abraham lincoln travel

Lincoln’s Whistle-Stop Trip to Washington

On the way to his inauguration, President-elect Lincoln met many of his supporters and narrowly avoided an assassination attempt

Brian Wolly

Digital Editorial Director

In February, 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln traveled from Springfield to Washington, visiting his supporters and finding his voice on his way to taking the oath of office on March 4.

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Monday, February 11, 1861

• Lincoln Home At approximately 7:30 a.m., President-elect Abraham Lincoln leaves for the railway station without his wife, who will join him later.

• Springfield Train Station As Lincoln boards the train at Springfield's Great Western Railroad depot, he says to the crowd, “To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything... I now leave.. with a task before me greater than that which rested upon [George] Washington.”

• Decatur Train Depot

• Tolono Train Station

• Vermilion Country Train Depot

• State Line City, Indiana

• Lafayette, Indiana After being joined by a committee of Indiana politicians in State Line City, Lincoln speaks before a crowd in Lafayette, “While some of us may differ in political opinions, still we are all united in one feeling for the Union. We all believe in the maintenance of the Union, of every star and every stripe of the glorious flag, and permit me to express the sentiment that upon the union of the States, there shall be between us no difference. “

• Thorntown, Indiana

• Lebanon, Indiana

• Zionsville, Indiana

• Indianapolis, Indiana Lincoln arrives at 5 p.m., welcomed by Gov. Oliver Morton and a 34-gun salute. He joins a procession of 20,000 state legislators, public employees, soldiers, firemen and others. For the first time in his journey, he temporarily loses his copies of his Inaugural address. With Mrs. Lincoln alongside him, he boards the train en route to Cincinnati at 11 a.m. the following morning.

Tuesday, February 12, 1861

• Shelbyville, Indiana

• Greensburg, Indiana

• Morris, Indiana

• Lawrenceburg, Indiana

• Cincinnati, Ohio At a public reception held by the German Industrial Association, Lincoln says, “I deem it my duty...that I should wait until the last moment, for a development of the present national difficulties before I express myself decidedly what course I shall pursue.” His reluctance to make definitive public statements on the secession crisis was an ongoing theme in his remarks on this journey. Escorted by members of the Ohio legislature, Lincoln departed on the Little Miami Railroad at 9 a.m. the following morning.

Wednesday, February 13, 1861

• Milford, Ohio

• Miamiville, Ohio

• Loveland, Ohio

• Morrow, Ohio

• Corwin, Ohio

• Xenia, Ohio

• London, Ohio

• Columbus, Ohio A crowd of 60,000 greets Lincoln in Columbus, where he speaks to the public from the steps of the state capitol, but his address is curiously out of touch with reality. “It is a consoling circumstance that when we look out there is nothing that really hurts anybody, Lincoln says. We entertain different views upon political questions, but nobody is suffering anything.” He leaves shortly before 8 a.m. the next morning on a rainy day to Pittsburgh.

Thursday, February 14, 1861

• Newark, Ohio

• Frazeysburg, Ohio

• Dresden, Ohio

• Coshocton, Ohio

• Newcomerstown, Ohio

• Uhrichsville, Ohio

• Cadiz Junction, Ohio

• Steubenville, Ohio

• Wellsville, Ohio

• Rochester, Pennsylvania

• Allegheny City, Pennsylvania On the trip to Pittsburgh, Lincoln is delayed two hours because of a broken-down freight train. He arrives in Allegheny City (now part of Pittsburgh) at 8 p.m. and takes a carriage across the river into the steel city.

• Monongahela House, Pittsburgh Lincoln is awestruck by the size and strength of the crowds greeting him on the streets of Pittsburgh. He says in the lobby of the Monongahela House, “I could not help thinking, my friends, as I traveled in the rain through your crowded streets, on my way here, that if all that people were in favor of the Union, it can certainly be in no great danger -- it will be preserved.”

Friday, February 15, 1861

• Alliance, Ohio His remarks in Alliance have a familiar ring, “I appear before you merely to greet you and say farewell... If I should make a speech at every town, I would not get to Washington until some time after the inauguration.” At other towns, he apologizes to the crowd for his hoarse voice. In Wellsville, he declines to make a speech as he had already done so when he stopped on his way to Pittsburgh.

• Ravenna, Ohio

• Hudson, Ohio

• Weddell House, Cleveland Amidst a snow storm, Lincoln arrives in Cleveland to another large crowd. In spite of his farewell comments in Springfield, he once again appears to underestimate the severity of the situation, telling the adulatory group, “The crisis, as it is called, is altogether an artificial crisis.” For the second time, Lincoln's inaugural address is thought to have been lost by Robert Lincoln. He departs town at 9 a.m. the following morning

Saturday, February 16, 1861

• Willoughby, Ohio

• Painesville, Ohio

• Madison, Ohio

• Geneva, Ohio

• Ashtabula, Ohio The crowds in Ashtabula call for Mrs. Lincoln to make an appearance from the train car, but the President-elect replies that he “should hardly hope to induce her to appear, as he had always found it very difficult to make her do what she did not want to.”

• Conneaut, Ohio

• Girard, Pennsylvania

• Erie, Pennsylvania

• North East, Pennsylvania

• Westfield, New York Legend meets lore when the now bearded Lincoln meets 12-year-old Grace Bedell, the young girl who “advised him to let [his] whiskers grow.” “Acting partly upon her suggestion, I have done so,” Lincoln said in Westfield. “And now, if she is here, I would like to see her.”

As a contemporary newspaper report said, the two meet and “he gives her several hearty kisses ... amid the yells of delight from the excited crowd.”

• Dunkirk, New York

• Silver Creek, New York

• Buffalo, New York Lincoln is greeted by former president Millard Fillmore and 10,000 supporters. He spends the night at the American House and observes the Sabbath the next day with Fillmore at a local Unitarian church. He leaves Buffalo at 5:45 in the morning on Monday, February 18 with newspaper man Horace Greeley onboard.

Monday, February 18, 1861

• Batavia, New York

• Rochester, New York

• Clyde, New York

• Syracuse, New York

• Utica, New York

• Little Falls, New York

• Fonda, New York

• Amsterdam, New York

• Schenectady, New York

• Albany, New York In spite of an enthusiastic welcome in the state capital, Mr and Mrs. Lincoln resolve never to return to Albany, as their trip was marred by political bickering between state legislators.

Tuesday, February 19, 1861

• Troy, New York

• Hudson, New York

• Rhinebeck, New York

• Poughkeepsie, New York

• Fishkill, New York

• Peekskill, New York

• Hudson River Railroad Company, New York City “I shall not easily forget the first time I ever saw Abraham Lincoln... From the top of an omnibus (driven up on side, close by, and blocked by the curbstone and the crowds) I had, I say, a capital view of it all and especially of Mr. Lincoln: his looks and gait; his perfect composure and coolness; his unusual and uncouth height; his dress of complete black, stovepipe hat pushed back on his head; dark-brown complexion; seamed and wrinkled yet canny-looking face; black, bush head of hair; disproportionately long neck; and his hands held behind, as he stood observing the people.” -- Walt Whitman

• Astor House, New York City An estimated 250,000 people watch Lincoln's 11-car procession to the Astor House, where me meets with William Cullen Bryant, editor of the New York Evening Post.

Wednesday, February 20, 1861

• Academy of Music, New York City Earlier in the day, Mrs. Lincoln and her children visit P.T. Barnum's museum. That evening, President-elect Lincoln heads to the Academy of Music to take in a new Verdi opera. After the first act, the entire audience and cast sings “The Star Spangled Banner” in honor of the special guest.

• City Hall, New York City Before leaving for City Hall, Lincoln meets with Joshua Dewey, 94, who voted in every presidential election since George Washington's. At City Hall, he tells Mayor Fernando Wood and the city council, “There is nothing that can ever bring me willingly to consent to the destruction of this Union.”

• Astor House

Thursday, February 21, 1861

• Cortland St. Ferry

• Jersey City, New Jersey

• Newark, New Jersey

• Elizabeth, New Jersey

• Rahway, New Jersey

• New Brunswick, New Jersey

• New Jersey State House, Trenton “This body is composed of a majority of gentlemen who, in the exercise of their best judgment in the choice of a Chief Magistrate, did not think I was the man... Nevertheless...they came forward here to greet me as the constitutional President of the United States ... the representative man of the nation, united by a purpose to perpetuate the Union and liberties of the people.” -- Abraham Lincoln

• Bristol, Pennsylvania

• Kensington Depot, Philadelphia

• Continental Hotel Lincoln rides to the Continental Hotel and speaks to 100,000 supporters. An observer remarks, “We are confident that not one person in the crowd below heard one word of Lincoln's speech.” That evening, Frederick W. Seward delivers a letter from his father, Sen. William Seward, that discusses a plot uncovered to assassinate Lincoln in Baltimore. The railroad company's detectives support this intelligence. He pledges to consider altering his schedule, but insists on fulfilling his engagements in Philadelphia and Harrisburg.

Friday, February 22, 1861

• Independence Hall Lincoln goes by carriage to Independence Hall, where, inspired by his surroundings, he says, “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodies in the Declaration of Independence.” Before leaving, he raises a new flag of 34 stars (Kansas had just been admitted three weeks earlier on January 29, 1861) over Independence Hall.

• Philadelphia Train Station With Detective Allen Pinkerton accompanying, Lincoln leaves for Washington, via Baltimore. Telegraph lines out of the city are cut to prevent word of the trip from spreading south.

• Leaman Place, Pennsylvania

• Lancaster, Pennsylvania

• Pennsylvania State House, Harrisburg, PA As per his schedule, Lincoln appears before the state legislature and Gov. Andrew J. Curtin and says, “It shall be my endeavor to preserve the peace of this country.” New plans have been drawn up for Lincoln's arrival into Washington. His initial response: “Unless there are some other reasons besides ridicule, I am disposed to carry out Judd's plan.” He boards a special train headed back to Philadelphia, where he will connect with an 11 p.m. train to the nation's capital.

Saturday, February 23, 1861

• President Street Station, Baltimore, MD

• Washington, DC Lincoln has breakfast with Sen. Seward, telegraphs his wife with news of his safe arrival, and sits for Mathew Brady, photographer.

The President-elect was widely ridiculed for his secretive entrance into Washington. Both newspapers and the general public were worried they had once again elected a weak, indecisive commander-in-chief. Fortunately for the Union, the fears were unfounded.

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Brian Wolly | | READ MORE

Brian Wolly is the digital editor of Smithsonian.com

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The Heart of Louisiana

Lincoln in New Orleans

New Orleans was a long ride by flatboat down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers for a young Abraham Lincoln.  It’s a journey Lincoln made twice to sell goods from the family farm in Indiana. 

retracing the steps of lincoln in new orleans

Kevin Wood was making his annual visit to New Orleans when I met him near the Mississippi River on a foggy late January morning. Wood looks like Abraham Lincoln. And he dresses like Lincoln in a black suit, white shirt, bowtie and top hat. People driving by honk their horns, while those he passes on the sidewalk wave and ask for pictures. Wood is in character, doing his best to look and act Presidential. He smiles as he tells me, “I looked in the mirror one day and said, you look a bit like Abe.” Wood, who’s from Michigan, has worked full time as “Abraham Lincoln” for the past 8 years, doing history presentations for schools, churches and civil groups.

from midwestern farm to slave auctions

“Lincoln” walks to the corner of Chartres and St. Louis Streets, which was once the site of the St. Louis Hotel and Hewlett’s Exchange, one of the most active slave auctions in the city. He points to a historical marker on the side of the building and says, “I saw some of those enslaved people sold, men and women and children, too.” In 1828 and 1831, long before the real Abraham Lincoln was President, a young Abe made two trips by flatboat from his family farm in Rockport, Indiana, to New Orleans.

reconstructing history

Tulane University geographer and author Richard Campanella spent several years researching and tracing Lincoln’s New Orleans trips. Campanella explains that the young Lincoln did not keep a journal or diary of his two boat trips. But once Campanella figured out the timeline, he was able to find records of other things that Lincoln would have been exposed to on his river journeys. He created a detailed narrative of Lincoln’s likely experiences in his book, Lincoln in New Orleans: The 1828-1831 Flatboat Voyages and Their Place in History .

lincoln’s flatboat trips to new orleans

We stand along South Peters Street a few blocks upriver from the Mississippi River Bridges in New Orleans. This is where Campanella says the flatboats would have docked. The river steamboats and sailing ships would have been further downstream closer to the French Quarter. “There’s all sorts of activity here,” Campanella explains. This is where the flatboat crews were, “making deals with local merchants and wholesalers,” selling corn, wheat and smoke pork, typical items carried downriver from Midwestern farms.

Documenting slave auctions for lincoln’s visit

In his book, Campanella writes in great detail about the people who likely stood on the auction block and were sold to the highest bidder at Hewlett’s Exchange in New Orleans during the days that Lincoln was in New Orleans. “Probably the most significant aspect of Lincoln’s two trips to New Orleans would have been his first-person witness to large scale Southern plantation slavery, and large-scale slave auctions, the buying and selling of human beings,” Campanella explains.

lincoln in new orleans on tv

attacked by bandits

On his first flatboat trip to New Orleans in 1828, a 19-year-old Abe Lincoln and his partner Alan Gentry were victims of a night attack by bandits. “A club was landed on Lincoln’s right temple,” Campanella says. That beating left a scar on Lincoln’s head that could be seen for the rest of his life. Campanella believes the attack took place near the present-day town of Convent. After narrowly escaping the murder attempt, Lincoln and Gentry arrived in New Orleans the next day.

exploring Louisiana history

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Cheryl Lacey Sumwalt

February 2, 2024 at 10:29 am

Incredible synopsis of the “issue of the time” that includes fascinating photos! Enjoyed seeing on Fox8 New Orleans and then online!

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The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet.

Abraham Lincoln Timeline

A timeline about the life and career of Abraham Lincoln

February 12, 1809 Abraham Lincoln is born in a one-room log cabin at Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky. He is the second child born to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy (Hanks) Lincoln—daughter Sarah was born February 10, 1807.

1838 In March, Henry Truett is charged with the murder of Dr. Jacob Early and Lincoln prepares his defense. On August 6, Lincoln is re-elected to the General Assembly and becomes Whig Floor Leader. In October, Truett is acquitted after a three-day trial.

1840 In June, Lincoln argues his first case before the Illinois Supreme Court. On August 3, he is re-elected to the Illinois General Assembly for the fourth and last time. In the fall, he reportedly becomes engaged to Mary Todd, or they at least have "an understanding."

1841 January 1, Lincoln breaks off the engagement with Mary Todd. (Some say this occurred during the final week of December.) On March 1, he forms a new law partnership with Stephen T. Logan.

1842 Lincoln does not seek re-election to the Illinois General Assembly. In September, he accepts a challenge to a duel by Democratic state auditor James Shields but the duel is averted. Over the summer, Lincoln and Mary Todd resume their courtship and marry on November 4. They live at the Globe Tavern in Springfield.

1843 On August 1, Mary gives birth to Robert Todd Lincoln, who is named in honor of Mary’s father. Late in the year they move to a rented cottage.

1844 In May, the Lincolns move into a house in Springfield, bought for $1,500. Lincoln campaigns for Henry Clay in the presidential election. In December, he dissolves his law partnership with Logan, then sets up his own practice, accepting William Herndon as his partner.

1846 On March 10, Mary gives birth to their second son, Edward "Eddie" Baker Lincoln. On May 1, Lincoln is nominated to be the Whig candidate for U.S. Congress—he is elected on August 3. The first known photographs are taken of the Lincolns some time after his election.

1847 U.S. Representative Lincoln moves into a boarding house in Washington, D.C., with his wife and two sons, but Mary soon takes the boys and goes to stay with her stepmother, Betsey Humphreys Todd, in Kentucky. On December 6, he takes his seat in the House of Representatives. On December 22, Lincoln presents resolutions questioning President James K. Polk about the Mexican-American War, asking where the spot was that American troops were killed by Mexican troops, the justification for declaring War. He is nicknamed "Spotty Lincoln;" his opposition to Polk’s war seemed for a time to have ended his political career. He also becomes known for opposing slavery during this term in the House.

1848 On January 22, Lincoln gives a speech on floor of the House against Polk’s Mexican-American War policies. He campaigns for General Zachary Taylor as the Whig nominee for president in Maryland, Boston, Massachusetts, New York, then in Illinois as he and his family travel over the summer.

