Hudsonians mourned the great American tragedy
By Patricia Fenoff
Collections Manager
General Lee's surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at the Appomattox
Courthouse marked the end of a prolonged Civil War. The nation was weary after four
years of conflict that resulted in the deaths of some 700,000 soldiers and an
undetermined number of civilian casualties.
But there was more horror ahead, a great American tragedy. On the evening of
April 14, 1865, Good Friday, President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the head while
watching the play “Our American Cousin” in Ford's Theater. He died the next morning,
touching off a wave of grief across the country and around the world.
The president's body was boarded on a funeral train that traveled about 1,600
miles through more than 160 communities before arriving in Springfield, Illinois, for
burial. A mourning nation turned out by the hundreds of thousands along the route to say
goodbye to their president, the first to fall by an assassin's bullet.
Hudson was among the cities in which the funeral train stopped, albeit briefly, on
the night of April 25, 1865. It was a solemn occasion, as noted in the journal of Adjutant
General Edward D. Townsend, commander of the
funeral train. In Hudson, he wrote, “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 light of
the torches at that dead hour of night.”
This April, the City of Hudson and various
organizations in surrounding communities
commemorated the sesquicentennial of the Lincoln
funeral train's journey. Through the efforts of
Eugene Shetsky, aide to Hudson Mayor William
Hallenbeck, the city acquired a framed facsimile of
the handwritten draft of Lincoln's preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation from 1862. On loan
from the New York State Library, the document was the centerpiece of an interpretive
display, titled “Lincoln's Long Journey Home,” which was on view April 24 to 26, 2015,
at the Robert Jenkins House, 113 Warren St., the headquarters of the Hendrick Hudson
Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. The display also was
seen by students of local schools in arranged tours. Well over 300 people viewed
“Lincoln's Long Journey Home.”
The exhibition, curated by chapter Collections Manager Patricia Fenoff and
member Carol Biernacki, focused on significant events during President Lincoln's
administration, up to his assassination, and the extended journey to his eventual burial.
Most notable of Lincoln's achievements was the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln wrote the draft proclamation in the telegraph office of the War Department in
the summer of 1862 while waiting for favorable news from the war front. It was written
in pencil on paper that was lying about the office. President Lincoln read this document
to his Cabinet members on September 22, 1862, and told them that he firmly believed in
its principles, though he would accept minor changes to its wording. Except for some
revisions by Secretary of State William H. Seward and the chief clerk, the document is
otherwise entirely in Lincoln's hand.
Lincoln signed the official Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which
declared that all persons held as slaves within the rebellious states “are, and
henceforward shall be free.”
The New York State Legislature purchased the four-page draft of the
Emancipation Proclamation from abolitionist Gerrit Smith in 1865, shortly after
Lincoln's funeral train passed through Albany.
Smith won the document in a lottery at the Albany Relief Bazaar in the winter of
1864. The event was one of several “sanitary fairs” held throughout the northern states
to raise funds for the medical care of wounded soldiers.
The lottery for the proclamation was organized by little-known, but powerful,
Albany Republican political operative William Barnes. Through his connections to
Secretary of State Seward, Barnes acquired the document for the fair and appointed a
special committee of powerful men, which included Smith, to oversee the lottery.
Smith won the
lottery and afterwards,
Barnes lobbied the New
York State Legislature to
buy the proclamation for
the state library. The
Legislature did not act
until 1865, after President
Lincoln's death.
“Lincoln's Long Journey Home” also included a number of photographs of
President Lincoln, his family, and his funeral train; a reproduction of the reward poster
for Lincoln's assassin and his accomplices; a commemorative 36-star flag; a rosette from
the president's catafalque in the White House; a portrait of the president by local artist
Robert Whelan; and a replica of the Lincoln Monument.
Of particular interest is a replica of the gun that killed the president. The gun fired
by John Wilkes Booth was known as a Baby Philadelphia Derringer, a single shot,
percussion cap pocket pistol originally designed in 1850. The chapter's non-firing replica
reveals the unassuming simplicity of this 19th century pistol and a general appearance
that deceives the pivotal role this basic firearm played in the nation's history.
