Lincoln's Assassination - April 15, 1865

As a member of the Lincoln Funeral Coaltion, I have been working and preparing for this sesquicentennial, and especially its culmination at the burial in Springfield.  I have thought long about how I might feel on this day and what I might want to say.  And words fail me.

I can rest easy in the knowledge that words also failed most of the contemporary editors.  The assassination of a President is something so horrific, so unbelievable, that one is thrown into unbelieving shock.  Many editors across the North, overwhelmed by their emotions, kept their columns very short and terse.  In an era when tears are considered unmanly, they publicly confessed their own tearful reactions.

It is easy to talk about the public reactions, the sermons, the mourning decorations,and the mournful journey of the funeral train, but it is hard to capture that moment of grief, when it feels as if the floor has fallen out beneath you, when blackness seems to overwhelm everything and one wonders if things would ever be the same again.  

The United States and its future changed profoundly on that day.  And so I think it most fitting to rest in that contemplative, heavy hush that comes before the rushing roar of preparations and think of Abraham Lincoln, the man, the President, the leader of the country.

(Images from the Library of Congress)