973.7L63 C4H23d Harper, Robert S. During Two Journeys LINCOLN ROOM UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY tif^fr MEMORIAL the Class of 1901 founded by HARLAN HOYT HORNER and HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER i8og - ABRAHAM LINCOLN - 1865 DURING TWO JOURNEYS A Publication of the Ohio Lincoln Sesquicentennial Committee Ohio State Museum — Columbus 10, Ohio Nineteen Hundred Fifty-Nine The cover picture is a rare photograph taken about 1860 of the State House at Columbus. The view is from the southwest. DURING TWO JOURNEYS I On the way to Washington Lincoln and the Ohio General Assembly II On the way to Springfield "Ohio Mourns* by Robert S. Harper The Ohio Historical Society Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://archive.org/details/duringtwojourneyOOharp 2 ."7Ll>2 t'/nfrol* DURING TWO JOURNEYS I On the way to Washington Lincoln and the Ohio General Assembly ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President-elect of the United States, ad- dressed a joint session of the Ohio General Assembly in Columbus on February 13, 1861, stopping while enroute to Washington where he was to be inaugurated on March 4. The country was in turmoil, the Union divided. Secession was an established fact, with seven states out of the Union and others preparing to follow. Jefferson Davis had been elected provisional President of the newly-organized Confederate States of America, chosen on February 9 by secession delegates at Montgomery, Alabama. Because of the unsettled condition of national affairs, Lincoln's itinerary for the journey to the national capital was not determined until the last days in January. Acting quickly on receipt of word that the President-elect would travel across Ohio, the General Assem- bly adopted a joint resolution on January 31 inviting him to visit Columbus. Governor William G. Dennison, Jr., a native of Cincin- nati, transmitted the invitation by letter to him on January 31. Lincoln replied to Dennison's letter on February 7, saying: Sir: Your letter of the 31st ult. inviting me on behalf of the legislature of Ohio, to visit Columbus, on my way to Wash- ington, has been duly received. With profound gratitude for the mark of respect and honor thus cordially tendered me by you and them, I accept the invitation. Your obt Servt. A. Lincoln His Excellency W. Dennison Governor of Ohio Please arrange no ceremonies which will waste time. Again acting quickly, the Legislature placed the arrangements in the hands of a joint committee consisting of members of the Senate and the House, and invited the City Council of Columbus to join in the official reception. Members of this joint committee, as announced in the press, were: For the Senate: James Monroe of Lorain; F. P. Cuppy of Mont- gomery; G. W. Holmes of Hamilton. For the House: S. E. Brown of Miami; J. Scott of Warren; W. G. Flagg of Hamilton; John Welsh of Athens; G. W. Andrews of Auglaize; E. Parrott of Montgomery. For the Columbus City Council: A. B. Buttles, Joseph H. Riley, and S. E. Ogden. Still battling time, the Joint Committee was unable to announce the official reception program until Wednesday morning, February 13, the day of Lincoln's arrival. That morning's Ohio State Journal said: "The President-elect and suite, accompanied by the commit- tees appointed on the part of the General Assembly and the Executive, will reach Columbus about 2 o'clock P. M. today, and will proceed at once to the State Capitol in carriages, under escort of the 1st Battalion, 2d Regiment, Lieut. Col. Mills, commanding. The Governor will receive the President- elect at the Executive Rooms; thence, accompanied by the Committee of Escort, they will proceed to the Hall of Representatives, when the Governor will present the Presi- dent-elect to the General Assembly, through Lieutenant Governor Kirk, its presiding officer; after which the Presi- dent-elect will proceed to the rotunda of the Capitol, where he will receive the citizens until 5 o'clock P.M. From 8V2 o'clock to 10 P.M. there will be a levee at the House of Representatives for ladies and their escorts. This levee, and all ceremonies, will close at 10 o'clock precisely. The Presi- dent-elect will be the guest of the Governor during his stay in the city, and with his suite, accompanied by the Governor's aids and the proper committees, will leave for Pittsburg by special train at 8 o'clock A.M. on Thursday. The execution of this programme will be entrusted to Brig. Gen. Lucian Buttles, who is appointed marshal of the day. Proper salutes will be fired on the arrival and depar- ture of the President-elect." Lincoln came in by special train, arriving at 2:10 from Cincinnati where he had spent the night. He was greeted at the depot — on the site of the present Union Station — by a crowd of several thousands that had begun to gather at the noon hour. A lookout on the Scioto River bridge gave the signal when he saw the train approaching and a gun was fired, the first in a 34-gun salute. When the President- elect, accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln and the three sons, Robert, 17, William, 10, and Thomas, 7, emerged from their car "the air was rent with a deafening shout," a reporter wrote. The parade formed and marched down High Street between lines of flag waving and cheering spectators. Upon arrival at the State House, Lincoln was escorted by Governor Dennison to the House chamber where members of both branches of the Assembly were gathered for his appearance. The chamber was packed, the crowd including many women who had