1849 Lincoln fails to be appointed commissioner of the General Land Office and on March 31, returns to Springfield, leaving politics to practice law. On May 22, Abraham Lincoln is granted U.S. Patent No. 6,469 for buoying vessels over shoals—he is the only president ever granted a patent.

1850 February 1, Edward Lincoln dies a month before his fourth birthday, of what was thought to be diphtheria but which may have been tuberculosis. Lincoln resumes his travels in the 8th Judicial Circuit. On December 21, Mary give birth to another son, William "Willie" Wallace Lincoln, named for the husband of her sister Frances.

1854 Lincoln re-enters politics to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act and is elected to the Illinois legislature but declines the seat, hoping instead to become a U.S. Senator.

1855 Lincoln loses the election for U.S. Senator; at this time, senators were chosen by the Illinois House of Representatives, not by direct election.

1856 Lincoln helps organize the new Republican Party of Illinois and in May at the first Republican convention, Lincoln gets 110 votes for the vice-presidential nomination—he gains national attention but loses the nomination to William Lewis Dayton. He campaigns in Illinois for the Republican presidential candidate, John C. Frémont.

1857 On June 26, Lincoln speaks against the Dred Scott Decision in Springfield.

1858 On June 16, Lincoln receives the Republican nomination for Senator from Illinois, opposing Democrat Stephen A. Douglas. He gives his House Divided speech at the state convention in Springfield. He and Douglas also engage in a series of seven debates known today as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates .

1859 In a 54 to 46 vote, the Illinois legislature elects Douglas for the U.S. Senate over Lincoln. In the fall, Lincoln makes his last trip through the 8th Judicial Circuit.

In July, Robert Lincoln enrolls at Harvard University.

On November 6, Lincoln is elected as the 16th President of the United States, receiving 180 of 303 electoral votes and about 40 percent of the popular vote in a five-way election. He is the first Republican President.

1861 On February 11, President-elect Lincoln gives a brief farewell speech to friends and supporters in Springfield and leaves with Mary and Tad by train for Washington, D.C. They arrive February 23 and on March 4, Lincoln delivers his First Inaugural Address during inauguration ceremonies on the steps of the U.S. Capitol building.

On April 15, President Lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers to serve three months in the Union army. The Civil War has begun. 

On July 21, 1861, the Union Army suffers a humiliating defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. The President realizes the war will be long. 

1862 On February 20, 1862, William Lincoln dies at age 11 of typhus. Mary Todd Lincoln is devastated and, some say, never fully recovers.

April 16, 1862, Lincoln signs an act that abolishes slavery in the District of Columbia.

On May 20, Lincoln approves the Federal Homestead Law. 

On September 17, General Robert E. Lee and the Confederate armies are stopped at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland, the bloodiest day in U.S. history.

December 31, the President signs a bill admitting West Virginia to the Union as the 35th state.

1864 On March 12, Lincoln appoints Ulysses S. Grant as General-in-Chief of all the Federal armies. William T. Sherman succeeds Grant as Commander in the West. 

June 8, Lincoln is nominated for a second term as President. 

July 11–12, Fort Stevens on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., is unsuccessfully attacked by a Confederate force under Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early. Lincoln and Mary watch the battle from the fort.

On September 2, Sherman’s army captures Atlanta and in November the President, on advice from Grant, approves Sherman’s "March to the Sea." 

On November 8, Lincoln is re-elected, defeating Democrat George B. McClellan—Lincoln gets 212 of 233 electoral votes and 55 percent of the popular vote. 

December 20, Sherman reaches Savannah, Georgia, leaving a path of destruction 60 miles wide all the way from Atlanta.

On April 9, General Robert E. Lee surrenders his Confederate Army to General Ulysses S. Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The following day, celebrations break out in Washington. 

On April 11, Lincoln makes his last public speech, which focuses on the problems of reconstruction. 

On April 14, Lincoln and his wife, Mary, see the play Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater. About 10:13 p.m., during the third act of the play, John Wilkes Booth shoots the 56-year old president in the head. Doctors attend to the president in the theater then move him to a house across the street. He never regains consciousness and dies at 7:22 the following the morning. 

On April 19, Lincoln’s funeral procession proceeds down Pennsylvania Avenue. On April 21, a nine-car funeral train with 300 dignitaries begins the journey from Washington, D.C.. to Springfield, Illinois. 

On April 26, John Wilkes Booth is shot and killed in a tobacco barn in Virginia. 

On May 4, Lincoln is laid to rest in Oak Ridge Cemetery, outside Springfield, Illinois.

1876 A gang of counterfeiters attempt to steal Lincoln’s body, intending to trade it in exchange for one of their members being released from prison. The plot fails.

1897 Abraham Lincoln Memorial University is established at Harrowgate in East Tennessee to honor the late president. 

1901 Robert Todd Lincoln orders that his father be buried under several tons of concrete to insure the body will not be disturbed again.

1909 in honor of the centennial of Lincoln’s birth, his image is placed on the one-cent piece.

1914 Lincoln’s face is placed on the first five-dollar Federal Reserve Bank Note.

May 30, 1922 President Warren G. Harding officially dedicates the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Riding The Circuit With Lincoln

A new picture of prairie lawyers coping with bad roads and worse inns on the Illinois frontier, drawn from David Davis’ letters

February 1955

One of the most important periods in the life of Abraham Lincoln was the time when he “rode the circuit” in central Illinois in the late 1840’s and early 1850’s. Prairie lawyers and court officials traveled together from one county seat to another for sessions of the circuit court, moving by atrocious frontier roads and stopping in inns, taverns and boarding houses where accommodation was not always of the best. From this period date many of the traditional Lincoln stories—tales told in the evening around the fire, anecdotes from the courtroom, and so on. Here Lincoln grew and developed as a lawyer and as a politician; here, too, he formed personal relationships of great importance in his later life.

One of these was his friendship with David Davis, the Maryland-born lawyer and judge who rode the circuit with him, shared bed and board with him on occasion, knew him intimately, and became one of his campaign managers at the 1860 Chicago Republican convention which nominated Lincoln for the Presidency. Eventually, Davis was appointed by Lincoln to the United States Supreme Court.

Willard King, Chicago lawyer and author, has spent years on a comprehensive study of Judge Davis’ life. No biography of the man exists, and Mr. King’s labors have involved the tracking down and microfilming of vast collections of letters and other papers, scattered all the way from Illinois to Pennsylvania and from New England to Maryland. From the fruit of years of this literary detective work he has drawn a new and intimate picture of the early circuit riders—a picture colored by Lincoln’s presence and personality, shedding a revealing light on one of the homespun, formative eras in middle-western American life.

“In my opinion,” Davis declared, “Lincoln was happy, as happy as he could be, when on this circuit and happy no other place.” Twice yearly, Davis and Lincoln made the three-month circuit of the fourteen counties comprising the Eighth Judicial Circuit. More than a hundred letters, recently discovered, written from the circuit by the Judge to Sarah, his wife, make a vivid story of their course around it.

A few days before his circuit began at Springfield in March and August, Davis set out from Bloomington in his buggy. For years, on horseback, he had plodded over this familiar road. But it could scarcely be called a road. No fences marked it; no gravel covered it; the wagon ruts had merely made a trail in the prairie mud.

In good weather, however, he enjoyed this ride. Much of the land was uncultivated and the tall, luxuriant prairie grass, mottled with wild flowers, bent under every breeze. As he rode past the quail whistled, the grouse whirred up, the wolf and the deer fled. But in wet times water stood on the flat prairie making travel a nightmare. After such a trip, his friend Jesse Fell wrote: “I came pretty near losing a horse…We came to a slew that looked too deep for safety and I detached a horse and rode in to ascertain the depth. I had gone but a little way till we plunged into a deep hole and with great difficulty my horse got through, having swam some distance.” (Fell was greatgrandfather of Governor Adlai Stevenson.)

The sixty-mile ride to Springfield took two days. The first night a traveler stopped at Hoblit’s tavern, the “half-way house” between Bloomington and Springfield. After such a trip the Judge reported to Sarah: “About dark on Friday I reached Mrs. Hoblit’s. Supper was over and I asked for bread & milk…Mrs. Hoblit seemed tired & I did not want to put her to any trouble. I started after an early breakfast Saturday morning…I got to Elkhart about two o’clock and fed my own horses & got a cold dinner from Mrs. Latham (at my own request however). You can say to Lyman [the Judge’s bachelor half-brother] that Miss Latham looked very enticing…I left Elkhart about 3 o’clock—got to Mr. Clark’s about · past 5 and after watering my horses and talking to Mr. Clark about the neatness and beauty of his farm…I wended my way slowly to Springfield. The roads were bad all the way from Hoblit’s.”

By 1850, Springfield, the largest town on the circuit, had 4,500 people. “This town is overrun with foreigners,” Davis announced, “Irish, Dutch, Portuguese & Norwegians.” It had two newspapers, eight churches, a scrap of railroad, and, as early as 1848, the telegraph. When the telegraph office was opened, Davis had written to Sarah: “These old Succers, who go into the telegraph office and witness the operation, can’t believe. They shake their heads & think there is some hocus pocus about it.”

Usually the Judge arrived in Springfield on Saturday night. On Sunday he went to the Episcopal Church where the Reverend Charles Dresser, who had performed the Lincolns’ marriage service, officiated. On Monday court convened. Lincoln, Stuart, Logan and the other lawyers came in to hear the Judge open the session. With his fear of speaking extemporaneously, Davis at first wrote out in advance his charge to the Grand Jury in Sangamon County. “Every one of you,” he admonished them, “is required to throw aside all malice, hatred & ill will—to show no favor or affection—but to administer the Law righteously & fearlessly & with a single eye to truth & justice.” All of his instructions, however, counseled leniency. He cautioned the jury “not to suffer bad & designing men” to obtain indictments “to gratify a malicious heart or to wreak a petty vengeance.” “There are a class of men,” he informed them, “hovering about every Grand Jury who, on any slight quarrel with a neighbor…go to a Grand Jury…Avoid all such men—distrust their complaints…& take them with many grains of allowance.”

When the Grand Jury had retired the Judge heard motions and tried cases. Small cases predominated: minor misdemeanors for gambling or selling liquor; and, on the civil side, appeals from justices of the peace. Many land title suits, cases involving the ownership of cattle, slander and libel suits and a few murders, divorces and bastardy proceedings came before the court.

At Springfield, Davis frequently saw the governor about pardons for persons convicted on his circuit. In 1850 at Paris, on the eastern part of his circuit, a man named Joseph Knight was convicted of murder. The jury demanded the death sentence. In Life on the Circuit with Lincoln , Henry Clay Whitney afterwards reported that Judge Davis “had not the courage to pronounce sentence.” “He admitted it,” Whitney declared, “and his condition was pitiful as the term wore on leaving the murderer unsentenced. So Charlie Constable [one of the lawyers] came to his rescue: and in a bold, plain hand wrote out a form of sentence and nerved the Judge up to the performance of reading it to the victim; which he did in a shaky voice.” Whitney, an unscrupulous reporter, so far as he dared gave a false picture of Judge Davis, whom he hated bitterly. However, this story is at least partially confirmed by one of the Judge’s letters to Sarah from Springfield: “This is the day that I appointed for the execution of poor Knight at Paris. However I am glad, very glad, to be able to report to you that…I interceded with the Governor and got…Knight’s sentence commuted to imprisonment for life. A great weight is removed from my spirits in consequence of the poor fellow not having to be hung.” Kirby Benedict, a lawyer in Paris, wrote the Judge: “I sincerely thank you for the aid you rendered Joseph Knight in saving his neck. Persons who came from a distance through the rain to see him hung felt chagrined in not seeing ‘the show’ but it passed off with as little feeling and excitement as could have been anticipated under the circumstances.”

Davis got many such commutations and pardons. Usually Lincoln aided in these efforts. In 1850 when the whole country had been stirred by the Webster-Parkman murder case in Boston, Davis wrote from Springfield to Sarah: “Poor Dr. Webster was hung yesterday. It is terrible for his family. Lincoln says that his little boy Robert has been counting the days that Dr. Webster had to live & Thursday he said that Thursday was the last night he had to live. Rather singular that the event should so mark itself…on a child of seven years.”

Many of the letters of the Judge and his wife in this period mention the Lincolns. Thus, in January, 1851, Mrs. Davis asked him: “Has Mrs. Lincoln been confined yet and if so what has she? I am anxious to know.” William Wallace, Lincoln’s third son, had recently been born. The Lincolns had wanted a girl instead of a boy. The next year the fourth Lincoln boy, Tad Lincoln, was born. At about the same time the Davises became the parents of a long-wanted girl. Sarah wrote the Judge: “Is Mr. Lincoln with you on the circuit? And has be become reconciled to his little son?”

After Sangamon on the circuit came Tazewell County. Ever since Davis had come to Illinois he had been attending court in Tremont, the county seat. Tremont had a population of only 461, and Davis stayed with friends while holding court there. In 1850 the county seat was moved to Pekin, a much larger town. A new Greek-columned courthouse rose in Pekin that summer and in September Davis first held court in it. Many years later a veteran lawyer at Peoria recalled an incident of that court: “Lincoln was there in a bobtail sack coat [and] jean pants that came within sixteen inches of his feet…And while the trial was going on there was a bat flying back and forth in the courtroom. Lincoln got up on a seat in front with a broom and hit at the bat. Another fellow took a big cattle whip…six or eight feet long and made a slap at it. Finally Lincoln hit the bat and knocked it down. Everybody shouted and ran to get it. Then they threw it out of the window. Not the slightest remark was made by the court about it, although the room was in perfect tumult.” All of the Judge’s friends agreed that he was a stickler for dignity but that he also knew when to relax the rules of judicial decorum.

When court had adjourned in Pªkin, Lincoln and Davis drove to Metamora, the county seat of Woodford County, about twenty miles away. It was a small town and the tavern “Traveller’s Home,” had bad beds and worse food. “The tavern at Woodford is miserable,” Davis complained, “but it may be that Mr. Cross [the Court Clerk] may take compassion on us & take us to his house.”

After two or three days, the court’s work was done and the itinerant bar moved to Bloomington, thirty miles away. That town was growing fast. In 1848 Davis reported: “The town authorities have just taken the census…The town is nearly 1,150…It is believed that, if houses were built, by the census of 1850 (two years hence) there would be 1,500 people.” Actually the count of that year showed a population of nearly 1,600.

“They are running crazy at Bloomington with property,” Davis declared in the fall of 1851. Two weeks later Davis, as agent for his relative, Levi Davis, sold Lincoln two Bloomington lots for $325.08. Two railroads had been authorized by the legislature to be constructed through the town. But the first frenzy of the land boom soon subsided. Lincoln held his lots five years and then sold them for $400.

When court was in session in Bloomington the Davises, from their earliest days there, had held a “court party” at their home for the lawyers. Sarah once wrote the Judge that she had secured some delicious oranges which, with some apples, she was saving for his court party. Years later an elderly woman who in her youth had participated in these parties told how Sarah, at Lincoln’s request, sang “The Charming Woman”:

After a week at Bloomington the circuit moved on to Mt. Pulaski, the county seat of Logan County, population 360. It was forty miles from Bloomington, a long day’s ride. While making his spring circuit with Lincoln in 1851, Davis wrote: “The tavern at Pulaski is perhaps the hardest place you ever saw. A new landlord by the name of Cass, just married—everything dirty & the eating Horrible . Judge Robbins, Lincoln, Stuart & everybody else from Springfield [were there.] The old woman looked as we would suppose the witch of Endor looked. She had a grown daughter who waited on the table—table greasy—table cloth greasy—floor greasy and everything else ditto. The girl was dressed in red calico with a black silk cardinal over it, with a wreath of artificial flowers (two full blown roses & little things in proportion) around her head. Waiting among greasy things. Think of it. I wonder if she ever washed herself. I guess the dirt must be half an inch thick all over her. The Lawyers thought she was dying to get married, but of course on such a subject as that I would not venture an opinion.” This description gives the stage setting for Davis’ amazement over the fact that, while others on the circuit complained about the food and beds, Lincoln never seemed to mind them. At the table, Lincoln was pre-occupied; buried in his own thoughts. “He thought more than any man I have ever known,” said William H. Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner and biographer.

