1,700 MILES OF MOURNERS
“I kept on until I arrived at the East Room…before me was a catafalque on which was a form wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers…there was a throng of people…weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded… ‘The President…killed by an assassin…’ A loud burst of grief…woke me from my dream.”
–Abraham Lincoln, recounting a dream shortly before his assassination in 1865.
, news of President Abraham Lincoln’s shooting on April 14, 1865, and death on the 15th spread quickly, and the country—both in the North and South—was in shock. The nation and government turned to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton who agreed to run the nation until Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn in. He met with an assembly from Illinois that pleaded Lincoln be laid to rest in Springfield, his “adopted home” in the first state to recognize his “greatness.” Stanton then appointed a Committee of Arrangements (made up of Illinois citizens) to determine the transportation of President Lincoln’s remains from Washington, D.C., to their final resting place. ¶ Distraught, Mary Todd Lincoln also turned to Stanton and the nation for her husband’s burial. Her only request was that Willie Lincoln, who had died in the
