Although Union General William T. Sherman and Confederate General Joseph Johnston a week earlier agreed on terms for a surrender of Jonston’s remaining army, the last large body of Confederate forces, officials in Washington D.C. rejected those terms as too lenient on the Confederacy. Subsequently, Jefferson Davis rejected Union demands for harsher conditions, and from…
As Abraham Lincoln‘s funeral train — the Lincoln Special — travels from Harrisburg to Philadelphia, tens of thousands of people line the route to catch a glimpse of the car bearing Lincoln’s remains. Not since the deaths of America’s Founding Fathers has there seemingly been national mourning on the massive scale as that over the…
Three days after the assassination that stunned a war-torn nation, the body of Abraham Lincoln is placed on public display at the White House. Fittingly, the president who maintained an open door to American citizens is now lying in an open casket. Through Lincoln’s presidential door routinely walked poor and rich, whites and free blacks.…