White House History 47 "Death and the White House"

Please note that the following is a digitized version of White House History Quarterly, Issue 47, originally released in print form in 2017. Single print copies of the full issue can be purchased online at Shop.WhiteHouseHistory.org No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

All photographs contained in this journal unless otherwise noted are copyrighted by the White House Historical Association and may not be reproduced without permission. Requests for reprint permissions should be directed to rights@whha.org. Contact books@whha.org for more information. © 2017 White House Historical Association.

All rights reserved under international copyright conventions.

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY NUMBER FORTY-SEVEN• FALL 2017

4

by William Seale WILLIAM SEALE is an American Historian and author and the editor of White House History.

DEATH AND THE PRESIDE�T's HousE

8 "FIRS T IN WAR, FIRS T IN PEACE," AND FIRST IN DEATH

A HIS TORY OF PRESIDEN TIAL MOURNING by Matthew Costello MATTHEW COSTELLO is the senior historian at the White House Historical Association.

20 MEDICAL MYS TERY: PRESIDENT WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON

by Richard F Grimmett RICHARD GRIMMETT is a specialist in international security with the Congressional Research Service and the author of St. John's Church, Lafayette Square: The History and Heritage of the Church of the Presidents.

SuccUMBS To A FATAL ILLNESS IN THE WHITE Hm;sE

32

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S FUNERAL TRAIN:

by John White JOHN WHITE is the author of thirteen books and more than 150 articles.

He was employed by the National Museum of American History from 1958 to 1990.

THE SOLEMN JOURNE Y FROM WASHING TON TO SPRINGFIELD

46 SOCIE T Y CALLS ON WIDOW MARY TODD LINCOLN:

by Clifford Krainik CLIFFORD KRAINIK is an author and independent historian specializing in 19th-century photography and Americana.

A COLLECTION RECALLS A TRADITION

54

by Lawrence L. Knutson LA WRENCE L. KNUTSON is a journalist and writer. He retired from the Associated Press in 2002 following a thirty-seven year career. He is the author of Away from the White House.

THE DEATH OF A SON: CALVIN COOLIDGE JR.

60

THE GRIEF OF Two FATHERS: P RESIDENT CALVIN COOLIDGE LOOKS TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN FOR STRENGTH by Amity Shlaes AMITY SHLAES is an author and columnist. Her books include Coolidge, a biography of the president.

66

"RUN SLOW, RUN SILEN T": THE NATION MOURNS AS

PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D.ROOSEVELT's FUNERAL TRAIN PASSES by Robert Klara ROBERT KLARA is a journalist and author specializing in uncovering the overlooked and forgotten facets of American history.

76 REFLECTIONS: FAMILY LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Stewart D. McLaurin, President, White House Historical Association

�oreword (jone 'But g{pt !Forgotten

The White House draped in black for the slain President James Garfield in September 1881.

Habiliments of mourning at the Presidents House had been established following the death of President William Henry Harrison in 1841.

Presidents are mourned at their deaths in fairly similar ways.

White House traditions of official mourning began in 1841 with the sudden death of William Henry Harrison, "Old Tippecanoe," who had triumphed in his inauguration as president only one month before. Even in a time when communications were, by our standards, almost primi­ tive, the story traveled quickly, from newspaper to newspaper, state cap­ ital to state capital, reaching the whole nation within a few weeks.

Black flags and bunting were still evident long after the event. Grief in the states took ceremonial form in processions with symbolic empty coffins, orations, and newsprint, and set precedents for the public mourning of seven presidents who would die in office, in years to come.

In this issue we examine in detail the mourning rituals that marked not only Harrison's death but also the deaths in office of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as, more cursorily, of Zachary Taylor, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, Warren G. Harding, and John F. Kennedy. There were other deaths in the White House-of first ladies and president's children-and this issue also describes the deaths of Willie Lincoln and Calvin Coolidge Jr., and the ways in which their grieving fathers carried on with presidential respon­ sibilities.

Death comes to the White House, as to every home in the nation. But Americans share no greater shock than the death of a presi­ dent. At White House History we have planned this issue on death and the White House over a long period, and we know from the extensive literature that we will revisit it later on. This issue is a beginning.

William Seale Editor, White House History

Death and the President's House

WILLIAM

'I.following ;, a list, compiled as accu­ rately as we are able, of those known by the author to have died in the White House and those presidents and their children who died elsewhere while resident in the White House.

Presidents of the United States 1841 1850 1865 1881 1901 1923 1945 1963

William Henry Harrison Zachary Taylor Abraham Lincoln James A. Garfield William McKinley Warren G. Harding Franklin D. Roosevelt John F. Kennedy

Only two of the eight presidents on the list actual­ ly died in the White House proper, and both died of natural causes: William Henry Harrison in 1841 and Zachary Taylor in 1850. Two presidents died of natu­ ral causes while traveling: Warren G. Harding in San Francisco in 1923 and Franklin D. Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Georgia, in 1945. Of the four presidents who died at the hand of assassins, Abraham Lincoln died in a house across the street from Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., in 1865; James Garfield died at Elberon on the Jersey Shore in 1881; William McKinley died in Buffalo, New York, in 1901; and John F. Kennedy died in Dallas, Texas, in 1963.

SEALE

Harrison's, the first, both stunned and amazed the nation. Even in the absence of mass communica­ tion, the bad news traveled fast. In Washington the famous general who had been president for only one month lay in state in the White House, his dress sword atop his coffin. Black and white crepe drapery wrapped the White House columns and street lamps and hung from windows all over town. Bells tolled.

The nation at that time declared thirty days of offi­ cial mourning, a tradition that has continued. To a great extent, the White House decorations of Harrison's mourning were copied for all presidential funerals to follow.

Children of Sitting Presidents of the United States 1800 1804 1862 1924 1963

Charles Adams Maria Jefferson Eppes Willie Lincoln Calvin Coolidge Jr. Patrick Kennedy

The deaths of children in the White House cast grief and sympathy over the nation. Anguish within the circle of the first family is kept as private as possi­ ble, but for the public such a loss amid the glory of the presidency lingers long beyond the White House.

T°hrough the more than 200-year history of the White House, death has come to five youthful members of the sitting presidents' families. The first presidential

child to die was Charles Adams, the son of John Adams, the second president of the United States and the first to occupy the White House. Charles, age thirty and married, succumbed to alcohol and became a raging danger to all those who tried to help him. His parents called upon him in New York separately while en route to take residence in the new Federal City, in the fall of 1800, only to find his situation too near the end to give any hope. He died before Christmas, far away from the unfinished White House.

Since that time three young sons of presidents have died, but only one actually died in the White House. That was the third of four sons of Abraham and Mary Lincoln, Willie Lincoln, who died in 1862. The other two died in hospitals, Calvin Coolidge Jr., who died at Walter Reed Hospital in 1924, and Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, who died at the Boston Children's Hospital in 1963. All three are interred beside their fathers.

Wives of Sitting Presidents of the United States 1842 Letitia Christian Tyler 1892 Caroline Harrison 1914 Ellen Axson Wilson A number of presidents came to the White House as widowers-Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and Chester Arthur­ and three more would lose their wives during their presidency. All three first ladies died in the White House. The first was Letitia Christian Tyler, the first wife of John Tyler. An invalid following a stroke, she made an appearance at the White House wedding of her daughter Elizabeth but rarely left the private Second Floor quarters. She died on September 10, 1842, at the age of 51. Fifty years later, Caroline Harrison died of tuberculosis at age 60 on October 25, 1892. On August 6, 1914, Ellen Axson Wilson died of Bright's disease. Presidents Tyler and Wilson would remarry during their presi­ dencies.

6 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

Residents c. 1803 Child (name not known) of Eddy and Fanny slaves in the Jefferson White House 1873 Judge Frederick Lincoln Dent 1952 Margaret (Madge) Gates Wallace In the first administration of Thomas Jefferson, a passing took place that was obscure outside the walls of the White House but had a powerful impact upon the well-being of its occupants. This was an infant born to Eddy and Fanny, enslaved servants of the president. The baby was about a year old. Only a few details are known, not even the baby's gender.

Jefferson paid Peter Lennox, a carpentry contractor who had worked on White House projects, to build the coffin. Where the child was buried is not known.

Other deaths within the White House itself included two in-laws in residence. Private grief was contained, as usual, for Julia Dent Grant's father, Judge Frederick Lincoln Dent, whose funeral was held in 1873 for family and friends in the Blue Room.

Madge Gates Wallace, the mother of First Lady Bess Truman, died at age 90 in her White House bedroom in December 1952. She had lived with the Trumans for ten years, in apartments, the Blair House, and the White House.

Intruders 1976 Chester Plummer 1994 Frank Eugene Corder Chester Plummer, an intruder who scaled the White House fence, was shot and killed by the Secret Service after ignoring orders to stop. In 1994, Frank Eugene Corder was killed when he crashed a stolen Cessna onto the South Lawn, failing in an apparent attempt to hit the building itself.

Funeral services held for First Lady Caroline Harrison in the East Room of the White House were documented with an illustration by W P. Snyder for the November 5, 1892, issue ofHarper's Weekly.

The young United States of America mourned the loss of its first president George Washington with ceremonies conducted throughout the country for many weeks after his death on Decenzber 14, 1799.

In Philadelphia, an elaborate procession began at daybreak on December 26, 1799, with the firing of sixteen canons. This illustration from Birch's Views of Philadelphia captured the scene as a ,nock funeral proceeds up High Street. Soldiers escort a riderless horse bearing an empty saddle ahead of pallbearers who carry an empty coffin.

"First in War, First in Peace," and First in Death A History of Presidential Mourning MATTHEW

a

"'z C: z :i'

"'z "'z w u_ 0 :,

a: :, Cl

§! g0 :i:

"'ii' 0 :,_

.I. �

"1ii w a: 0.. rn z 0

., "!2 0

� u.i t:

COSTELLO

};J-

he night of December 14, -i;i, �1799, George Washington died at Mount Vernon in his sixty-seventh year. As he languished on his deathbed, he asked his secretary Tobias Lear to settle his business accounts, complete his unfinished correspondence, organize his military and political papers, and assist his wife Martha and his family with any other matters that might arise from his death. Washington also requested that his body be laid out for three days then placed in the family vault "without parade, or funeral Oration."' While Washington's family entombed him privately, the young nation collec­ tively mourned the loss. Politicians and orators marked the occasion with speeches, parades, and processions. Pastors gave eulogies to Washington's many virtues. Businesses closed their doors and citi­ zens gathered in halls, streets, taverns, and public squares to pay homage to the nation's first president.

Between his death and February 22, 1800, what would have been Washington's sixty-eighth birthday, more than four hundred funeral and memorial cere­ monies were held across the country.2 These mourning practices, while grand in scale, were not wholly unique to George Washington. In some ways they resembled the public responses of two other notable eighteenth-century deaths, King George II in 1760 and Benjamin Franklin in 1790.

American colonists grieved the loss of their king, but as tradition dictated they also celebrated the ascen-

sion of George III as the new protector and defender of their English liberties. The death of Benjamin Franklin, America's first international celebrity, brought incred- ible sorrow across the coup.try. Newspapers were filled with poems and epitaphs, and thou­ sands of spectators watched his funeral procession in Philadelphia. The reaction to Washington's death was an enlarged fusion of these two events. Much like the late King George II, Washington was a for­ mer head of state and national symbol, and like Franklin, he was wildly popular.3 However, the after­ math of Washington's demise was unlike any that preceded him and was unparalleled until the nation mourned President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. But this occasion provides insight into how Americans learned to mourn their fallen leaders and reinvent polit­ ical traditions to link themselves with the presidency.

America's independence from England did not immediately sever all cultural ties. Some colonial mourning rituals survived the Revolution and shaped early American hero worship. State funerals were not immune to social, political, and cultural change, as the times often shaped the orations, eulogies, and even the actors who sometimes performed these public rituals. The history of presidential mourning, grounded in tradition yet shaped by scientific and technological progress, tells us much about the changing relationship between the president and the people.

Traditions established after George Washington's death set a precedent for the early presidents who followed him. Funeral and burial responsibilities fell on the shoulders of family members of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, while the popu­ lace grieved through staged events.

The passing �f the revolutionary generation alarmed many Americans.

Could the United States and the Union endure without the physical presence of the Founders? A new gen­ eration of politicians rose to power, arguing that they were the rightful heirs to the Revolution. Armed with the electoral support of white laborers, farmers, merchants, and tradesmen, this new generation maintained that they were the true links between a shared, nostalgic past and America's expansionist future. As a result, voters gravitated toward candidates with sim­ ilar backgrounds or life experiences, electing General Andrew Jackson in 1828 and 1832, along with General William Henry Harrison in 1840.

George Washington's tomb, like those of the early presidents and Founding Fathers of his generation, was sited on family property. The image by Nathaniel Currier, c. 1845, at left, shows his second tomb at Mount Vernon, much as it appears today.

The cover illustration on sheet music for a funeral dirge for William Henry Harrison (opposite) includes an image of the pro­ cession leaving the White House. This procession established a tradition that would be followed with the funerals of presidents to come.

10

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number47)

The First President to Die in Office: William Henry Harrison Hailed as the hero of the Battle of ih Tippecanoe, William Henry Harrison's -� presidency ended unexpectedly with his death a mere thirty one days after his �' 4 inauguration. As the first sitting presi­ dent to die in office, politicians knew this moment had far-reaching consequences.

First, the death of a president sparked congre�·: sional and public debate over the interpretation of presidential succession laid out in Article II of the Constitution. Second, Harrison's death ensured that Whig legislation would either fail to be passed by Congress or would be vetoed by his successor, John Tyler. Finally, the occasion allowed politicians to establish state mourning traditions to solidify the connection between the American people and the president. Against the backdrop of the national capi­ tal, political agents orchestrated a grand spectacle celebrating Harrison and his public and military serv­ ice, all while employing national symbols and encour­ aging citizen participation to create a shared sense of loss and suffering. 5 In the early morning hours of April 7, 1841, mourners congregated on the streets of Washington, D.C. Citizens, hoping to enter the President's House and pay their respects, solemnly marched down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the mansion draped in black crepe and insignia. Only "ladies, and the gen­ tlemen attending them, officers of government, the

-:�/I

repre entative of foreign states," however, were allowed inside.President Harrison's ,�. funeral service took place in the East \�. Room. The lid of his coffin featured "the lif;; Sword of Justice," "the Sword of State," a "wreath of laurel," and "a scroll con­ taining the Constitution of the United States." After Reverend William Hawley ,,- of St. John's Episcopal Church performed the last rites, the coffin was transported to a high-built funeral car, "which was so constructed as to give the spectators a full view of the pall and cof­ fin." Wrapped in black velvet, the car featured six white horses at the helm; the pallbearers, one from each state and territory, took their positions along­ side the car. Associations, fraternities, military detachments, representatives, fire companies, and Freemasons all positioned themselves into divisions for the grand procession. With the participants now in place, Harrison's remains slowly moved southeast through the city to the Congressional Cemetery. One witness wrote of the crowd, "There is now silence deep and universal ...loud sighs and burning tears attested their deep affiiction." 6 One columnist estimat­ ed that some twenty-five thousand citizens joined the procession honoring their recently deceased president.7 Just under a decade later, President Zachary Taylor died at the White House several days after a long Fourth of July ceremony in the hot sun. The plan for Harrison's funeral were taken out and fol­ lowed in nearly every detail for Taylor.

=

First in War, First in Peace, and First in Death: A Brief History of Presidential Morning, 1799-2004

11

The First Presidential Assassinations: Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, and William McKinley By modifying the mourning process with nation­ al symbols and insignia, American politicians invent­ ed new presidential commemorative traditions, invit­ ing Americans to share their suffering through public rituals and remembrance. These rituals evolved again after the shocking assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Lincoln had steered the country through a horrific civil war, overseen the emancipation of more than 4 million slaves, and was beginning to advocate for policies of reconciliation between the North and the South. As northerners celebrated Union victory, a group of southern con­ spirators attempted to reignite the war by murdering several high-level government officials. President Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward were targeted but only one assassin, John Wilkes Booth, succeeded in his mission.

Lincoln's traumatic death resonated with all Americans. As one columnist for the Maine Farmer noted, "The cup of joy is suddenly dashed from our lips by the awful tidings that the President of the United States had been barbarously and ruthlessly assassinated." 9 But the advances of nineteenth-centu­ ry science, communications, and transportation assured that more Americans could engage in presi­ dential mourning traditions than ever before. By embalming the president and sending his remains by cross country train back to Springfield, Illinois, for burial, more Americans personally experienced the loss of their leader as they viewed his remains or watched his funeral train pass by. 9 Lincoln's funeral followed the traditions forged 12 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number47)

by President Harrison's obsequies, but there were several significant additions to these customs. First, Abraham Lincoln was the first president to lie in state in the United States Capitol Rotunda. After the commencement of the funeral services in the East Room at the President's House, Lincoln's coffin was placed on a "funeral car" and drawn by six white horses down Pennsylvania Avenue, accompanied by a riderless horse with reversed boots in the stirrups.

The general public was also permitted to view the body, heightening the nation's sense of loss. The art of embalming was now practiced widely because of the massive losses of life during the Civil War. This practice allowed army doctors and professional embalmers to preserve the dead on the battlefield and delay decomposition so their remains could be sent home. Lincoln's remains would not go directly to Springfield for burial; instead, his body traversed the country by train, allowing more Americans to experience the loss of their president in a more inti­ mate and agonizing way. Finally, communication and transportation advances permitted more Americans to not only read about Lincoln's where­ abouts but also to participate in the mourning of Lincoln in their own cities, communities, and states.''

While there were a number of notable presiden­ tial deaths after Abraham Lincoln, many followed this new model of national mourning. The funerals of James A. Garfield (1881) and William McKinley (1901), both victims of assassination, followed the Lincoln traditions closely. The remains were brought back to the nation's capital for state funeral services; laid out in the East Room of the President's House; transported down Pennsylvania Avenue with a grand funeral procession; the coffin lay in state for public visitation in the Capitol's Rotunda; and transported

back to their respective states for burial. Some forty thousand mourners shuffled through the Capitol cor­ ridors to see Garfield's coffin lying on the Lincoln catafalque. At the conclusion of the ceremonies, Garfield's body was headed west to Cleveland, Ohio, for final repose. McKinley, who died in Buffalo, New York, was also sent back to Washington, D.C., to receive the same state honors as Presidents Lincoln and Garfield. One correspondent noted that even after eight hours of visitation in the Rotunda there were "still thousands of people waiting to get a

last glance at the casket." 12 McKinley's remains were eventually taken back to Canton, Ohio, for burial.

The funeral of Warren G. Harding, who died unex­ pectedly in San Francisco, California, in 1923, also followed the Lincoln mourning rituals. Harding received the same honors and tributes as the other deceased presidents and was transported by train back to his burial site in Marion, Ohio.13

Following a precedent set by the sequencing of the funeral and public viewing of Abraham Lincoln, President William McKinley lay in state in the Rotunda of the US. Capitol following his assassination in 1901.

