Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

The U.S. Capitol, newly constructed in 1860, was draped in black after Lincoln's shocking death. So was the place of the murder, Ford's Theater. Following a custom of the time, "mourning cards" were printed commemorating the life of the slain leader.

Grieving crowds thronged Washington's streets for the first of many funerals for the man who had been born on a corn-husk-covered bed in a nearly windowless, one-room Kentucky log cabin on "Sinking Spring Farm." (The link takes you to a nearly exact replica located at his birthplace.)

His much-loved step-mother, Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln, reportedly said:

I knowed they'd kill him. I bin awaitin' fer it.

To allow people around the country to participate in funeral services, a train took the President's body to many different cities before he was laid to rest in Springfield, Illinois.

In New York, someone took a picture of the President in his open coffin. In Chicago, more than 125,000 people viewed his body. A drawing of the open-coffin was published in Buffalo.

In 1865, Walt Whitman (whose poetry, among others Lincoln read) wrote O Captain! My Captain! to commemorate the President's death. Even in his lifetime, the poem became Whitman's most famous. It has been included in anthologies (one, the Riverside Literature Series No. 32, incorporated an earlier version which Whitman himself corrected) and referred to in movies (like Dead Poets Society starring Robin Williams and Ethan Hawke).

Despite the nation's overwhelming grief at the loss of its first assassinated President, who had delivered his second inaugural address a mere six weeks before his death, the military and civilian law enforcement officials directed their attention to capturing the escaped still-at-large killer.