“Lincoln & myself left Pulaski last evening about 5 o’clk & came 15 miles & stayed at Mr. Walker’s,” Davis reported. They were on their way to Clinton, population 367, the county seat of DeWitt County. The next morning they rode the remaining ten miles into Clinton where Lincoln, Gridley, Scott [John M. Scott, a young lawyer of Bloomington] and the Judge all stayed at Mrs. Hills’. “I found out,” the Judge informed his wife, “that Mrs. Hills’ was a dirty place—plenty of bedbugs, &c, &c.” A few years before he had written: “This thing of traveling in Illinois and being eaten up by bed bugs and mosquitoes (fleas you know don’t trouble me much) is not what it is cracked up to be.”

In 1851 Davis hurriedly finished court in Clinton in two days and set out for Monticello, another very small town, the county seat of Piatt County. En route Davis, Lincoln, and Campbell couldn’t resist stopping overnight at Mr. Richter’s tavern at Marion [now DeWitt] where the Judge had “a neat, clean bed—a great luxury,” he assured Sarah. They were distressed however because “a poor bound girl” in the house was pregnant, “one of the boys tho t to be the father.”

The next spring the Judge and bar had a disagreeable ride in the rain to reach Monticello. Finally they came to the Sangamon River about a mile from town. “Could not cross,” the Judge reported. “For two hours stayed in rain waiting for Ferryman. Swam the horses & took the buggy over straddle a canoe and we went over ourselves very comfortably in the Canoe.” They did not arrive at Monticello until 3 o’clock and had “quite a Court” for two days.

From there they had only a twenty-mile ride to Urbana, population 210, the seat of Champaign County. In May, 1850, a newspaper, the Danville Illinois Citizen , published a five-column report of the May term of the Champaign Circuit Court. It spoke of Judge Davis’ strength of mind, legal acumen and power of discrimination. “As a man, Judge D. will never be the object of universal admiration, but will at all times command the highest esteem and respect.”

A most striking word-picture of Lincoln as a lawyer in this article notes at this early date qualities that the world later came to know. “Rough, uncouth and unattractive,” he was also “stern…and unfamiliar…slow and guarded,” yet “profound in the depths of his musings…He lives but to ponder, reflect and cogitate…In his examination of witnesses, he displays a masterly ingenuity…that baffles concealment and defies deceit. And in addressing a jury, there is no false glitter, no sickly sentimentalism to be discovered. In vain we look for a rhetorical display…Seizing upon the minutest points, he weaves them into his argument with an ingenuity really astonishing…Bold, forcible and energetic, he forces conviction upon the mind, and, by his clearness and conciseness, stamps it there, not to be erased…Such are some of the qualities that place Mr. L. at the head of the profession in this State.”

“This town is improving…astonishingly,” Davis wrote Sarah from Urbana in 1851. “More improvements since we were here last fall than for any six years previously.” He scribbled this letter from the bench during an evening session of his court: “I am in the midst of a trial for bastardy which excites a great deal of interest. I am determined to sit it out if it will take till midnight. Mr. Lincoln, in his opening speech to the jury bore down savagely on the Def t who is now married & who has been using extraordinary exertions to prove that the woman had permitted the embraces of other men.” Davis then wrote four pages of desultory gossip concluding: “It is now nearly 10 o’clock & Lincoln to make his Closing Speech. I have scratched this scrawl in the midst of a heated trial. Pray forgive it…I think of you all the time & love you more and more.”

The court records in Champaign County show that the jury found Albert G. Carle to be the father of Nancy Jane Dunn’s bastard child. For its education and support, he was ordered to pay $50 a year.

Davis hoped to go to Danville the next day but Nancy’s father demanded a trial of his suit against Carle for seducing Nancy. Davis wrote Sarah: “I open this letter to write another word. I thought that I should have left yesterday morning but…both parties insisted on a trial in the seduction suit & I had to continue it over until this morning in order to summon extra jurymen…”

Davis’ letter then continues: “The seduction trial has been in progress this morning and they blacken her character desperately. I felt sorry for her father. I suppose he thought her virtuous. The evidence discloses a beautiful state of morals among the young men & young girls of this Grove.” The court records show that Lincoln’s client recovered $180.41 for the seduction of his daughter.

After Champaign County the judge and bar went to Vermilion, the next county on the circuit—county seat, Danville, population 736. In the legislature in 1845 Davis had succeeded, “by hard work,” as he told Colton, in getting the counties of Vermilion and Edgar added to the circuit. The people in these Wabash River counties were largely Henry Clay Whigs from Kentucky who, he hoped, would neutralize the votes of the Jackson Democrats in Moultrie and Shelby counties.

In 1850, the famous case of Fithian vs. Casseday erupted. A quarrel in the Sewing Society of the Pres-byterian Church had caused the withdrawal of one group who joined the Methodist Church. The previous spring Davis had heard from Oliver Davis about the “Squaw War” that divided the town. “Everybody is at sword’s point. The Ladies of different families that were intimate last fall won’t speak now…The result is—They build two Seminaries that cost $4 or $5,000 each.” Dr. William Fithian, an early settler, had taken a prominent part in this battle of the ladies. Casseday, the leader of the opposite faction, published an article attacking Fithian. “Now suppose, Doctor, I was to ask you,” Casseday queried in his pamphlet, “if you ever abandoned the corpse of your wife at Paris and left her to be buried at the mercy of others.” Casseday knew, he admitted, that the doctor claimed he had left town on that occasion to attend his sick son. But Fithian would have been at the funeral, his detractor asserted, had it been an election. (Fithian was an ardent Whig.) “Go cast yourself down at her grave,” Casseday exhorted, “water the green sod with tears of regret and penitence, then perchance Heaven may forgive you for abandoning the lifeless body of her that now lies in yonder graveyard.” For this alleged libel, Fithian sued Casseday for $25,000.

On the trial Davis reported to Sarah: “We had an exciting trial at Danville the last two days and nights of the week—Fithian v. Casseday—growing out of the publications of last winter. Linder & Lincoln for Fithian and Murphy & Hannegan (formerly U.S. Senator from Indiana) for Casseday. The ladies of the town in great number were present all the time. I gave your respects to them…They all seemed delighted with the speeches that were made. Mr. Hannegan is a beautiful speaker. His elocution is as fine as any man’s that I ever heard. He is as companionable [and] pleasant [a] gentleman as I ever associated with…He…entertained us greatly with descriptions of foreign countries, ambassadorial dinners, &c, &c.” But despite Hannegan’s eloquence, Linder and Lincoln secured a verdict for Dr. Fithian of $547.90.

The next spring when Lincoln and Davis were again staying at Bailey’s public house in Danville, the Judge wrote Mrs. Davis: “We are all overwhelmed here at a Tragedy occurring in Covington last Friday. You may recollect that the Hon. Edward A. Hannegan of Covington…was with us last court…He was a man of High passion & carried a knife (unfortunately) & three or four times a year took hard sprees & on such times is nearly delirious…Last Friday in a drunken frolic he killed his own Brother-in-Law…a man universally esteemed in Covington. He lived some 12 hours after he was stabbed—forgave Hannegan…Poor Hannegan is said to be crazy & has tried to kill himself…with Laudanum…We doubt about…[this last] being so.”

On this trip Davis wrote to Sarah while the lawyers were speaking, “in a cause where three young men & a certain Female Lecturer, Fanny Lee Townsend, are charged with disturbing a camp meeting.” Davis with Lincoln and Campbell had driven from Urbana. On the way, it rained so hard that they “stayed all night at a very clever family’s” about 15 miles from Danville. (“Clever” then meant “accommodating.”) “It rained again Sunday,” Davis concluded, “and we had a hard time to get to Danville, but by heading [up] streams &c we got thru.” Bailey’s tavern was still “very dirty.”

From Danville the Judge and bar moved south 35 miles to Paris, population 697, the shire town of Edgar County. The ride from Danville to Paris always delighted him. “The country the whole distance is beautiful to the eye—much better improved than in McLean and Tazewell,” he wrote his wife. In the spring, as they drove into Paris, the perfume of the locust blossoms filled the air.

But although Paris was charming the tavern was wretched. “I have got quartered in about the meanest tavern you ever saw,” he told Sarah. “It would worry your father to be about. The floors don’t look to have been scoured for a quarter of a century.”

In May, 1848, Davis had written Sarah from Paris: “The Sons of Temperance…had a procession formed at the Court House and preceded by a brass band…They number 74. Their uniform is a white sash thrown over the shoulders & united in front by a blue bow.” To hear the speeches on temperance, Davis went to the Methodist Church. “There was a fine audience of Ladies and they appeared well dressed & seemed to have more of the air of gentility about them than those I saw in the Methodist Church at Danville. U. F. Linder, Esq. of Charleston…made a pretty speech.”

Another lawyer frequently mentioned by Davis on the eastern part of his circuit was Charles H. Constable, a tall, personable young man of considerable ability. Like Davis, he was a Whig from the eastern shore of Maryland. On Taylor’s election as President, Constable sought a diplomatic appointment to one of the South American countries. He asked Davis to write to Washington in support of this application. “This is a very important move to me and failure is defeat indeed,” he declared. “From Lincoln I find no time is to be lost.” Davis wrote as requested but Constable did not secure the appointment. Thereafter Constable asked Davis and Lincoln to sponsor him for a federal judgeship in the Washington or Oregon territories. Again they wrote several letters to Whig Congressmen and Senators urging Constable’s appointment, but again they were unsuccessful.

In the fall of 1851, Davis, while writing to Sarah from Paris, was suddenly interrupted by a violent row between Lincoln and Constable. “Since I wrote the above,” Davis confided, “there has been a quarrel between Lincoln and Constable on politics, a serious one. I feel very sorry and nervous about it.”

Holland, Lincoln’s first biographer after his death, told the story of this quarrel to illustrate Lincoln’s strong party feeling. Constable called at Davis’ and Lincoln’s room at the tavern in Paris. “Mr. Lincoln stood with his coat off, shaving himself before his glass.” Constable declared that the Whig Party was “old fogyish” and indifferent to its young men and contrasted the opposite attitude of the Democratic Party. “Lincoln suddenly turned on him fiercely and said: ‘Mr. Constable, I understand you perfectly, and have noticed for some time back that you have been slowly and cautiously picking your way over to the Democratic Party’…Both men were angry and it required the efforts of all the others present to keep them from fighting.” Davis succeeded in reconciling them, but shortly thereafter Constable became a Democrat and was elected Circuit Judge in the next circuit south, where he served until his death.

The next spring, Davis, Lincoln and Campbell again came to Paris together, but Lincoln had his own buggy. It rained all the way from Danville. “We can’t ride anywhere without its raining,” Davis complained. “Pete,” one of his horses, had been hurt at the stable in Danville and the Judge was annoyed at the hostler. To cap it all, the stage driver blundered: “The Danville stage came in & passed through town just as I was leaving Court—when lo and behold the key was lost & the mail passed on to Marshall, with, I have no doubt, a letter from your own sweet self. The Postmaster says, on the stage’s return tomorrow, that he is in hopes to open the mail…Lincoln got a letter from his wife. She says…[her baby] has the nursing sore mouth—child 18 mos. old. I guess she ought to have quit nursing some time ago.”

From Paris the circuit went to Shelbyville, Shelby County, seventy miles away, population 385; it took at least two days to reach it. On the way Davis had to pass through Charleston, the seat of Coles County, which was not on his circuit. In good weather he enjoyed the first half of the trip. “The country between Paris & Charleston,” he asserted, “is handsomer than any I have ever seen in the State & if Yankees instead of Kentuckians and Tennesseans had the control of it, it would blossom as the rose.”

In November, 1851, Davis, Lincoln and Campbell avoided an overnight stop in Charleston by taking three days to go to Shelbyville and staying at farm houses. But the next spring they found a pleasant, comfortable inn at Charleston with a good supper and a clean bed. “The old tavern keeper asked a blessing at the table.” The following day’s ride to Shelbyville, however, exhausted them. “My horses were very tired,” Davis reported. “Mr. Lincoln’s old horse nearly gave out.” Davis began to grumble that Paris and Shelbyville should be taken off his circuit.

“Shelbyville,” Davis wrote in 1848, “is as ragged and dilapidated a place as you ever saw—no improvements for ten years.” But the tavern then was tolerable and the food first rate. Even when it rained for several days Davis stayed comfortably in his room reading novels and playing whist with Judge Treat. When court adjourned the Judge led the lawyers on a fishing trip on the Kaskaskia River. And some very clever, gentlemanly people then lived in Shelbyville; Davis reported a party for the court and bar at Colonel Prentiss’ home. “The entertainment was elegant—Parlors handsomely furnished—Supper at ten—Roast Pig, Ham, Turkeys, Custard, Coffee, Tea & a variety of Cakes and Pies—Wines & liquors on the side board—Card tables, &c &c.” Davis also described a dance. The young ladies and gentlemen seemed well dressed. “The music, everybody said, was good but the fiddler was drunk. The town was full of people & 2 drunken men in their shirt sleeves pushed their way through and came into the dance. I assure you everything looked democratish enough to have suited the most fastidious.”

From Shelbyville they went to Sullivan, the seat of Moultrie County. It was a small town, “not any better than Clinton,” Davis reported. “The people are the regular hunting shirt Tennesseans.” The twenty-mile ride to reach it was sometimes unpleasant. Davis described an all-day trip there in the rain; with a buffalo robe, umbrella and overcoat, he claimed that he kept from getting wet. In time they learned to stop at farms on the way. “Lincoln, Anthony Thornton, Campbell & Moulton and myself went (last Sunday morning) to Mr. John Wards about five miles from Shelbyville,” Davis wrote. “Whiled away several hours, got a fine dinner, & about 3 o’clock started for Sullivan where we got about 6 o’clock.”

As usual the tavern at Sullivan was bad and they tried to stay somewhere else: “We found Mrs. Elder with a very sick headache and abed. We went to a tavern but I only got supper. Really got vexed on account of [bad] stable for my horses. Went to Mrs. Elder’s & slept & next morning got breakfast at tavern & afterwards took all our meals & slept at Mrs. Elder’s. The tavern was so tough that I should have been in a bad humor to have staid there.”

With joy, Davis drove from Sullivan to Decatur, the seat of Macon County, his “old stamping ground.” “I left [Sullivan] yesterday morning with Campbell—Lincoln in his buggy—& we got to Decatur about 3 o’clk,” he wrote, a distance of about 25 miles. “You can’t imagine how well I feel, to get round my old haunts. The Tavern is first rate and the people old friends.” At first Mr. Crone ran the brick inn but later Davis wrote, “Mr. Elliott keeps the tavern which is as good as that kept by Mr. Crone. Everything is clean and neat. I got a straw bed for the first time.” By June, when he arrived on his spring circuit, the weather was beginning to be warm. “Slept without my flannel shirt; also took my drawers off,” he reported, asking Sarah if she couldn’t make him a light flannel nightgown. Once he took a bath in his room, his first in two weeks.

Last on the circuit came Taylorville, the seat of government in Christian County. Davis first went there as a lawyer in 1848. “I left Decatur last Sunday morning with Mr. Benedict…in the rain,” he wrote, “and went over a blind road and poor country to Taylorville, which is a new place but prettily laid out and tastefully arranged with trees & shrubs…The tavern is kept by Col. Bond who married a sister of Mrs. Ewing in Bloomington.”

In June, 1850, Sarah was ill and sent for the Judge at Decatur. He came home at once, abandoning the June term at Taylorville. To make up for this omission he called a special term there in August, just prior to the beginning of his fall circuit at Springfield. Captain H. M. Vandeveer, the leading lawyer in Taylorville, wrote him: “I shall provide a private room for you. You may invite any Gentlemen you choose to room with you.” After the special session the Judge reported to his wife: “I had pleasant accommodations at Taylorville in company with Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Thornton of Shelbyville…Sunday we left & got to Springfield towards night. Mr. Lincoln had lost his conveyance & although a heavy drag for my horse I had to take him.”