Chapter members served as docents during exhibit hours, some in period dress to
mark the occasion. Didi Barrett, member of the New York Assembly, presented the
chapter a citation for its role in encouraging Hudson Valley residents to remember
President Lincoln's ties to the region, “and
to seek increased knowledge of his
remarkable life, his enduring legacy
and profound impact on our nation.”
Profound Sorrow
Word of the president's death spread
quickly. Newspapers eloquently described
the pall that gripped the still struggling
nation. Locally, the Columbia Republican
of April 18, 1865, declared: “No event in
the history of our country has awakened
such profound sorrow as the death, by the
hands of an assassin, of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States. No words of
ours can express the grief, or weigh the loss that the nation has sustained. It is one of
those sudden and mysterious providences that
sometimes plunge a whole people in tears,
and compel every heart to bow beneath the
supreme government of God.”
The newspaper described the troubled and
anxious expressions on the faces of
Hudsonians as they learned of the
Washington tragedy. “All seemed to interpret
the event as a common national calamity.”
Flags in the city were immediately lowered
to half staff and businesses closed “as if by a common instinct of grief.” Church bells
tolled solemnly at midday and the streets were almost as quiet as on the Sabbath.
Never have we known our citizens to unite more heartily in expressions of sorrow
for any event; indeed never has there been occasion for such a sudden bowing down of
the national heart, in the midst of rejoicing, under the mighty hand of God,” the
Columbia Republican reported.
The Presbyterian Church
was filled from floor to gallery
with citizens. Pastor Leavitt's
message was described as “brief
and expressive, a just tribute to
the character of Mr. Lincoln as a
man, a patriot and statesman, and
a Christian.” Episcopal Bishop
Potter was succinct, stating “a
glorious career of service and
devotion is crowned with a
martyr's death.”
The Columbia Republican also praised the late president, while lamenting his
death after winning re-election to a second term and preserving a united nation with the
end of the Civil War. “Abraham Lincoln was a man of the people—a plain man, an
honest man, a pure patriot, a wise if not learned Statesman. Ever since his first
inauguration he has been drawing the hearts of the American people closer to himself,
by the kindliness of his temper, by the homeliness of his speech, by his unfaltering faith,
his magnaminity to his foes, and his inflexible and unimpeachable integrity of
character... And now, when he is struck down in the midst of this double triumph, it is
one of the noblest vindications of his goodness and greatness that men of all parties view
with each other in doing honor to his memory.”
Call For Justice
The Hudson Common Council, also moved by the murder of the president,
adopted a resolution seeking just punishment for the perpetrators “so the stain of
innocent blood may be taken off from the land.”
The resolution read, in part, “we hereby declare our fixed purpose to sustain our
National Government, and especially our new President called to his position by this
afflicting and mysterious dispensation of Divine Providence, in the effort utterly to
overthrow this wicked rebellion, which has been a fountain of so many woes and of so
many crimes.”
“...We hold in reverent memory the public and private character of the late Chief
Magistrate of the United States—a man of pure and unselfish patriotism—wise, honest,
judicious, forbearing, successful as the ruler of this great nation—a just man....upright in
all his life—full of kindness and goodness—the true friend of the lonely and the
oppressed.”
Public citizen committees were formed to organize means of paying respect to the
president when his funeral train stopped in the city.
The train, named the United States, was delivered to Lincoln in early 1865. It was
intended to be the equivalent of present-day Air Force One, but was never used by the
president while he was alive.
The train carrying the martyred president chugged out of Hudson north to Albany,
where local officials traveled the next day to again pay their respects. Formal funerals
were held in 12 major cities and many more memorial services were organized along the
train's route, which was
mapped to retrace his
path to Washington in
1861.
In its edition of
April 25, 1865, the
Columbia Republican
reflected on the events
that had passed. “What a
week was that through
which the nation has just
passed! A whole people
in mourning for their
Chief, their Leader, their
Father. The land
shrouded with emblems
of grief, the bells of half
a continent tolling, and
twenty millions of
people joining in funeral
rites. Such is the tribute paid to Abraham Lincoln, the Faithful, by the filial subjects of a
Republican Government. Well may the world stand in awe at such a spectacle.”