been admitted to the floor by special action of the House membership. An Ohio State Journal legislative correspondent thus described Lincoln at that moment: "The impression which the appearance of the President-elect created was most agreeable. His great height was conspicuous even in that crowd of goodly men, and lifted him fully in view as he walked down the aisle. When he took the Speaker's stand, a better opportunity was afforded to look at the man upon whom more hopes hang than upon any other living. At first the kindness and amiability of his face strikes you; but as he speaks, the greatness and determination of his nature are apparent. Something in his manner, even more than his words, told how deeply he was affected by the enthusiasm of the people . . . "There was the simplicity of greatness in his unassuming and confiding manner that won its way to instant admiration. He looked somewhat worn with travel and the fatigues of popularity, but warmed to the cordiality of his reception." Lincoln was taken to the rostrum where Governor Dennison introduced him to Lieutenant Governor Robert C. Kirk. Addressing his remarks to the President-elect, the Lieutenant Governor spoke as follows: "Sir: On this day, and probably this very hour, the Congress of the United States will declare the verdict of the people, making you their president. It is my pleasurable duty, in behalf of the people of Ohio, speaking through this General Assembly, to welcome you to their Capital. "Never in the history of this Government has such fearful respon- sibility rested upon the Chief Executive of the nation as will now devolve upon you. Never since the memorable time our patriotic fathers gave existence to the American Republic, have the people looked with such intensity of feeling to the inauguration and future policy of a President, as they do to yours. "I need not assure you that the people of Ohio have full confidence in your ability and patriotism, and will respond to you in their loyalty to the Union and the Constitution. It would seem, sir, that the great problem of self-government is to be solved under your administration. All nations are deeply interested in its solution, and they wait with breathless anxiety to know whether this form of government which has been the admiration of the world is to be a failure or not. "It is the earnest and united prayer of our people, that the same kind Providence which protected us in our colonial struggles and has attended us thus far in our prosperity and greatness, will so imbue your mind with wisdom, that you may dispel the dark clouds that hang over our political horizon, and thereby secure the return of harmony and fraternal feelings to our now distracted and unhappy country. God grant their prayer may be fully realized! Again I bid you a cordial welcome to our Capital." President Lincoln replied in these words: "It is true, as has been said by the President of the Senate, that very great responsibility rests upon me in the position to which the votes of the American people have called me. I am duly sensible of that weighty responsibility. I cannot but know what you all know, that, without a name, perhaps without a reason why I should have a name, there has fallen upon me a task such as did not rest even upon the Father of his Country, and so feeling, I can not but turn and look for the support without which it will be impossible for me to perform that great task. I turn, then, and look to the American people, and to that God who has never forsaken them. "Allusion has been made to the interest felt in relation to the policy of the new administration. In this I have received from some a degree of credit for having kept silence, and from others some depreciation. I still think I was right. "In the varying and repeatedly shifting scenes of the present, and without a precedent which could enable me to judge by the past, it has seemed fitting that before speaking upon the difficulties of the country, I should have gained a view of the whole field, to be sure, after all, being at liberty to modify and change the course of policy, as future events may make a change necessary. "I have not maintained silence from any want of real anxiety. It is a good thing that there is no more than anxiety, for there is nothing going wrong. It is a consoling circumstance that when we look out there is nothing that really hurts anybody. "We entertain different views upon political questions, but nobody is suffering anything. This is a most consoling circumstance, and from it we may conclude that all we want is time, patience and a reliance on that God who has never forsaken this people. "Fellow Citizens, what I have said, I have said altogether extemporaneously, and I will now come to a close." Lincoln then went to the west terrace of the State House where he spoke to a "great concourse of people." These are his words: "Ladies and Gentlemen: I appear before you only to address you very briefly. I shall do little else than to thank you for this very kind reception; to greet you and bid you farewell. I should not find strength, if I were otherwise inclined, to repeat speeches of very great length, upon every occasion similar to this — although few so large — which will occur on my way to the Federal Capitol. "The General Assembly of the great State of Ohio has just done me the honor to receive me, and to hear a few broken remarks from myself. Judging from what I see, I infer that the reception was one without party distinction, and one of entire kindness — one that had nothing in it beyond the feeling