With the end of his trip the Judge had traversed an area, he informed Sarah’s father, almost as large as the whole state of Connecticut. Travel had been rigorous, living usually miserable, but, despite his complaints, he thoroughly enjoyed it. Most of the joy came from his relations with his companions and particularly Lincoln, the only lawyer, except the State’s Attorney, who traveled the entire circuit with him. Their close friendship soon became well-known throughout the circuit. As early as 1850 a prominent Whig in Taylorville wrote the Judge about the necessity of removing their postmaster who pretended to be a Whig and had a brother in Springfield who was a well-known member of that party. But actually the postmaster paid over all of the profits of the office to the old postmaster who was a rabid Loco and still ran the post office. The Taylorville Whigs had appealed to Congressman Baker without avail. To approach Lincoln through ordinary channels would be fruitless because he knew the postmaster’s brother. “We have consulted about the matter,” the letter ended, “and have concluded to…ask you to use your influence with Lincoln in procuring the removal.” For the rest of Lincoln’s life, Davis heard many such pleas.

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• Abraham Lincoln

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The train ride that brought Lincoln to D.C. — and introduced him to the nation

So much has been written about Abraham Lincoln that it’s rare when a historian discovers an episode in his life that, if fully developed and interpreted, yields important new insights. Ted Widmer has done just that in his superb new book, “ Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington .” It’s ostensibly about the train trip the president-elect took from Springfield, Ill., to the nation’s capital; it’s in fact about how Lincoln and his fellow Americans came to know and trust one another, an experience that profoundly shaped his presidency.

In February 1861, Southerners feared that Lincoln’s election meant the end of slavery and their way of life; talk of secession and civil war was rampant. Northerners rejoiced at the election’s outcome, while fearing that it could lead to the country’s dissolution; they looked to Lincoln for reassurance.

Widmer, a historian at the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York, spent 10 years applying his impressive talents as a researcher and storyteller to explain how our 16th president used a 13-day train trip to introduce himself to his fellow citizens and to prepare himself for the greatest crisis in the nation’s brief history.

The issue of slavery, most believed, would determine future events. Though his views were well known, Lincoln adopted a “strategy of silence” during the campaign and now through the four-month interregnum. But the Republican platform was unequivocal: Slavery must not be extended beyond the states where it already existed. “That was the rock that now loomed before the ship of state,” Widmer writes. As their next president, Lincoln believed he must calm anxious citizens — but the Constitution left him no means to do so.

Lincoln chose to use his train trip as the vehicle for connecting with those who elected him. Widmer demonstrates a deft ability to relate Lincoln’s circumstances to those of others in the nation’s past: He quotes George Washington as feeling like “a culprit who is going to the place of his own execution” on the eve of his inauguration in 1789. “But his long trip from Mount Vernon to New York had helped to make his presidency real to the people. Now, in order to save the country, Lincoln needed to summon all of his strength for an even longer journey . . . and he needed to get there quickly while there was a country left to save.”

In plotting his route, however, speed was not his priority; political sagacity was. He insisted on visiting the capitals of the five “essential” states that had elected him — Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey; if hostilities broke out, he would need them to provide the manpower to deal with it.

On Feb. 11, an emotional Lincoln bid “an affectionate farewell” to 2,000 friends before the “Presidential Special” headed out. Hundreds and then thousands lined the tracks, trying to catch a glimpse of the man who embodied their hopes. These were “Lincoln’s kind of people,” in Widmer’s telling, “and he reached out toward them every few miles, waving, or bowing, or shaking hands, or saying a few quick words sometimes from a train that slowed but did not stop.”

As Lincoln had plotted his route strategically, so too does Widmer with his writing; his creative structure and new research offer compelling diversions about some of the people and history the president-elect encountered. Included are past and future presidents, as well as the slaughterhouses of Cincinnati and the nauseating corruption of Albany. Every place had someone or something distinctive, and Widmer invariably finds it.

The trip proved exhausting and at times frightening — with at least two assassination attempts. Lincoln was often in pain, Widmer says, “especially his hands, after the nightly ordeal of shaking hands with thousands of local well-wishers.” Nonetheless, “the trip was making a difference. Even when the president-elect said nothing, the response was overwhelming, as at Ashtabula, when he could barely speak and the crowd burst into a ‘state of din-bewildered enthusiasm,’ screaming simply because he was there.”

Lincoln’s confidence grew as the Special entered New Jersey, where he told state legislators that, while he favored reconciliation, “I fear we will have to put the foot down firmly,” which he suddenly did, literally and dramatically — to the cheers of the astonished lawmakers. “This was the clear statement everyone was waiting for,” Widmer writes. “. . . He had found his footing, in every sense.”

In Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, Lincoln “talked humbly about the way he understood the Declaration [of Independence], and the hope it inspired . . . the equal rights that inhere in all people.” The key word in the declaration, he added later, was “all” — “All men are created equal.” “It permits no equivocation,” Widmer adds, before asserting, “Lincoln had reset America’s moral compass.”

Lincoln ended his remarks with a “stunning” admission: He would be “one of the happiest men in the world” if the country could be saved with its great idea intact. He would “rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it.”

The evening before, detective Allan Pinkerton had warned Lincoln that an armed mob would be waiting for him in Baltimore and that he must deviate from his course to evade the “death trap.” Given a choice between continuing his journey with his dignity and his purpose intact, or avoiding assassination by stealth and probably inviting ridicule, he quickly chose the latter; the Special completed its journey, safely, to Washington.

“No one knew yet what a Lincoln presidency would mean, but the fact that he had survived the ordeal meant that his presidency would actually begin,” Widmer writes. “His odyssey was complete.” Days later, Lincoln arrived at the Capitol for his inauguration to speak of “the better angels of our nature.”

Widmer has written a revelatory work about an important but underappreciated episode that placed Lincoln “on the verge” of developing the confidence and courage to become America’s greatest president. His book could also be on the verge — of becoming a Lincoln classic.

Lincoln on the Verge

Thirteen days to washington.

By Ted Widmer

Simon & Schuster. 606 pp. $35

Abraham Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union during the American Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing enslaved people.

Quick Facts

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Abraham Lincoln was the 16 th president of the United States , serving from 1861 to 1865, and is regarded as one of America’s greatest heroes due to his roles in guiding the Union through the Civil War and working to emancipate enslaved people. His eloquent support of democracy and insistence that the Union was worth saving embody the ideals of self-government that all nations strive to achieve. In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves across the Confederacy. Lincoln’s rise from humble beginnings to achieving the highest office in the land is a remarkable story, and his death is equally notably. He was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in 1865, at age 56, as the country was slowly beginning to reunify following the war. Lincoln’s distinctively humane personality and incredible impact on the nation have endowed him with an enduring legacy.

FULL NAME: Abraham Lincoln BORN: February 12, 1809 DIED: April 15, 1865 BIRTHPLACE: Hodgenville, Kentucky SPOUSE: Mary Todd Lincoln (m. 1842) CHILDREN: Robert Todd Lincoln , Edward Baker Lincoln, William Wallace Lincoln, and Thomas “Tad” Lincoln ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius HEIGHT: 6 feet 4 inches

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, to parents Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln in rural Hodgenville, Kentucky.

Thomas was a strong and determined pioneer who found a moderate level of prosperity and was well respected in the community. The couple had two other children: Lincoln’s older sister, Sarah, and younger brother, Thomas, who died in infancy. His death wasn’t the only tragedy the family would endure.

In 1817, the Lincolns were forced to move from young Abraham’s Kentucky birthplace to Perry County, Indiana, due to a land dispute. In Indiana, the family “squatted” on public land to scrap out a living in a crude shelter, hunting game and farming a small plot. Lincoln’s father was eventually able to buy the land.

When Lincoln was 9 years old, his 34-year-old mother died of tremetol, more commonly known as milk sickness, on October 5, 1818. The event was devastating to the young boy, who grew more alienated from his father and quietly resented the hard work placed on him at an early age.

In December 1819, just over a year after his mother’s death, Lincoln’s father Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, a Kentucky widow with three children of her own. She was a strong and affectionate woman with whom Lincoln quickly bonded.

Although both his parents were most likely illiterate, Thomas’ new wife Sarah encouraged Lincoln to read. It was while growing into manhood that Lincoln received his formal education—an estimated total of 18 months—a few days or weeks at a time.

Reading material was in short supply in the Indiana wilderness. Neighbors recalled how Lincoln would walk for miles to borrow a book. He undoubtedly read the family Bible and probably other popular books at that time such as Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim’s Progres s, and Aesop’s Fable s.

In March 1830, the family again migrated, this time to Macon County, Illinois. When his father moved the family again to Coles County, 22-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own, making a living in manual labor.

Lincoln was 6 feet 4 inches tall, rawboned and lanky yet muscular and physically strong. He spoke with a backwoods twang and walked with a long-striding gait. He was known for his skill in wielding an ax and early on made a living splitting wood for fire and rail fencing.

Young Lincoln eventually migrated to the small community of New Salem, Illinois, where over a period of years he worked as a shopkeeper, postmaster, and eventually general store owner. It was through working with the public that Lincoln acquired social skills and honed a storytelling talent that made him popular with the locals.

Not surprising given his imposing frame, Lincoln was an excellent wrestler and had only one recorded loss—to Hank Thompson in 1832—over a span of 12 years. A shopkeeper who employed Lincoln in New Salem, Illinois, reportedly arranged bouts for him as a way to promote the business. Lincoln notably beat a local champion named Jack Armstrong and became somewhat of a hero. (The National Wrestling Hall of Fame posthumously gave Lincoln its Outstanding American Award in 1992.)

When the Black Hawk War broke out in 1832 between the United States and Native Americans, the volunteers in the area elected Lincoln to be their captain. He saw no combat during this time, save for “a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes,” but was able to make several important political connections.

As he was starting his political career in the early 1830s, Lincoln decided to become a lawyer. He taught himself the law by reading William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England . After being admitted to the bar in 1837, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, and began to practice in the John T. Stuart law firm.

In 1844, Lincoln partnered with William Herndon in the practice of law. Although the two had different jurisprudent styles, they developed a close professional and personal relationship.

Lincoln made a good living in his early years as a lawyer but found that Springfield alone didn’t offer enough work. So to supplement his income, he followed the court as it made its rounds on the circuit to the various county seats in Illinois.

On November 4, 1842, Lincoln wed Mary Todd , a high-spirited, well-educated woman from a distinguished Kentucky family. Although they were married until Lincoln’s death, their relationship had a history of instability.

When the couple became engaged in 1840, many of their friends and family couldn’t understand Mary’s attraction; at times, Lincoln questioned it himself. In 1841, the engagement was suddenly broken off, most likely at Lincoln’s initiative. Mary and Lincoln met later at a social function and eventually did get married.

The couple had four sons— Robert Todd , Edward Baker, William Wallace, and Thomas “Tad”—of whom only Robert survived to adulthood.

Before marrying Todd, Lincoln was involved with other potential matches. Around 1837, he purportedly met and became romantically involved with Anne Rutledge. Before they had a chance to be engaged, a wave of typhoid fever came over New Salem, and Anne died at age 22.

Her death was said to have left Lincoln severely depressed. However, several historians disagree on the extent of Lincoln’s relationship with Rutledge, and his level of sorrow at her death might be more the makings of legend.

About a year after the death of Rutledge, Lincoln courted Mary Owens. The two saw each other for a few months, and marriage was considered. But in time, Lincoln called off the match.

In 1834, Lincoln began his political career and was elected to the Illinois state legislature as a member of the Whig Party . More than a decade later, from 1847 to 1849, he served a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives. His foray into national politics seemed to be as unremarkable as it was brief. He was the lone Whig from Illinois, showing party loyalty but finding few political allies.

As a congressman, Lincoln used his term in office to speak out against the Mexican-American War and supported Zachary Taylor for president in 1848. His criticism of the war made him unpopular back home, and he decided not to run for second term. Instead, he returned to Springfield to practice law.

By the 1850s, the railroad industry was moving west, and Illinois found itself becoming a major hub for various companies. Lincoln served as a lobbyist for the Illinois Central Railroad as its company attorney.

Success in several court cases brought other business clients as well, including banks, insurance companies, and manufacturing firms. Lincoln also worked in some criminal trials.

In one case, a witness claimed that he could identify Lincoln’s client who was accused of murder, because of the intense light from a full moon. Lincoln referred to an almanac and proved that the night in question had been too dark for the witness to see anything clearly. His client was acquitted.

As a member of the Illinois state legislature, Lincoln supported the Whig politics of government-sponsored infrastructure and protective tariffs. This political understanding led him to formulate his early views on slavery, not so much as a moral wrong, but as an impediment to economic development.

In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act , which repealed the Missouri Compromise , allowing individual states and territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. The law provoked violent opposition in Kansas and Illinois, and it gave rise to today’s Republican Party .

This awakened Lincoln’s political zeal once again, and his views on slavery moved more toward moral indignation. Lincoln joined the Republican Party in 1856.

In 1857, the Supreme Court issued its controversial Dred Scott decision, declaring Black people were not citizens and had no inherent rights. Although Lincoln felt Black people weren’t equal to whites, he believed America’s founders intended that all men were created with certain inalienable rights.

Lincoln decided to challenge sitting U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas for his seat. In his nomination acceptance speech, he criticized Douglas, the Supreme Court , and President James Buchanan for promoting slavery then declared “a house divided cannot stand.”

During Lincoln’s 1858 U.S. Senate campaign against Douglas, he participated in seven debates held in different cities across Illinois. The two candidates didn’t disappoint, giving stirring debates on issues such as states’ rights and western expansion. But the central issue was slavery.

Newspapers intensely covered the debates, often times with partisan commentary. In the end, the state legislature elected Douglas, but the exposure vaulted Lincoln into national politics.

With his newly enhanced political profile, in 1860, political operatives in Illinois organized a campaign to support Lincoln for the presidency. On May 18, at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Lincoln surpassed better-known candidates such as William Seward of New York and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Lincoln’s nomination was due, in part, to his moderate views on slavery, his support for improving the national infrastructure, and the protective tariff.

In the November 1860 general election, Lincoln faced his friend and rival Stephen Douglas, this time besting him in a four-way race that included John C. Breckinridge of the Northern Democrats and John Bell of the Constitution Party. Lincoln received not quite 40 percent of the popular vote but carried 180 of 303 Electoral College votes, thus winning the U.S. presidency. He grew his trademark beard after his election.

Lincoln’s Cabinet

Following his election to the presidency in 1860, Lincoln selected a strong cabinet composed of many of his political rivals, including William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Edwin Stanton.

Formed out the adage “Hold your friends close and your enemies closer,” Lincoln’s cabinet became one of his strongest assets in his first term in office, and he would need them as the clouds of war gathered over the nation the following year.

Before Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union, and by April, the U.S. military installation Fort Sumter was under siege in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, the guns stationed to protect the harbor blazed toward the fort, signaling the start of the U.S. Civil War , America’s costliest and bloodiest war.

The newly President Lincoln responded to the crisis wielding powers as no other president before him: He distributed $2 million from the Treasury for war material without an appropriation from Congress; he called for 75,000 volunteers into military service without a declaration of war; and he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, allowing for the arrest and imprisonment of suspected Confederate States sympathizers without a warrant.

Crushing the rebellion would be difficult under any circumstances, but the Civil War, after decades of white-hot partisan politics, was especially onerous. From all directions, Lincoln faced disparagement and defiance. He was often at odds with his generals, his cabinet, his party, and a majority of the American people.

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln delivered his official Emancipation Proclamation , reshaping the cause of the Civil War from saving the Union to abolishing slavery.

The Union Army’s first year and a half of battlefield defeats made it difficult to keep morale high and support strong for a reunification of the nation. And the Union victory at Antietam on September 22, 1862, while by no means conclusive, was hopeful. It gave Lincoln the confidence to officially change the goals of the war. On that same day, he issued a preliminary proclamation that slaves in states rebelling against the Union would be free as of January 1.

The Emancipation Proclamation stated that all individuals who were held as enslaved people in rebellious states “henceforward shall be free.” The action was more symbolic than effective because the North didn’t control any states in rebellion, and the proclamation didn’t apply to border states, Tennessee, or some Louisiana parishes.

As a result, the Union army shared the Proclamation’s mandate only after it had taken control of Confederate territory. In the far reaches of western Texas, that day finally came on June 19, 1865—more than two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. For decades, many Black Americans have celebrated this anniversary, known as Juneteenth or Emancipation Day, and in 2021, President Joe Biden made Juneteenth a national holiday.

Still, the Emancipation Proclamation did have some immediate impact. It permitted Black Americans to serve in the Union Army for the first time, which contributed to the eventual Union victory. The historic declaration also paved the way for the passage of the 13 th Amendment that ended legal slavery in the United States.