"First in War, First in Peace," and First in Death: A History of Presidential Mourning

13

PUBLIC PROCESSIONS

Beginning with President Lincoln's funeral, public processions became a fixture of presidential obsequies. Scenes from processions in Washington, D. C., include (clockwise from top right): James Garfield's 'funeral car" in 1881; Warren G. Harding's body leaving the White House in a horse-drawn caisson, 1923; a crowd queuing along a rain-drenched Pennsylvania Avenue to pay respects to President William McKinley, 1901; and Lincoln's cortege moving toward the US. Capitol as spectators line the sidewalks, perch on rooftops, and lean out of windows to see the president's body pass by.

14 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

"First in Wai·, First in Peace," and First in Death: i\ History of Presidential Mourning

15

The First Televised Presidential Funeral: John F. Kennedy The next major transforma­ tion in presidential mourning came with yet another tragic assassination in the new techno­ logical age: the television. While campaigning for reelection in - November 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Local and national television stations closely covered the president's whereabouts, speeches, and movements, so the news of his death was all the more shocking when CBS interrupted the popular soap opera As the World Turns with a short bulletin to inform viewers that the president had been shot.

Shortly thereafter television anchor Walter Cronkite announced that the president had died at "One P.M. Central Standard Time, Two o'clock Eastern Standard Time, some thirty-eight minutes ago." 14 Honoring Jacqueline Kennedy's request, the slain president's state funeral followed many of the Lincoln traditions: the president remains were brought to the black draped East Room of the White House for private services; his coffin was transported by six white horses down Pennsylvania and

Constitution Avenues to the Capitol with a riderless horse; his coffin was placed in the Rotunda on the Lincoln catafalque; and the public was permitted to view the casket for eight hours. But the Kennedy family did break with one significant tradition: they chose to bury the president at Arlington National Cemetery instead of in his nati�e Massachusetts.

The greater change in this presidential mourning was the broadcasting of Kennedy's funeral across all major news networks. "The medium of television, which played such a major part in the career of President Kennedy," wrote New York Times colum­ nist Jack Gould "is the instrument that is making the tragedy of his death such a deeply personal experience in millions of homes over this long weekend." 15 More than 1 million Americans witnessed the funeral rites in Washington, D.C., and an estimated 180 million citizens, nearly 95 percent of the country's total popu­ lation, watched them live on television. The advent of new technology once again allowed more Americans to personally grieve the loss of their national leader 16 while sharing such iconic moments as John Kennedy Jr.'s final salute to his father.

Walter Cronkite (left) announced President Kennedy's death on live television to a stunned national audience on November 22, 1963.

Television coverage of the funeral ceremonies included scenes of the Kennedy family, foreign dignitaries, and high government officials arriving at St. Matthew's Cathedral (opposite).

16 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number47)

"First in War, First in Peace," and First in Death: i\ History

or Presidelllial Mourning

17

The First President Mourned in the Digital Age Ronald Reagan A number of state funerals for former presidents followed the Kennedy model, but recent lead­ ers have added another interest­ ing shift in siting their graves.

Lyndon Johnson opted to be buried on his ranch in Texas. · However the rest have chosen to be laid to rest at their presidential libraries. Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan chose to be buried at their libraries.

Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Gerald Ford all received the same state honors and selected their own burial sites. With the advent of the internet, presidential mourning has now become instantaneous, connecting more Americans and peoples of the world than ever thought possible.

President Ronald Reagan's state funeral services last­ ed for a week and stretched from Simi Valley, California, to Washington, D.C. More than 200,000 people passed through the Capitol Rotunda to pay their last respects. But in the digital age, presidential mourning adapted once again, allowing Americans to experience grief in the moment, follow minute-by-minute updates, and revisit the events afterward.

Audible Inc. offered online users free audio downloads of Reagan's funeral service.

Website traffic for the New York Post rose "123 percent, with Mr. Reagan's funeral being the top story for 58 percent of its visitors." 17 In a rather ironic twist, it seems very fitting that the information revolution allowed more Americans to grieve the president nicknamed "The Great Communicator." 18 Originally built on the foundations of British political culture, American presidential mourning traditions gradually evolved over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth cen­ turies. While historically Americans have never directly elected their presidents, the rela­ tionship between the office and the people has nonetheless transformed with the expansion of suffrage, developments in transportation, and 18

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

technological progress. This evolution in sentiment, cultivated by national political culture and redefined by untimely or tragic presidential deaths, has fos­ tered the American tradition of a deeply personal relationship between Americans and their presidents.

The deaths of William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor compelled politicians to revamp state funeral policies and encourage the public to participate in national rituals of collective loss. Scientific advances in body preservation and traniwortation permitted more Americans to personally ;r visually experience the tragic deaths of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, and William McKinley. Presidential remembrance transformed yet again in the twentieth century as the media of television and the Internet revolutionized how Americans mourned. As we look to the future of presidential mourning, one can only imagine how social media will alter our mourning traditions, heighten our experiences, and shape the memory of our national bereavement.

- N11EWG£:NGE WNTEJRllOiGA,TOIIRS: AP\P,1, T

··ER SCHOOL COUlD DliSH OU .. VI.JAY -

Crowds watch live coverage of President Reagan's funeral on screens in Times Square.

NOTES I.

George Washington, last will and testament, July 9, 1799, Papers of George Washington, Retirement Series, ed. William Abbot et al. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1999), 4:491.

2.

Gerald Kahler, The Long Farewell: Americans Mourn the Death of George Washington (Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 11-20; Brady Carlson, Dead Presidents: An American Adventure into the Strange Deaths and Surprising Afterlives of Our Nation's Leaders (New York: W.W. Norton, 2016), 9 2-4; Edward Lengel, Inventing George Washington: America's Founder, in Myth and Memory (New York: Harper Collins, 201 I), 10-16. For more on the death of George Washington, see Peter R. Henriques, "The Final Struggle Between George Washington and the Grim King: Washington's Attitude Toward Death and an Afterlife," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 107, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 78-83; Otto Lohrenz, "Thomas Davis Jr.: Officiating Clergyman at the Funeral and Burial of President George Washington," Anglican and Episcopal History 73, no. 2 (June 2004): 169-95; Joseph Ellis, His Excellency (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 269-75.

3.

Boston Evening Post, December 29, 1760; New Hampshire Gazette, January 2, 1761; Boston Gazette, January 5, 1761; Boston Evening Post, January 5, 1761; Boston Post Boy, January 5, 1761; New York Mercury, January 5, 1761; New York Gazette, January 12, 1761; New York Packet, April 22, 1790; New York Daily Gazette, April 22, 1790; Pennsylvania Mercury, April 22, 1790; Independent Gazetteer, April 24, 1790; Burlington Advertiser, April 24, 1790; Massachusetts Spy, April 29, 1790; Weekly Museum, May I, 1790; New Hampshire Gazette, May 5, 1790.

4.

The Sun, April 5, 1841; Madisonian for the Country, April 6, 1841; Berkshire County Whig, April 8, 1841; Salem Gazette, April 8, 1841; Joseph Ellis, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), 205-16; Kevin Hayes, The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 639-44; Carlson, Dead Presidents, 25-30.

5.

Gail Collins, William Henry Harrison (New York: Henry Holt, 2012), 122-25; Freeman Cleaves, Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison and His Time (1939; repr., Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1969), 340---43; Carlson, Dead Presidents, 30-36; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 2006, 1983), 139-45. Anderson argued that a shared vernacu­ lar and dissemination of culture through print capitalism fostered the growth of both national awakening and consciousness. In the United States, newspapers and periodicals, coupled with a growing literate popula­ tion, keep more Americans connected with current events, policies, and people. The death of a president, whether it be of natural causes or assassi­ nation, would have certainly been felt collectively as the president came to symbolize "the people."

6.

"From Our Own Correspondent: Funeral of President Harrison," New World· A Weekly Family Journal of Popular Literature, Science, Art and News, April 17, 1841, 2, 16,252.

7.

"Funeral of the late President, William Henry Harrison," Log Cabin, April 10, 1841. According to one newspaper articl_e that detailed the funeral pro­ cession order, there were thirty-four assistant marshals and seventeen dis­ tinct divisions. These divisions were filled with members of various brigades, volunteers, veterans, sailors, clergymen, local and national offi­ cials, immigrant societies, schoolchHdren, and trade organizations. See "Funeral Procession of the Late President of the United States," The Sun, April 23, 1841; Log Cabin, April 17, 1841. Harrison's death in office also created the precedent that the federal government would cover the expens­ es of a presidential funeral. In late August 1841 Congress allotted $3,088.89 to settle accounts for Harrison's funeral. See Log Cabin, September 4, 1841; House Journal, 27th Cong., 1st sess., August 19, 1841 (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1841), 36, 384; Senate Journal, 27th Cong., !st sess., August 31, 1841 (Washington, D.C.: Thomas Allen, 1841), 32, 222-23. Harrison's body was eventually transported back to North Bend, Ohio, for final burial, continuing the tradition of presidents reposing in their home or native states. For more on the ceremonies inside the White House and in Washington, D.C., see William Seale, The President's House: A History, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2008), 1:230-33. For an eyewitness account, see John Quincy Adams, diary, April 7, 1841, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Compromising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, ed. Charles Francis Adams (repr., Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), 10:459-60.

8.

Zachary Taylor's state funeral followed Harrison's precedent in many ways: his body was laid out in the East Room where the Episcopal rites were performed; the coffin was placed on a funeral car and "drawn by 8 white horses"; and his remains were temporarily buried at the Congressional Cemetery until his family removed them in October 1850 for burial on the Taylor property in Kentucky. See The Sun, July 13, 1850; Trenton State Gazette, July 15, 1850; Daily Ohio Statesman, July 15, 1850; K. Jack Bauer, Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 314--19.

9.

"The Great National Calamity," Maine Farmer, April 20, 1865, 33, 19, 2.

10. Martha Hodes, Mourning Lincoln (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 22-69; Richard Wightman Fox, Lincoln's Body: A Cultural History (New York: W.W. Norton, 2015), 97-123; Barry Schwartz, "Mourning and the Making of a Sacred Symbol: Durkheim and the Lincoln Assassination," Social Forces 70, no. 2 (December 1991): 343-64; For more on the attempt to steal Lincoln's remains, see Thomas Craughwell, Stealing Lincoln's Body (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). ll. New York Times, April 20, 1865; Chicago Tribune, April 20, 1865; San Francisco Bulletin, April 21, 1865; The Sun, April 25, 1865; Hartford Daily Courant, April 26, 1865; Daily Ohio Statesman, April 29, 1865; Daily Ohio Statesman, May 2, 1865; Chicago Tribune, April 26, 1865; Hodes, Mourning Lincoln, 141-88; Robert Reed, Lincoln's Funeral Train: The Epic Journey from Washington to Springfield (Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer Publishing, 2014), 110-115; Dorothy M. Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Twenty Days: A Narrative in Text and Pictures of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Twenty Days and Nights That Followed (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 85-139; Carlson, Dead Presidents, 108-15; Seale, President's House, 1:406-11; Andrew Chamberlai., and Michael Parker Pearson, Earthly Remains: The History and Science of Preserved Human Bodies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 171-73.

12. New Haven Evening Register, September 21, 1881; Daily Inter Ocean, September 22, 1881; Daily Picayune, September 24, 1881; New York Times, September 22, 1881; Wheeling Register, September 24, 1881; New York Times, September 15, 1901; Idaho Daily Statesman, September 15, 1901; Aberdeen Daily News, September 17, 1901; Grand Forks Daily Herald, September 17, 1901; Dallas Morning News, September 18, 1901; Philadelphia Enquirer, September 18, 1901; Emporia Gazette, September 18, 1901; Carlson, Dead Presidents, 120-27, 147; Seale, President's House, 1:618-20.

13. Chicago Daily Tribune, August 4, 1923, and August 9, 1923; Carlson, Dead Presidents, ,224--25; Seale, President's House, 2:106-7.

14. Walter Cronkite, CBS Broadcast, November 22, 1963, www.cbsnews.com; Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Miffiin, 1965), 70-75; Robert Da11ek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 (Boston: Little, Brown, 2003), 688-94.

15. Jack Gould, "TV Personalizes Grief," New York Times, November 24, 1963.

16. Chicago Daily Tribune, November 23, 1963; New York Times, November 24, 1963; "A Hero's Burial," New York Times, November 25, 1963; Dallek, Unfinished Life, 694--702; Carlson, Dead Presidents, 184--88; Robert Poole, On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery (New York: Walker, 2009), 219-29.

17. "Click One for the Gipper," New York Times, June 21, 2004.

18. "Ronald Reagan 1911-2004, Funeral Schedule," Associated Press, June 7, 2004; "Nation Begins Its Long Farewell," Palm Beach Post, June 10, 2004; "Audible Makes Free Audio Downloads of Former President Ronald Reagan's Funeral Service Available at www.audible.com," Business Wire, June 11, 2004; "Ronald Reagan ,1911-2004," Newsday, June 12, 2004; Craig Shirley, Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan (Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson Books, 2015), xiv-xvi, 87-104; Paul Kengor, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 307-11; Carlson, Dead Presidents, 151-52; Timothy Raphael, "Mo(u)rning in America: Hamlet, Reagan, and the Rights of Memory," Theatre Journal 59, no. 1 (March 2007): 1 2-0.

"First in War, First in Peace," and First in Death: A History of Presidential Mourning 19

Medical Mystery President William Henry Harrison Succumbs to a Fatal Illness in the White House RICHARD

F .

illiam Henry Harrison was born into a prominent Virginia family on February 9, 1773. His brief study of medicine ended in 1791 upon the death of his father, Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, governor of Virginia, and noted Anti-Federalist. At 18, young Harrison joined the U.S. Army and served under General Anthony Wayne in the Indian wars in the Northwest Territory. He retired from the army in 1797, became secretary of the Northwest Territory in 1798, and was elected the Northwest Territory's dele­ gate to the U.S. Congress in 1799. When Congress divided the Northwest Territory in two-the Ohio and Indiana Territories-Harrison was appointed territorial governor of Indiana. He served in this capacity from May 1800 to December 1812.1 Harrison's heroics at the November 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe were followed by his appointment by President James Madison as commander of the U.S. northwestern army with the rank of brigadier general during the War of 1812. In March 1813, he was pro­ moted to major general and placed in charge of the Eighth Military District, which encompassed presentA campaign banner depicts 1840 presidential candidate General William Henry Harrison, on horseback, as a man younger than his 67 years at the time. The central image is surrounded by twelve vignettes that support the public image the Whig Party had created

GRIMMETT

day Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri. During the British invasion of Ohio in 1813, Harrison's forces dealt the British and their Indian allies a major defeat at the Battle of the Thames River, and earned him the status of an American military hero. 2 From 1818 to 1828 he represented Ohio in Congress, first in the U.S. House of Representatives, then in the Senate, from which he retired. A support­ er of Henry Clay, he gained prestige in Clay's new Whig Party and in 1836 was chosen as a candidate from the northwestern states. Jacksonian Martin Van Buren would win the presidency, but General Harrison won the largest number of electoral votes of all the Whig candidates and set the stage for his candidacy in the 1840 presidential election.3 Presidential Campaign and Election of 1840 The presidential campaign of 1840 gave the Whig Party a chance to build upon its gains at the state and congressional level. Despite such successes, there had been internal differences between local and national Whig leaders following the loss of the presi­ dential election in 1836. By the time of the December 1839 party convention in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, most delegates had concluded that the Whig Party leader, Senator Henry Clay, could not win a national presidential election. William Henry Harrison was a viable alternative. He was not widely identified with the policy fights between the Whigs and the

Democrats, and the party delegates believed that he could attract new voters, and even some Democrats.

Naturally popular in the northwestern states, his potential was also clear to Whig party leaders in east­ ern states. By emphasizing Harrison's personal quali­ ties and biography, rather than divisive issues, the Whigs created a united front against President Van Buren and the Democrats. Harrison was chosen as the Whig party candidate in December 1839 to attract southern conservatives, the delegates chose John Tyler, a states' rights former Democrat from Virginia and delegate who had supported Henry Clay, to be Harrison's running mate as vice presi­ dent.4 During the presidential campaign, the Whigs introduced and emphasized a populist style. They held rallies, created local party clubs, composed cam­ paign songs, and coined catchy political slogans, most notably "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too"-a refer­ ence to Harrison's victory at the Battle of Tippecanoe. "Old Typ" was touted as a leader who could identify with the common man of the West as well as one who was a military hero, while President Martin Van Buren was attacked as an aristocrat who lived a lavish lifestyle and whose Democratic Party had led to financial ruin for the country. Whig cam­ paign literature described Harrison as a "Log Cabin" man who favored "Hard Cider," and Van Buren as an elitist who drank fine wines. The campaign of the Whigs succeeded across the board. Not only did Harrison defeat Van Buren by 234 electoral votes to 60, the Whig party won control of Congress and sev­ eral state governments.

Inauguration and Subsequent Fatal Illness The inauguration of William Henry Harrison as president took place on March 4, 1841, a cold day in Washington. He was 68 years old, making him the oldest presidential incumbent until Ronald Reagan's election in 1980.5 Large crowds lined the route along Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capitol. Instead of taking a carriage, Harrison chose to ride his own horse. He wore no topcoat or hat when he began his one hour and forty minute inau­ gural address of more than 8,000 words. It was the longest such address ever delivered by a president.

After taking the Oath of Office, Harrison 22

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

returned on horseback to occupy the White House.

One month later, he was dead. Given his age, long exposure to the elements on Inauguration Day, and the later diagnosis that his death was due to pneumo­ nia, the conventional conclusion has been that Harrison's actions were a direct, precipitating factor in his death. This conclusion is oft-repeated in histo­ ry books. Yet Harrison conducted official presiden­ tial business for nearly a month without exhibiting signs of pneumonia. After he became ill in late March 1841, his attending physician kept daily med­ ical notes on the treatments and medications given to the president.

