State funeral of Abraham Lincoln
After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, a three-week series of events was held to mourn the death and memorialize the life of the 16th president of the United States.
[2] The train largely retraced the route Lincoln had traveled to Washington as the president-elect on his way to his first inauguration, more than four years earlier.
After the final lying in state and related services, Lincoln was interred during a ceremony on May 4, at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield.
The body again lay in state on the 20th and on the early morning of the following day a prayer service was held for the Lincoln cabinet officials.
Only persons authorized by the State Department were allowed to travel on the train, which was limited to 20 miles (32 km) an hour for safety.
An honor guard accompanied the train; this consisted of Union Army Major General David Hunter; brevet Major General John G. Barnard; Brigadier Generals Edward D. Townsend, Charles Thomas Campbell, Amos Beebe Eaton, John C. Caldwell, Alfred Terry, George D. Ramsey, and Daniel McCallum; Union Navy Rear Admiral Charles Henry Davis and Captain William Rogers Taylor; and Marine Corps Major Thomas H. Field.
Four accompanied the train in a logistics capacity: Captain Charles Penrose, as quartermaster and commissary of subsistence; Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln's longtime bodyguard and friend and U.S.
[7] There is an immersive laying in state exhibit in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.
The hall depicts the moment Lincoln was laid in state there, with lavish, elaborate, and sometimes odd decorations, including a replica black casket.
Despite repeated attempts by the association to change the location of the burial to Mather Block, she remained firm in her decision.
A few hours after Lincoln's death they met in Sen. Richard Yates' room at the National Hotel, to arrange a burial in Springfield, Illinois.
Mary Lincoln was not receiving visitors, but she preferred Chicago or the empty crypt in the U.S. Capitol that had been prepared for George Washington.
On April 28 Mary sent a message to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, in which she stated that her decision was final, and that Lincoln's remains must be placed in the Oak Ridge Cemetery.
"[12] When the tomb was completed in 1874, Lincoln's coffin was placed in a white marble sarcophagus in a burial room behind a steel gate locked with a padlock.
In November 1876, Chicago counterfeiter James "Big Jim" Kennally planned to steal Lincoln's body and hold it in exchange for a pardon for his engraver (who was serving a ten-year sentence at Illinois State Penitentiary) and $200,000 (equivalent to $5,722,500 in 2023).
Moving the coffin proved difficult; it weighed some 400–500 pounds (180–230 kilograms) and Power and the members of the Monument Association were mostly in their 60s (the youngest was 56).
He said that the unventilated basement was almost impossible to enter in the summer weather and also moving the heavy coffin had been brutally hard on himself and the other aging Monument Association members.
In 1882, after Mary Todd Lincoln died, Robert instructed the Guard of Honor to bury his mother's coffin wherever they kept his father's.
In 1900, a complete reconstruction was undertaken, Lincoln's remains were exhumed, and the coffin was placed back in the white marble sarcophagus.
Lincoln's coffin would be placed in a steel cage 10 feet (3.0 m) deep and encased in concrete in the floor of the tomb.
During the second reconstruction, the entrance to the tomb was reconfigured to better accommodate visitors and the original, white marble sarcophagus was replaced with the red granite marker in front of the place where Lincoln is interred.
On December 21, 1865, the two caskets were moved to the temporary vault, halfway up the hillside, where the Lincoln Tomb was in construction at the top of the hill.
His body remained in the tomb until May 27, 1930, when he was re-interred at the family plot of his father, Robert Todd Lincoln (August 1, 1843, to July 25, 1926), at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
The coffins containing the bodies of Mary, Eddie, Willie, and Tad Lincoln were removed during the second tomb reconstruction (1930–1931) from their crypts and transported to the Oak Ridge mausoleum, located near the south gate of the cemetery.