of the citizenship of the United State of America. "Knowing, as I do, that any crowd, drawn together as this has been, is made up of the citizens near about, and that in this county of Franklin there is great difference of political sentiment, and those agreeing with me having a little the shortest row, from this, and the circumstances I have mentioned, I infer that you do me the honor to meet me here without distinction of party. I think this is as it should be. "Many of you who were not favorable to the election of myself to the Presidency, were favorable to the election of the distinguished Senator from the State in which I reside. If Senator Douglas had been elected to the Presidency in the late contest, I think my friends would have joined heartily in meeting him on his passage through your Capital, as you have me today. If any of the other candidates had been elected, I think it would have been altogether becoming and proper for all to have joined in showing honor, quite as well to the office, and the country, as to the man. The people are themselves honored by such a concentration. "I am doubly thankful that you have appeared here to give me this greeting. It is not much to me, for I shall very soon pass away from you; but we have a large country and a large future before us, and the manifestations of good will towards the Government, and affection for the Union which you may exhibit, are of immense value to you and your posterity forever. "In this point of view it is that I thank you most heartily for the exhibition you have given me, and with this, allow me to bid you an affectionate farewell." Announcement was then made that Lincoln would shake hands with all who wished to meet him in the rotunda. The crowd was to enter at the south and pass out the north portal. However, the press of the surging crowd became so great the President-elect was compelled to retreat to the stairs where he stood and bowed to the people until all had walked past him. The Lieutenant Governor's remark about the "verdict of the people" was in reference to the fact that the House and Senate of the Federal Congress went into joint session at noon that day to count the electoral ballots and thus make the Presidential election official. Sometime in late afternoon, Lincoln received a telegram from a Congressman friend, saying the vote had been counted peaceably. There had been anxiety that the votes might not be counted, due to the tensions in Washington, and there were rumors that insurgents would attempt to seize the city to block Congressional action on the ballots. Lincoln dined at the home of Governor Dennison, at the north- west corner of Spring and High Streets, and there he received state officials, members of the General Assembly, and the members of the Columbus city council. At eight o'clock, he held a levee in the Governor's offices in the State House. The Lincoln family spent the night with the Dennisons. The next morning at eight o'clock, in a cold February drizzle, he entrained to continue the journey eastward. His route took him east to Pittsburgh, then back into Ohio and north to Cleveland on February 15 to spend the night. The special train resumed its journey eastward the following morning at 7:30 o'clock. Large crowds greeted the President-elect at every station along the way to the Pennsylvania border. At Conneaut, final stop in Ohio, a man in the welcoming crowd called out to him: "Don't give up the ship, Abe!" "With your aid I never will as long as life lasts!" Lincoln shouted back to him. They were the last words he was to speak on Ohio soil. SOURCES Ohio State Journal, Columbus. New York Herald, New York. The (Columbus, Ohio) Crisis. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. The Abraham Lincoln Association, Springfield, 111. Roy P. Basler, Editor. Rutgers University Press (1953). DURING TWO JOURNEYS II On the way to Springfield "Ohio Mourns" FOR nine solemn hours on a soft April day the body of Abraham Lincoln lay in the rotunda of the State House in Columbus. That was on Saturday, April 29, 1865, just two weeks after the President died from an assassin's bullet fired by actor John Wilkes Booth in a Washington theater. Lincoln's body was enroute to Springfield, Illinois, aboard a black-draped funeral train that had left Washington on April 21 to wind its way slowly across the country to permit the people to pay homage to the man who had saved the Union. There were nine cars in the train. The last car contained the body of the martyred President and that of his son, William Wallace Lincoln, who had died in the White House in his twelfth year in 1862. The train carried a guard of honor, a Congressional delegation, and a military staff. The clouds of a warm spring rain were breaking when the funeral train drew into the Columbus station at half-past seven o'clock that morning. Rain had fallen on the train all night, ever since it left Cleveland at midnight. At every town along the line — Berea, Grafton, Wellington, Crest- line, Galion, Mount Gilead, Cardington, Worthington, and all the others — crowds stood beside bonfires to see the train pass. At many places it stopped briefly; at others it slowed to a man's pace. Bells tolled in church steeples, a strange sound in the stillness of a country- side night. A great mass of silent people surrounded the depot, a shed-like structure on the site of the present Union Station. The train stopped with the funeral car squarely across High Street. Muffled bells tolled all over the city. A band played a dirge. A hearse, a gigantic pagoda-like