The death of President Harrison one month to the day after he took the oath of office was a shock to the nation and political Washington. Former President John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary on April 4, 1841: "In upwards of half a century, this is the first instance of a Vice President being called to act as President of the United States, which places in the Executive chair a man never thought of for it by anybody. This day is in every sense gloomy-rain the whole day."6 The president's attending physician, Dr. Thomas Miller of Baltimore, and four consulting physicians put out a brief statement describing the onset of Harrison's pneumonia on March 28, as well as other intestinal maladies, which did not respond to their ministrations. Given the president's "age and debili­ ty," their efforts to heal him were unsuccessful and he died on April 4 at 12:30 a.m. Through this brief report and a later, much more detailed, article pub­ lished in the Medical Examiner in May 1841 by Dr. Miller, pneumonia became the accepted cause of death as a fact for generations. 7 It would take more than 170 years for a serious alternative thesis of the cause of President Harrison's death to appear. In 2014, Jane McHugh and Philip A. Mackowiak published an article in Clinical Infectious Diseases that examined medical and envi­ ronmental issues that might provide a credible expla­ nation. The essence of their thesis is that the symp­ toms described by Harrison's doctor in his published case notes were consistent with a serious gastroin­ testinal infection with a secondary involvement of the lungs. Given the severity of Harrison's gastrointesti­ nal issues, it is most probable that he died of "enteric

After many medicines and treatments failed, one of the president's five physicians (Dr. Thomas Miller, third from the left) looks on as William Henry Harrison nears death. Also included in the dramatic scene are a weeping Secretary of the Treasury, Thomas Ewing; Secretary of State Daniel Webster, who looks away; Reverend William Hawley, Rector of St. John's Church who would deliver the eulogy; and Harrison's niece and nephew (depicted here dressed in purple).

fever" a variation of typhus caused by ingesting Salmonella typhi or S. paratyphi-and not from pneumonia. By giving Harrison opium for his dis­ comfort, the doctor not only inhibited bowel move­ ments that could have helped remove deadly bacterial pathogens from his system but also facilitated their invasion into his blood stream. 8 A key environmental factor was the capital's lack of a sewer system. Until at least 1850, raw sewage flowed onto public land near the White House, posing health hazards from the bacteria that flourished in the swampy marshes created by such waste materials. Moreover, the water supplied to the White House came from springs in the area encom­ passed by 13th, 14th, I, and K Streets NW. Upstream from these springs, near 15th and R Streets NW, was a city dumping area for "night-soil" or fecal material collected and deposited at this site each day by the municipal government.9

It was readily possible for deadly bacteria to form at the dumping area, leach into the ground and water table, and then infect the springs that supplied water to the White House. The fact that Harrison had frequently taken "carbonated alkali"-an antacid used to treat his frequent "dyspepsia"­ would have weakened his body's natural resistance to dangerous bacteria should he ingest them through food or water. Strengthening the thesis that bacteria contaminated water could have been present in the White House is the fact that both James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor suffered severe gastrointestinal ill­ nesses while living at the White House, with Taylor dying there in July 1850 from acute cholera. 10

Medical Mystery: President William Henry Harrison Succumbs to a Fatal Illness 23

THE

BOSTON MEDICAL AND SURGICAL JOURNAL. VoL. XXV.

\VEDNESDA.Y, AUGUST 18, 18U. l,

No. 2.

PREBI0ENT HAR.RISON'S LAST ILLNESS. (Communicated for the Bo,ion Hedlcal &DCI 8ur1ical Journal.]

THE profession of medicine is singular1y situated. When differences occur among its members, there is no power to settle and adjudicate them finally. In all other professions disputation is allowed, until decision is marle, and then its voice is hushed; whilst in medicine cavilling is end­ less, and old and apparently exploded notions are again and again, like unquiet spirits, aroused from the tombs of the past, and there is no priest­ hood foun<l in the profession to exorcise them. Medicine is a true de­ mocracy, for all stand upon equal ground; and the only controlling power is public opinion of the prof�sion, the union of the mass in condemnation of the indi,·idual. The body of the profession being the only tribunal, the opinions and practice of its members must be amenable to their pl'aise or censure. The moment these are )aid before the profession, they be­ come fair subjects of criticism and debate. If it were otherwise, danger­ ous opinions might exert an unfortunate influence, and valuable ones not be sufficiently pressed. \Ve despise that spirit of fault-finding, that sees no good in anything; but justice requires' that we should openly condemn what our judgment disapproves.

In the case of our late President, the object was so distinguished, and his life so important, that all eyes were turned with intense interest to his medical attendants ; they were viewed as holding a public trust of the dearest character, and should be held answerable to the enlightened of the profession for the proper performance of that tnist, according to th� ap ­ proved practice of the profession-as we would hold a public officer re­ sponsible for the performance of his duty, according to the settled princi­ ples of the public good and political economy. In this li,ght, and inas­ much as they have published a report of the case, making it the property of the profession: we exercise the right, as a humble member, to no­ tice it.

On the 26th of March, the report states, the attendant physician was first called to see the President, and found him "slightly ailing, although not confined to his room." He complained of having been slightly in­ disposed for some days, which he attributed to fatigue and anxiety of mind. He had not sent for him to ad vise, but to inform him of some pe­ culi�rities of constitution; that he was subject to neuralgia, and bad been dyspeptic, but avoided it of late by attention to diet; "that when ·siek be always l'equired a very stimulating practice," &c. General advice wa1 24 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

given, but no medicine. On Saturday, the 27th, at 1, P. M., he was suddenly called to see the President. " Found hitn in bed ;" he told him that "he bad been attacked an hour and a half previously with a se­ vere chill." He "prescribed the ordinary remedies, such as mustard to the stomach, heat to the extremities, additional bed-clothing and wann drinks. The re-action was slight, and perspiration readily induced by a gentle diaphoretic draught, tartar emetic, with the spts. Mindereri and di­ luents." " At 5, P. M. his condition much improved, his skin wann and moist, his thirst allayed; said he was satisfied he should have a good night, and be well m the morning; his pulse was soft, about 75; com­ plained only of slight pain over the right eye, which he considered neu­ ralgic," and for which he declined any remedy. "His tongue being slightly furred, and his bowels not having been moved for two days," he prescribed "R. .Mass hydrnrg. gr. x.; ext. col. comp. grs. iii. M. Ft. pil. iii.; this being a medicine which he stated always acted kindly."

Sunday, March 28th, at 4, A. l\f., he was summoned to visit the Presi­ dent; " found that about 12 at night he had been seized with a violent pain over the right brow, and in his right side, from which he still con• tinued to suffer; the pains were intermittent, equally increased by deep inspiration and motion, but not by pressure; contrary to his expectation be had slept but little during the night, none since the onset of the pain; he complained of thirst ; his tongue was dry; his mouth clammy ; his skin wann and moist; pulse 80, and soft; occasionally great nausea.

He attributed bis pain to the want of an operation from his bowels, which were uneasy. I ordered enemata, sinapisms, with warmth to the part affected, and gave him a Siedlitz powder. Half past 8-more easy; bowels had been gently moved by the enemata. Ten o'clock, finding the bowels not sufficiently moved by the injection, which caused small, dark, offttnsive, fluid evacuations, ordered one of the following pills to be given every two hours: R. Hydrarg. �hlorid. !uit., gr. xij.; _pulv_. rhei, . gr. xv.; camphone, gr. v1. M. Ft. pd. No. v1.; and left d1recuons to have cups freely applied to the side, should the pain return in my absence.

Upon visiting the President, received the following report. At half past 11 he was very restless; objected to all local applications to his side; applied laudanum to the rectum to remove the unpleasant effects or the irtiection; gave a pill at 12; pain being increased, at his request applied laudanum to the part ; slight chilliness at half past 12, requiring wann applicatioos to the extremities; at two gave the second pill, soon after which he had a dark, small, indurated passage similar to that of the morning. At half past 2 I aaain saw him; his skin was wanner and drier than it had been; pulse ;omewhat accelerated; his breathing more hurried; tongue and fauces dry; thirst intense ; face a little flushed.

Upon examination was satisfied that the lower lobe of the right lung was the seat of pneumonia, complicated with congestion of the livel\; but that the acute pain was neuralgic. Continued pills ; had cups applied over the side affected; Grdnville's lotion to the spine and brow. He was relieved very much; although the quantity of blood taken by the cups was vPry small, he felt the effect of its loss, breaking out into a free per­ spiration, complaining of nausea, and a sense of faintness.

President Harrison's course of treatment was documented in detail in a report made by his physicians in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, published April 14, 1841, and then elabo­ rated on by his attending physician in the Medical Examiner on May 14, 1841. This extensive record begins on March 26 when the president is "slightly ailing" and he attributes his symptoms to fatigue and anxiety. The record contin­ ues through the decline and death of the president. The article excerpted opposite from the August 18, 1841, issue of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal was written by an anonymous physician, who made the first detailed critique of how the presi­ dent's illness was treated by his doctors. This author quoted extensively from the doctors' report noting, in his view, the inapproprinte use of various medications.

Among the many medica­ tions the president received were powders once on the shelves at the Stabler­ Leadbeater Apothecary in Alexandria, Virginia, which was dispensing these drugs just a few miles away at the time of the president's death.

Medical Mystery: President William Henry Harrison Succumbs to a Fatal Illness 25

To John Williams; Dr. Mahogany coffin of double thickness Lead coffin of double thickness1 with glass Finding gold lace and trimming mahogany coffin Walnut coffin Outside case for coffins1 lettered Shaving and dressing deceased Winding sheet Breast-plate1 and putting on Sending cases out to grave yard Making car and trimming To 6 grooms To 6 whips for grooms Making dresses for 6 grooms1 trimming 6 horses Preparing scarfs1 bands1 and rosetts Two persons to attend to horses Livery for horses and board for driver Four persons engaging and attending to carriages Six persons at President's putting on scarfs1 arm1 and hat bands $lo Making and covering 40 batons for marshals $25 Attendance at President's1 and on the day of the funeral To 97 hacks1 at $5

Referred to the Committee of Ways and Means: The Funeral Expenses of William Henry Harrison The invoices for the costs incurred by the US. govern­ ment for President William Henry Harrison's funeral and the preparations surrounding it are transcribed here from the originals preserved in the National Archives. The itemized expenses paint a picture of the event.

Bought of Bradley & Estep.

29 yards black cotton velvet1 at 50 cents 61 99 yards black silk1 at 75 cents 1 piece white ribbon1 at $1 3 pieces black crape1 at $6.75 2 dozen black silk gloves1 at $7.50 4 pieces black ribbon1 at 50 cents

$14.50 $74.25 $1.00 $20.25 $15.00 $2.00 $n2.50

138 'I.yards white silk1 at 62"/,cents 3 pieces silk ribbon1 at 50 cents

$86.41 $I.so $87.91

62'/,yards white silk1 at 62'/, 2 pieces black crape1 at $6.75 4 pieces black crape1 at $6-75 8 Do. Do. $6.75 1 dozen gentlemen's black kid gloves '/,Do. ladies' Do. at $9 per doz.

2 papers pins1 at Il'/,cents

$39.06 $13.50 $27.00 $54.00 $15.00 $4.50 $.25 $73-75

The invoice above, submitted by John Williams, reflects that Harrison's body was cleansed and clothed only in a "winding sheet" probably of either linen or cotton. It was placed in a mahogany coffin of "double thickness," with a glass panel in the top, revealing Harrison's face. A silver engraved plate was screwed lower on the top identifying the president. The coffin was draped in gold lace (apparently found with some difficulty). A second coffin of walnut enclosed the first of mahogany. An "outside case" enclosed both coffins, painted and lettered with the president's name and probably the Great Seal of the United States. The outer case and walnut coffin were sent to the "grave yard," while the mahogany coffin was used in the funeral. It was probably not kept open for public view in the days Harrison lay in state in the East Room, given that the body was wrapped, not clothed. No mention is made of embalming, but this must have been carried out in the usual way of the time by inserting large amounts of salt in apertures of the corpse and in cavities left by removal of vital organs.

40 yards white satin1 at $62'/,

Four Days attendance at the President1s House to Michael Rearden1 Dr. Keeping guard on the death of Gen. Harrison1 at $4 per day To 4 nights attendance at same1 at $4 per night

$16.00 $16.00 $32.00

Guards were paid to watch over the president's coffin as were attendants for the horses, which apparently came from outside Washington. Contracts were also made with stable men, drivers, and others.

Several invoices were submitted to the government

by Darius Clagett, a prominent Washington and Baltimore dry goods merchant. Under his direction the 'funeral car" was built atop an ordinary wagon. It was wholly covered in drapery elaborate­ ly formed into sunbursts, tight smocking, and ruf­ fles-apparently inexpensive fabric in great quanti­ ty-trimmed in tassels and gold stars and braided borders. The mahogany coffin was placed high on the funeral car, fully vis�ble to great crowds.

To D. Clagett1 Dr. for hanging Presidenes house

32 pieces black crape1 at $6 4 superfine do.1 at $12 IO black galoon1 at 31 "l4 cents 4 boxes black pins1 at 25 cents "I.lb. black thread1 at 204 yards black superfine cambric1 at .25 72 "l1pieces twilled do.1 at 25 cents

$192.00 $48.00 $3.12 "l1 $1.00 $1 .25 $51.00 $18.62 "l1 $314.00

To D. C[agett1 Dr. for Funeral of Genera[ Harrison

32 pieces black crape1 at $6 6 tape1 at 12 "l2 6 galoon1 at 31 "14 6 ribbon1 at 62 "l2 8 doz. black cotton gloves1 $4.50 9 gentlemen's silk do.1 at $12 84 "l2yards black silk1 at $1 140 do cambric1 at 25 cents 17 do linen1 at $1.25 55 "l2do cotton velvet1 at 50 cents l2doz. black kid g[oves1 at $12 2 white silk do at $12 2 pieces white crape1 at $6 1 "I.yards black doth1 at $5 1 doz. ladies' gloves 13 "l1yards silk velvet1 at $3.50 0

To T homas T. Barnes1 Dr.

To 8 pieces black Italian crape1 2 pieces wide do.

6 doz. gentleman's black si[k gloves1 5 pieces white lustring ribbon1

$192.00 $.75 $1.87 l2 $J.75 $36.00 $108.00 $84.25 $35.00 $21.25 $27-75 $6.oo $24.00 $12.00 $6.25 $9.00 $46.37 $614.25 7

$6.50 $n $9 50 cts

$52.00 $22.00 $54.00 $2.00 $130.00

& Co.1 Dr. $25.00 $20.00 $17.50 $10.50 $14.00 $4.00 $8.oo $99.00

Materials for a funeral pa[[ to Owen1 Evans1

10 yards gold lace, at $2.50 10 do. do. $2 IO do. black silk fringe1 at $1.75 12 do. white satin1 at 87°l1cents 4 rich gold tassels1 at $3.50 4 rich gold stars1 at $1 Making the pall

Bought of Geo. W. Phillips

April 6th1 86 yards black silk1 at 24 yards black crape1 at $80.80

So cents 50 cents

$68.80 12.00

Clagett provided black and white crape mourning drapery for the exterior on the north side of the White House. On the interior the great light fix­ tures in the East Room and parlors were likewise draped in crepe, all mirrors covered. Fringe, tas­ sels, and ribbons elaborated the somber drapery.

For the funeral procession to the temporary tomb, costumes had to be made. Six grooms from the White House stables accompanied the funeral car, half in white and half in black; they carried whips, which they held in concert, ceremonially. The grooms wore costumes of some sort, perhaps black tunics, with black-and-white drapery "trimming."

The forty marshals of Washington each carried white batons, which they held in formation. White House black gloves, white gloves, and scarves were provided for any staff involved. Gloves, in kid or silk, were distributed to principal guests- "gentle­ men, " and "ladies. " Darius Clagett's decorative mourning designs would last for more than a century and still in White House mourning, have an echo.

The State Funeral Whatever its cause, the death of President Harrison created an immediate need to organize a state funeral for him, a feat never before undertaken for a sitting president. Because Vice President John Tyler was not present in Washington, and many members of the Harrison family were distant, includ­ ing his wife Anna, the senior cabinet officers and mil­ itary leaders rapidly put in place a funeral program as follows: The funeral was to begin in the East Room at 12:00 p.m. on April 7. Those specifically invited to attend were former President John Quincy Adams, members of Congress, all officers of the fed­ eral and local governments, and the resident mem­ bers of the diplomatic corps.

The religious service was to be conducted according to the rites of the Episcopal Church, in which Harrison usually worshipped. The body would then be taken to Congressional Cemetery and placed temporarily in the public vault. Military support was supervised by the commanding general of the Army, the commander of the District of Columbia militia, and the senior Navy captain present in the District.11 The order of procession from the White House to the Congressional Cemeterx was carefully planned.

The ornate hearse carrying the president's coffin would follow a procession of representatives of every branch of the military, senior officials of the District of Columbia, mayors of adjacent cities, the clergy, and physicians to the president. Behind the hearse would march the president's family and friends fol­ lowed by President John Tyler, former President John Quincy Adams, the Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, governors of the states and territories, various officials of the government, and members of a variety of military, civil, and fraternal organiza­ tions. It was to be a grand assemblage, befitting the occasion.12

The Reverend William Hawley of St. John's Church conducted the funeral for President Harrison.

His portrait remains in the collection at St. John's, where he servedfrom 1817 to 1845.

As planned, the funeral began at noon on April 7, with the Reverend William Hawley, rector of St. John's Episcopal Church, conducting the service.

Hawley had been so concerned that the service be conducted properly that on the evening of April 5 he consulted with former President John Quincy Adams regarding the propriety of a prayer he wished to give for President Harrison at the White House funeral.

Adams reassuringly concurred with what Hawley planned to do. At the conclusion of the formal funer­ al service, Reverend Hawley pointed to a table near the president's coffin on which were a bible and an Episcopal prayer book. Hawley stated that upon Harrison's arrival in Washington for the inaugural service, the president had purchased them and had advised Hawley that he had read them every day since. Harrison also told Hawley that it was his 28

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

l

intent to formally join the Episcopal Church on Easter Sunday, an action that was prevented by his death. 13 At the conclusion of the official funeral services at the White House, the proces­ sion made its way to the Congressional Cemetery where Harrison's casket was placed in the public vault, pending its removal a decade later to a permanent burial site in Ohio. Thus was established a basic model for future state funerals held in Washington for deceased presi­ dents that was to be utilized again within nine years, following the death of President Zachary Taylor in July 1850. 14 Apart from establishing precedent and pro­ tocol, the death of President William Henry Harrison also compelled the U.S. constitutional system to address the issue of presidential succes­ sion when a chief executive prematurely vacated the office. Until John Tyler succeeded Harrison as president, there was a theoretical question posed by the language of the Constitution regarding what occurred when a president died.

Article II, Section 1, stated at that time: "In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by law provide for the case of the removal, death, resignation, or inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what officer shall then act as President, and such offi­ cer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected." Did the devolution of the powers of a deceased presi­ dent make the vice president an "acting presi­ dent" who retained the title of vice president until a new election was held, or was he now clearly the president with not only the powers of the presidency but the formal title as well? John Tyler made it clear he believed he was no longer the vice president but the president, with both the official title and the powers of the office.

Despite some initial opposition to Tyler's inter­ pretation, his position on the subject was accept­ ed. Subsequent vice presidents who succeeded a deceased president were deemed to be president following the Tyler precedent. 15

ORDER

OF EXERCISES 01' 71[1 000UI0N 01'

TBII DIIATB

l....INTRODUOTORY.

7...ORIGINAL HYMN.

:er1USSD-F.Gout.D, .......U.l)ffUT• .J.r.1'1"ZUlft, A. W04tricken 1'11!.0ple, in IOfTOW W& gnlher I Tho @wn of oar glory, our hopea full in bloom Are cli&a� wlth the face of oar Ohief'tain,our Faiber, To uble and cyprea.s to blllli• roond hili lamb, While pale in the abt'O'Ud lioa O.e Patrio1 aleepillrfJ', A light thn.t ror earth iano looger 1o born, Removed,&omitaplarA!, aHdnationiaweepiug; And dark, whare it ahooe, follti tM shade or ■a um,

SSH'ft1'0E!I rzo• �-- IC1Lll't1'&:tl.

