"Never before was rejoicing turned into such sudden and overwhelming sorrow. A demon studying how most deeply to wound the greatest number of hearts, could have devised no act for his purpose like that which sent Abraham Lincoln to his grave. No man's loss could have been so universally felt as that of a father, brother, friend. Many a fireside was made lonely by this bereavement. Sadness and despondency seized upon all. Men ceased business, and workmen returned home with their dinner buckets unopened. The merchants left their counting-rooms for the privacy of their dwellings. A gloom, intensified by the transition from the pomp and rejoicing of the day before, settled impenetrably on every mind. Bells sadly tolled in all parts of the land. Mourning drapery was quickly seen from house to house on every square of the national capital; and all the chief places of the country witnessed, by spontaneous demonstration, their participation in the general sorrow. In every loyal pulpit, and at every true altar throughout the nation, the great public grief was the theme of earnest prayer and discourse on the day following. One needs not to dwell on what no pen can describe, and on what no adult living on that day can ever forget."
Funeral services were conducted in the East Room of the White House on Wednesday, April 19, by Doctor Gurley, of the Presbyterian Church. Andrew Johnson, the successor of President Lincoln, by proclamation, recommended that memorial services be held that day throughout the United States. I kept my first diary that year, and made the following entry for that day:
"Abraham Lincoln's funeral preached; order to hold meeting at every church in the U. S. Heard David Swartz preach in Clear Spring. 2 Samuel, 3 chapter, 38 verse. The minister was a Methodist, and the words of the text were, 'Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel?'"
The remains of President Lincoln were taken to his old home, Springfield, Illinois, for interment. An address was there delivered by Mr. Lincoln's highly-esteemed friend, Bishop Simpson, of the Methodist Episcopal Church. A large monument, appropriate to the memory of him who "bound the nation and unbound the slave," marks the place where his body lies in Oak Ridge Cemetery.
The three-story brick building in which President Lincoln died in Washington City is still standing. The lower story is used by Mr. O. H. Oldroyd, containing the Oldroyd Lincoln Memorial Collection, consisting of more than three thousand articles pertaining to the martyred President. I visited this house, May 23, 1901. In some pictures of the house in which Lincoln died there is a flag floating from a window in the second story, and in others the third story, with the statement that the flag indicates the room in which President Lincoln died. Neither is correct. He died in a small room on the first floor, in the rear part of the building.
It is now nearly forty-four years since Abraham Lincoln died. There have been great changes in our country during that time. The South now vindicates Lincoln, and realizes that he was their friend. Peace and good will now prevail between the North and the South, cemented by the blood of Lincoln.
Joseph H. Bradley, chaplain National Soldiers' Home of Virginia, in a communication to the Ram's Horn, quotes from a letter written by General William G. Webb, a Christian ex-Confederate:
"Abraham Lincoln was a great and good man, and was raised up by God to preserve this nation as one and indivisible, and to give freedom to the slaves. As a Confederate, I could not see it; and after our defeat it took me some time to grasp it; but it became very plain to me after a while. God has a great work for this nation to do, and Mr. Lincoln was, like Washington, one of his instruments to prepare the people for this mission which the United States is to accomplish toward the enlightenment, freedom, and Christianization of the world."