On November 19, 1863, Lincoln delivered what would become his most famous speech and one of the most important speeches in American history: the Gettysburg Address .

Addressing a crowd of around 15,000 people, Lincoln delivered his 272-word speech at one of the bloodiest battlefields of the Civil War, the Gettysburg National Cemetery in Pennsylvania. The Civil War, Lincoln said, was the ultimate test of the preservation of the Union created in 1776, and the people who died at Gettysburg fought to uphold this cause.

Lincoln evoked the Declaration of Independence , saying it was up to the living to ensure that the “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” and this Union was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

A common interpretation was that the president was expanding the cause of the Civil War from simply reunifying the Union to also fighting for equality and abolishing slavery.

Following Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the war effort gradually improved for the North, though more by attrition than by brilliant military victories.

But by 1864, the Confederate armies had eluded major defeat and Lincoln was convinced he’d be a one-term president. His nemesis George B. McClellan , the former commander of the Army of the Potomac, challenged him for the presidency, but the contest wasn’t even close. Lincoln received 55 percent of the popular vote and 212 of 243 electoral votes.

On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee , commander of the Army of Virginia, surrendered his forces to Union General Ulysses S. Grant . The Civil War was for all intents and purposes over.

Reconstruction had already began during the Civil War, as early as 1863 in areas firmly under Union military control, and Lincoln favored a policy of quick reunification with a minimum of retribution. He was confronted by a radical group of Republicans in Congress that wanted complete allegiance and repentance from former Confederates. Before a political debate had any chance to firmly develop, Lincoln was killed.

Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, by well-known actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House across the street and laid in a coma for nine hours before dying the next morning. He was 56. His death was mourned by millions of citizens in the North and South alike.

Lincoln’s body first lay in state at the U. S. Capitol. About 600 invited guests attended a funeral in the East Room of the White House on April 19, though an inconsolable Mary Todd Lincoln wasn’t present.

His body was transported to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois, by a funeral train. Newspapers publicized the schedule of the train, which made stops along various cities that played roles in Lincoln’s path to Washington. In 10 cities, the casket was removed and placed in public for memorial services. Lincoln was finally placed in a tomb on May 4.

On the day of Lincoln’s death, Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the 17 th president at the Kirkwood House hotel in Washington.

Lincoln, already taller than most, is known for his distinctive top hats. Although it’s unclear when he began wearing them, historians believe he likely chose the style as a gimmick.

He wore a top hat to Ford’s Theatre on the night of his assassination. Following his death, the War Department preserved the hat until 1867 when, with Mary Todd Lincoln’s approval, it was transferred to the Patent Office and the Smithsonian Institution. Worried about the commotion it might cause, the Smithsonian stored the hat in a basement instead of putting it on display. It was finally exhibited in 1893, and it’s now one of the Institution’s most treasured items.

Lincoln is frequently cited by historians and average citizens alike as America’s greatest president. An aggressively activist commander-in-chief, Lincoln used every power at his disposal to assure victory in the Civil War and end slavery in the United States.

Some scholars doubt that the Union would have been preserved had another person of lesser character been in the White House. According to historian Michael Burlingame , “No president in American history ever faced a greater crisis and no president ever accomplished as much.”

Lincoln’s philosophy was perhaps best summed up in his Second Inaugural Address , when he stated, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

The Lincoln Memorial

Since its dedication in 1922, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington has honored the president’s legacy. Inspired by the Greek Parthenon, the monument features a 19-foot high statue of Lincoln and engravings of the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Former President William Howard Taft served as chair of the Lincoln Memorial Commission, which oversaw its design and construction.

The monument is the most visited in the city, attracting around 8 million people per year. Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the memorial’s steps in 1963.

Lincoln has been the subject of numerous films about his life and presidency, rooted in both realism and absurdity.

Among the earlier films featuring the former president is Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), which stars Henry Fonda and focuses on Lincoln’s early life and law career. A year later, Abe Lincoln in Illinois gave a dramatized account of Lincoln’s life after leaving Kentucky.

The most notable modern film is Lincoln , the 2012 biographical drama directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln and Sally Field as his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln . Day-Lewis won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, and the film was nominated for Best Picture.

A more fantastical depiction of Lincoln came in the 1989 comedy film Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure , in which the titular characters played by Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter travel back in time for the president’s help in completing their high school history report. Lincoln gives the memorable instruction to “be excellent to each other and... party on, dudes!”

Another example is the 2012 action film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter , based on a 2010 novel by Seth Grahame-Smith. Benjamin Walker plays Lincoln, who leads a secret double life hunting the immortal creatures and even fighting them during the Civil War.

Lincoln’s role during the Civil War is heavily explored in the 1990 Ken Burns documentary The Civil War , which won two Emmy Awards and two Grammys. In 2022, the History Channel aired a three-part docuseries about his life simply titled Abraham Lincoln .

• Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
• I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
• No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other ’ s consent.
• I have learned the value of old friends by making many new ones.
• Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
• Whenever I hear anyone arguing over slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
• To give the victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
• Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
• Don ’ t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
• Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.
• With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation ’ s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
• I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.
• Nearly all men can handle adversity, if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
• I ’ m the big buck of this lick. If any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns.
• We can complain because rose bushes have thorns.
• Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
• It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us !

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.

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Abraham Lincoln Road Trip: 13 Spots To Explore In Illinois

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While Illinois is called the Land of Lincoln, the truth is that Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, was born February 12, 1809, in a cabin 3 miles south of Hodgenville, Kentucky to Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln. Nancy died during Lincoln’s childhood, and Thomas remarried Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow with two girls and a boy. The Lincoln family moved to Southwestern Indiana in 1816 and Illinois in 1830.

Until he went to Washington D.C., for the presidency, so from 1830 on, Honest Abe’s life was carved out in the state of Illinois. If you are a Lincoln buff, there are many trails and spots to see and learn about his life.

We recommend breaking your Illinois road trip up to see sites in different sections of the state. As you plan, note that Central Illinois probably has the most Lincoln sites, and they are close together.

1. Lincoln Heritage Museum, Lincoln

With over 100 Lincoln artifacts, the Lincoln Heritage Museum gives a wonderful overview of Abraham Lincoln’s life. Located at Lincoln College, this museum is special to me because I visited it with my late father.

Also in Lincoln, on the town square, is a plaque marking the 1876 headquarters of a gang of conspirators who planned to steal Abraham Lincoln’s body and holdit for ransom!

Pro Tip : If you enjoy the fun and quirky, be sure to see the Railsplitter Covered Wagon that is recognized as the world’s largest covered wagon! Old Abe is driving, and the wagon stands 24 feet tall!

Charles Brutlag / Shutterstock

2. Lincoln’s New Salem, Petersburg

Lincon’s New Salem is a reconstructed village where Lincoln’s life in Illinois really began. This is where he first struck out on his own. Here he spent six years clerking and operating the Barry Lincoln store. In New Salem, Abraham Lincoln enlisted in the Black Hawk War and supposedly fell in love with Ann Rutledge, then later with Mary Todd. He split rails and began his political career, winning a seat in the Illinois General Assembly. This is a great place to see history and is a kid-friendly environment.

Eddie J. Rodriquez / Shutterstock

3. Lincoln’s Tomb, Springfield

Lincoln left Springfield for the last time in 1860 for the Presidency. The next time he returned was in his funeral train in April of 1865. Lincoln’s Tomb is his final resting place and that of the Lincoln family (except Robert). The tomb is a fitting memorial with a bit of history. Besides the solemn burial site, there is also a bit of fun to be had with Lincoln’s bronze statue; the tradition is to rub his nose for luck.

Be sure to look down the hill to check out the temporary receiving vault that held the bodies of the president and his sons Edward and William.

4. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, Springfield

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum is an interactive museum where you can learn about Lincoln’s life and the politics surrounding it. The museum is an in-depth review and offers wonderful theaters that bring Lincoln to life in a way that no other places do. The gift shop is a great place to find books and other Lincoln gifts, too!

Misty Fritz / Shutterstock

5. Carlinville Square And More, Carlinville

Moving south, there are some great Lincoln stops as well! The town of Carlinville has a couple neat Lincoln stops. Head to the Carlinville square to see two Lincoln murals, one of Lincoln as a lawyer, and one of Lincoln as a rail-splitter. Also, in Carlinville outside the United Methodist Church at the corner of South Broad and East First Street is a boulder signifying where Lincoln gave a speech while running against Stephen Douglas for the Illinois Senate Seat.

Pro Tip: Carlinville has the only square where Route 66 goes all the way around. If you’re interested in Route 66, check out my picks for 8 Best Stops On Route 66 In Central Illinois , too!

6. Abraham Lincoln Statue, Bunker Hill

This Lincoln statue is right between the two main streets! It is a bronze statue that was a gift from Captain Charles Clinton as a token of appreciation to the Illinois men under his command.

7. Mt. Vernon Appellate Courthouse, Mt. Vernon

In 1859 Abraham Lincoln successfully argued a famous tax case at the beautiful Mt. Vernon Courthouse . He had been part of the Eighth Judicial Circuit since 1839.

Pro Tip: In 1888 Clara Barton used this courthouse as a hospital. Tours are available.

8. Old Lincoln Courthouse And Museum, Beardstown

In Beardstown, you’ll find the Old Lincoln Courthouse and Museum , where Abraham Lincoln defended Duff Armstrong. This is the only courtroom where Lincoln practiced that’s still used as a courtroom today.

9. John Shastid’s Home, Pittsfield

Built in 1838, the Shastid family moved to Pittsfield from New Salem. Abraham Lincoln would dine with them when he was a circuit rider on legal business. While there is a lot of historic information here, the story I love most goes like this: After one meal, Lincoln, lost in thought, ate the last quail, leaving none for the Shastids’ son Thomas, who hollered out, “Abe Lincoln, you’re an old hog!”

Pro Tip: Pittsfield is full of history, from the amazing Civil War flag in the Menard County Courthouse to the cool East School Museum and the Pike County All Wars Museum .

APN Photography / Shutterstock

10. Sesquicentennial Square, Quincy

Western Illinois also offers up Lincoln history, and the site of the sixth debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas is located on the square in the center of Quincy . There is a lovely bronze relief of the Debate Memorial created by artist Lorado Taft. Details of their speeches are on tablets alongside the huge bronze relief.

On another side of the square is a Looking for Lincoln site that mentions his friendship with Quincy newspaper editor Andrew Johnston. He published some of Lincoln’s poetry anonymously.

Pro Tip: There is a great Italian restaurant on the square in Quincy called Tiramisu .

11. The Kibbe Museum, Carthage

The Kibbe Museum has an entire Lincoln room! There are several photographs along with an original reward poster for John Wilkes Booth! The museum also recently came into a rather morbid but fascinating memento: a lock of hair from William J. Fraim, a gentleman Lincoln defended unsuccessfully in Carthage. He was hanged and the lock of hair was saved. The Lincoln room goes through Lincoln’s life and death. My favorite piece is a hand-sewn flag that was made for Lincoln’s visit to town. There is also information on the Wide Awakes that helped campaign for Lincoln.

Outside of town is St. Simon Cemetery where some relatives of the Lincoln family are buried.

The Hancock County Courthouse is also a wonderful stop. With a rotunda of stained glass, the courthouse is stunningly beautiful. Abraham Lincoln spoke outside the Hancock County Courthouse on October 22, 1858.

12. Batavia Historical Society Museum, Batavia

Batavia is the first of two stops I recommend in northern Illinois. After President Lincoln died, Robert Lincoln did not believe his mother sane, and in 1875, a Chicago court agreed. Robert brought Mary to Bellevue Place. Located in Batavia, Mrs. Lincoln stayed at Bellevue Place from May 20 to September 11, 1875. Due to public outcry, she was soon released and returned to Springfield where she stayed with her sister Elizabeth at Edwards Place . The bed and dresser that Mary used while staying at Bellevue Place are on display in the Lincoln Room at the Batavia Historical Society Museum .

13. Tinker Swiss Cottage Museum And Gardens, Rockford

Robert Tinker built the widow Mary Manny the beautiful Tinker Swiss Cottage after they married. Mary had been wed to John Manny who created the Manny Reaper. Cyrus McCormick sued John Manny for patent infringement. John Manny hired Edwin M. Stanton to defend him, and Abraham Lincoln had a part in the defense. The case was won, but John Manny died from tuberculosis before learning of the verdict. The couch that Abraham Lincoln sat on in the Manny Mansion is now in the Tinker Cottage!

Take time to tour the state and stop by these amazing Lincoln sites and soak up a bit of Lincoln history!

Cindy Ladage is a freelance writer, blogger, and book author. She is married to a farmer and lives on a farm in central Illinois. Cindy loves to travel to rural areas and places less traveled and share details with her readers through her blog Traveling Adventures of a Farm Girl .

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Abraham Lincoln: Foreign Affairs

A key part of Abraham Lincoln's military strategy rested upon an effective blockade of the South's 3,500 miles of shoreline, including a dozen major ports and nearly two hundred inlets, bays, and navigable rivers. This was an almost impossible task for a nation with only a handful of naval ships. By the war's end, however, Lincoln had commissioned about five hundred ships, with an average of 150 on patrol at any one time. These ships captured or destroyed approximately fifteen hundred blockade runners. On the other hand, five out of six blockade runners evaded capture, enough to allow Britain to argue that it was a "paper blockade" not recognizable by international law. Most of this cargo, however, was lightweight luxury items, small munitions, and medicines. On the export side, the Confederacy shipped but a small percentage of its cash-earning cotton crop abroad during the war, five hundred thousand bales compared to ten million bales for the three years prior to the start of the Civil War.

Foreign Recognition and Intervention in the War

The issue of the blockade's effectiveness became the major foreign policy question in the first few years of the war. The Confederacy confidently expected England to escort Confederate cotton vessels or to send British merchant and war ships to Southern ports to pick up vitally needed cotton. To hasten this active intervention, the Confederacy informally cut off most cotton exports in 1861. Surprisingly, England took no official action to break the blockade and even tolerated the seizure by the Union of British ships trading with the Confederacy. Nor did England ever officially extend diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy.

This is not to say that the failure of England and other European countries officially to support the Confederacy was a foregone conclusion. Nor is it to say that no aid was extended from England to the Confederate war effort. Far from it. At several times during the war, both England and France came close to recognition and to intervention. It took all the skill of America's minister to England, Charles Francis Adams, the grandson of President John Adams and the son of President John Quincy Adams, to keep England out of the war.

Southern Belligerency Status

The first crisis occurred when England issued a proclamation of neutrality, which rested upon the logic of the Union's declared blockade. According to English reasoning, although Lincoln proclaimed the rebels to be insurrectionists and thus not recognizable under international law as a belligerent power engaged in war, his declared blockade was an act of war, which would have to be conducted against a sovereign state. Thus Lincoln had actually granted belligerency status to the Confederacy and thereby forced foreign powers to do the same. By proclaiming neutrality, England afforded the Confederacy the status of a belligerent power. Other European nations followed England's lead. Belligerency status gave the Confederacy the right, according to international law (signed by European nations after the Crimean War in 1856), to contract loans and to purchase arms from neutral nations. It also allowed England to provide safe harbors for both Union and Confederate warships and merchant vessels, to build blockade runners and warships for the Confederacy, and to formally debate in Parliament the merits of active intervention.

The delicacy of the situation exploded into near battle when two Confederate diplomats, James Mason and John Slidell, were seized by the U.S. Navy from a British ship, the Trent, en route to England. England's prime minister, Lord Palmerston, sent Lincoln an ultimatum demanding an apology and the release of Mason and Slidell, and ordered troops to Canada in preparation for war. He also seized all English shipments to the U.S., including a vital supply of saltpeter, the principal ingredient of gunpowder, of which the Union was in desperately low supply. Lincoln had little choice but to release Mason and Slidell, although he avoided a public apology. England, greatly relieved, refused to press the issue.

For the remainder of the war, English shipbuilders constructed dozens of lightweight blockade runners for the Confederacy as well as several warships. The C.S.S. Alabama and Florida sunk sixty-four American merchant ships in the course of the war. In France, Louis Napoleon sent thousands of French soldiers into Mexico to overthrow the regime of Benito Juérez in hopes of making the nation a French colony. He unofficially supported the Confederacy but stopped short of formal recognition. In the summer of 1862, a coalition of European nations—Britain, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia—came close to offering to mediate the war, which would have been tantamount to recognizing Confederate independence.