11T J\'ET, 1A.IIH lfOllH, D, 11.

t

2.... VOLUNTARY ON THE.ORGAN. 3....SELECTIONS,

Tllo• 1'1'1:1 :,1.1..t.111 oF tl4Tll>, :II!' HT, uina •Oll&!ti », 'D,

♦

To k nad rup,onrit"aly ieMlm tha Mi11'A'lcr and Con� � Wbea lead tbro' the land, bill ood valley 111.d mouncaln gregotiOfl, tu Joll0111." } •Wen110aadio.ghis uamc, aud.relli:ctingits beams..

NiAutw. Lord, let me know my epihrod tlae num• Tho de1.th•aagtl'1 wand opened grl�f'a bitter fomtain, � 11 y thv.t I mv.y be ccrt.i.Jii:d bow loog I , with ite f4r-flowiq •1r warm To q ::.0 f:'Jn� 1, :::,,� .,Peop!1, Behold, thou :hut macle my dn:,1 01 it wel'1!

Alu! that &he cpo.iler so early must se..-er n A tie which. the hearts v! a country had bound ;::aot: !h�·j ':1 ::�r,��;.,.�! ��n°�� :i:g�l: er VAJUty. To hilD whoii gon�who isgone, o.nd forever, To jolll the bright ho!l8 who tbll!ir Savi�l' eurround ! )fiT1. For mttn wvllr:e h t in o. nin sb111Iaw, and dlll­ qo.ie1eth hims cl£ in vain; he hc1.-peth. op ridln, aud Out Fo.tbe.t in Ile-a.no , yet grant us another cali,aot tell wbo ab.all fP,di.H them.

.Jo.ya

:::�:��:!i•::•d:r ��

ho!:ti; � fuw ;aro, wh:it is my bope. Truly tnJ

t ♦

�;:r: O Ja Whei:t ca.\l"i!l to thy pre111t11ce, hia mantle beltow, Nin. Deliyer me from all mine.offances, -tDd malr:e me not a -rebuke -unl1J tbe foolish.

I To Thee wbo1 from dnrka.81, thy childrenl:iast 11tricken, We cry wichourwou11d, 111liaa balm from tho Tre e P•o. Whea thou with nbukei, dost chosl�fl man for aio, thou malce,t hb beauty to con1-amr. uway, like 11.1 Wb.oie lcl!.'t'H heal the nat1oi:t1. lleu, hear u-, 11.11d ttingaprment. Every man there-� e qulc\:e �}�"!i b��a:!i.f Our,n:odin111gCeet to tatul1!.. unto Thul Mm. Keo.rm prayer, 0 Lord.; aodwith thineean consiUer my ce.�Ulg: bold nol thy pe11cc at my teara. &...

Pto. Fm I orn a1tro.t1..r with thee, 1.ucl 11. •"'journllY KO:N, r::,1.1,1t11t OVBlllNCI, er; o.1allmyfa.th111rs 'ilNNl, t Nin. 0 lfllU'e me I\ litl!e, tho.t I may n?Conr my l �tmigth1 b!forelga henee andhe no more.aten, l P,o. Lord Ibo-a hut been OUTrefu� from one gen- \ Bl' KO!\', GZOHB LUllr........aHD H 11.t't'. T••• l'OX. ando.l 10 another. l Real, wearied IOklier, n,t,-th.rworkis doae, !"ili �J!!��e ::0 Th.r ltt"t grc1.t bu.ule fougbti-the Yiotory wan� e t eT AnU whore tlay country'a 11111ill1 vlgil ki!�i,, from. 1nrJ1.sting and world without imd.

Around thine bonm'dgn.H, a.Nation wcep:1!

Pto. Thou tumest man to destruction; op.in th1Jll 111.yut, Come agu.in, ye. children of' men. ) Not •ro id the tum.ult oC the 1W111ir:ig fight

l

l

EULOGY•

9....ORIGINAL HYMN.

.::�jn:,;:�:J::1:;/:tG:J l

tt

U!•'

t

! !

On thy IOllg" da.y cuno down tho peaceful 11igbt; N<K wbeu the m1nmun vr 1hr fm:est-tide, Calm•• lhy ren!rcnd. re•na forenr glide.

But mid thy country's nnnali, that pI'OClalm Thy worlh, thy vnlot and thiiie boo.�t farne,­ To-cloy the people's chief we bade thee bllil,Anott:.er came, and swell'd thy fo.neml wail!

'

Rut,patriotHero, rf!llt,-the war oC� No more ab.all -res: lbw with ita rever'd. atriCe, Normortalure, 11orpompofearthly1t1.te Weigb downthysoul,-the toilof'heiaggreat!

Min. For a lhou1W1d JNTS in thy siaht aN: but as t iaput as• wutll iu &be night,l yenerduy ;' sHing Pn,. As sooo as thoa. acattemt them, tbey 1ft e'f'l!ln , as.rt ,le�,-and fade away suddenly, like th11 �Mm. In the morninr, it ia green 11Dd growath up; f but in th.e evening1 it UI cut down, dried up o.nd with� tltei, or d spl n eu u; Dl! a Mi". Thou hut set our mi s deeds-bd'ore thee1 and oa.rUJcret&i.or;jn the light of llar cOUJ1tC111\Dt�. .Pto, For when thou a.rt angry, an ou.rdo.yi,ue ng oar yean to an end, as it wer• a tale • C"t , �jd�ri

u:� -:Vtli;o!'r.�(aiiDL;:,.�O:

M"&11. The do. ofwr � are three acore ya.ta and tw i and thoUKbmen be 110 strong that they eome to fo•rscore ynn, yeti:, ihei1: •�th, tbi!n, butabour �SOTrOw: soa>oapaue1h it&ffllyudweontgone.

Pro. So tench n to n�m� our days, that we moy applr our hearts lllll1J Wlldom. o o the Fa.th.e. , and to the Son, tLDd � to �� 8°'h:.;.�

,:.w11

PGO. Asit was in the beginniDg, is 11ow1 md e-rer wil be world withcKit md-=-Axur,

4.-DffiGE.

"Uovoil 1hy bo,.m, Mthful lomb."

5,... READING OF THE SCRIPTURE. n UT.... r. DIIUIICE.

I

I

l

t

All bomao. thitigs are n.iD,-the mightiest power Fadlls lllceo. sh1.dow-wlther1 like a Bowe ,; 1 proudest h�11 decay,-4Ut 8urt8t trm , � Dinol't'es ud. dies,-a.na we ouael't'ea m:e dwt.

And.wblleth1nameftoo.1sdowJ1.ti011'srollingaucam.

The IOlolitr'e glory and.the sage's theme.Taught by thy let Kmp and Rulers owo, Tbat GOD on high is Gmi.t 11.Dd Gon alone I

r..te,

1 O.. ,,PRAYER. :a:r u..-. JIUllol.l'a UIIJ'DU.,

11 .... DffiGE.

11Child or mortality," j

12......BENEDIOTION,

6....PRAYER.

ff UT, 1.illl:I wotll1 l), D,

18.....DffiGE.

►---------------n.urr.11t1 BT XOllM � Hl:WITIL

"'z Lil 0:

"0

� �"'

:::;

For weeks following Harrison's state funeral, mourning continued across the country. This program, which details the order of exercises for a service held in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on May 3, 1841, is one example of a local memorial.

Medical Mystery: President William Henry Harrison Succumbs to a Fatal Illness 29

Composed to be sing �,i tkc 14th. of Jiay 1811; tlrn day rect111&mcnderl by Ike PRESIDENT, to be st& apart as a da,y vf fastini a,.rl pr,,yer, by tile people of tke United Slate,, on account of t"8 death of Gen. Wm. If. Hanison.

l Ar.;umnTY Go»! Oh, hear our moun ! ,ve lift our voice in prayer; Oh! make our countr 's nu tuy own, Take us beneaU1 thy care. ') ,.,.

We mourn our hieftnin laid in dust· ,v fc l thy chastening rod: \Ve know thy judgment all ar just: Bu oh! ha\· mcl'cy Gon !

3.

De thou our council, thou ow· guiJe, Keep us from every ill ; And may tho man call d to Prosid Learn, and ob y thy will.

30 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

llY L. ORIF:FlNG,

4.

Teach him Oh GoD, to keep thy law, 'l'o look to Thee for aid; ,Vhen pestjlence, or faction nwe, Or Lbreatniug fo invade.

5.

While sorrow's cloud o'er pread our land, And gloomy fears impart · tret h forth in love, thy powerful hnn I, And cheer each drooping heart.

6.

May this short warning teach us all, To leave our sinful road; And be prepared to meet the call, "Come stand before your God."

President Harrison was mourned with poetry and music as well as ceremony. The poet and literary crit­ ic N. C. Willis composed a poem (left) exclaiming that death had never before trod on the president's floor, while "A National Hymn" (opposite) was composed and distrib­ uted on broadsides to be sung on < May 14, 1841, a dd'y designated by President John Tyler for national fasting and prayer in memory of Harrison.

THE DEATH OF HARRISON

by N. C. Willis, 1841 What! soar'd the old eagle to die at the sun!

Lies he stiff with spread wings at the goal he had won!

Are there spirits more blest than the "planet of even," Who mount to their zenith, then melt into Heaven� No waning of fire, no quenching of ray, But rising, still rising, when passing away?

Farewell, gallant eagle! thou'rt buried in light!

God-speed into Heaven, lost star of our night!

Death! Death in the White House! Ah, never before, Trod his skeleton foot on the President's floor!

priate to that disease. Indeed, he argued, the published case notes clearly indicated that the attending physician to the president was essentially let­ ting the patient self-diagnose and direct his treatment. The president's doc­ tor had an obligation to determine for himself what the disease was, and thenaggressively treat it. Instead the attending physician was focused on making the president "comfortable." Even, if President Harrison did have some form of pneumonia-which the anonymous physician believed to be the case-his physician, Dr. Miller, did not take the necessary steps to attack it. "President Harrison's Last Illness," The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 25, no.2 (August 18, 1841): 24-32.

NOTES I.

"William Henry Harrison," American National Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 10:223-25; "Harrison, William Henry, (1773-1841)," Biographical Direciory of the United States Congress, 1774-present, online at www.bioguide.congress.gov.

2.

James A. Green, William Henry Harrison: His Life and Times (Richmond: Garrett and Massie, 1941), 127-33; Kathryn Moore, The American President (New York: Fall River Press, 2007), 110-12; "William Henry Harrison," American National Biography, 10:225.

3.

"William Henry Harrison," American National Biography, 10:225-26; "Harrison, William Henry, (1773-1841)," Biographical Directory of the United States Congress; Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 41, 45, 61; Eileen Shields-West, The World Almanac of Presidential Campaigns (New York: World Almanac, 1992), 53-58.

4.

Holt, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, 90-93, 100, 102-5; Shields­ West, World Almanac of Presidential Campaigns, 58; Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 271-72.

5.

Holt, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, 106-13; Shields-West, World Almanac of Presidential Campaigns, 59-63; Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 574-75.

6.

John Quincy Adams, diary, April 4, 1841, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1876), I 0:457

7.

Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 570; "William Henry Harrison," American National Biography, 10:226; Thomas Miller, M.D. et.al., "Death of President Harrison," The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 24, no. 10 (April 14, 1841):160-61; Thomas Miller, M.D., "The Case of the Late William Henry Harrison, President of the United States," Medical Examiner 4, no. 20 (May 15, 1841): 309-12; Jane McHugh and Philip A. Mackowiak, "Death in the White House: President William Henry Harrison's Atypical Pneumonia," Clinical Infectious Diseases 59: no. 7 (October I, 2014): 990-95.

8.

Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 12 vols.

(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1876), 10:457; Miller, et. al., "Death of President Harrison," 160-61; Miller, "The Case of the Late William Henry Harrison," 309-12; The clinical details of the president's treatment, once published, raised criticism within months from one anony­ mous physician. This doctor argued that if President Harrison's illness was, indeed, pneumonia, then the treatments utilized in his case were not appro-

9.

McHugh and Mackowiak, "Death in the White House," 992-94; Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, A History of the National Capital (New York: MacMillan, 1916), 2:238, 303-4.

10. McHugh and Mackowiak, "Death in the White House," 994; James K. Polk, diary, The Diary of James K Polk (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1910), 3:506-7; "The Last Illness of General Zachary Taylor," Baltimore Sun, July 13, 1850, I. 11. "The Funeral," Baltimore Sun, April 5, 1841, 2.

12. "Arrangements for the Interment of the Late President," Washington National Intelligencer, April 7, 1841, 3.

13. Adams, diary, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10:458--o0; "The Funeral," Washington National Intelligencer, April 9, 1841, 3; "The Last lilness of General Zachary Taylor," I; William Hawley, "Noticia of Gen. Harrison While in Washington," Washington National Intelligencer, April 24, 1841, 2.

14. "Last Illness of General Zachary Taylor," I; Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 589.

15. On April 6, 1841, Vice President John Tyler took the Oath of Office as president of the United States. It was administered by William Cranch, chief justice of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, in the pres­ ence of the cabinet of former President Harrison. Tyler stated that having taken the oath as vice president previously, there was no need for him to take another one to succeed to the title and powers of the office of presi­ dent following Harrison's death. Judge Cranch certified that this was the position of Vice President Tyler. Tyler stated that he took the second oath merely to ensure that there were no doubts about his status as president.

The fundamental questions associated with a vice presidential succession to the presidency, and a process for selecting a successor vice president as well, were comprehensively resolved in 1967 with the ratification of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Medical Mystery: President William Henry Harrison Succumbs to a Fatal Illness

31

Abraham Lincoln's Funeral Train The Solemn Journey from Washington to Springfield

JOHN WHITE

�soufnem states began to leave the Union even before Abraham Lincoln took office in 1861, and open warfare began on April 12, soon after his inauguration. As the war accelerated, death and destruction grew in scale, and the Confederacy proved to be a formidable enemy. A man of peace and compromise, Lincoln soon found himself study­ ing military tactics and the latest forms of deadly armaments. The world watched America's agony, convinced that the Confederacy would win its attempt to break free of the Union, which was barely seventy years old.

But by 1863 the Union began to rally. The fall of Vicksburg reopened traffic on the Mississippi River, and the Confederacy was divided in half.

Victory at Gettysburg followed, ending the southern ambition to shift the battlefield into Yankee territory.

Tough and ruthless northern generals had emerged, including Ulysses S. Grant, who understood that it was necessary to sacrifice men to win battles.

The war ended quickly after Richmond was abandoned early in April 1865 and Jefferson Davis and Confederate leadership fled. A few days later General Robert E. Lee surrendered, and the killing and destruction came to an end. The total death toll for both sides was more than 700,000.

It had been a grueling four years for the presi­ dent, but now Lincoln and his wife Mary talked con­ fidently of the future. They chose to attend a play at Ford's Theatre. And so just when Americans were

beginning to adjust to a new era of peace, even hope, the president was dead, shot by John Wilkes Booth.

The Funeral Car The U.S. government acted quickly so the nation might heal through public mourning on an unprecedented scale. A funeral train bearing the pres­ ident's body from Washington, D.C., to his longtime home in Springfield, Illinois, would, planners expect­ ed, allow a million people to pay respects to their fallen leader. 1 Far from the direct Washington to Springfield route that Mary Todd Lincoln requested, the train would stop at ten cities, many of them state capitals-Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York City, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Chicago-for memorial processions and programs. It would also pass slowly through smaller towns and rural hamlets.

The railroad car selected to carry President Lincoln's coffin had been completed a few months earlier expressly for the purpose of carrying the presi­ dent and other officials on government business. 2 Its construction was likely authorized by General Daniel McCallum, director of the U.S. Military Railroad, a U.S. Army agency created to operate captured Confederate railroads. Early in the war the agency took over the repair shops of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad in Alexandria, Virginia, across the river from Washington, D.C., for the storage of cars and locomotives. The superintendent of the car

repair shops, Benjamin P. Lamason, prepared a design for the president's railroad car late in 1863.3 A former employee of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Lamason copied the basic design for a monitor roof passenger car developed by that railroad the previous year. Overall, the presidential car was about 48 feet long, and the interior was arranged with three private compartments, unlike a coach with seating for ordi­ nary passengers. The center compartment was a drawing room that offered the president a private retreat and sleeping area. A narrow passageway allowed access between the two end compartments.

There are no original drawings or photographs of the car's interior, though two engravings of it as part of the funeral train reveal the casket and funeral decorations. There are, however, several good photo­ graphs of the car's exterior that document its appear­ ance. Whether it had armor-plated side walls, as was often said, is uncertain. In 1893, William H. H. Price, the foreman of the Alexandria car repair shops, wrote that it did not, and with twelve windows on each side, such a precaution would have been point­ less. There were also, according to Price, no cooking or bathing facilities in the car.4 Yet this contention is contradicted by others involved in its construction as well as by exterior photographs showing water tanks built into the roof at one end of the car. Light was provided by three oil-burning chandeliers and several side lamps, as evidenced by vent chimneys visible in the roof. Two large stoves on opposite sides at each end of the car provided heat. The interior woodwork was black walnut and oak, and the walls were par­ tially upholstered in a tufted pattern in a rich corded crimson silk. Oil paintings decorated the panels between the windows. The curtains were light green silk, and the furnishings included several sofas and overstuffed chairs. 5 The exterior was said by Price to have been painted a rich chocolate brown rubbed to a fine fin­ ish with oil. Yet paint samples taken from one of the surviving clerestory windows has been recently ana­ lyzed as being a mahogany color. 6 A large sheet metal oval panel, 62 inches long, affixed to the center of the body, was decorated with the U.S. Coat of Arms and the words "United States" painted in small gold let­ ters above the panel. Some authors assume this was the car's name, but Price insisted it had neither num34 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

ber nor name. 7 The presidential car was completed in February 1865, and the president was invited to take a ride, but he refused to do so because he felt the car was too ostentatious for a simple man of the people.

The Funeral Train Begins Its Journey The president's body was displayed in the East Room of the White House. Following the funeral on April 19, the casket was moved to the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, where again thousands filed by to pay their respects. At dawn on April 21 the casket was carried by soldiers two blocks north to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad station, where President Andrew Johnson, General Ulysses S. Grant, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, and other high-ranking govern­ ment officials awaited. Mary Todd Lincoln was not present and did not ride the train at any time. 8 Robert Lincoln either watched the train leave the sta­ tion or was onboard only as far as the first stop in Baltimore. Of the 150 or so men on the train, many were soldiers, including an Honor Guard. Operating crews were rarely on duty for more than 100 miles.

The locomotive was draped in black bunting.

Behind it were nine cars; the funeral car was second from the end. Lincoln's casket was put in the rear compartment, while the coffin of his deceased son, Willie, who died in 1862, was placed in the front compartment; he had been disinterred to be reburied next to his father. At 7:50 a.m. a pilot engine with a single passenger car left the station. It would travel ten minutes ahead of the funeral train to avert any sabotage to tracks and detect any defect that might cause a derailment. Both trains traveled no more than 20 miles an hour, and only 5 miles per hour through stations. They had the right of way over all other trains, and all switches were spiked open to the main line. Every railroad on the route of Lincoln's funeral train was temporarily under the control of the U.S. military.

