Bloody Crimes (32 page)

The arch seemed lost in the vast labyrinths from which it rose. A spread eagle was perched above it. Beneath this aerial guardian was a bust of the dead President in sable drapery. Then came a ubiquitous display of black velvet, studded with beautiful silver stars in filigree lace, which reflected light over the suits of woe and gloom of which they were the national ornaments…

Beneath the canopy, near the honored dead, were busts of
Washington, Jackson, Webster and Clay—all resting on high pedestals. The vicinity of the catafalque was also the scene of elaborate and artistic mourning. All the furniture, the statues and the portraits of the Governor’s room were in character with the sad scenes around them [and all] were covered with crape. The statue of George Washington, near which Mr. Lincoln received his friends four previous years, was elaborately draped, and the chandeliers were covered with black cloth.

For the most part New Yorkers behaved well and respected Lincoln’s remains. Some, however, could not control their emotions. One report observed: “The deportment of the people was very different from that of the crowds which usually assemble in great cities. No gladsome laugh, no familiar greeting, no passing jests. Grief was denoted on every countenance. Many would have pressed close to the coffin, if but to touch it with their fingers, were they permitted. Frequent attempts were made by ladies to kiss the placid lips of the corpse.”

During the viewing at City Hall, some people tried to do more than touch Lincoln. Some actually wanted to place mementos in the coffin. Captain Parker Snow, a commander of polar expeditions, presented to General Dix some relics of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated expedition. They consisted of a tattered leaf of a prayer book, on which the first word legible was “martyr,” and a piece of fringe and some portions of uniform. These relics were found in a boat lying under the head of a human skeleton. What possible connection did these bizarre relics have to Abraham Lincoln? They did not belong in the coffin, and Dix refused to place them there. Such practices, if tolerated, would have turned Lincoln’s coffin into a traveling gypsy cart overflowing with antiquarian oddities that would have weighed more than Lincoln’s corpse.

The coffin was closed at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday: “With practiced fingers,” wrote one eyewitness, “the undertaker, Mr. F. G. Sands,

THE NOTORIOUS GURNEY IMAGE, TAKEN INSIDE NEW YORK CITY HALL. EDWARD D. TOWNSEND STANDS AT THE FOOT OF THE COFFIN IN THE ONLY SURVIVING PHOTOGRAPH OF LINCOLN IN DEATH.

and his assistant, Mr. G. W. Hawes, removed the dust from the face and habiliments of the dead…and the lid was silently screwed down without form or ceremony, and with none but a few officers and orderlies and a couple of reporters as witnesses. The…bearers, eight in number, sergeants of the Veteran Reserve, stationed themselves on each side of the coffin, and remained there motionless as statues awaiting further orders.”

At 12:30 p.m. the hearse, drawn by sixteen white horses, began traveling uptown to the depot of the Hudson River Railroad on Twenty-ninth Street. One hundred and twenty-five people had viewed the corpse. Five hundred thousand stood along the procession route.

A TIME FOR WEEPING, BUT VENGEANCE IS NOT SLEEPING
, read one of the signs posted along the parade route.

The hearse stopped for an oration at Union Square, and by 3:00 p.m., the head of the procession arrived at the Hudson River Railroad depot. But it took another half hour for the hearse to reach the embarkation point.

The spectacular events in New York City outdid all previous public honors for the late president, even those conducted in the national capital. The
New York Times
congratulated the people of Gotham: “As a mere pageant, the vast outpouring of the people, the superb military display, the solemn grandeur and variety thrown into the procession by the numberless national, friendly, trade and other civic societies; the grand accomplishment of music; and, above all, the subdued demeanor of the countless multitude of onlookers, made the day memorable beyond the experience of the living generation.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
“He Is Named for You”

T
he funeral train departed New York City at 4:15 p.m. on Tuesday, April 25. The engine steamed north along the Hudson River. After a few hours, darkness and torch flames intensified the drama. The train passed Fort Washington, Mount St. Vincent, Yonkers, Hastings, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington, Tarrytown, Sing Sing, Montrose, and Peekskill.

At 6:20 p.m., the train stopped at Garrison’s Landing, opposite the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The corps of cadets assembled to honor their fallen commander in chief. They passed through the funeral car and saluted. At 9:45 p.m. thousands of people gathered at Hudson to see the train.

General Townsend was surprised to see so many mourners when he looked out the window:

The line of the Hudson River road seemed alive with people. At each of the towns by which it passes, the darkness of night was relieved by torches, which revealed the crowds there assembled.

THE MEMORIAL ARCH ABOVE THE TRACKS AT SING SING, NEW YORK.

At Hudson…elaborate preparations had been made. Beneath an arch hung with black and white drapery and evergreen wreaths, was a tableau representing a coffin resting upon a dais; a female figure in white, mourning over the coffin; a soldier standing at one end and a sailor at the other. While a band of young women dressed in white sang a dirge, two others in black entered the funeral-car, placed a floral device on the President’s coffin, then knelt for a moment of silence, and quietly withdrew. This whole scene was one of the most weird ever witnessed, its
solemnity being intensified by the somber lights of the torches, at that dead hour of night.