In the end, however, no European nation offered mediation nor extended recognition of the Confederacy. Among the reasons undermining active European intervention were several principal considerations. Economically, there were developments that shifted trade relations to emphasize the North's economic ties with Europe. To begin with, huge cotton exports in 1857-1860 had enabled English manufactures to stockpile inventories that carried them through much of the war. Additionally, new sources of cotton in Egypt and India replaced the Southern supply after 1862. Furthermore, the Union became a major consumer of British iron, ships, armaments, and woolen uniforms and blankets, which absorbed the decline in the U.S. market for English cotton textiles. At the same time, crop failures in Western Europe in 1861 and 1862 increased European dependence on American grain and flour, making King Corn as powerful as King Cotton.

Socially, the open hostility of England's working class to the Confederacy as a nation of aristocrats and slavemasters countered the support for the Confederacy by English members of the upper class. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation served to transform British antislavery sentiment into strong political opposition to the Confederacy. On the diplomatic front, there was a delicate balancing act between France and England, as neither side wanted to be the first to recognize Confederate independence lest the other use it to foment a new alliance with the Union.

All of these factors came to play in a series of diplomatic flourishes and sentiment shifts that reflected the battlefield fortunes of Union armies. But nothing was perhaps more consequential than the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation when combined with Lincoln's iron determination to win the war. Once the war became a crusade to destroy slavery, and once the Union Army presented itself as an army of liberation, rather than just an army of national self-preservation, it was almost impossible for England to intervene on the side of the Confederacy. British public opinion had become strongly abolitionist, and no government could have taken the other side.

Michael Burlingame

Professor Emeritus of History Connecticut College

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3 Days Following President Lincoln's Footsteps in Washington, DC

Explore president abraham lincoln’s washington, dc with this itinerary, including where he stayed before moving into the white house, how he spent his final days and much more..

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Day 1: From the Lincoln Memorial to Ford's Theatre

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Start your day at the  Lincoln Memorial . Lincoln’s statue gazes out across Memorial Bridge to  Arlington National Cemetery , which was home to Robert E. Lee’s former estate. Hop into a cab to visit  President Lincoln’s Cottage . Lincoln spent his summers here in 1862, 1863 and 1864, and drafted the parts of the Emancipation Proclamation there.

Have a late lunch in bustling  Penn Quarter , then explore the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery . The 16th president celebrated his second inaugural ball in the grand space known as the Lincoln Gallery. The Portrait Gallery’s collection of presidential portraits includes the last photograph taken of Lincoln.

From there, it’s a quick walk to  Ford’s Theatre . The underground museum illustrates the events leading up to Lincoln’s assassination. Catch an evening performance of an American classic.

Day 2: Continue in the 16th President's Footsteps

National Museum of American History

Take in the treasures at the  National Museum of American History , including Lincoln’s top hat. Civil War buffs can also spy the chairs that Grant and Lee sat in during the surrender at Appomattox.

Pause for a photo outside the White House, then have lunch at the  Willard InterContinental , where Lincoln stayed before moving into the White House in 1861. There’s a copy of his bill on display in the hotel’s history gallery.

Willard InterContinental Washington

Pay a visit to New York Avenue Presbyterian Church , just two blocks away; it's where Lincoln worshipped. Emulate Lincoln’s love for Shakespeare with an evening production at the  Shakespeare Theatre Company  or  Folger Shakespeare Theatre .

Day 3: Capitol Hill & More

BKL via Flickr

Begin your day at the National Museum of Health & Medicine , which houses a fascinating collection of artifacts, including the bullet that took Lincoln’s life and fragments from his skull.

From there, head to Fort Stephens. Part of the fort system erected to defend Washington, DC, it was the site of the only battle to take place within the District, where Lincoln was famously under fire.

Spend the afternoon on  Capitol Hill . Explore the fascinating collections of Civil War photographs at the  Library of Congress , then unwind in Lincoln Park  - it’s home to the original memorial to Lincoln, paid for by newly freed slaves.

Looking for more ideas for your visit to Washington, DC? Explore  even more adventures and itineraries  here.

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The History Hit Miscellany of Facts, Figures and Fascinating Finds

• United States

7 Historic Sites Associated with Abraham Lincoln

Follow in the footsteps of abraham lincoln, from the gettysburg battlefield where he made his famous address to the lincoln memorial commemorating his legacy..

Lily Johnson

19 aug 2021.

The 16th President of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln, led the Union during the American Civil War, and is perhaps most famous for his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, resulting in the abolition of slavery. To follow in his footsteps is to understand the journey of a country through one of its most tumultuous periods.

Many sites commemorate his iconic figure and his achievements, from the majestic Lincoln Memorial to the sombre Gettysburg Battlefield where Lincoln gave his famous address. Any tour of Abraham Lincoln’s life would also be incomplete without a visit to Ford’s Theatre, where it was so dramatically ended. Wherever your travels take you, we’ve compiled a fascinating selection of historic places linked to Abraham Lincoln, with both its most famous sites and a few hidden gems you won’t want to miss.

1. Gettysburg Battlefield

Abraham Lincoln’s presidency was shaped and remembered for his victory in the American Civil War and no more is this felt than at Gettysburg National Military Park. In 1863, the small town of Gettysburg became the scene of one of the bloodiest battles in the war and one which marked a significant turning point in favour of Lincoln’s Unionists. This would also become the site of Lincoln’s famed Gettysburg Address, said to be the most quoted speech in American history.

2. Ford's Theatre

It was in Ford’s Theatre on the night of 14 April 1865 that well-known actor John Wilkes Booth shot and fatally injured President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was the first American President to be assassinated. Ford’s Theatre is now an operating theatre house as well as a museum showcasing a variety of historical artefacts related to Lincoln’s presidency, his assassination and his life in Washington. Ford’s Theatre also stands across the street from Petersen House, where the President was taken following the shooting and where he subsequently died.

3. Petersen House

Petersen House was the boarding house where President Abraham Lincoln was taken after being shot across the road at Ford Theatre on the night of 14 April 1865. The President died the morning after arriving. The Peterson House Museum offers its visitors a brief tour including the room where Lincoln died as well as viewing various historical artefacts relating to his assassination.

4. Lincoln Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial is a Greek style monument in Washington DC’s West Potomac Park built to honour the sixteenth President of the United States of America. It houses a giant statue of Lincoln inside the memorial with the words “In this temple as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the union the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever”. As the site of many important political speeches and events, Lincoln Memorial has a history of its own. In particular, it was the site where Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech on 28 August 1963.

5. Lincoln Tomb

Lincoln Tomb in Springfield, Illinois, is the final resting place of Abraham Lincoln. The tomb is now also the burial place of his wife and three of his four sons. Visitors to Lincoln Tomb can enter the 117-foot brick and granite structure and learn about Lincoln through his own speeches, which are displayed throughout.

6. Mount Rushmore

Abraham Lincoln’s vital role in shaping his country is commemorated at Mount Rushmore, where his face was immortalised alongside those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. The artist, Gutzon Borglum said he chose Lincoln to represent the preservation of the United States.

7. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Illinois explores the life of the 16th US president and his legacy, all in the context of wider US history. From detailed recreations of the places where major events in his life took place – the White House, his boyhood home – to genuine personal possessions, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum has a range of exhibits about Lincoln.

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Abraham Lincoln’s Funeral Train: How America Mourned for Three Weeks

By: Christopher Klein

Updated: October 5, 2023 | Original: February 8, 2022

After dying from a bullet wound on April 15, 1865 , Abraham Lincoln was not permitted to rest in peace—not immediately at least. Even in death, the assassinated president was called upon to make one final sacrifice to the Union as his body was paraded across a grief-laden country in a funeral pageant that spanned nearly 1,700 miles.

“Now, he belongs to the ages,” Edwin Stanton reportedly uttered when Lincoln passed, but the secretary of war didn’t believe the country was ready just yet to say goodbye. Although Mary Lincoln wanted her husband’s body to take the most direct route home to Springfield, Illinois for burial, Stanton convinced her to approve a more circuitous railroad journey that retraced the whistle stops Lincoln had made from the Illinois capital to the national capital four years earlier, just before his inauguration .

As dawn broke over Washington, D.C. , on April 21, the clopping of hooves broke the silence as horses drew the hearse carrying Lincoln’s black mahogany coffin from the U.S. Capitol, where it had spent the prior two nights lying in state, to the nearby Baltimore & Ohio Railroad station. Gripping the coffin’s silver handles, soldiers carried Lincoln’s body onto the presidential railroad car, which featured luxurious crimson silk upholstery and walnut and oak finishing. Consumed by war, Lincoln never had a chance to see the newly constructed railcar, let alone ride in it.

Inside the funeral car, the presidential coffin joined a smaller one that contained the body of his son, Willie, who had died from typhoid fever three years earlier at the age of 11. Willie’s casket had been held in a vault in a Georgetown cemetery awaiting interment in Springfield at the end of Lincoln’s presidency, which no one envisioned would end so prematurely.

Lincoln’s widow, who was too distraught to leave the White House for five weeks, was not among the funeral train’s 150 passengers, who included a funeral director and an embalmer. Wishing to give Americans a chance to see their fallen president face-to-face one final time, Stanton had gained Mary Lincoln’s consent to allow the lifting of the upper half of the casket lid for public viewings in 10 cities along the route.

The great advances in the art of embalming during the Civil War had allowed the unrefrigerated bodies of tens of thousands of soldiers to be returned to their families for burial, and the same process was used to preserve the commander-in-chief. Embalmer Charles Brown proclaimed there would be no perceptible change in Lincoln’s appearance by the end of the lengthy tour. “The body of the president will never know decay,” he assured the Chicago Tribune .

William H.H. Gould, the conductor on the funeral train’s first leg, recalled that the president appeared at rest leaving the national capital. “He looked as if he were asleep in pleasant dreams,” Gould recollected.

Enormous Crowds Attended Round-the-Clock Viewings of Lincoln

With the last embers of the Civil War yet to be snuffed out and Lincoln’s assassin on the loose, nerves ran high as the funeral train made its first stop in rainy Baltimore, John Wilkes Booth’s hometown and a city once so hostile to Lincoln that as president-elect he traveled through it incognito due to fears for his life.

No such animosity could be found four years later as a quartet of horses wearing black hoods bore a rosewood hearse through muddy streets for three hours before a public viewing. The mourners included approximately 30,000 Black marchers and spectators.  New York Tribune reporter Charles Page was struck by the sight of “white and black side by side in the rain and the mud” and the lack of “consciousness of any difference of color.”

Similar scenes repeated themselves as grief-stricken Americans communed in city after city. “The martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when alive,” declared preacher Henry Ward Beecher. “The nation rises up at every stage of his coming. Cities and states are his pallbearers.”

In Philadelphia , tens of thousands of mourners escorted the presidential coffin to Independence Hall, where in 1861 Lincoln declared he “would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender” the principles of the Declaration of Independence . During a 20-hour public viewing, approximately 150,000 people passed by Lincoln as he rested near the foot of the Liberty Bell.

Even larger crowds emerged in Manhattan. There, a half-million spectators—including six-year-old Theodore Roosevelt gazing down from a second-floor window in his family’s mansion—witnessed a massive procession in which 16 horses hauled an elaborate hearse decorated with patriotic imagery. An estimated 125,000 people filed past Lincoln’s corpse in City Hall.

Lincoln’s Body Began to Show Signs of Decay

The limits of embalming in an age before refrigeration were becoming clear by the time Lincoln’s body departed New York City . Newspapers reported that Lincoln’s eyes were sunken, his visage sallow and withered. “It is not the genial, kindly face of Abraham Lincoln,” reported the New York Evening Post . “It is but a ghastly shadow."

“No perceptible change has taken place in the body of the late president since it left Washington,” Brown assured the press. However, the public viewings were clearly taking a toll as the embalmer tried to hide Lincoln’s darkening countenance with chalk-white makeup, and the perfume of lilacs and camellias struggled to conceal the odor from the decomposing body.

Still, the public viewings continued. In fact, civic pride spurred the construction of more extravagant hearses, catafalques and memorial arches at each successive stop as if cities were trying to outdo each other in their expressions of grief.

Perhaps more moving than the grand spectacles of collective mourning, though, were the private moments of sorrow exhibited by those who traveled from miles around to camp along the railroad tracks, seeking a momentary glimpse of the presidential coffin through the railcar’s windows. For mile upon mile, men took off their hats and bowed their heads as the train passed. Women whispered prayers. Choirs sang hymns. Through the dead of night, bonfires alongside the tracks illuminated the way westward. For a country that had bottled up four years of grief during the Civil War, the funeral train served as an emotional catharsis.

The Funeral Train United the North

The crowds along the rails swelled as the funeral train steamed into the Midwest. “As the president’s remains went farther westward, where the people more especially claimed him as their own, the intensity of feeling seemed if possible to grow deeper,” reported Brigadier General Edward Townsend.

Even at 3 A.M., 12,000 people gathered in Richmond, Indiana, as the funeral train passed under a 25-foot-high arch erected by its citizens. One woman dressed as the Genius of Liberty wept over a mock coffin, while a committee of ladies boarded the train to present a pair of floral wreaths.

After a public viewing in Chicago , where the line of mourners stretched more than a mile, the funeral train finally reached Springfield, Illinois on May 3. After a 1,645-mile journey, Lincoln was home.

The funeral train had passed through 400 cities and towns. One million Americans viewed Lincoln’s corpse, and millions more saw the train as the North united to bid Lincoln farewell.

“By and large, the funeral train experience—and Lincoln’s posthumous image—knitted northern white Democrats and Republicans together, and even offered northern African Americans some protected access to public life at a time of great danger for them,” says Richard Wightman Fox, author of Lincoln’s Body: A Cultural History .

After a 24-hour public viewing in the Illinois state capitol, Lincoln’s coffin was finally closed on the morning of May 4. Following the burial ceremony at Oak Ridge Cemetery, which included an hour-long eulogy, the coffins of father and son were placed inside a limestone vault and the doors and iron grating shuttered. Nearly three weeks after he breathed his last, Lincoln was finally laid to rest.

HISTORY Vault: Abraham Lincoln

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What were the hobbies or interests of Abraham Lincoln?

Travel Destinations

June 19, 2023

By Kristy Tolley

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States and is widely regarded as one of the nation’s greatest leaders. Despite his busy schedule as a politician and statesman, Lincoln had a wide range of hobbies and interests that helped him relax and unwind. His interests ranged from reading and writing to farming and gardening, hunting and fishing, music, and storytelling. Let’s take a closer look at some of the hobbies and interests that Lincoln enjoyed throughout his life.

Reading and Writing

Lincoln was an avid reader and writer throughout his life. He was known to carry books with him wherever he went and was said to have read every book he could get his hands on. As a young man, Lincoln taught himself to read and write, and he spent many hours studying the Bible, Shakespeare, and other great works of literature. He also wrote extensively, both for personal enjoyment and for political purposes. Lincoln’s speeches and writings are renowned for their clarity, eloquence, and honesty, and they continue to inspire people around the world today.

Lincoln’s interest in politics began at a young age, and he was an active participant in local and state politics throughout his life. He served in the Illinois state legislature and the United States Congress before being elected President in 1860. As President, Lincoln led the nation through one of its most challenging times, the Civil War, and he is remembered for his unwavering commitment to preserving the Union and ending slavery.

Before entering politics, Lincoln practiced law for many years. He was known for his skill as a lawyer, and he worked tirelessly to defend the rights of his clients. Lincoln’s legal career helped him develop the critical thinking skills and attention to detail that would serve him well in his later political career.

Farming and Gardening

Despite his busy schedule, Lincoln enjoyed spending time on his farm in Illinois. He was an enthusiastic farmer and gardener, and he took great pride in his crops and livestock. Lincoln believed that farming was a noble profession, and he often spoke of the virtues of hard work and self-reliance that he learned from his time on the farm.

Lincoln was an avid hunter and enjoyed spending time in the great outdoors. He was known for his marksmanship and enjoyed hunting a variety of game, including deer and wild turkey. Lincoln believed that hunting was an important part of American life, and he often spoke of the need to preserve the country’s wildlife and natural resources.

In addition to hunting, Lincoln also enjoyed fishing. He was an experienced angler and enjoyed fishing in the streams and rivers near his home. Lincoln believed that fishing was a peaceful and relaxing activity that allowed him to connect with nature and escape from the pressures of politics and public life.