As the funeral train departed, the locomotive's bell tolled slowly and nearby engines tolled their bells in response. Soldiers from the Eighth Regiment stood at attention and presented arms as the train slowly passed. The planned route would take it over seven­ teen different railroad lines, and the transfers between them were difficult and time consuming.

Locomotives had to be switched, too, but all were decorated similarly in black bunting, and some car­ ried a portrait of Lincoln affixed at the front. At each stop the coffin was removed from the train and car­ ried by horse-drawn hearse to a public place, often a statehouse, for viewing and a ceremony with music and prayers. Stations along the way were draped in black, and local groups set up memorial arches across the tracks, filled with flowers and flags. Where the train did not stop, people stood along the tracks to pay their respects in silence, with hats removed.

From Washington, D.C., to Maryland and Pennsylvania The first stop was Annapolis Junction, where the Maryland governor and Baltimore city officials boarded. At Relay, Maryland, a group of local women placed a floral arrangement on the coffin. At 10:00 a.m., when the train reached Baltimore, it was raining, as it seemed to do for much of the trip. A large crowd had gathered at Camden Station to witness its arrival. The coffin was transported to the Exchange Building where it was opened for public

Although no photographs of the interior of President Lincoln's funeral car exist, this engraving published in Harper's Weekly depicts the president's flag-draped guarded coffin and the mourning decorations inside the car.

viewing for several hours. Thousands moved past in slow-moving lines. Meanwhile the rail cars were moved to the Northern Central Railroad Station on Calvert Street, from which the train departed. Meanwhile mourners continued to file through the Exchange Building just to see where the casket had been.

After leaving Baltimore at 3:00 p.m., the train headed north for Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania. The governor of Pennsylvania met the train at the state line and rode along with the gover­ nor of Maryland. Lincoln had traveled to Gettysburg over these very tracks in late 1863 to deliver his famous address at the cemetery dedication ceremony.

An interim stop at York was just long enough for a group of women to lay a wreath of roses on the coffin.

The Solemn Journey to Springfield: Lincoln's Funeral Train 35

Completed in February 1865, the rail car built by the United States Military Railroad agency and intended for the president's use, would ultimately be used instead to transport President Abraham Lincoln's body from Washington, D. C., to Springfield, Illinois. It is seen here attached to a United States Military Railroad locomotive, the W. H. Whiton, at the rail yard in Alexandria, Virginia.

Against the wishes of Mary Todd Lincoln, who requested the funeral train carry her husband's body directly to Springfield, the US. government chose a circuitous route with many stops to allow the grieving nation a greater opportunity to mourn.

Birthplace and Course of Life 08'

COL '

BRAHAM ,.

o or "'•

.E.RAL CORTE E,

rr ,

n1

)

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN ANO

Htsl ry or th Nanon

I. R.

The train reached Harrisburg at 8:35 p.m., and the coffin was moved to the State House. Thousands of mourners passed by the open casket until mid­ night. A second viewing was held the next morning.

The train left promptly for Philadelphia at 11:15 a.m., heading east over the Pennsylvania Railroad's main line. Onboard was Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln's old law partner and close personal friend.9 Because of the crowds lining the tracks, it took the train more than five hours to reach Philadelphia, whereas a local train took only about three and one half hours and an express only two and one half hours. One of the spectators as the train passed slowly through Lancaster was former president James Buchanan.

Philadelphia was the nation's second largest city at this time, and an estimated half million people were on hand to see the hearse bearing the presi­ dent's body accompanied by eleven military divisions 38

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

marching down Market Street. Distant cannons fired once every minute. A military band played slow, solemn music while church bells tolled along the route. The procession ended at Independence Hall, where the casket was placed reverently next to the Liberty Bell. So many people wanted to view Lincoln's body that policemen had to keep the line moving; no one was allowed to pause for even a sec­ ond next to the coffin. Still, mourners had to wait in line four to five hours just to reach the entrance to Independence Hall. The train had arrived in Philadelphia late in the afternoon of April 22 and departed two days later at 4:00 a.m.

From New Jersey to New York The course across New Jersey involved three different railroad lines-the Philadelphia and Trenton, the Camden and Amboy, and the New

Lincoln's funeral car was transported across the Hudson River from New Jersey to Manhattan aboard the ferry Jersey City on April 24, 1865. This woodcut depicting the scene was published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper on May 13, 1865.

Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company-as well as a ferry across the Hudson River. The train arrived at Jersey City, opposite Manhattan, at 10:00 a.m. on April 24. The casket was placed on a hearse and driven aboard the ferry Jersey City, which crossed the mile-wide Hudson River to Desbrosses Street in the Lower West Side. The passengers per­ mitted on this first boat were high-level political and military leaders. Two more ferries carried the rest of the guests.

The hearse then disembarked and was driven a few blocks south to City Hall at Chatham and Broadway Streets. Meanwhile, the funeral car and office car that traveled with it were moved upstream on a car lighter, a special style of flatboat used to carry freight or passenger cars, to Christopher Street.

They were then pulled southward to the Chamber Street station of the Hudson River Railroad, just a

few blocks west of City Hall in lower Manhattan, to await the end of the ceremonies. Once again, a huge and sorrowful crowd passed by the coffin. As people stood in line, pickpockets skillfully worked the crowd, much to the dismay of the police. A local newspaper lamented that the corpse was now much discolored because of an imperfect embalming, a comparatively new art in the United States.

At 11 :40 a.m. on April 25, the doors of City Hall were closed. A little over two hours later the coffin was returned to the hearse. Sixteen horses pulled it uptown to the Hudson River Railroad depot at 30th Street and 10th Avenue, where it was returned to the funeral car. Large locomotives were not allowed this far south in Manhattan, so the train of nine cars was broken up into sections and pulled by small locomo­ tives known as dummies to an upper station on 9th Avenue, where full-size road engines would take over. The dummie engines were decorated with black cloth, silver eagles, and white and black satin rib­ bons, with portraits of Lincoln mounted on either side of the engineers' cabs. The train moved �lowly out of the city, picking up speed at 60th Street. It then ran along the east side of the Hudson River to Albany, some 140 miles to the north. This was the only high speed rail line in the nation, built to com­ pete with the fast river steamers on the Hudson.

The governor of New York and a large number of state government officials rode the train from New York City to the New York state capital. At Sing Sing, it passed under a huge arch that spanned two tracks and proclaimed, "We Mourn a Nation's Loss." The train stopped for dinner at Poughkeepsie, and at 10:55 p.m. it reached the point east of Albany where the casket had to be transferred to Albany by ferry. The funeral car and the rest of the train pro­ ceeded to Troy, where they crossed the Hudson on a railroad bridge and returned to Albany on a track that paralleled the river on its western bank. The funeral program at the New York Statehouse in The Solemn Journey: Lincoln's Funeral Train to Springfield 39

Albany included music and prayers, and again crowds of viewers filed past the coffin, all wanting to say farewell to the great man who had saved the Union.

The train left Albany on April 26 at 4:00 p.m. and at last began heading west. It was the fifth day of the journey. This part of the trip was over the New York Central Railroad's famous Water Level Route that follows the Mohawk River valley. The train reached Rochester at 3:20 a.m., so precluding all but a short ceremony. At 5:18 a.m. a longer stop was made at Batavia, where officials from Buffalo and former president Millard Fillmore boarded the train.

Buffalo was reached at 7:00 a.m. The large seaport and industrial city presented a program that included another exhibit of the body. At 10:10 p.m. the funer­ al train departed from the New York Central station.

Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois Several stops were made for fuel and water or engine and crew changes as the train passed from one railroad to the next on its way to Cleveland, Ohio, where it arrived at 7:00 a.m. at the main depot on the shore of Lake Erie, very near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. The depot was a large but low wooden structure built out over the water and so served also as a marine terminal for Great Lakes steamers. The Public Square was close by, but city officials wanted a long procession and so the funeral car was immediately pulled backward to the subur­ ban station at Euclid Street, about a mile away. The casket was placed in an elaborate hearse and pulled back to the Public Square. In this way, a large crowd could view it as it was slowly conveyed along this wide thoroughfare. Thousands of visitors had arrived to pay their respects. Hotels were filled, and trains came into the city without a vacant seat.Nine thou­ sand people walked past the coffin in four hours.

When the viewing was stopped at 10:00 p.m., there were still more than 100,000 waiting to see the corpse of their late commander in chief. The casket was con­ veyed back to Lakefront Station for midnight depar­ ture. Old Nashville, the locomotive that would take the train to Columbus, was elegantly decorated, and earlier in the day it had been photographed, sur­ rounded by officials of the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad.

40

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

This photograph captures the crowds in Buffalo, New York, as the hearse carrying Lincoln's body is transported to St. James Hall, where 100,000 people filed past the coffin. The funeral car can be seen just below the trees at the top center of the image.

The train headed south for the state capital of Columbus and arrived there at 7:30 a.m., slightly behind schedule due largely to heavy rain. Never­ theless, all along the way people stood near the track with bowed heads, some weeping, some repeating prayers, as the funeral car rolled by. Some stood on tiptoe in hopes of catching a glimpse of the coffin. In rural areas, farmers lit huge bonfires to illuminate the train as it passed by.

Columbus was not a large city; in 1860 its popu­ lation was only about 20,000. However, Ohio's gov­ ernor, John Brough, was important to the Lincoln administration.10 Brough and Lincoln had been friendly for a decade, and his election as governor in 1863 over Clement Vallandigham, leader of the Copperheads who opposed the war and sympathized with the Confederacy, was critical to the Union cause. Brough had been appointed by the secretary of war to head the Lincoln funeral arrangements committee, and this task he managed with enthusi­ asm. Lincoln lay in state in the monumental rotunda of the Ohio Statehouse.

Upon leaving Columbus, April 29, at 8:00 p.m., the train traveled west, bound for another midwest­ ern state capital, Indianapolis. Upon crossing the state line, the train stopped briefly at Richmond, where, even at 3:00 a.m., some 15,000 people had gathered at the station for a brief memorial service.

Four hours later it was Indianapolis's turn to honor the martyred president. Heavy rain ended the plans for a long procession, and Lincoln's casket went directly to the Indiana Statehouse. Elaborate, solemn decorations surrounded Statehouse Square, including busts and portraits of national leaders and heroes.

Despite dreadful weather, more than 100,000 people came to view Lincoln's remains. The local street rail­ way mounted cloth banners on the sides of its cars that proclaimed mottos such as: "Sorrow for the Dead, Justice for the Living" and "Fear not Abraham! I am Thy Shield." At 10:00 p.m. the casket was removed, and an hour later the train was on its

way toward Chicago. At Michigan City, Indiana, 10 miles east of Chicago, it passed under a 35 foot high arch, the largest of the memorial arches built for the funeral procession, that was festooned with ever­ greens, flowers, and flags. The rain had stopped at last, and the remainder of the trip to Chicago was made under clear skies.

Another special train was needed to carry the Chicago delegation onward. The pilot train, the funeral train, and a special train now proceeded on the tracks of the Michigan Central Railroad. The final several miles were over Illinois Central tracks to its gigantic stone depot on the lakefront just below the Chicago River. One again, the casket was trans­ ferred to a hearse for a street processional to the Cook County Courthouse for public viewing. It was now May 1.

During the ceremonies, the funeral car was moved over to the Chicago and Alton depot on Canal Street, about nine city blocks from the court-

house, for the final leg of its trip to Springfield. A thousand men bearing torches marched ahead of the coffin. An additional eight-car train had been assembled with the president of the Chicago and Alton Railroad onboard; his presence would, it was assumed, assure a smooth trip southward to Springfield. 11 At 9:30 p.m. on May 2, the train departed. These last 184 miles to the south took eleven and one half hours. Along the way a meteor passed through the sky. An arch placed near the track read: "He Has Fulfilled His Mission."

When the train steamed into Springfield on May 3, Lincoln had been dead for nineteen days, the train had covered more than 1,600 miles, and more than one million Americans had gazed upon the remains of this great leader for the last time. The burial took place on a warm and sunny day, May 4.

The caskets of Willie and Abraham were placed in a receiving vault in Oak Ridge Cemetery, where they would remain until a more elaborate tomb was comThe Solemn Journey: Lincoln's Funeral Train to Springfield

41

Lincoln's funeral car crossed the tracks over Lake Michigan and arrived in Chicago on May 1, 1865 (right). From there it continued to Springfield, Illinois, its final destination, where his coffin was once again moved by hearse (below) to the Statehouse, where crowds lined up to view his body (bottom left). The African American man with the cane near the head of the line is Reverend Henry Brown, a minister in Springfield who had once done odd jobs for the family. Brown also posed with Lincoln's favorite horse Old Bob, who followed the hearse the day of the funeral.

(/J (/J w a:

"'z 0 0 u.

0

CD :J

pleted nearby. In time, Mary Lincoln and her three other sons would join Willie and Abraham at Oak Ridge.

Recessional and Aftermath The great funeral procession was over. The Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore director's car, the Lincoln car, and a few coaches carried General McCallum, his subordinates, and the Honor Guard back to Washington. The likely route was a very direct one via Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Parkersburg to Baltimore and the District of Columbia, with most of the travel over Baltimore and Ohio tracks and its several subsidiaries. The funeral car was returned to the U.S. Military Railroad shops in Alexandria. Not long after, it was used to carry the body of Frances Adeline Seward, wife of Secretary of State William Seward, to Albany, New York, in late June. It may have been used for a few more official trips, but these do not seem to be a matter of record.

With the end of the war, the military began a huge reduction of troops and equipment. The U.S. Military Railroad did not vacate the Alexandria shop until March 1, 1866, but it sold hundreds of steam locomotives to dozens of eager buyers.

Captured railroads were returned to private owner­ ship. The Orange and Alexandria Railroad was deeded to the Virginia State Public Works Commission in June 1865 and was reconveyed to the officers of the railroad once they had reorganized.

Even as Lincoln's funeral car was rolling away from Springfield, top government officials, including Secretary of War Stanton, seemed ready to dispose of this elegant vehicle. Where to keep it was the problem. It required 24-hour guards to prevent visi­ tors from stealing small pieces of the car for sou­ venirs. In February 1866 interested parties were advised to inspect the car at any time in Alexandria.

To push the matter along, an auction was held April 11, 1866, and the car was sold to Ward H. Lamon for $6,850.

Like so much government property, the sale price was a bargain, as the car was estimated to have cost $33,000. Lamon was not motivated by turning a profit but was intent on seeing the car go to owners who would use it in a dignified manner, not huck-

44

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

sters who might make it part of a sideshow. Sad to relate, that became its fate many years later. Lamon resold the funeral car to Thomas C. Durant, vice president and general manager of the Union Pacific Railroad. Durant was a medical doctor, but his real occupation was as promoter and Wall Street specula­ tor. Clever and engaging, he took control of the giant project to build the eastern half of the transcontinental railroad. Durant was also a show­ man. After the railroad reached the 100th meridian, some 280 miles west of Omaha, he decided to stage an extravagant end-of-track party for one hundred special guests-members of Congress, Wall Street investors, and other social elites, with their wives and children.

In October 1866, Durant's deluxe nine car train traveled the Union Pacific rails. It had three baggage cars stuffed with the best food and drink, and Durant and his family rode in the Lincoln funeral car. A fake Indian war dance and a huge grass fire were staged to entertain the passengers as they ram­ bled through the prairies. At St. Joseph, Missouri, the Lincoln car was carried by a Missouri River steamboat to Omaha because there was no direct rail link to Omaha at that time.

After the big party, the car became an office car for the Union Pacific. Despite its notable history, it was not popular because of its ride; its sixteen-wheel undercarriage made it roll and sway like a ship in a storm. In 1870 it was sold to the Colorado Central Railroad as a business car for that line's chief engi­ neer, but several years, following a takeover of the smaller line, it became Union Pacific property once again. In 1886, a Denver newspaper described it as a relic of faded gentility that had seen better days,13 used on the Maryville branch to transport track workers from place to place. By 1893, it was on a storage track in North Platte, Nebraska.

There was talk of restoration and display at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, but Union Pacific officials decided renovation costs were too great and so the funeral car was returned to storage.

In 1898 it was exhibited at Omaha's Trans­ Mississippi Exposition, where souvenir seekers did some damage. Four years later, on Lincoln's birth­ day, the car was displayed at the Union Pacific repair shops in Omaha. The New York Times com-

mented on its painted decorative interior panels and noted that Lincoln had been a champion of govern­ ment support for building the transcontinental line.

The general offices of the railroad were closed that day so employees might view the vehicle that carried Lincoln on his finaljoumey. 13 In 1903, the funeral car was sold to Franklyn A. Snow, a sideshow operator from Peoria, Illinois.

Snow restored the car with new window sashes and repaired and painted the car inside and out. It was displayed in a special building next to a giant Ferris wheel at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. After the fair closed, Snow took his prize on a brief tour, but he died in 1905, and the car was placed on a Chicago and Alton Railroad siding in Joliet, Illinois. In October of that year, Thomas Lowry, a prominent railroad executive from Minneapolis purchased the car. Here at last it seemed that a responsible and financially able patron had been found.

Lowry moved the car to a park in Columbia Heights, a northeastern suburb of Minneapolis. A shed was erected, but the long-promised marble museum structure was never built. After Lowry died in 1909, the car sat and moldered. A plan was made to remove it to a state museum, but on March 18, 1911, a grass fire spread by strong winds set the car ablaze, and the damage was so severe that restora­ tion was impossible. The public was invited to remove any pieces they cared to salvage.

Some relics, perhaps from 1911 or perhaps taken earlier, have come down to the present day.

The Union Pacific Railroad Museum in Council Bluffs, Iowa, displays furniture said to be from the car, but it is not fully documented. Two of the clerestory window sashes are held in a private collec­ tion and another by the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Historical Society. The Chicago Historical Society has a silver builder's plate, and the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society has painted panels that may be from funeral car's central compartment. Of more interest is the full-size operating reproduction of a steam locomotive built by David Kloke, a machinist in Elgin, Illinois. 14 He intends to build a replica of Lincoln's funeral car, too.

NOTES 1.

Several books are devoted in part or whole to Lincoln's funeral train: Dorothy M. Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Twenty Days: A Narrative in Text and Pictures of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Twenty Days and Nights That Followed (New York: Harper & Row, 1965); John W. Starr Jr., Lincoln and the Railroads (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1927); H. Robert Slusser, Mr. Lincoln's Railroad Car, Alexandria Archaeology Publication 76 (Alexandria, Va., 1996); Scott D. Trostel, The Lincoln Funeral Train (Fletcher, Ohio: Cam-Tech, 2002).

2.

Additional information on "the car itself was found in George B. Abdill, Civil War Railroads (Seattle: Superior, 1961; William Price, Locomotive Engineering, September 1893; William Brey, John Carbutt on the Frontier of Photography (Cherry Hill, N.J.: Willowdale, 1984); John H. White Jr., The American Railroad Passenger Car (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).

3.

