Funerary Procession of Abraham Lincoln
Main article: Assassination of Abraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln's funeral train was to take the body of the president (and the disinterred coffin of his son Willie, who had predeceased him in 1862) from Washington D.C. back to Springfield, Illinois for burial. It would essentially retrace the 1,654 mile route Mr. Lincoln had traveled as president-elect in 1861 (with the deletion of Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and the addition of Chicago). The train left Washington for Baltimore at 8:00 AM on April 21, 1865.
Lincoln's funeral train (the "Lincoln Special") left Harrisburg on Saturday - April 22, 1865 at 11:15 AM and arrived at Philadelphia at Broad Street Station that afternoon at 4:30 PM. It was carried by hearse past a crowd of 85,000 people and was held in state in the Assembly Room in the east wing of Independence Hall. While there, it was escorted and guarded by a detail of 27 Naval and Military officers. That evening, a private viewing was arranged for honored guests of the mourners. The next day (Sunday - April 23, 1865) lines began forming at 5:00 AM. Over 300,000 mourners viewed the body - some waiting 5 hours just to see him. The Lincoln Special left Philadelphia's Kensington Station for New York City the next morning (Monday - April 24, 1865) at 4:00 A.M.
Read more about this topic: Independence Hall
Famous quotes containing the words abraham lincoln, procession and/or lincoln:
“I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness or feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as in my most anxious judgement, I consistently can. But you must act.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Its imaginary value will increase with the years, and if he [his grandson-in-law] lives to my age, or another half century, he may see it carried in the procession of our nation’s birthday, as the relics of the saints are in those of the church.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.”
—Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)