Lincoln had a deep love of music and was an accomplished musician himself. He could play the harmonica, banjo, and violin, and he was known to sing and play music with his friends and family. Lincoln believed that music had the power to bring people together and lift their spirits, and he often used music as a way to connect with others.

Lincoln was a frequent patron of the theater and enjoyed attending plays and performances whenever he could. He was particularly fond of Shakespeare’s works and was known to quote from them frequently. Lincoln believed that the theater was an important part of American culture and that it had the power to educate, inform, and inspire.

Storytelling

Lincoln was a gifted storyteller and enjoyed sharing stories with his friends and family. He was particularly adept at using humor and wit to make his stories memorable and engaging. Lincoln believed that storytelling was an important part of American culture and that it had the power to entertain, educate, and inspire.

Athleticism

Despite his tall and somewhat awkward appearance, Lincoln was a surprisingly athletic man. He enjoyed playing sports and was known for his strength and endurance. Lincoln believed that athleticism was an important part of a healthy and well-rounded life and encouraged others to stay active and fit.

Lincoln believed that education was the key to success in life and was an advocate for public education throughout his political career. He believed that every person should have access to a quality education and that it was the responsibility of the government to provide it. Lincoln’s commitment to education helped to lay the foundation for the modern American public school system and continues to inspire educators and students around the world today.

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Kristy Tolley

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“A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand”: Deciphering Lincoln’s Warning About Civil War

By tim brinkhof | may 30, 2024.

On June 16, 1858, a beardless Abraham Lincoln took the stage at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield to formally accept his nomination for U.S. senator on behalf of the state’s freshly formed Republican Party. 

In a short speech whose fame might rival that of the Gettysburg Address , the future president warned the “gentlemen of the Convention” that the country’s divided stance on slavery could only lead to civil war. 

“‘A house divided against itself cannot stand,’” Lincoln declared . “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”

These prophetic words come from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament, in which Jesus informs the Pharisees that “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.” They now rank among the most iconic in the history of American politics . 

But while the phrase has since been quoted by countless politicians in and outside the U.S., and went on to inspire popular TV shows like HBO’s House of the Dragon (which also revolves around a civil war), its original meaning is not as obvious as one might think.

What “A House Divided” Really Means

A common misconception about the House Divided speech is that Lincoln believed the Union would destroy itself as a result of its inability to regulate the spread of slavery. This is not the case, however. “I do not expect the Union to be dissolved,” Lincoln stressed. “I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided.”

Cessation would come through civil war: a resolve by Northern and Southern leaders to settle through combat what they could not agree on in conversation. A succession of ineffective and hotly contested laws—including the 1820 Missouri Compromise , which outlawed slavery in parts of the recently acquired Louisiana Territory , among other actions—indicated to Lincoln that the pro-slavery elements of U.S. society could not coexist under the same roof as abolitionist elements. 

If the house—the Union—was to remain intact, one side had to subjugate the other. 

In 1858, three years before Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, Lincoln did not yet know which side would ultimately emerge victorious. Still, he knew there could only be one successor. 

“Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it,” the future president proclaimed, “and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South.”

In addition to formulating a vision of the future, Lincoln’s House Divided speech takes aim at his senatorial rival, the incumbent Democrat Stephen Douglas. Whereas Lincoln advocated for federal control over the spread of slavery, thus maintaining the balance of power outlined by the Missouri Compromise, Douglas championed popular sovereignty, the idea that new territories should be able to decide for themselves whether slavery would be legal within their borders. 

Lincoln’s thoughts on popular sovereignty—a system which, it should be noted, only took into account the votes of white, landowning men—were greatly influenced by the Dred Scott decision , the outcome of a case brought to the U.S. Supreme Court a year prior. Scott and his wife Harriet, an enslaved Black couple, sued for freedom when their enslavers took them from Missouri, a state where slavery was legal, to Illinois, a place where it was not. 

When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Scott’s enslavers, it essentially opened the door for Southern slaveholders to take people they enslaved into free territories. This move convinced Lincoln that the balance of powers could not be maintained, and that the entire U.S. would soon end up either permitting slavery or outlawing it altogether. 

“We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their state free,” he declared, referencing both Scott and Douglas, “and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.”

Lincoln’s Legacy

Although Lincoln lost the senatorial race to Douglas, his House Divided speech, and the equally publicized Lincoln-Douglas debates that followed paved the way for Lincoln’s successful presidential campaign in 1860. Running against Unionist John Bell and Southern Democrat John C. Breckenridge, the more charismatic and well-versed Lincoln won the White House with 180 electoral votes—dwarfing the 12 procured by Douglas, who also ran for office on the Northern Democratic ticket.

Lincoln’s oratorial eloquence was rivaled only by his clairvoyance. As foretold, the U.S. readily descended into civil war after his inauguration, resulting in the abolition of chattel slavery following the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. 

At the same time, one could argue that Lincoln’s house remained divided. Following the Civil War , former enslavers obstructed Reconstruction-era policymaking in the South. Instead of properly integrating formerly enslaved people into society, new structures were put in place to prolong their systemic oppression. These means ranged from sharecropping—a form of servitude that differed from antebellum slavery only in name—to racial segregation, a policy that continued until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

As a democracy with only two consequential political parties, the U.S. has repeatedly teetered on the edge of civil unrest. When tensions flare , commentators and candidates regularly echo Lincoln’s famous words. Now, all they need to do is listen to them.

Read More Stories About Famous Quotations:

Broome County artists to travel to Illinois to paint a mural of President Lincoln

VESTAL (WBNG) -- Rebecca and Stephen Whitman owners of Stilettos Fine Arts Studio will be making the trip to Lincoln, Illi. this weekend to paint a 1,000-square-foot mural of Abraham Lincoln on the side of a local business.

The couple got the offer after Stephen’s work on a mural in Rockville, Ind. was noticed impressing the contractor. The Whitmans won’t be doing the project alone however, they will be doing it alongside world-renowned mural artist Bruce Greig, who has done many pieces throughout the southern tier.

The painting of Lincoln took about a month to complete while balancing the responsibilities of their business as well.

“It was about a month,” Rebecca said. “I’ve been down here, and I was working on it because I have to run my business. We teach students we’ve been down here just a few hours here, a few hours there, over the course of a month.”

Stephen whose work got the ball rolling on their Illinois gig is extremely excited to get out to Illinois and leave his mark on the Midwest once again.

“I mean, it’s spontaneous,” Stephen exclaimed. “It’s like dude, you get to hop in a car and like you’re driving and someone’s paying you to go do something you love and you’re going to create something thousands of people are going to see. The adrenaline rush is so different. I can’t explain that you know, it’s just, it’s inspirational man.”seven to

The trio of Rebecca, Stephen and Bruce are expected to take seven to nine days to finish the mural weather permitting but classes will still be held at their art studio while they’re gone thanks to volunteers.

Copyright 2024 WBNG. All rights reserved.

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Guest Essay

The 19th-Century Club You’ve Never Heard of That Changed the World

By Jon Grinspan

Dr. Grinspan is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the author of “ Wide Awake : The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War.”

George Kimball was ready for war as soon as the first brick hit his head.

The 20-year-old printer was listening to an abolitionist lecture in Boston’s Bowdoin Square during the 1860 presidential campaign, when a pro-slavery throng tried to shut it down. Kimball was prepared, present as part of a torch-bearing, black-clad bodyguard called the Wide Awakes, who beat the brick-throwers back using their torches as clubs.

As Kimball walked home, blood in his eyes, he wanted “war declared at once.” Years later, having fought his way through from Bull Run to Gettysburg to Petersburg, he still considered that Boston brickbat, “as much a casus belli as was the firing upon Fort Sumter.” For him, it was the embattled right to publicly protest slavery that sparked the conflict — a fight over free speech brought on the war.

Today, our starkest political debates often turn on similar questions of public speech and public violence. Across diverse conflicts, from college campuses to the Capitol’s steps, we keep asking where the line is between heated words and aggressive deeds. Though framed as a legal question concerning the First Amendment, more often it’s a conundrum for our political culture.

In a democracy, how far is too far?

It’s a question that fueled America’s bloodiest war. The Civil War was fought over slavery (anyone who says it wasn’t is just wrong). But how did American slavery, which began in 1619, spark a conflict in 1861? How did a long-running debate turn into a shooting war? Where, exactly, was that dynamic moment when an argument became a fight?

George Kimball’s Wide Awakes help make sense of it all. That half-forgotten movement provides a missing link between the election and the war. In the presidential campaign of 1860, hundreds of thousands of diverse young Americans joined companies of Wide Awakes, marching in militaristic uniforms, escorting Republican speakers, fighting in defense of antislavery speech. Their grass roots rising helped elect Abraham Lincoln as president, but also began the spiral into war.

“Slavery,” Frederick Douglass warned as the conflict loomed, “cannot tolerate free speech.” In the decades before the Civil War, many Americans obliged, keeping quiet on the subject. Over the years, that took mounting coercion. States banned public criticism, regular “mobbings” persecuted abolitionists. In congress, antislavery leaders were bullied and beaten. In Northern cities, abolitionist speech was possible, but so was racist terrorism. Lincoln grumbled that most in the North “crucify their feelings” on the subject, but they would not do so forever.

The pushback came from a surprising place: Hartford, Conn. Even that orderly New England town saw brutal mobbings. In the 1856 presidential campaign, local Democrats blasted a Republican rally with fireworks angled like howitzers into crowds of men, women and children. So, to kick off the 1860 campaign, local Republicans invited the brawling Kentucky abolitionist Cassius M. Clay. “Cash” took the stage on a wintry February evening, attacking the way the forces of slavery “suppress the voice of the pulpit, the freedom of the press and of speech” and warning “insurrection is certain.”

Insurrection began that evening. As Clay’s audience filtered out into the night, they beheld a strange tableau: five young textile clerks in black, shiny, makeshift capes. Though designed to keep torch-oil from dripping on their clothing, the outfits embodied the same aggressive verve Clay had just expressed. As the five capped clerks led a torchlit march through town, Democrat thugs attacked. When young Republicans beat them back, a new movement was born.

Within a week, the new club had dozens of members, elected officers, and a name — the Wide Awakes — building off a sense of generational awakening against slavery.

For their first official march, they had the random good luck to escort Lincoln through Hartford’s dark streets. Their clubs started to bubble up across Connecticut that spring, using embattled antislavery speech as a recruiting tool. When a Wide Awakes rally was attacked in New Haven, the movement placed bloodied comrades onstage as proof of the suppression they faced.

The movement was like a black flag, flashing across the North. Young Chicagoans organizing the Republican National Convention took it up, outfitting thousands of Wide Awakes in a few weeks. Companies exploded from there, proliferating from Maine to California, led by German radicals in Milwaukee, fugitive slaves in Boston, Knickerbocker aristocrats on Broadway, antislavery Southerners in D.C., even young women at Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts.

By the end of that summer, Americans believed that there were half a million Wide Awakes in a nation of 31 million. The real number may have been smaller, but even this exaggeration shows how large the movement loomed.

Some Wide Awakes were radical abolitionists, others cautioned moderation, but they all shared a sense that pro-slavery forces were suppressing their views. Free speech provided a convenient cause all could march under. It was vague on the most divisive topics, it conveniently united their enemies (lumping Southern enslavers in with Northern Democratic mobbers), and it suggested that the Wide Awakes’ democratic birthright was being stolen.

Republican protests, for the right to protest, drew protests of their own. Northern Democrats asked when it had become OK for political parties to march like armies. A more pointed response came from farther South. Panicked mis- and disinformation swirled. Senator Louis Wigfall of Texas told Congress that the Wide Awakes movement was plotting “to sweep the country in which I live with fire and sword.”

Angry young Southern Democrats now felt that they were the ones being suppressed. Many started uniformed clubs of their own to “offset” Wide Awakes. In Charleston, S.C., and St. Louis, the Southern Democratic Party organized “Minutemen” clubs. In Washington and Baltimore, they formed the shadowy National Volunteers, which included a worrisome number of the Capitol Police. Again and again, they warned of “coercion” by a Northern majority. By the peak of the 1860 campaign, hundreds of thousands of uniformed young men — both Wide Awakes and their “offsets” — were marching for the right to protest each other.

By the time he won the election, Lincoln was ready to be done with the Wide Awakes. But radical secessionists weren’t, using the movement as a boogeyman in their campaign for disunion. South Carolinians invoked the Wide Awakes the night they left the Union. Virginia’s ex-governor told his state that if they did not secede, they would “be cut to pieces by the Wide Awakes.” This minority of extremists planned to break away no matter what, but the Wide Awakes armed them with a potent symbol to scare more moderate Southerners out of the Union.

Wide Awake hotheads also began to repurpose their marchers as fighters. Some wrote Lincoln, offering to send thousands of armed Wide Awakes to his inauguration. In St Louis, Wide Awakes snuck in rifles and drilled secretly in breweries, while the Southern Democratic Minutemen evolved from a political club into a paramilitary militia. Soon their former campaign headquarters bristled with shotguns, cannon and Confederate flags.

When Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, they began the Civil War, but the fighting killed no one. The first bloodshed came from the kind of street-mobbing that had escalated over decades. As Massachusetts troops headed through Baltimore a few days after Fort Sumter, those anti-Wide Awake National Volunteers led a force against them. Five soldiers and 12 civilians were killed. A few weeks later, St. Louis’s militarized Wide Awakes pushed back, with about 30 dying in an awful street fight.

Wide Awakes who had started out as demonstrators were now combatants. What had been a political organization with militaristic motifs became a military organization with political motives.

In the generations since, we have willfully forgotten the Wide Awakes, and with them the fight over democratic speech that precipitated the conflict. Americans have taught themselves an oddly cozy account of their Civil War, jumping from genteel orators debating the “peculiar institution,” to Blue and Gray soldiers arrayed on Virginia cornfields, all set to mournful fiddle music.

Textbooks use the passive phrase, “The Coming of the Civil War.” But the war didn’t come. Americans brought it, argued it, protested it into being. The Wide Awakes help re-politicize that story, as an unfolding and uncertain tug of war between speech and action, equal parts inspiring and troubling. Marching for the best of causes, they helped bring on the worst of consequences.

Jon Grinspan is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the author of “ Wide Awake : The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War” and “ The Age of Acrimony : How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915.”

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2024-S PF70 RD Advance Releases Lincoln Cent 10-Coin Silver Proof Set

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The Final Moments of Abraham Lincoln: His Wife's Account of His Last Words

Posted: June 6, 2024 | Last updated: June 6, 2024

The scene from that fateful night on April 14, 1865, is one that many of us have heard described over the years. It's a commonly-known fact that President Abraham Lincoln spent the last evening of his life attending a play in Washington, D.C., but few people know the details of what followed the 10:15 p.m. shooting.

The true final words that Lincoln spoke to his wife have been a source of discussion and disagreement throughout the years since his tragic passing. Read on to learn what some historians believe he said to her. Did this story change your perception of Lincoln's final moments?

A Night At The Theater

April 14, 1865 was a date that changed so much about American history, but the 16th president of the United States didn't know that. He and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, attended Ford’s Theater to see a performance of the play "Our American Cousin" from their private box.

At 10:15 p.m., a gunman named John Wilkes Booth snuck up behind the engrossed president and shot a bullet into the back of his head.

On The Heels Of Victory

Just five days before Lincoln was gunned down at the theater, the American Civil War had ended. This was a great victory for the president and the nation. The Confederate General, Robert E. Lee, surrendered his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, signaling the end of the long and bloody conflict.

John Wilkes Booth was a Confederate sympathizer and spy whose brutal act that April evening was part of a three-part plan of attack on the government of the United States.

Read More: Fascinating Historical Figures That We're Lucky To Have Photos Of

Upset By The Abolition Of Slavery

Even though the Confederacy was based in the south, John Wilkes Booth remained up north during the Civil War. Coming from a family of actors, Booth himself pursued a career on the stage.

After attending a speech in which Lincoln stated that he was in favor of granting voting rights to former slaves, though, Booth jumped into action and planned Lincoln's assassination. He and a small group of co-conspirators had previously plotted a kidnapping plan against the president, but this time murder was the goal.

Multiple Deaths Were Planned

Booth learned that Abraham and Mary Lincoln would be in attendance at the theater that April night and decided to commit his devastating act. He had a small team of co-conspirators who were enlisted to assassinate Vice President Andrew Johnson (pictured) and Secretary of State William H. Seward at the same time Booth pulled the trigger on Lincoln.