Lamason's career and life are not well recorded. By 1908 he was living in Toledo, Ohio, where his sons owned a department store. They issued a postcard of the Lincoln funeral car that was given to members of the Grand Army of the Republic. See James L. Lowe, Lincoln Postcard Catalog, rev. ed. (Folsom, Pa.: Deitiologists of America, 1973).

4.

Locomotive Engineering, September 1893, 15.

5.

Ibid.

6.

Ibid.

7.

Ibid.

8.

Mary Todd Lincoln remained inside the White House for more than a month after the assassination and did not attend the funeral service in Springfield. For a brief account of the events surrounding Lincoln's lying in state and the funeral, see Anthony S. Pitch, "The White House and Lincoln's Assassination," White House History, no. 25 (Spring 2009): 42-55.

9.

Ward Hill Lamon wrote two books about Lincoln: The Life of Abraham Lincoln: From His Birth to His Inauguration as President (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1872), a two-volume p�oject but only one appeared, ghostwritten

by Chauncey Forward Black; and Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865, ed. Dorothy Lamon Teillard (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1895), presumably written by Lamon himself.

10. John Brough (1811-1865) was a newspaper man and railroad president before entering politics. No book-length biography is available, but his life is recorded in most standard biographical dictionaries.

I 1. The oft-repeated notion that Lincoln's casket was placed onboard a Pullman sleeping car for the final part of the trip is erroneous.

12.

Tribune Republican [Denver] as reproduced in Railroad Gazette, August 27, 1886, 603.

13. On November 4, 1903, the Christian Advocate reported that the panels from the car's central compartment were decorated with various state Coats of Arms.

14. Dan Nosowitz, "The Strange History [and Future] of Lincoln's Funeral Train," Atlas Obscura, April 14, 2015, online at www.atlasobscura.com.

The Solemn Journey: Lincoln's Funeral Train to Springfield 45

For six weeksfollowing the president's.funeral, the widowed Mary Todd Lincoln remained in seclusion at the White House, unwilling to see many of the callers who came to express their sympathy. This photograph likely captures her carriage on the day of her departure.from Washington. The columns of the North Portico remain wrapped in blczck crepe, wind-blown and faded, to be removed at the end of the official mourning period.

Society Calls on Widow Mary Todd Lincoln A Collection Recalls a Tradition

CLIFFORD KRAINIK

� Mary Todd Lincoln's nightmare years in Washington began with a chilly reception by Washington society, then the press questioned her loyalty to the Union, and soon her personal spending and fashion sense became the focus of satire. But those close to the family later reported that it was the crushing grief over the death of Willie, her 11-year­ old son and favorite child, that had irrevocably trans­ formed her. 1 When the horrific four years of civil war finally reached an end and it seemed as though the Lincolns could begin to find a happier place in their lives, a .44-caliber lead ball fired at point-blank range by John Wilkes Booth ended President Lincoln's life.

Consumed by grief, Mrs. Lincoln remained secluded in her room for six weeks after her husband's funeral.

The historian William Seale explains, "The few who ventured close to her were puzzled by her wild hyster­ ics.... people who might have given comfort began to stay away."2 President Andrew Johnson made no effort to nudge her from the White House, but late in the afternoon of May 22, Mrs. Lincoln, her face hid­ den in a black veil, finally left the President's House and slipped away to the railroad station. Her com­ panion, Elizabeth Keckley observed that "there was scarcely a friend to tell her good-bye. She passed down the public stairway, entered her carriage, and quietly drove to the depot where we took the cars." 3 In the weeks between the president's funeral and the first lady's departure from the White House, con­ cerned citizens called on Mrs. Lincoln. Perhaps most did not realize that she had no inclination to receive

callers. At the time it was customary for visitors to leave calling cards if they could not be received. The custom originated in France in the early nineteenth century, spread throughout Europe, and then came to the United States, where it became especially fash­ ionable in New England during the 1840s. Calling card rituals were well established in polite society by the time of the American Civil War. Specially desig­ nated silver trays were placed in entrance halls to col­ lect the cards. There were other customs associated with the cards as well: a folded top left corner meant the visitor had come in person; a folded bottom left corner meant "farewell"; a folded top right corner meant "congratulations." A black frame around the edge of the card signified mourning.

Ralph Geoffrey Newman, the distinguished Lincoln scholar, antiquarian, author, and owner of the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago, was a passionate student and collector of "Lincolniana."

When asked to define the term "rare" as it applied to the collecting of Lincoln memorabilia, Newman smiled and said, "The term is vastly abused and the appellation 'rare' could rightly be used for items seen once, or perhaps twice in the course of an established dealer's lifetime." He paused for a moment, then con­ tinued, "Even rarer are the items kept by the dealer as his own tangible link to the past."4 An example of such a rare collection emerged from the estate of Mr. Newman in 2001: thirty-two calling cards left at the White House for the grieving widow of President Lincoln. Twenty-seven of the cards are published on the following pages, reproduced at their actual size.5

LINCOLN'S CABINET It would have only been fit­ ting for all the members of Lincoln's cabinet to pay their respects to his widow, but represented in the collection are only three calling cards from the seven-member cabinet: Attorney General James Speed, Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch, and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. Welles's wife, Mary Jane, who had lost six children of her own, was a rare good friend of Mary Todd Lincoln.

Although sick with a heavy cold, she spent the night of the assassination and the followi�g day with Mrs. Lincoln.

Each of the three cards is printed in the identical engraved script that simply conveys the title of the dis­ tinguished visitor, without mention of his name.

MILITARY OFFICERS Seven of the calling cards in the collection were left for Mrs. Lincoln by military officers. The navy was represented by Rear Admiral William Radford an8,.Commander Henry Augustus Wise.

., ·I . .

The cards of three Union generals are also found in the collection: General Christopher Columbus Augur, General Richard Delafield, and General James B. Ricketts.

J

'I

,_, ,

In addition, there is a card from the Maryland Provost Marshal, N. L. Jeffries of Baltimore, who liked to grace his name with the rank of "General." One intriguing card left for Mrs. Lincoln came from "Colonel Badeau (pictured at bot­ tom left). Adam Badeau was "Aide de camp to the General" ( Ulysses S. Grant) and practiced law in New York before joining the Union Army in 1862.

He joined the staff of General Grant as a brevet lieutenant colonel in .1864.

His personal encounters with Mrs. Lincoln were sometimes unpleasant, but his card was an acknowl­ edgment of his sympathy in spite of their former difficulties.

FOREIGN DIGNIT ARIES The eleven cards left by foreign dignitaries make up one-third of the total collec­ tion. Four cards are from European dignitaries: Baron Frederick de Gerolt, the minister from Prussia and Germany for twenty-seven years; Roest van Limburg for His Majesty the King of the Netherlands; Marquis de Chambrun, French diplo­ mat; and Baron M. de Stoeckl for the emperor of Russia.

Two diplomats from Mexico left their cards at the White House: Ignacio Mariscal, secretary of the delegation, and Minister Matias Romero, who served as Benito Juarez's envoy to the United States during the French intervention in Mexico (1861-67).

j,) // //,;, / ,_. ./1,,r,: de:.,, �/?o-eck/-/ � G':xuaot�:,u.u:,te--: d.>11.:,udiv ,tift,,�w-;;v ,,1,, , ._ /,,Pt(,,� f':;:,y.,�>-,,-,,,1.,. r4-:k.d&,f £.1 ,�v�4

@ n1-'7

Cards left by diplomats from Central and South America include Alberto Blest Gana, Charge d'Affaires of Chile; Minister Luis Molina from Nicaragua and Honduras; Minister Federico Luciano Barreda from Peru; and General Eustorjio Sa/gar from Colombia. The American diplomat Anson Burlingame, the Lincoln­ appointed minister to China ( Qing Empire), also pre­ sented his calling card at the White House.

@!./4u=-rr.k,,.a:,y

,!}%?'71,.,tfj-,,,.,_ua,t;_rp ,:7

,-,w,.;/, ·

/.om..·

U'

•

,,,II,,�,,;;,,;;

'-.,,£:xu v.

The exact path that the cards followed from Mrs. Lincoln's possession to Newman's collection is not entirely known, but their unique status is unques­ tionable. Considering the enormous number of visi­ tors to the White House who paid their respects to Mrs. Lincoln, it is astounding how very few of these printed traces remain-a mere residue. A cursory analysis of the Mary Lincoln calling card collection reveals a distinct demographic of visitors-Lincoln cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, and foreign emissaries. For whatever reason, the last group represents more than one-third of this calling card population.

The clear similarity of the engraved script letter­ ing on the calling cards for foreign diplomats and the design and typeface similarities of the cards of cabi­ net members and Supreme Court justices suggest that a single vendor was used by the distinguished states­ men for their cards. The Washington City directory of 1864 carried a lengthy advertisement for engraver and printer, J.W. Orr of 75 Nassau Street, New York. The company proclaimed, "This is the largest and best establishment of the kind in America. Mr. Orr's facilities for executing every branch of work connected with Engraving ...Fine Printing, etc., are superior to that of any other establishment in the U.S.All orders, however large, are executed in a superior style. Orders by mail, express or telegraph, promptly attended to." 6 It seems likely that the elite statesmen would naturally patronize the finest sta­ tioner available, and so Mr.Orr probably printed most of the calling cards that were eventually received by Mrs. Lincoln.

Although there is no way to determine the num­ ber of calling cards received by Mrs. Lincoln after the president's assassination, it is reasonable to assume that the number would be considerable in light of the unifying forces of grief and empathy for the late president. The calling cards surviving in the collection left at the White House in mid-April 1865 are poignant reminders of the national tragedy, and of the overwhelming personal loss suffered by Mary Todd Lincoln.

NOTES The author wishes to thank Blaine V. Houmes, M.D., Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for allowing me access to his collection of Mary Lincoln mourning /calling cards and to Rebecca Norris, Catonsville, Maryland, for assistance in researching and editing this article.

I.

According to Elizabeth Keckley, Willie was his mother's favorite child.

Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 46.

2.

William Seale, President's House: A History, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2008), I :410.

3.

Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 92.

4.

Ralph Newman, conversation with Clifford Krainik in Chicago at the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, summer 1976.

5.

Information about individuals whose cards are illustrated is from "Cabinet and Vice Presidents," Mr. Lincoln's White House, online www.mrlin­ colnswhitehouse.org.

6.

Entry in Andrew Boyd, ed., Boyd's Washington and Georgetown Directory (Washington, D.C.: Taylor and Maury, 1864), 329.

Society Calls on Widow Mary Todd Lincoln: A Collection Recalls a Tradition

53

t 1 YJ\ t � � ��i�t�\\� \\)tm'� ��" �" �it�

--------­ -----

s a r� s e c e tt tAade Mute \ o 11.etion d a e r . p 11.rrest s o\s�\ng.

Se\l\\o p

s10E o 1:. s £ jl.i 11-1 S i N E R pr,

�outh, d o e tt s A it e ooctor l O'I v-,1, a r o r e I' se� eo a\. s ,-a1< 1-\0S\l;t d e e V-,\'10 \ R ter to V-,a\ e s u o H

---------=

President and Mrs. Coolidge posed with their two sons Calvin Jr. ( standing left) and John on the South Portico of the White House on June 30, 1924.

Later that same day, Calvin Jr. played tennis wearing tennis shoes without socks. He developed a blister on his toe that ultimately led to his death.

The Death of a Son: Calvin Coolidge Jr.

LAWRENCE L .

aune 30, 1924, 16-year-old Calvin Coolidge Jr. ran to the South Lawn of the White House for several sets of spirited tennis with his older brother. No one could have imagined that a family and national tragedy was about to unfold.

Eager to match skills with 19-year-old John Coolidge, his onetime roommate at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania, Cal slipped on sneakers without bothering with socks. As he changed clothes afterward, he found a blister on the middle toe of his right foot. He dabbed it with iodine but paid no further attention. 1 Within a day or so he grew tired and listless, complained of stomach pains, and was sent to bed. Soon he was running a 102 degree fever. Red streaks appeared on his right leg. Alarmed White House physicians called in Dr. John B. Deaver of Philadelphia, a prominent surgeon and stomach specialist. Dr. Deaver found that Cal's lymph glands were slightly swollen and tender to the touch.

Fearing a bacterial infection, he ordered blood tests.

The finding: septicemia, blood poisoning.2 That was bad news in 1924.

Antibiotics had yet to be developed. Penicillin would not become commercially available until the early 1940s. Treatment options for blood poisoning were limited. Mortality rates were high. 3 It was soon clear the boy was seriously ill. The president became gripped with fear and apprehen­ sion. "I think I have never witnessed such a look of

KNUTSON

agony and despair that was on the president's face," said Charles Dawes, Coolidge's vice presidential run­ ning mate, recalling a scene after dinner in the White House.4 Edmund W. Starling, chief of the White House Secret Service detail, called Coolidge "a strick­ en man, going about as if in a dream." He told this story in a memoir: "One day he went out and caught one of the many rabbits that live on the White House grounds. I watched him take the little animal in his arms and carry it inside to show to Calvin. He would have carried him the whole of the White House grounds, a handful at a time, if it would have done any good." 5 The rabbit's visit earned the president a smile. But nothing seemed to do any good. Reporters were told of Cal's condition. News stories resulted in an outpouring of concern and sympathy. Soon there were prayer vigils outside the White House.

Coolidge came to office in August 1923 when Warren G. Harding's sudden death elevated him from the vice presidency. Now he sought a full four­ year term in his own right. Radio was then a new phenomenon, and the president's son listened with interest from his bed as Democrats met in New York to nominate a candidate to oppose his father. It took 103 ballots to narrow the field to John W. Davis, a former solicitor general and U.S. ambassador to Great Britain.

With Calvin Jr. seriously ill, the Coolidges devoted few if any thoughts to the president's politi­ cal future, and the president's Fourth of July birth-

Calvin Coolidge Jr. received emergency treatment at Walter Reed Hospital (left) but without modern antibiotics the infection proved fatal.

Following a simple memorial service, he was buried in Plymouth, Vermont, where his parents were photographed visiting his grave (opposite) in 1928.

day passed without celebration.6 The next day an ambulance took Calvin to Walter Reed Hospital, where Dr. Deaver operated almost immediately. He cut into the lower right leg and inserted drains in a desperate bid to carry away the poisons invading his patient's body. Describing the surgery in a front-page story on Sunday, July 6, the New York Times also reported that the infection had become widespread.7 Called in as a consultant, Dr. John A. Kolmer, a leading Philadelphia infectious disease specialist, watched in the sickroom as the boy's condition went "from bad to worse." Cal became delusional. At one point he imagined he was mounted backwards on a trotting horse and begged to be turned around. His father turned him on the bed, quieting him for the moment.8 Mary Randolph, the White House social secretary, described a second hallucination in her memoir. Calvin believed he and his nurses were "fighting some terrific battle against terrific odds," she wrote.

After rallying troops in what seemed to be a last stand, he called out, "I surrender." Then, look­ ing at a nurse, he demanded, "Now you say it too, say you surrender!" When it was clear noth­ ing else would satisfy him, the nurse complied: "All right, Calvin, I surrender."

56 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

"A moment more and he had slipped into a coma," Mary Randolph wrote. "After that it was only a mat­ ter of breathing on for a few hours until the heart stopped." 9 At about IO p.m. Dr. Kolmer told the president and first lady the end was at hand. "The president sprang from his chair, and took his dying boy in his arms, shouting hysterically into his ears that he would soon join him in the Great Beyond," the doc­ tor remembered. Coolidge repeatedly tried to place in his son's hands a gold locket containing a strand of his grandmother's hair. "It is commonly stated that President Coolidge was 'cold as ice,"' Dr. Kolmer wrote. "But I had the opportunity of seeing him in this hour of grief and know quite otherwise. Indeed, it was the most touching and heart-rending experi­ ence of my whole professional career." 10 Calvin Coolidge Jr. died at about 10:30 p.m. on Monday, July 7, 1924.

It was the first death of a sitting president's child since 1862, when typhoid fever took the life of President Lincoln's 11-year-old son, Willie. The country learned the news when the Democratic Convention adjourned out of respect for the presi­ dent. JI In reporting the boy's death, the New York Times described Cal Coolidge as bright and vibrant with a remarkable will to survive. "All that loving

hands and skill of modern science could do in a brave battle failed to save the life of the boy," it said. The newspaper described the boy as slender, blue-eyed, athletic, and apt to be as quiet as his father, whom the country knew as "Silent Cal." 12 Americans reacted with an outpouring of sym­ pathy, flooding the White House with thousands of

letters and telegrams. Some expressed their emotions in poetry and even song. Many messages came from parents who had also lost a child. Sailors from the presidential yacht, Mayflower, had considered Cal Coolidge a pal on their cruises together. Now they formed an Honor Guard around his open casket in the East Room. Late one night the president, wearing

a: ('J

IL 0

�----" Calvin Coolidge Jr. 57

a dressing gown, stood over the casket and gently smoothed his son's hair. He remained inconsolable for months. A friend said his face had "the bleak des­ olation of cold November rain beating on gray Vermont granite." 13 Calvin was buried after a simple ceremony at the family plot at Plymouth Notch, Vermont,as a Marine Corps bugler sounded taps under a slanting sun. At a memorial service the pastor of the Edwards Congregational Church in Northampton, Massa­ chusetts, remembered him as "a boy on whom one could depend, willing to work hard and play the game." 14

The presidential campaign was at hand.

Coolidge made a few radio addresses but left cross­ country barnstorming to his running mate Dawes.

The economy was booming. Coolidge was popular.

He crushed his opponent-15.7 million to 8.4 million votes. The White House was his for another four years. 15 But his son's shadow remained a vivid pres­ ence. "When I look out that window I always see my boy playing tennis on that court," he told a White House visitor. 16 In tortured logic, Coolidge blamed himself for Calvin's premature death. His reasoning: had he not been elected president the boy would not have played tennis on a White House court.

There would have been no blister and no blood poisoning.17 Three years after Cal's death, while vacationing in the Black Hills of South Dakota,Coolidge startled the country with one terse sen­ tence: "I do not choose to run for president in 1928." Although there were many reasons for that decision, some believed that Coolidge's despair over his son's death was a clear factor. He rein­ forced that impression in his 1929 autobiography. "In his suffering he was asking me to make him well.I could not," Coolidge wrote and added, "When he went,the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him....

I do not understand why such a price was exacted for occupying the White House." 18 President Coolidge's friend, inventor Thomas Edison, expressed his sympathy with a telegram sent by Western Union (draft at left), which read, "May I venture to intrude upon you to express my deep sympathy with you in the sorrow that has been laid upon you. "

58 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number47)

Calvin Coolige Jr. was eulogized as a "boy on whom one could depend, willing to work hard and play the game." He described himself as undeserving of the title "first boy of the land" because he felt such a title should be earned.

NOTES I.

Margaret Jane Fischer, Calvin Coolidge, Jr., 1908-1924 (Rutland, Vt.: Academy Books, 1982), 24-27.; Ishbel Ross, Grace Coolidge and Her Era (New York: Dodd Mead, 1962), 117-22.

2.

David Greenberg, Calvin Coolidge (New York: Times Books, 2006), 96; "Calvin Coolidge Jr. Is Seriously Ill," New York Times, July 5, 1924, I.

