. The president believed that the dream portended some good news involving Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s army. General Ulysses S. Grant, who was attending the meeting, pointed out that Stones River “was certainly no victory, and he knew of no greater results which followed from it.” However that might be, Lincoln said, this dream preceded that fight.
Sitting at the Cabinet meeting, Secretary Welles did not htink much of the dream. But two or three days later he remembered it and recorded it in his diary. “Great events did indeed follow,” he wrote mournfully, “for within a few hours the good and gentle, as well as truly great, man who narrated his dream, closed forever his earthly career.”
The provenance for this dream is quite good. Several other witnesses to Lincoln’s account also told this story. Less than three years later, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton recounted Lincoln’s dream to english novelist Charles Dickens. Dickens, in turn, described it in a letter to the English biographer John Forster.
According to Dickens, Stanton had been late to the meeting, and Lincoln described the dream while they waited for him to arrive. When Stanton entered the room, Lincoln said, “Let us proceed to business, gentlemen,” Stanton noticed something different about the president that afternoon. He “sat with an air of dignity in his chair instead of lolling about it in the most ungainly attitudes, as his invariable custom was; and that instead of telling irrelevant or questionable stories, he was grave and calm, and quite a different man.” Upon leaving the meeting, Stanton said to Attorney General James Speed, “That is the most satisfactory cabinet meeting I have attended for many a long day! What an extraordinary change in Mr. Lincoln.”
Speed agreed, and said that the entire Cabinet had noticed the change. “While we were waiting for you,” Speed told Stanton, Lincoln told the Cabinet a story “with his chin on his breats”: “Gentlemen, something very extraordinary is going to happen, and that very soon.” Speed asked Lincoln whether it would be good news, but the president replied “very gravely”: “I don’t know. But it will happen, and shortly too!” Speed asked if Lincoln had some new information. “No, but I have had a dream. And I have now had the same dream three times. Once, on the night preceding the Battle of Bull Run.” And one other time the night before another Union defeat (Dickens could not remember the name of the battle). Speed asked Lincoln about “the nature of this dream.” “Well, Lincoln replied without lifting his head, “I am on a great broad rolling river—and I am in a boat—and I drift—and I drift!—but this is not business.” At that point Stanton entered the room, and Lincoln said, “Let us proceed to business, gentlemen.”
Secretary of State William H. Seward’s son, Frederick, was also present at the meeting representing the State Department, since his father had been badly injured in a carriage accident. In 1916, he published his own version of the dream—that Lincoln had felt “a vague sense of floating—floating away on some vast and indistinct wxpanse, toward an unknown shore.” Lincoln, according to Seward, also mentioned “the coincidence that each of its previous recurrences had been followed by some important event or disaster, which he mentioned.”
According to Seward, those in the room made “the usual comments.” One thought it “merely a matter of coincidences.” Another laughed and said, “At any rate it cannot presage a victory nor a defeat this time, for the war is over.” Seward, taking the dream seriously, then suggested to the president, “Perhaps at each of these periods there were possibilities of great change or disaster, and the vague feeling of uncertainty may have led to the dim vision in sleep.” “Perhaps,” Lincoln replied, “perhaps that is the explanation.’”
The Civil War in 50 Objects Harold Holzer and the New York Historical Society P. 318-320
“Mary, in her own way, had been as worried about her husband as he was about her. Not long before this day, he had almost sadistically confided to his fragile wife the details of a strange dream. As he remembered the chilling experience:
“About ten days ago I retired very late. I had been waiting up for important dispatches. I could not have been very long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness around me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs.
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 in the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse 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.”
(Note: Lincoln will, in fact, end up Lying in State in the East Room.)
“After returning to the White House, Lincoln took care of remaining business, saw a few callers, and only then began dressing for the theater. His last-minute chores would make the couple late. The play was already under way when the Lincolns boarded the presidential carriage. A few minutes later, they pulled up at Senator Ira Harris’s house at Fourteenth and H streets to pick up Henry and Clara. Then they set off for the theater, a redbrick building a few blocks away on Tenth Street. When they finally entered Ford’s, they walked up to the mezzanine level, then circled their way around the back aisle toward their box at stage left. The audience quickly caught sight of them and began to applaud, and the actors stopped mid-performance to join in the ovation. By the time the Lincoln party reached the box, the orchestra was in the midst of a full-blast rendition of “Hail to the Chief.” Lincoln acknowledged the welcome and then took his seat in an upholstered rocking chair drawn close to the rail. Mary sat down next to him in an upright chair. Miss Harris and Major Rathbone settled on a settee along the back wall.
When a shot rang out, most members of the audience at first thought it was part of a special effect in the play. No one remembered who screamed first, but many thought it must have been Mrs. Lincoln calling almost incoherently for help.”
Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War Jonathan W. White P. 165
“Over the years, Lincoln’s friends, family, and close associates recounted other improbable assassination dreams as well. For example, a similar White House funeral dream is attributed to Mary Todd Lincoln. In the 1940s, some descendants of the Todd family claimed that Mary “dreamed she descended the great staircase in the White House, looked into one of the large rooms and saw her husband’s body lying in state” a few nights before April 14, 1865. It seems likely that these descendants had read the account of Lincoln’s dream in the newspapers and that over the ensuing decades the incredible story morphed into a dream of their direct relative, like a game of whisper down the lane.”
Note: Also in the ‘Lincoln Dream Lore Genre’ is the ship and horizon looming one. According to White in Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War, page 164, “A digital search of newspapers from 1865 indicates that the ship on the water dream had gained widespread attention within a month of Lincoln’s death, but no such mention of the far more provocative White House funeral dream appeared. If it was all the talk around Washington, as the 1880 article intimates that it was, then surely it would have found its way into the press shortly after Lincoln’s death. In fact, the White House funeral dream was not widely circulated in newspapers and periodicals until the early 1880s, after the story appeared in Gleason’s Monthly Companion.” See also pages 165-166 for a discussion of Lincoln’s bodyguard Crook’s version of saying good night to Lincoln before he left for Ford’s Theatre. Really, just buy the book. It’s a fascinating 228 page deep dive into that era’s Midnight in America, with a preface by Lincoln, “While others are asleep I think. Night is the only time I have to think.”
The chair. The hallway to get to the chair.