At 10:55 p.m., East Albany welcomed Lincoln with a torchlight escort that led the funeral train across the river to Albany. Even in the dark, witnesses could make out the signs posted on two houses:
THE HEART OF THE NATION THROBS HEAVILY AT THE PORTALS OF THE TOMB. LET US RESOLVE THAT THE MARTYRED DEAD SHALL NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN.
At 1:30
A.M.
Lincoln’s coffin was placed in the assembly chamber of the state capitol and the middle-of-the-night viewing began. The lateness of the hour did not deter the citizens. On they came, at a rate of seventy viewers per minute, more than four thousand an hour.

U
pon leaving New York, Townsend had sent his usual positive report to Stanton, in which he commented that he had “examined the remains and they are in perfect preservation,” but did not mention an episode that had occurred while Lincoln’s remains were on view at City Hall. When Stanton learned of the incident by reading the newspapers later that night, he became enraged and dispatched a wrathful telegram that threatened to ruin the reputation and military career of the trusted aide he had personally chosen to command the funeral train.

“I see by the New York papers this evening that a photograph of the corpse of President Lincoln was allowed taken yesterday at New York,” Stanton wrote. “I cannot sufficiently express my surprise and disapproval of such an act while the body was in your charge. You will report what officers of the funeral escort were or ought to have been on duty at the time this was done, and immediately relieve them and order them to Washington. You will also direct the provost-marshal to go to the photographer, seize and destroy the plates and any pictures and engravings that may have been made, and consider yourself responsible if the offense is repeated.”

At the bottom of the handwritten screed, Stanton scrawled a message to Major Eckert at the War Department telegraph office: “Please order this telegram to be delivered to-night, and if the escort has left New York order it to be forwarded to Albany.”

Stanton had assumed, no doubt, that close-up images had been made of Lincoln’s face. That was not an unusual custom in nineteenth-century America. It was common for mourners, especially the bereaved parents of deceased infants or children, to commission photographers to preserve for eternity the faces of the loved and lost. Indeed, some enterprising cameramen specialized in corpse photography, often posing dead infants cradled in the arms of their parents, as though in not death but slumber. But Stanton was likely thinking about the condition of Lincoln’s body. By the time he was photographed in New York, Lincoln had been dead for nine days. Civil War mortuary science could not preserve his body indefinitely. Yes, the undertakers rode aboard the train, but there were limits to the art. Stanton no doubt feared that horrific images depicting Lincoln’s face in a state of gruesome decay would be distributed to the public.

When Townsend arrived in Albany, he had not seen Stanton’s telegram. He sent the secretary of war another sunny report: “We have arrived here safely. Words cannot describe the grandeur of the demonstration in New York and all along the Hudson River. The outpouring of popular feeling, quiet and unaffected, is truly sublime.”

Stanton’s telegram reached Townsend on the morning of April 26 and shattered the general’s sense of aesthetic sublimity. He knew his boss well, including his propensity for angry tirades. If Stanton sounded this ill-tempered on paper, Townsend could only imagine how furiously he was raging back in Washington. And once Stanton learned the full story, Townsend feared, Lincoln’s god of war would become apoplectic.

It was Townsend, and no one else, who had allowed Lincoln’s corpse to be photographed. He decided, before others could report the details of what he had done, to confess and accept the conse
quences. He immediately telegraphed Stanton: “Your dispatch of this date is received. The photograph was taken while I was present, Admiral Davis being the officer immediately in charge, but it would have been my part to stop the proceedings. I regret your disapproval, but it did not strike me as objectionable under the circumstances as it was done. I have telegraphed General Dix your orders about seizing the plates. To whom shall I turn over the special charge given me in order to execute your instructions to relieve the officers responsible, and shall Admiral Davis be relieved? He was not accountable.”

When Stanton learned that Townsend had permitted the photographs to be made, he decided not to relieve him of command. The train was on the move, in the middle of a synchronized, complicated cross-country journey, and no one on the train possessed better organizational skills to command it than Townsend.

The secretary of war sent a more tempered reply: “As Admiral Davis was not responsible there is no occasion to find fault with him. You being in charge, and present at the time, the sole responsibility rests upon you; but having no other officer of the Adjutant General’s Department that can relieve you and take your place you will continue in charge of the remains under your instructions until they are finally interred. The taking of photographs was expressly forbidden by Mrs. Lincoln, and I am apprehensive that her feelings and the feelings of her family will be greatly wounded.”

Townsend, offended at the insinuation that he had disobeyed an order from the martyred president’s widow, could not resist defending his reputation and replied: “Your dispatch just received. I was not aware of Mrs. Lincoln’s wishes, or the picture would not have been taken with the knowledge of any officers of the escort. It seemed to me the picture would be gratifying, a grand view of what thousands saw and thousands could not see.”

But Townsend had not yet told Stanton everything. It was bad enough that he had allowed the photographs. Even worse, he had
posed in the pictures while standing next to President Lincoln’s body. Stanton might have considered this perceived pursuit of personal publicity unforgivable. On April 20, before the funeral train departed Washington, Stanton had issued Townsend detailed, written instructions on the mission, including the admonition that “the Adjutant-General and all the officers in charge are specially enjoined to strict vigilance to see that everything appropriate is done and that the remains of the late illustrious President receive no neglect or indignity.” Could there be a greater indignity than for a commissioned officer of the U.S. Army, a general no less, the man “specially assigned to represent the Secretary of War, and to give all orders in the name of the Secretary as if he were present,” to pose for souvenir photographs with the corpse of the assassinated president? Perhaps only that Admiral Davis, personal representative of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, had also posed for the photos.