3.

Greenberg, Calvin Coolidge, 96.

4.

Quoted in Robert Sobel, Coolidge: An American Enigma (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1998), 15.

5.

Edmund W. Starling, with Thomas Sugrue, Starling of the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946), 5.

6.

Jared Rhoads, "The Medical Context of Calvin Jr.'s Untimely Death," July 7, 2014, online at Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, coolidgefoundation.org; Ross, Grace Coolidge, 117.

7.

Fischer, Calvin Coolidge, Jr., 24; "Surgeons Operate on President's Son," New York Times. July 6, 1924, 1.

8.

Dr. John A. Kolmer, typescript memoir, April 10, 1942, 2, reprinted in "A Death in the White House," The History of Vaccines, online resources of College of Physicians of Philadelphia, www.historyofvaccines.org.

9.

Mary Randolph, Presidents and First Ladies (New York: Appleton-Century Company, 1936), 82-83.

JO. Kolmer, typescript memoir, 2.

11. Greenberg, Calvin Coolidge, 96-97.

The president and first lady treasured two sto­ ries which they believed said much about their son.

Grace Coolidge found and framed Cal's handwritten reply to a teenager who wrote to say that as the pres­ ident's son he should be known as "first boy ofthe land." "I think you are mistaken in calling me the first boy ofthe land since I have done nothing," Calvin responded. "It is my father who is president.

Rather, the first boy ofthe land should be someone who has distinguished himselfthrough his own actions."' 9 The president told the other story in his autobi­ ography. "The day I became president he had just started to work in a tobacco field. When one ofhis fellow laborers said to him, 'If my father were presi­ dent I would not work in a tobacco field,' Calvin replied, 'Ifmy father were your father, you would."'20

12. "President's Son, CaJvin Jr., Dies As Parents Watch," New York Times, July 8, 1924, I. 13. Quoted in Robert H. Ferrell, Grace Coolidge: The People's Lady in Silent Cal's White House (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 105. See also Fischer, Calvin Coolidge, Jr., 28-29; Greenberg, Calvin Coolidge, 98.

14. New York Times, "President's Son Buried in Vermont on Ancestral Hill," July 11, 1924, Page I. New York Times, "Northampton in Silent Grief," July 11, 1924, Page 4.

15. The 1924 presidential election results are, for the popular vote, Calvin Coolidge, 15.7 million; John W. Davis, 8.4 million; Progressive Party can­ didate Robert M. La Follette, 4.8 million.

16. Quoted in Greenberg, Calvin Coolidge, 98.

17. Ibid., 98-99; Calvin Coolidge, The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge (New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1929), 190.

18. Calvin Coolidge, Autobiography, 190.

19. Quoted in Ferrell, Grace Coolidge, 102-3.

20. Calvin Coolidge, Autobiography, 189-90.

Death of a Son: Calvin Coolidge Jr.

59

{

, ,,

I,

_,,..1.

J,1 il

\

Crushed by the death of his son Calvin Jr., President Coolidge drew inspiration from President Abraham Lincoln, who also lost a son in the White House. Despite their grief Lincoln and Coolidge carried on with the responsibilities of the presidency. Pictured here in the Oval Office in 1924, a pensive Calvin Coolidge would later reflect on the death of his son writing, "when he went, the power and glory of the Presidency went with him. "

The Grief of Two Fathers President Calvin Coolidge Looks to Abraham Lincoln for Strength AMITY SHLAES

� a president loses a child, America mourns with him. This is in part because of an understanding of the great burdens that a chief executive shoulders and in part because of a concern about whether the added weight of a tragedy may prove too heavy for the executive to complete his work. Willie Lincoln died on February 20, 1862, the same week that Jefferson Davis was inaugurated president of the Confederate States of America. The fate of the Union was far from certain, yet, perhaps in part because he felt citizens' affection for him, President Abraham Lincoln pushed ahead and mar­ shaled the strength to lead the Union to victory.

Calvin Coolidge Jr. died on July 7, 1924, not quite a year into his father's presidency. Yet President Calvin Coolidge, too, had a mandate, less dramatic than Lincoln's but nevertheless real: to restore to high repute a presidency besmirched by the scandals of his late predecessor, Warren G. Harding. Doing so entailed not only cleaning up but following through on their party's campaign promises: shrinking the federal government, lowering taxes, and reducing the huge federal debt of World War I. Harding and Coolidge believed that improving the business envi­ ronment would benefit the whole country. Business needed an environment to expand, and many wartime offices needed to be dismantled.

Disappointed at Woodrow Wilson's failure to see the Treaty of Versailles through Senate confirmation, many Americans also hoped for an international

peace treaty to bring closure after World War I. A long list, and a mourning president might not be up to the job.

Doubts about Coolidge had coalesced even before his son's death, while Coolidge was still vice president. Harding, former senator, was a master of legislative politics, as well loved as, say, Lyndon Johnson four decades later. Coolidge, as a former governor was new to Washington. Harding spent long evenings with pals and guests. Coolidge cut out of dinners early. Coolidge's family of four presented as friendly and square; the Hardings affected a regal demeanor. Harding's questionable private life was not yet the subject of gossip, but his White House became known for impropriety when visitors were served alcohol during Prohibition and played cards for money. The sloppy style reflected sloppy policies, the worst of which was the Harding administration's betrayal of World War I veterans. Harding had com­ mitted to build Walter Reed-style hospitals across the nation, but Charles Forbes, the man Harding had appointed to lead the effort, took kickbacks, and the hospitals were neither completed nor well built. In failing health and burdened by these mounting trou­ bles, Harding stalled. The president died before he completed delivery on campaign commitments: to pay back the war debt, to reduce tax rates down into the 20 percent range, and to put the economy on sta­ ble footing.

After Harding's death, Teapot Dome emerged

THE DEATH OF WILLIE LINCOLN President Lincoln's sons Willie and Tad were among the first little boys to live in the White House, and the first to attract news coverage. Both boys had Union uniforms, which they wore frequently. They were friends with the soldiers camped on the White House Grounds, who were made to pet the boys' goats and ponies. At the time the South Grounds sloped down to a swampy area where stale water stood and mosquitoes swarmed. Around Christmas 1861, both boys developed typhus. Tad proved the stronger of the two, but Willie sank. He was kept in the Prince of Wales guest room upstairs, tucked away in the now-famous Lincoln bed, where he died at 5:00 in the afternoon of February 20, 1862.

Willie's coffin was placed in the Green Room, his father close beside it. The funeral was held in the East Room while Mary Lincoln remained in her bedroom upstairs; she never really recovered. The president continued on with his work, however, though his sleep was forever troubled.

62

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number47)

as the scandal of the period. Interior Secretary Albert Fall had secretly traded interest-free loans and cash for control of U.S. Navy oil reserves in Wyoming and California, and Attorney General Harry Daugherty seemed to be complicit. The dirty con­ tracts suggested the government was incapable of pri­ vatization, a key concept for the Republican Party.

The corruption weighed heavily upon Coolidge when he was vice president and living at the Willard Hotel; insomnia allowed him to sleep only in the early hours. As a young Republican, he had studied his forerunners. Like Lincoln, he "read law" rather than attend law school. The partying Harding White House seemed far from the Lincoln presidency and far from Coolidge's Boston, where as Massachusetts governor he had pared back government bureaucra­ cy, infuriating his patrons. His two sons, John and Calvin Jr., provided consolation in the purgatory of vice presidency, especially Calvin Jr., who took a deep interest in politics and picked up on the hypocrisy in the air. The high schooler crafted a bitter poem about the price of Washington's ill­ gotten success: Men say untruths for you alone And by foul means you're called their own Yet rest not till their dying day Because they grasped you in such way. 1 When Coolidge took office in August 1923, he vowed to complete to "perfection" what Harding and the Republican Party had "started."2 But public doubt was still palpable. "The Accident of an Accident," was the way one observer described Coolidge. 3 Small for a president, and thin, Coolidge was known as morose. As a child the native Vermonter had lost his mother and his only sister and already seemed gloomy to many observers. His own body guard, Colonel Edmund Starling, referred to the president as "The Little Fellow."4 Early on it became clear to the White House staff that Coolidge and his family comported them­ selves differently from the Hardings. Determined that his White House would stand for propriety, and that all Coolidges must play their part, Coolidge moni­ tored the household and federal budgets with the same sharp eye. The Coolidge boys dressed up for dinner, whether they liked it or not. Once John showed

up for the evening meal in casual clothes. "Young man, you are having dinner tonight with the president of the United States. You will dress properly."5 Living by example was one thing, but Coolidge also had to throw out wrongdoers and pass laws. In the spring of 1924 he appointed special counsel to investigate Teapot Dome, accepted the attorney gen­ eral's resignation, and sought the decrease in the tax rate as the Republican Party had promised. Although he was not able to approach the low pre-war level of 7 percent, president signed into law a tax compromise of 46 percent in the early summer of 1924.

The death of Calvin Jr. that summer looked to many like a fatal blow to a lame duck. Coolidge was running for president again, but mourning precluded campaigning. With the election less than six months away, the Coolidges retreated to his remote birthplace of Plymouth, Vermont. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were permitted a visit, but Coolidge mostly kept to himself. He was willing to meet with children who reminded him of Calvin, or to speak with leaders of philanthropies on the telephone. Later, in his auto­ biography, Coolidge confessed the extent of the pain from Calvin's death: "when he went, the power and glory of the Presidency went with him."6 From Vermont the Coolidges brought a spruce tree to plant on the White House Grounds in memory of Calvin, but the sapling apparently did not survive the strange soil: there is no trace of it in White House records.

Some biographers have chosen to rate Coolidge's weakness after the death of Calvin as dis­ positive. The most scholarly is Robert Gilbert, whose The Tormented President: Calvin Coolidge, Death, and Clinical Depression sketches a decline that ren­ dered Coolidge hopelessly ineffective. 7 Yet the facts suggest otherwise. Coolidge was surely what we would call depressed, but he did not give up. Even without speeches, his quiet 1924 campaign succeeded beyond hopes. He took an absolute majority beating both the feisty third party, the Progressives, and the Democrats combined. With more support in Congress postelection, Coolidge pushed through the final components of the Republican tax plan.

Working with Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, he reduced the top tax rate to the goal level of 25 per­ cent. When Coolidge left office, the federal budget was lower than when he came in, a feat unmatched

The Grief of a Two Fathers: President Calvin Coolidge Looks to Abraham Lincoln for Strength

63

A Pr11<lr1m•ltm lullM JJ1111tSrJ 11th, 19,9, 6y (.1'1m1 (Mlidtl, ,1,,,, Gdwr,,111 of M,m«lnudtr

'hvESCORE

and ten years ago that Divine Providence, which infinite repetition has made only the more a miracle, sent into the world

a new life, destined to save a nation. No star, no sign, foretold his c.oming About his cradle all was poor and mean save only the source of all great men, the love of a wonderful woman. When she faded away in his tender years, from her dtathbed in humble poverty she dowered her son with greatness. There can be no proper observance of a birthday which forgets the mother. Into his origin, as into his life, men long have looked and wondered. In wisdom great, bur in humility greater, in justice strong, but in compassion stronger, he became a leader of men by being a follower of the truth. He overcame evil with good. His presence filled the Nation. He broke the might of oppression. He restored a race to its birthright. His mortal frame has vanished, but his spirit increases .r;t;) with the increasing years, the richest legacy of the greatest century. ,0

{ilEN show by what they worship what they arc. Ir is no accident that before the great example of American manhood our people

stand with respect and reverence. And in accordance with this sentiment our laws have provided for a formal recognition of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln; for in him is revealed our ideal, the hope of our country fulfilled. .0 ..0 .,0

Qoiv, therefore, by the authority of Massachusetts, the 12.th day of

February is set apart as

�

.,,c{;;>

/;INCOLN VAY

�

· JO

and its observance recommended as befits the beneficiaries of his life and admirers of his character, in places of education and worship wherever our people meet one with another.

Given at the Executive Chamber, in Boston. this 30th day of January, in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-third. a, � .,@

COURTESY OP'

NATIONAL CITY BANK NEW YORK CITY

Coolidge's admiration for Abraham Lincoln was evident well before his presidency when as governor of Massachusetts in 1919 he signed a proclation to establish a Lincoln Day honoring the birthday of the sixteenth president.

64 WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

by any peacetime president. Finally Coolidge achieved what Wilson and Harding had not: he saw a world treaty on peace, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, through Senate ratification.

The country moved past Teapot Dome to focus on Henry Ford's new model, radios, electricity, and all the other benefits of Harding-Coolidge prosperity.

Productivity increased enough to reduce the work week from six to five days. In other words, Coolidge helped gave Americans something they have appreci­ ated ever since, Saturday.

"The American public has taken Coolidge at his word before and has not been disappointed," an edito­ rial had commented in 1924.8 In the later 1920s, other papers joined a chorus of praise for Coolidge. In his second term, Coolidge's popularity grew. Though the history books may remember him as silent, the reality was that Coolidge became an accomplished radio speaker: his nasal voice cut through the airwaves like wire, the listeners noticed.9 Under Coolidge the office of the presidency regained both respect and authority to the benefit of two of his successors, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt. Coolidge's is not a story of "yes, but." It is a story of "but, yes."

What enabled Coolidge to recover and lead?

Religious faith, to be sure. If he could not understand the death of Calvin, he could have faith that God could. Coolidge also prized, and drew consolation from, the discipline of routine. In 1927, when he and the first lady hosted Charles Lindbergh after his transatlantic flight, Coolidge praised Lindbergh not only for bravery but also for being "a man of good moral habits and regular in all his business transac­ tions. " 10 With Calvin gone, the pair were happy to have an extra son: Coolidge even ordered the aviation superstar to change his suit from white to dark when time came for church.

Yet other factors sustaining Coolidge in his sec­ ond term were his sense of service and the conviction that service mattered more than personal grief. If any­ thing, Coolidge's public campaign of presidential self­ lessness intensified after the death of Calvin. Once Senator Selden Spencer of Missouri took Coolidge for a walk. To cheer the president, Spencer pointed to the White House and asked who lived in that big house with the pretty pillars. "Nobody," replied Coolidge.

"They just come and go." 11

A final comfort to the mourning Coolidge was doubtless his model, Lincoln, who had continued to shoulder his responsibilities as president after the loss of his son Willie. In 1926, two years after Calvin's death, Coolidge acknowledged his enthusiasm for the sixteenth president when he broke his usual rule of thrift and allowed the federal government to buy a great collection of Lincoln memorabilia. 12 In 1928, Coolidge made a point of giving an address at Gettysburg, the site of Lincoln's speech and near to the Coolidge boys' boarding school in Mercersburg. 13 Coolidge chose not to run for office again in 1928.

Once released from the role of first couple, Calvin and Grace Coolidge found they were free to do many things, including to recall Calvin Jr. It was only after the presidency that Grace Coolidge published a mem­ oir describing her son's death. 14 The example of Coolidge's presidency of integrity holds up today. While still Massachusetts governor, Coolidge praised Lincoln for his strengths and perse­ verance in an introduction to a Lincoln biography

by Carl Schurz. 15 While still vice president, Coolidge gave a similar assessment of Lincoln in a speech in Springfield, Illinois. What Coolidge said of Lincoln is we now see likewise true of Coolidge: "he did not stop part way." 16 NOTES I. 2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

1 I. 12.

13.

Quoted in Margaret Jane Fischer, Calvin Coolidge, Jr.:1908-1924 (Rutland, Vt.: Academy Books, 1981), 16.

Coolidge in conversation with Edward McLean, quoted in Amity Shlaes, Coolidge (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), 261.

"Leader Badly Needed," New Orleans States, June 25, 1924, p. 4.

Edmund W. Starling, with Thomas Sugrue, Starling of the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946), 204.

Robert E. Gilbert, The Tormented President: Calvin Coolidge, Death, and Clinical Depression (Westport, Conn.: Prager, 2003), 51.

Starling with Sugrue, Starling of the White House.

Gilbert, The Tormented President.

"Coolidge and Lincoln," Jersey Journal, February 13, 1924.

Shlaes, Coolidge.

Coolidge, "Address Bestowing upon Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh the Distinguished Flying Cross in Washington, D.C.," June 11, 1927, online at American Presidency Project, ed. Peters and Woolley, www.presidency.ucsb.edu.

Reported inShlaes, Coolidge, 371.

Josephine Allen,"Documenting the Lincoln Collection," American Archivist 26, no. 4 (October 1963): 463-67.

Coolidge, "Address at Gettysburg Battlefield," May 30, 1928, online at American Presidency Project, ed. Peters and Woolley, www.presidency.ucsb.edu.

14. Wikander, Lawrence E. and Robert H. Ferrell, eds. Grace Coolidge: An Autobiography, (Plymouth Notch: Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, 1992).

15. Ibid.

16. Schurz, Carl, Abraham Lincoln, An Essay, With a New Preface by Calvin Coolidge. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, the Riverside Press Cambridge, 1920), pp iii-iv.

The Grief of a Two Fathers: President Calvin Coolidge Looks to Abraham Lincoln for Strength 65

''

�

,.!

\

'

! ,

�

.'·

I

I

,

I

(

This is the only known image taken aboard the President Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral train.

Roosevelt's casket is seen under guard aboard the Conneaut on April 13, 1945, as the train leaves Georgia for Washington, D. C. The flag-draped casket was placed on a bier high enough to allow spectators to view it through long observation windows on either side of the car.

"Run Slow, Run Silent" The Nation Mourns as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Funeral Train Passes ROBERT KLARA

J-{__

E. Allgood, seasoned engineer for the Southern Railway and one of the few hoggers entrusted to transport the president of the United States, had received countless running orders in his career. But the one handed up to the cab of engine no. 1262 on April 13, 1945, was unlike any that he had received before. Allgood's job on this Friday morning was to take Franklin D. Roosevelt to Atlanta. He was to chuff out of the Warm Springs, Georgia, station at precisely 10:00 a.m. and to take all the usual precautions. But here the similarities to his previous runs ended. For as the country had learned the previous day, Roosevelt was dead. His body lay inside a bronze-finished copper coffin in the last car of Allgood's train, and funeral services were scheduled for the following day up in Washington, D.C. The impulse of any engineer in Allgood's posi­ tion would be to deliver such an important charge as quickly as possible. Yet his orders were just the opposite. Delivered directly to division superintend­ ent W. F. Cooper, they read as follows: Mr. Cooper, the people down here were the President's very good friends and neighbors, and it is the request of Mrs. Roosevelt that you instruct your enginemen, wherever they see groups of people along the railroad, or at cross­ ings, to slow down sufficiently for them to have a last view of the casket. We have elevated it [in the last] car that this vision might be had.'

These wishes had been thoughtfully boiled down to directions more suited to railroading: "Run slow, run silent."2 And that is exactly what Allgood did.