vehicle with festooned silk and flags for the canopy, drew up to the car to receive the coffin. It was pulled by six plumed white horses in jet blankets, each led by a groom in black. The only sound was the sharp commands of the military. The funeral procession started down High Street on the planking pavement. Every window, doorway and balcony was filled with silent watchers and sidewalks were packed. Conversation was in whispers. Forty-two young women in black sang a hymn from a special conveyance. The procession moved to Broad Street, then east on Broad to Fourth, south on Fourth to State, east on State to Seventh, south on Seventh to Town, west on Town to High Street, then north to the west front of the State House. The whole downtown section of the capital was in mourning. The massive pillars of the State House were draped in spiral turns of mourning cloth from top to bottom. The windows also were draped. Over the west entrance to the capitol an inscription said: "God Moves in a Mysterious Way." Another, at the cornice above the columns, said: "With Malice Toward None; With Charity for All." The west gateway to the State House yard was arched with the inscription, "Ohio Mourns." It was nine o'clock when the procession reached the High Street entrance to the State House. The 88th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, acting as special escort, formed in two ranks from the street to the steps. Eight sergeants bore the coffin into the rotunda. Major General Joseph Hooker and Governor John Brough followed. The coffin was placed on a dais that occupied a flower-decked carpeted platform almost thirty feet long and more than twenty feet wide, rising by five steps dressed in black. Heads were bowed. The Reverend Mr, F. C. Felton said a prayer. Then the coffin was opened. There was a slight movement by the undertakers. For minutes the rotunda was still as death. A woman, the only one in the group, placed an anchor of white blossoms and evergreens at the foot of the coffin, a wreath of the same texture on the breast of the dead, and a cross at the head. A column of bright sunlight streamed down from the high-vaulted dome. Members of the various military organizations that had formed the procession were the first to view the body. They entered the west portal in fours, passing by twos on either side of the coffin, those on the right turning to the south door and those on the left to the north. The public followed in like formation. When the west portal was thrown open, two lines, formed four abreast, extended from the State House north to Long Street and south to Rich. The lines moved steadily. Heavy carpeting on the marble floor muffled the sound. A count showed eight thousand persons an hour were passing through the rotunda. This continued for more than six hours. By mid-afternoon, an estimated 50,000 had been admitted. Columbus at that time was a city of about 20,000. A platform had been erected at the east entrance of the State House for a service of tribute. A crowd had waited around it for hours. There was a prayer and a hymn by a choir. An oration by Job E. Stevenson of Chillicothe required a quarter of an hour. "History alone can measure his worth," Stevenson said, "but we, in parting from his mortal remains, may indulge the fullness of our hearts in a few broken words of his life and his death and his fame . . . The nation is saved and redeemed." The respectful silence that followed when Stevenson had finished was broken by cries from the crowd for Major General Hooker, seated on the platform. The band began to play a dirge but the cries for "Fighting Joe" continued. The General, stern visaged and distressed by the incident, rose to his feet. When the music ceased, he stepped forward. "My friends," he said, "I thank you very much for the compliment you pay me by your call. If I do not respond by remarks, you will ascribe it to the inappropriateness of the occasion. Your call was dictated by curiosity as much as to hear a speech from me. That I grant you. Further you must excuse me." The ceremony was concluded with the singing of an ode written by William Cullen Bryant. The crowd drifted into High Street, which was densely thronged, to await the reforming of the cortege. At six o'clock, the doors of the State House were closed. A bugler sounded assembly. The military reformed. Again sharp commands and rattle of arms. The eight sergeants carried the coffin to the hearse waiting in High Street. The procession moved north to the depot. The roar of heavy artillery shook capitol square with a national salute. At eight o'clock, the funeral train resumed its journey westward. At that same hour, the stage curtain rose at the Columbus Atheneum for the evening performance of "Paradise Lost." Source: Reports of the events of April 3J), 1865, as published in the Ohio State Journal, Columbus. The F. J. Heer Printing Company- Columbus 16, Ohio 1959 Bound by the State of Ohio THE OHIO LINCOLN SESQUICENTENNIAL COMMITTEE The Ohio State Museum Columbus 10, Ohio Michael V. DiSalle Governor of Ohio Honorary Chairman Mrs. James B. Patton Albert A. Woldman Chairman Vice-chairman Charles A. Jones Secretary John F. Cady Kent Castor Simon P. Dunkle Samuel Englender Hubert B. Eyman, Jr. Robert S. Harper George W. Ritter Mason M. Roberts Carl W. Schaeffer Robert Taft, Jr. Earl W. Wiley Erwin C. Zepp Executive Director Staff R. L. F. McCombs Executive Secretary Edith B. Plesia Secretary UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 973.7L63C4H23D C001 DURING TWO JOURNEYS COLUMBUS, OH 3 01 2 031805259