I
Abraham Lincoln had a dream.
He watched his prey move among the men below; watched how confidently it circled them. Choosing. Glaring at them like a god. Mocking them; reveling in their helplessness.
Just a moment now. Just another moment and it would begin. A series of rehearsed movements. A performance refined with each passing night. Perfected. Just a moment, and then the force and commotion and speed. He would stare into the blackness of its eyes and watch the life leave them forever. And then it would be over. For tonight.
He was twenty-five again, and strong. He was so strong. All of the sorrows in his life—all of the doubts and deaths and disappointments—all of them had been for this. They were the fires that burned in his chest. They were his strength. They were
If my enemies be quick, grant me speed. If they be strong, Lord, then grant me the strength to see them defeated. For mine has always been the side of righteousness. The side of justice. The side of light.
His ax blade had been sharpened and resharpened.
He leapt from the barn roof and soared over his prey. The creature looked up. Its eyes went black from lid to lid. Its fangs descended, hollow and hungry. He swung the ax with all of that strength and felt the handle leave his hands, his body still high above the earth. As he fell, he caught one of their faces in the corner of his eye. The face of a helpless man, frightened and bewildered. Not yet aware that his life had just been saved.
It had always been his purpose….
Abe woke in his White House office.
He dressed and sat at a small desk by one of the windows overlooking the South Lawn. It was a perfect late August morning.
It’s good to be in Washington. It feels strange to write those words, but then—I suppose I’ve been swept up in the excitement of the day. It promises to be a historic one. I only pray that it’s remembered for the right reasons, and not for the violence that some have predicted (and others hoped for). It’s not yet eight o’clock, but I can already see the crowds marching across the Ellipse toward the Monument. How many will there be? Who will speak, and how will their speeches be received? We will know in a few short hours. I only wish they had chosen a different venue. I admit that it causes me no small discomfort to be near that thing. I was surprised, however, at what little discomfort I felt sleeping in my office. It is fitting, I suppose. For it was here, in this very room, that I signed my name to the ancestor of this day. I must remember to send President Kennedy a note of thanks for having me as his guest.
II
On the morning of April 21st, 1865, Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train left Washington and began the journey home to Springfield.
Thousands lined the tracks as the “Lincoln Special” pulled away from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Depot at five minutes past eight o’clock, its nine cars draped in black garlands, a framed portrait of the late president hanging over the steam engine’s cowcatcher. Tearful men stood with their hats in their hands; ladies with their heads bowed. Soldiers, some of whom had left their beds at St. Elizabeths Hospital to see the train off, stood up arrow straight, saluting their fallen commander in chief.
Two of Abe’s sons were aboard with him, Robert, now a twenty-one-year-old army captain, and Willie, whose coffin had been removed from its temporary crypt and placed beside his father’s. Tad remained in Washington with Mary, who was too grief stricken to leave the White House. For thirteen days and nearly 1,700 miles, the train wound its way through the North, stopping in designated cities to lie in state. In Philadelphia, 300,000 people pushed and shoved to catch a glimpse of the slain president’s body. In New York, 500,000 stood in line to lay eyes on Abe, and a six-year-old Theodore Roosevelt watched his funeral procession go by. In Chicago, hundreds of thousands gathered around an outdoor viewing stand engraved with the words “Faithful to Right—Martyr to Justice.”
In all, more than twelve million people stood by the tracks to watch the funeral train pass, and more than a million waited in line to view the president’s open casket.
On Thursday, May 4th, 1865, a sea of black umbrellas shielded thousands of mourners from the scorching sun as Abe’s casket, sealed for all eternity, was carried into Oak Ridge Cemetery on a hearse pulled by six white horses.
As Bishop Matthew Simpson gave a stirring eulogy for the “Savior of the Union,” one particularly ashen mourner looked on from behind a pair of dark glasses, a black parasol in his gloved hands. Though his eyes were incapable of tears, he felt the loss of Abraham Lincoln more deeply than any living person in Springfield that day.
Henry remained by the closed gates of the receiving vault (where Abe and Willie’s caskets would remain until a permanent tomb could be built) long after the sun had set and the crowds dispersed, standing guard over his friend of forty years. Standing guard over the man who’d saved a nation from enslavement and driven darkness back into the shadows. He remained there most of the night, sometimes sitting in silent contemplation, sometimes reading the little slips of paper that people had left along with flowers and keepsakes at the foot of the iron bars. Henry found one of them particularly moving. It read simply:
“I am a foe to tyrants, and my country’s friend.” *
In 1871, Tad Lincoln—then living with his mother in Chicago—was stricken with tuberculosis. He died on July 15th at the age of eighteen. His body was taken to Springfield and placed in his father’s tomb beside brothers Willie and Eddy. Again, it was Robert who accompanied the funeral train, as Mary was too distraught to attend.
Of all Abe’s children, only Robert survived to see the new century. He would marry and father three children of his own, and in later life, he would serve two presidents, James Garfield and Chester A. Arthur, as secretary of war. He died peacefully at his estate in Vermont in 1926, at the age of eighty-two.
Tad’s death had been the final, irreparable blow to Mary Lincoln’s mental health. In the years that followed, she became increasingly erratic, often swearing that she saw her late husband’s face staring at her from the darkness on nighttime walks. She suffered from paranoia, insisting that strangers were trying to poison her or steal from her. She once had $56,000 worth of government bonds sewn into the linings of her petticoats for safekeeping. After Mary attempted suicide, Robert had no choice but to commit his mother to a psychiatric hospital. After her release, Mary moved back to Springfield, where she died in 1882, at the age of sixty-three. She was laid to rest beside the three young sons she’d wept for in life.