The engineer had barely taken his train out of Warm Springs when he realized the prescience of the first lady's instructions. The trackside was a mass of people, alone and in groups, waiting patiently for their chance to see the train. Men removed their hats, women dropped to their knees, and some sang. In their mourning, the people were "unmindful of heat or chill, sunlight or darkness," reflected the deceased president's secretary Grace Tully.3 They stood with the patience of saints-and the expressions of the stricken. "I never saw the like," said Timothy ("Big Tim") Haulbrook, who also rode inside the locomo­ tive. "The stations were jammed with folks; at every crossing, where two soldiers stood at attention as we passed, were crowds that craned their necks to see over the ones in front."4 It would later be estimated that more Americans stood along the tracks of the FDR funeral train than had come to all four his inaugurals. "The people did not wave," reported Life magazine. "They wept."5 Though they are unknown in the America of the present, funeral trains were commonplace in the cen­ tury preceding FDR's death, and for presidents espe­ cially. In 1850 Zachary Taylor's remains were taken home for burial by train, as were James Garfield's in 1881. When William McKinley's body was chuffed from Washington, D.C., to Canton, Ohio, in 1901,

The route taken by FDR's funeral train (left) included a stop in Greenville, South Carolina, where 25,000 people waited (opposite). Taken from a military plane as the train pulled into the station, one remarkable feature of this photograph is the neat rows of people standing atop the rails of nearby tracks in hope of getting a good view-creating the illusion of rail­ road tracks made out of people.

·-·�-

---__:��:_

-·-;:-2�

J:

taking Roosevelt's mortal remains that distance, especially with a state J funeral planned at roughly the mid­ point, in Washington, D.C. Yet the logistical mandate of a �� 'j;j� train would also be responsible for a p t>,.1-l remarkable event that would become every bit as significant as the proces­ sion of the body itself. The train's long and winding route through nine states, from south to north, granted ordinary 7: Americans an opportunity to witness -·· the train passing and thus to witness Roosevelt's passing. For three days and two nights in the spring of 1945, Americans mourned on a scale that ·- ---has never been equaled.

It is true that, eighteen years Americans laid coins on the rails to retrieve as sou­ later, when John F. Kennedy became the next presi­ venirs after the funeral train ran them over. Most dent to die in office, the national outpouring of grief notable was Abraham Lincoln's funeral train, which was also tremendous. But Kennedy's remains would brought the Great Emancipator's body home to be moved by jet, out of sight of those who longed to Springfield, Illinois, in the troubled spring of 1865. In mourn him. By contrast, not only was FDR's train a the decades before the interstate and the commercial visceral, eye-level presence, so was FDR. Atlanta airline, the railroad was the country's primary con­ mortician Fred Patterson had directed his men to veyance for long distances. And so it was, logically build the bier on which Roosevelt's 760-pound enough, that a body that had to be transported any bronze-finished copper coffin rested. Draped by the great distance would go by train. This was the case Stars and Stripes inside the Conneaut at the rear of with Franklin Roosevelt. When a cerebral hemor­ the train, the casket was easily visible through the rhage felled the thirty-second president at the "Little Pullman's long observation windows. And so it White House," his cottage in Georgia's pine moun­ would transform 1,050 miles of railroad track into tains, he was more than 1000 miles from his estate in the longest church pew in the United States.

Hyde Park, New York, where he wished to be buried.

Roosevelt's funeral train was actually several There was hardly an alternative but the railroad for trains traveling in two segments. The southern route,

_:i? g"f - �J

- �=�

.;- �:_· "' . �-...,--:,-.... i1i -t ��

68

--·- ��:-

iitf

"'"' :J

0 z

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number 47)

z <C tr IL

On the eastern edge of Washington's Union Station, servicemen secure the straps of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's coffin to a horse-drawn caisson on the morning of April 14, 1945. The Pullman sleeper's window (visible between the two men standing on the wheel spokes) has had its glass removed to permit the 760-pound coffin to be passed through, as it was too large to fit though the railroad car's vestibule doorway. The flag draping the lid had been hastily taken down from a flag pole in Warm Springs, Georgia, where Roosevelt had died inside his vacation cottage, and where the funeral train had begun its northwardjourney the day before. The elaborate procession assembling at trackside is bound for the White House and state funeral services in the East Room. The coffin would be brought back to this spot later in the evening and loaded back onto the train for the journey to the Roosevelt family estate in Hyde Park, New York, where Roosevelt had selected his own burial site in the rose garden.

722 rail miles between Warm Springs and the nation's capital, was covered by a single, eleven-car train.Owing to the sheer number of officeholders who boarded in Washington, the northern segment of 328 miles from Washington to Hyde Park, necessi­ tated two trains, one running a few miles behind the other. North of Washington, the eighteen-car train carrying FDR's casket also carried the most impor­ tant mourners: the Roosevelts, President Harry Truman and his family, FDR's cabinet, the Supreme Court, and others.The overflow train--dubbed The Congressional-carried a large number of elected offi­ cials in its eleven carriages, along with five truckloads of flowers bound for the gravesite.

Since the funeral train was actually a modifica­ tion of the presidential train that Roosevelt used while in office, it was essentially a rolling White House, complete with the expected amenities.Apart from the presidential car Ferdinand Magellan, a 142ton armored fortress complete with three bedrooms, a wood-paneled dining room, and a parlor with vel­ vet wingback chairs, passengers slept in snug Pullman berths, smoked in the lounges, and dined on white linen. There was ample food aboard and plenty of liquor, too.The funeral train welcomed most everyone who had served FDR in office-including Fala, his beloved black Scottish terrier-and a few who only appeared to. Tucked into compartment G of the Pullman car Glen Lodge was presidential aide Lauchlin Currie, a quiet, bespectacled man who for years had been spying for the Soviet Union as part of Washington's notorious Silvermaster Ring, which had yet to be uncovered.

Pampered as the passengers were, mourning was tedious business on a train creeping along at 25 miles per hour.Attentions naturally turned to the world outside the windows, where the loss of FDR was felt just as personally.The large number of mourners surprised the train's passengers, and so did depth of public sorrow.At the station in Greenville, South Carolina, the crowds were so thick that fireman Box Childers said, "You could have walked on their heads all the way to Salisbury." 6 In Charlotte, North Carolina, the entire town turned out to watch the train roll through.Silent at first, the crowd began to sing "Onward, Christian Soldiers," led by a troop of Boy Scouts. It was a moment that United Press cor72

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY (Number47)

respondent Merriman Smith later called the most memorable of the trip-not just for the grief expressed, but the fear that lurked behind it. "Those people were scared to death," Smith wrote."They weren't singing for a departed soul. They were sign­ ing for themselves ... as though they were asking, 'What are we going to do now?"'7 But to another newsman, the Associated Press's Harold Oliver, the crowds left a more encouraging impression.Oliver noted how, deep in the segregated South, the passing of FDR's funeral train was an occasion for black and white Americans to stand together.

At every stop, a city official went aboard to position a wreath of flowers at the head of Roosevelt's casket in the Conneaut8 and to express condolences to Eleanor Roosevelt. "There are no words," Atlanta's Mayor William B. Hartsfield told her, "to express how we feel." Officials knew there would be flowers presented, but they were unpre­ pared for the sheer number and size of the floral trib­ utes taken aboard. By the time the train reached Washington, the Conneaut had become a rolling Eden, with profusions of roses and lilies and fems pressed up to the glass.(Though nobody had noticed, Hartsfield had pinched a rose off the spray and secreted it in his palm as he left the train, a keepsake.)

Why such an outpouring of public grief? It is true that Lincoln's funeral train also witnessed such spectacles of devotion eighty years earlier, but the Americas though which the Lincoln and FDR funer­ al trains ran were at very different places in their his­ tories.Lincoln's assassination came just five days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, and though his death was for many a martyrdom, there were also those who felt no great sorrow. "For an enemy so relentless in the war for our subjugation," the former Confederate president Jefferson Davis would write, "we could not be expected to mourn. "9 It was different with FDR. True, Roosevelt's New Deal and his unabashed progressivism had made him enemies within the ruling class, and some hated him to the point of being unable to utter his name.

But his death not only had the effect of muting many of his critics (some of whom actually clamored for a berth on his funeral train); it also called forth count-

less thousands of people who believed, literally, that they owed him their lives. To them, he was the presi­ dent whose public relief programs had saved millions from starvation. He was the commander in chief who led the country through the largest war in its history.

And since Roosevelt had served an unprecedented twelve years in office, millions of young Americans had known no other leader.

But this is not to say that everyone regarded FDR's passing with respect. As the locomotive strug­ gled to pull the overloaded funeral train out of Washington's Union Station, the strain caused a coupler to fracture. As the crew scrambled to replace the broken knuckle, the reporter William Murphy, holding court inside a smoky dining car with fellow newsmen, joked that "the Republicans have always known it would be hard to get Roosevelt out of Washington."to Murphy added that he planned to stay at the gravesite for three days to be ready to file the story of FDR's rising from the dead.

But for the most part, decorum prevailed both inside and out, and if the crowds along the tracks seemed thicker out of Washington, it was because the northern route took the train through some of the largest population centers in the country: Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Despite the fact that the bulk of the northern run would take place in the dark and cold at night, mourners, unde­ terred, built bonfires to keep warm.

Aboard the Pullman Roald Amundsen, 21-year­ old Margaret Truman saw the bonfires. Years later, as she penned her memoirs, she recalled how the glow from the flames "illuminat[ed] thousands of grief-stricken faces." As she stared through her com­ partment window the faces haunted her, and she could not sleep. 11 Nor could Eleanor Roosevelt sleep.

Though the first lady had predicted that people would assemble along the tracks, she did not imagine the depth and scale of the grief they would express.

Awake all night aboard the Ferdinand Magellan, she watched "the crowds of people who stood in respect and sorrow all along the way.":2 The first lady was savvy about politics, but even she had not fully understood the influence her hus­ band had on everyday Americans. That understand­ ing would come only with a ride on his funeral train.

"I lay in my berth all night with the window shade

up, looking out at the countryside he had loved and watching the faces of the people at the stations, and even at the cross-roads, who came to pay their last tribute all through the night," she said. "I never real­ ized the true scope of the devotion to him until he died." 11 The sun rose as the funeral train rolled through the Bronx, changed locomotives, and began its final leg up the east bank of the Hudson River toward Hyde Park. In the early morning chill, some eighty people turned up at the tiny riverside station of Garrison, New York, including several Capuchin Franciscan friars who had come on foot from the nearby Glenclyffe Monastery. Also in the crowd was a father and son. They narrowed their eyes as they looked down the main line, awaiting the telltale puff of smoke from the engine. The man looked down and addressed his little boy. "You've got to remem­ ber everything you see today," he told him. When the funeral train chuffed past, eighteen dark-green Pullmans swaying heavily behind an enormous Hudson locomotive, FDR's flag-draped coffin visible inside the windows of the lounge car at the rear, the lad turned to his father and announced that he had, indeed, seen everything. "That's good," the man replied. "Now make sure you remember it." 14 NOTES I.

Quoted in Herbert G. Monroe, "President's Special," Railroad (November 1945): 33.

2.

William Webb, The Southern Railway System: An Illustrated History (Boston: Boston Mills Press, 1986), 81.

3.

Grace Tully, F.D.R., My Boss (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949), 370.

4.

Quoted in Monroe, "President's Special," 33.

5.

"Going Home: The Trip North," Life, April 23, 1945, 20.

6.

Quoted in Smithsonian Institution, "Steam Locomotive, Southern Railway No. 1401." Online at America on the Move, amhistory.si.edu.

7.

Quoted in Bernard Asbell, When FD.R. Died(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), 158.

8.

"The Last Train," Time, April 23, 1945, 19.

9.

Harold Holzer, "What the Newspapers Said When Lincoln Was Killed," Smithsonian March 2015, smithsonianrnag.com.

10. Asbell, When FDR Died, 184.

11. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman (New York: William Morrow, 1973), 223.

12. Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), 346.

13. Quoted in Rexford Tugwell, FDR: Architect of an Era (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 259.

14. "Platform in Garrison," New Yorker, April 21, 1945, 20.

"Run Slow, Run Silent"

73

BLAIR

HOUSE

THE PRESIDENT'S GUEST HOUSE

THE 2ND ANNUAL

BLAIR HOUSE KEEPSAKE (elebrating 75 years as 'The 'President's (iuest ;J-fouse

Featuring original artwork by Washington artist, Peter Waddell, the 2017 ornament depicts the Truman Study used by President Harry S. Truman as hzs officefrom 1948 to 1952, when Blair House became the official temporary residencefor the Trumans while the White House underwent a complete renovation.

Located on Pennsylvania Avenue, Blair House has served as The President's Guest House since purchased by the U.S. government in 1942. Under the stewardship of the Department of State, it welcomes visiting heads of state, ambassadors, and other notables. Blair House remains closed to the public but each keepsake provides a glimpse into the historic interior of the house.

Commissioned and sponsored by the Blair House Restoration Fund, a charitable organization whose mission to preserve and enhance the rooms, gardens, and fine arts collection of Blair House is supported by generous contributions from the private sector, and through the sale of our Blair House ornaments.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT BLAIR HOUSE OR TO PURCHASE AN ORNAMEN T VISIT: WWW .BLAIRHOUSE.ORG 2017 E DITION FOR $25.00 • 2017 AND 2016 EDITIONS TOGETHER FOR $45.00 ALSO AVAILABLE AT SHOP.WHITEHOUSEHISTORY.ORG

9 ¼" x 11 ¼" 432 pages Casebound with dust jacket

Shop.WhiteHouseHistory.org 800.555.2541

REFLECTI.ONS

�ami[y Life in tlie Wliite J-[ouse STEWART

D .

McLAURIN

PRESIDENT, WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

From the moment a But it is important to president-elect arrives at remember that the White the North Door to meet ◄ House serves as home the outgoing president on to the president and his Inauguration Day-an family, and just as in any enduring tradition in the American home, there peaceful transition of are times ofgreat sorrow. power-the first family Eight ofAmerica's forty­ enters into a public life five presidents died while unlike any other in exis­ in office. Three first ladies tence. It is the nature of died in the White House life in the White House. and five presidential children died while their As the White House is both the symbolic and, father was president of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, seen above with his family often, the literal center of the United States. Though in the Blue Room during the 1938 holidays, was one of American political life, grieving for the death of eight presidents who died while in office and who were a family member was routine events such as mourned publicly by the nation. decorating for the holidays often private, grieving for a president is ofcourse become celebratory spectapublic. Many Americans over the age of50 can still visu­ cles watched the world over. On Thanksgiving weekend, hundreds ofvolunteers from around the country gather alize the funeral ofPresident John F. Kennedy, the White to decorate the White House for the upcoming holiday House draped in black, for it was televised (in black and white). The family's private griefwas also public, season, and the chiefusher procures an 18-foot tall brought into the homes ofmillions ofAmericans.

Christmas tree for the Blue Room where the first lady oversees its decoration. And in the spring time, the first As we do with each issue ofour quarterly White lady and staff gear up for the annual Easter Egg Roll, House History journal, we address this solemn topic in when tens ofthousands ofchildren gather on the South depth. Articles examine for our readers the role that mourning and funerals related to deaths in the White Lawn in a 139-year-old tradition ofrolling eggs and having fun. So goes life in America's Executive Mansion. House have had in this most historic of American homes.

The subject is a reminder that while the White House As one season ends, another begins, each with its own represents both power and continuity, its temporary unique traditions interspersed with formal dinners and residents often face the same family struggles, hardships, visits from heads ofstate as well as with birthdays, and tragedies that all ofus do. As a symbol ofdemocracy anniversaries, and an occasional wedding (there have been and freedom, we have looked to the White House and its eight for presidential daughters and one for a sitting presi­ dent). It is a life where public and private are often consid­ residents to maintain those ideals, even when death has intervened and forever altered our nation's history. ered as one and the same.

"The Lincoln Train is Coming" Created by Wayne Wesolowski of Lisle, Illinois, these pallbearers carrying President Abraham Lincoln's coffin are a part of a one­ twelfth-scale model of the funeral train that transported Lincoln's bodyfrom Washington, D. C. to Springfield, Illinois, in 1865. Now owned by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, Illinois, the model is almost 15 feet long and took nearly four and one-half years to construct.

WHITEHOUSE

HISTORY WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY STAFF

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

William Seale, Editor

Frederick J. Ryan Jr., Chairman John F. W. Rogers, Vice Chairman James I. McDaniel, Secretary John T. Behrendt, Treasurer Stewart D. McLaurin, President Michael R. Beschloss, Jean Case, John H. Dalton, Henry A. Dudley Jr., Alice C. Foultz, Cathy Gorn, Janet A. Howard, Knight Kiplinger, Martha Joynt Kumar, Lauren Bush Lauren, Anita McBride, Mike McCurry, Robert M. McGee, Roger B. Porter, Harry G. Robinson III, Ann Stock, Gail Berry West

Scott Harris, Editorial Advisor Mac Keith Griswold, Editorial Advisor Anthony Pitch, Editorial Advisor Lydia Tederick, Editorial Advisor Marcia M. Anderson, Vice President ofPublishing and Executive Editor Fiona Griffin, Editorial Director Lauren Zook, Senior Production Manager Kristin Skinner, Production Manager Ann Hofstra Grogg, Consulting Editor THE EDITOR WISHES TO THANK

Ex Officio: David S. Ferriera, Carla Hayden Tom Mayes, Earl A. Powell III, David J. Skorton

The Office of the Curator, the White House

Directors Emeriti: Nash Castro, Jeannine S. Clark, Nancy M. Folger, David I. Granger, Elise K. Kirk, Leonard L. Silverstein

WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL A SSOCIATION STAFF Geraldine Alarcon, Marcia Anderson, Cindy Buck, Lauren Cahill, Leslie Calderone, Joanna Capps, :\iatthew Costello, Cora Cruz, Yolande Demosthene-Wood, John Emerson, Fiona Griffin, Nathaniel Guzeh, Arioth Harrison, Lindsey Kolling, Ed Lengel, Alexandra Lane, Albert Lee, Lynn Maxey, Lauren Zook McGwin, Bob Milam, Tiana Nailing, Kimberly Osborne, Evan Phifer, Rachel Phillips, Sharon Pierce, Melody Reynolds, Haley Rivero, Curtis Sandberg, Elizabeth Sheehy, Gina Sherman, Amanda Shifflett, Whitney Todd, Stephanie Tuszynski, Rhett Wilson, Teresa Williams, Cindy Wilson, Butch Winter, Alfred Young,

Willimn Henry Harrison, after succwnbing to natural but smnewhat uncertain causes in 1841, 1vas the.first president to lie in state in the White House East Roon1. The White House ii·as draped in black in mourning.for hin1 and his coffin loaded on a horse-dra1vnfimeral car and moved in proces­ sion to the U.S. Capitol ( as illustrated above). With precedent established, the scenes 1vould be repeated when death cut short the presidencies of Zachary Taylor, Abra/win Lincoln, Jeanes Garfield, William McKinley, Warren G. Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and 1nost recently John F Kennedy whose flag draped coffin was p/aced in the East Room.from Nove,nber 23 to 24, 1963, attended by an honor guard that included troopsfi·om the Army's Special Forces ( Green Berets).

This issue l?fWhite House History looks at death and the White House, with articles on who died and ho1t· the nation mourned bothfcJr and ll'ith the presidents.