Booth believed the murders of all three important men at once would throw the Union government into chaos, allowing the Confederacy to reorganize and continue the war.

Familiar With The Theater

As a prominent actor, John Wilkes Booth was familiar with Ford's Theater. In fact, he’d actually performed there himself a number of times so knew the building and its layout well.

The Lincolns’ attendance there in such a familiar place was the perfect opportunity for Booth to gain access to the president. Additionally, he was easily able to gain access to the president’s private box through his personal connections within the theater.

Late Arrival

The Lincolns weren't the only distinguished guests at the performance that night although certainly the most important and prominent. They brought as their guests the army officer Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris, who was the daughter of New York Senator Ira Harris. General and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant also planned to go, although they backed out before the play.

The Lincoln party arrived late to the theater, and upon their arrival, the orchestra interrupted the show to play "Hail to the Chief." All 1,700 people in attendance stood to applaud the president.

Lincoln's Security Agent Left The Theater

Of course, the president didn't attend the public event without security. A police officer named John Frederick Parker was assigned to protect Lincoln’s private box. However, he later told his family that Lincoln released him from duty until the end of the play.

So during the intermission, Parker went along with Lincoln’s valet and coachman to grab a drink at a nearby tavern, leaving the president’s box completely unguarded. John Wilkes Booth could easily gain access to the box. He quietly slipped in and locked the door behind him.

"Our American Cousin"

Not only was Booth familiar with Ford's Theater and its layout, but he also knew the play that was being performed that evening. He knew it so well, in fact, that he was able to time his ambush for the exact moment that actor Harry Hawk would be delivering a humorous line that was modified in honor of the president.

As laughter filled the theater around 10:14 p.m., Booth made his move. He crept up from behind and shot Lincoln behind his left ear with a pistol. The bullet passed directly through Lincoln’s brain and fractured both orbital plates before coming to rest near the front of his skull.

A Daring Escape

Henry Rathbone, the Lincolns' guest, turned and saw Booth over the fallen president and tried to apprehend him. However, Booth slashed the army officer from the elbow to his shoulder with a dagger.

Booth then leaped from the box to the stage 12 feet below, allegedly injuring his left foot during the landing. He held the bloody knife overhead and according to some sources, uttered the Virginia state motto, "sic semper tyrannis," which translates to “thus always to tyrants!”

Chaos In The Theater

The series of shocking events set the entire theater into complete chaos, with some audience members thinking the disturbance was all part of the act.

In the confusion, Booth ran across the stage to an exit door, slashing orchestra leader William Withers Jr. on his way out. He escaped from the theater, mounted a waiting getaway horse, and disappeared into the night. A massive manhunt was soon underway for the assassin.

The Civil War

John Wilkes Booth’s motive for assassinating Abraham Lincoln stems from the president’s role in the American Civil War. The war, which raged from April 12, 1861, to May 9, 1865, was fought between the Union and the Confederacy. The Union consisted of the 20 free states and four border states, which were slave states that did not secede from the Union. West Virginia was added to the border state list in 1863.

The Confederate States of America was formed by the seven states in the southern part of the country, whose residents largely opposed the abolishment of slavery and seceded from the Union.

The Confederacy Felt Threatened By Lincoln

Because Lincoln had run his campaign on a platform that opposed the expansion of slavery into the western states, members of the Confederacy felt threatened.

Lincoln was not an abolitionist but did think that the institution of slavery was morally wrong, and he disagreed with the protections that the founders of the United States had outlined for the practice when they drafted the Constitution. In 1854, Lincoln addressed the nation, outlining his oppositions to slavery. He also admitted he didn't know exactly what should be done about it within the established political system.

Early Views

During an 1858 debate against opponent Stephen Douglas in the race for the U.S. Senate, Lincoln said that he did not support "bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races." He held many views that would be problematic in modern society.

However, he did believe that African Americans had every right to improve their lives through hard work. Since slavery made this type of societal advancement impossible, he felt that the institution of slavery was ethically wrong.

Lincoln's Opinions Evolved Over Time

However, Lincoln's views changed over time. During the last speech he ever gave, on April 11, 1865, the president expressed that he felt that any Black man who had served on the side of the Union during the war should be given the right to vote.

This was a different opinion than he had expressed years earlier during the 1858 Senate debate when he'd said that African-Americans shouldn’t have the right to vote, serve on juries, hold office, or marry white people.

John Wilkes Booth's Background And Strong Political Views

Lincoln's eventual assassin was from a prominent theatrical family in Maryland. His father, Junius Brutus Booth, was a noted British Shakespearean actor who, along with his wife, moved to the United States from England in 1821. John's brothers, Edwin and Junius Brutus Jr., were both actors as well.

Prior to the Civil War, Booth found success as a leading actor in Richmond, Virginia, where he resided for the 1859–1860 theatre season. He was outspoken in his political views and frequently expressed a hatred of abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln. Booth even attended the hanging of abolitionist leader John Brown in 1859.

Booth And His Family Didn't Agree

Like many families in Maryland, the Booth family was divided in their views on slavery. John Wilkes had many arguments with his brother Edwin, who refused to appear on stage in the South or listen to his partisan politics and fiery denunciations of Lincoln and the North. The brothers' views on slavery were so extremely different that Edwin stopped welcoming John Wilkes into his home.

John Wilkes Booth’s hatred of Lincoln continued to grow over time. He was even arrested in St. Louis in 1863 because of "treasonous" remarks he made about the president.

Lincoln Was A Theater Fan And Had Seen Booth Perform

According to the book Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln And The Soldiers’ Home , as well as other sources, Lincoln was actually a fan of Wilkes Booth as an actor. After seeing Booth perform in "Marble Heart" at Ford’s Theater on November 9, 1863, Lincoln extended an invitation for the entertainer to visit the White House.

However, actor Frank Mordaunt later said that Booth "had on one pretext or another avoided any invitations to visit the White House." Booth refused to meet with the president he so loathed.

April 14, 1865

President Lincoln went about his business as usual on April 14, 1865, obviously having no idea how the day would end. He started the morning with a cabinet meeting to discuss how to treat defeated Confederate leaders and what type of economic aid to provide to the South.

After that was a luncheon with his wife Mary before more meetings. One of those appointments was with a former slave named Nancy Bushrod, who had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.

Carriage Ride To The Theater

After his official business was over for the day, Lincoln and Mary went on an afternoon carriage ride together. And later that evening, their carriage picked up their guests Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris and headed to Ford's Theater.

After being welcomed with "Hail to the Chief," the party was seated. According to Stephen Mansfield's book Lincoln’s Battle with God , Mary proceeded to flirt with Lincoln, asking him, "What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?”

His Final Words?

Over the years, Mary had developed a reputation for jealousy, and it's said that she would not hesitate to chastise anyone she felt was acting inappropriately around Lincoln. As researcher Joanne Shelby-Klein reports, "Mary Todd Lincoln did not want women alone with her husband; she was notoriously jealous.’’

But at the theater that fateful night, her comments about Ms. Harris were playful rather than accusatory. The president’s response to his wife: “Why, she will think nothing of it." For years, these words were thought to have been Lincoln’s last.

What Reverend N.W. Miner Said

The Lincolns' friend and neighbor, Reverend Noyes W. Miner, later claimed that Mary told him what the president's last words to her had been. Miner recalled the details of her revelation in a manuscript titled "Personal Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln."

According to Mary Todd Lincoln, her husband told her that they would “not return immediately to Springfield [their previous home].” Instead, Lincoln said, “We will go abroad among strangers where I can rest.”

The Holy Land

According to Miner, Lincoln's last words were ones filled with religious faith. "We will visit the Holy Land," Lincoln said to his wife Mary. “We will visit the Holy Land and see those places hallowed by the footsteps of the Savior. There is no place I so much desire to see as Jerusalem.”

At 7:22 am, the following day after being shot at Ford’s Theater, the president succumbed to his injuries.

There's Some Doubt That Lincoln Uttered These Words

These alleged final words of Abraham Lincoln were a surprise to some and are sometimes excluded from accounts of the president's final hours. Stephen Mansfield addressed this in his book. "It is natural that some should doubt. Schoolchildren do not learn them as they do the other facts of Lincoln’s life."

Mansfield further asserted that some scholars are reluctant to admit that Lincoln was a religious man. “Lincoln was, after all, a religious oddity. He never joined a church. In fact, he went through periods in his life when he was openly anti-religion – even anti-God.”

A Fabrication?

Miner's claims about Lincoln's last words have been criticized by some, which Stephen Mansfield acknowledged. "Surely, critics will say, to insist that these words are true, or that they are any reflection of Lincoln’s faith, is part of a religious re-working of his life – part of a misguided attempt by the pious to refashion him into a gleaming religious icon of some imagined national religion."

He continued, saying that critics would claim that "this is the fruit of bad research and pitiful scholarship: more myth than history." Miner's account has received lots of support over the years, though.

Many Historians Have Supported Miner's Claims

Because Miner's account of Lincoln’s final words stemmed from something that Mary allegedly told him, some prominent Lincoln historians have deemed his writings accurate and truthful.

One of these scholars, Dr. James Cornelius, is the curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. "We believe the words to be substantiated," he said. Other historians such as Doris Kearns Goodwin, Allen C. Guelzo, and Wayne Temple, have also expressed the belief that Miner's text is true.

A Clue To Lincoln's Religious Beliefs?

Seven years after Lincoln's assassination, his widow presented their friend, Reverend Noyes W. Miner, with a personal gift: a leather-bound bible, gilded in gold, that had belonged to the president.

Miner's family kept the bible for 150 years before donating it to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Illinois. Ian Hunt, head of acquisitions for the library and museum, calls the bible "a new opportunity to reflect on Lincoln's religious beliefs." Could it be that he was more religious than some people believe? It certainly appears that way, although the topic will likely be debated for many years to come.

Lincoln's Funeral Procession

Lincoln's funeral procession was held five days after his assassination, on April 19, 1865. His body remained in the Capitol Rotunda from April 19 through April 21 before being carried by a train called "The Lincoln Special" to its final resting place in Springfield, Illinois.

This custom-outfitted train, with a large portrait of Lincoln over the cowcatcher, traveled through 180 cities so grief-stricken Americans could pay their respects and say a final goodbye to the fallen president.

A Nation In Mourning

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered along the train tracks to bid Lincoln farewell. Some had bonfires, some sang, and some stood in silent mourning as the train carrying the president's body passed.

Some historians believe the overwhelming public reaction to the president's sudden death was partially a "response to the deaths of so many men in the war." Regardless, Lincoln's assassination ushered in "a period of profound national mourning."

Final Resting Place

Alongside his young son William Wallace Lincoln, the fallen president was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. William had succumbed to typhoid fever three years prior.

Mary did not fare well in the aftermath of her husband's assassination. Her grief was so intense that she was unable to even attend the funeral. Mary suffered from physical and mental health problems for much of the rest of her life.

The Manhunt For John Wilkes Booth

After a 12-day manhunt for the president's assassin, John Wilkes Booth was located hiding out in a tobacco barn in Maryland. He refused to surrender, even when soldiers set the barn on fire.

He was shot in the neck as he moved around in the burning barn, before being dragged outside where he died three hours later. In his pocket was his diary, in which he’d written about Lincoln’s death. "Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment."

What About The Plot To Kill Andrew Johnson And William H. Seward?

Booth's deadly plot also involved the assassinations of Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. He assigned a Confederate soldier named Lewis Powell (pictured) to kill Seward. Powell gained entry to Seward's home and stabbed him, attacking several other men in the process. They all recovered from their injuries.

The man assigned to kill the vice president, George Atzerodt, completely lost his nerve and didn't make an attempt. He and Powell were later hanged for their involvement in the plot.

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Pensacola Juneteenth celebrations include festivals, concerts and 'family reunion.'

Juneteenth is a true American holiday ‒ a day on which freedom and independence came to all Americans , giving fulfilment to the concepts of liberty and equality promised at our nation's founding.

The holiday commemorates the date when Union Gen. Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, on June 19 1865, and announced that all enslaved people in Texas were free. President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation ending legal slavery in the United States two years earlier. Enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation usually came with the advance of Union troops into a region, and Texas, the most remote outpost of the Confederacy, was the last to formally receive the news of freedom for all.

Juneteenth celebrations have long been held in Texas, and in 2021 Juneteeth was declared a federal holiday in the United States.

Pensacola will commemorate Juneteenth with a slew of events, including concerts, banquets, cultural celebrations and more.

"Well, it was a long time coming," said Jerry McIntosh, vice president of the Pensacola civil rights organization Movement for Change, referring to the country's embrace of Juneteenth. "It was a point in history that many people didn't know about and many African Americans didn't know about. But it was when America finally embraced democracy and allowed everyone to participate in this great experiment called America."

Movement for Change will hold its annual Juneteenth "Freedom Is Not Free" banquet beginning at 5 p.m. on Friday, June 21 at the Pensacola Improve Event Center, 375 N. Pace Blvd. The event's theme is "Democracy or Dictatorship" and will focus on Juneteenth and voting rights. Keynote speaker is writer and spoken word artist Kyla Jenee Lacey.

"We continue to focus on issues such as the right to vote and making sure that voters have access to good information so they can make good, informed decisions. We fight for inclusion for all Americans, which is what we have to do if want to sustain this great democracy, which has the potential to be even greater."

Tickets for the banquet are $50 and available at Movement for Change, 1603 N. Davis Highway.

Another major Juneteenth event is the third annual Watson Family Foundation Juneteenth ‒ A Family Reunion for the Culture event from noon to 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 15, at Museum Plaza, 330 S. Jefferson St. The event was started because of the desire of the Foundation's namesakes, Kimberly and Aaron Watson, "to celebrate Black culture in Pensacola," said Alicia Waters, director of legal support/client experience for the Watson Firm, the Pensacola law firm founded by Aaron Watson.

"We highlight Black businesses and celebrate our progress," said Waters, who is helping organize the event. "It's a celebration of how far we have come and at the same time pay tribute to our ancestors who came before us."

She too, celebrated the meaning behind Juneteenth.

"It shows that freedom is for everyone," Waters said. "We, as Black Americans, know that freedom isn't free. Someone before us paid the cost."

Features of the "Family Reunion" include African clothing and art vendors, dancing, a kid's area, spades and dominoes tournaments, a sweet potato pie contest, food vendors and a Juneteenth game show. Live performers include Jukebox Atlanta, comedian Marvin Hunter and local acts such as the Omega Lamplighters, saxophonist Austin Paul, Red Diamonds and Soulful Movement.

Folks who attend are asked to bring their own lawn chairs and blankets.

Here is a look at some of the other Juneteenth events coming up:

• Daughters of the American Revolution and African American Heritage Society "Ferry Ride to Freedom," 10 a.m., June 15. The ride will begin at the Pensacola Bay City Ferry dock, 750 S. Commendencia St. The ferry will travel to Fort Pickens, which is part of the National Park Service's National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Tickets are $30.
• Real Women Radio's Juneteenth Gospel Tribute "A Celebration of Freedom and Resilience," 4-6 p.m. June 15 at Old Christ Church, 405 S. Adams St.
• Pensacola State College Juneteenth Celebration, 1-3 p.m. June 16, Building 5 at PSC's Ninth Avenue campus. Event will feature performances by Poleon and Soulful Movement, and will also include poetry readings, various product vendors, face painting and more.
• University of West Florida Juneteenth Celebration, 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. June 17, UWF Commons Auditorium. Performances, music and food.
• Celebrating the Culture and Diversity of Pensacola Roundtable Discussion, hosted by Visit Pensacola from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on June 18 at the Voices of Pensacola Multicultural Center, 117 E. Government St. 
• Juneteenth Unity Fest ‒ A Community Celebration of Freedom, noon to 4 p.m. June 19, at Adoration for a New Beginning Church, 920 W. Government St. Music, free food, a kids' area and more.
• Journey to Juneteenth R&B and Blues Freedom Party, 2-7 p.m. June 19, Bayview Senior Community Center, 2000 E. Lloyd St. Event will feature Rickey Duffy and Friends, DJ Hale and more. There will also be educational displays, food vendors, arts vendors and more.

For more information on Juneteenth events in Pensacola, go to www.visitpensacola.com/events/holidays/juneteenth/ .