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Official Arrangements for the Funeral of President Lincoln

April 17, 1865

WAR DEPARTMENT

ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE

The following order of arrangement is directed:

ORDER OF THE PROCESSION.
FUNERAL ESCORT.
(In column of march.)

One regiment of cavalry.
Two batteries of artillery.
Battalion of marines.
Two regiments of infantry.
Commander of escort and staff.
Dismounted officers of Marine Corps, Navy, and Army, in the order named. Mounted officers of Marine Corps, Navy, and Army, in the order named. (All military officers to be in uniform, with side arms.)

CIVIC PROCESSION.

Marshal.
Clergy in attendance.
The Surgeon-General of the United States Army and physicians to the deceased.

Hearse.

Pallbearers.

On the part of the Senate: Mr. Foster, of Connecticut; Mr. Morgan, of New York; Mr. Jobnson, of Maryland; Mr. Yates, of Illinois; Mr. Wade, of Ohio; Mr. Conness, of California.

On the part of the House: Mr. Dawes, of Massachusetts; Mr. Coffroth, of Pennsylvania; Mr. Smith, of Kentucky; Mr. Colfax, of Indiana; Mr. Worthington, of Nevada; Mr. Washburne, of Illinois.

Army: Lieutenant-General U. S. Grant; Major-General H. W. Halleck; Brevet Brigadier-General W. A. Nichols.

Navy: Vice-Admiral D. G. Farragut; Rear-Admiral W. B. Shubrick; Colonel Jacob Zelin, Marine Corps.

Civilians: O.H. Browning, George Ashman, Thomas Corwin, Simon Cameron.

Family
Relatives.
The delegations of the States of Illinois and Kentucky, as mourners.

The President.
The Cabinet ministers.
The diplomatic corps.

Ex-Presidents.
The Chief Justice and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court.
The Senate of the United States.
Preceded by their officers.
Members of the House of Representatives of the United States.
Governors of the several States and Territories.
Legislatures of the several States and Territories.
The Federal judiciary and the judiciary of the several States and Territories.

The Assistant Secretaries of State, Treasury., War, Navy, Interior, and the Assistant
Postmasters-General, and the Assistant Attorney-General.
Officers of the Smithsonian Institution
. The members and officers of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions.
Corporate authorities of Washington, Georgetown, and other cities.
Delegations of the several States.
The reverend the clergy of the various denominations.
The clerks and employees of the several Deparments and bureaus, preceded by the
heads of such bureaus and their respective chief clerks.
Such societies as may wish to join the procession.
Citizens and strangers.

The troops designated to form the escort will assemble in the Avenue, north of the President's house, and form line precisely at 11 o'clock a. m. on Wednesday, the 19th instant, with the left resting on Fifteenth street. The procession will move precisely at 2 o'clock p.m., on the conclusion of the religious services at the Executive Mansion (appointed to commence at 12 o'clock m.), when minute guns will be fired by detachments of artillery stationed near St. John's Church, the City Hall, and at the Capitol. At the same hour the bells of the several churches in Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria will be tolled.

At sunrise on Wednesday, the 19th instant, a Federal salute will be fired from the military stations in the vicinity of Washington, minute guns between the hours of 12 and 3 o'clock, and a national salute at the setting of the sun.

The usual badge of mourning will be worn on the left arm and on the hilt of the sword.

By order of the Secretary of War:

W. A. NICHOLS,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

 

The funeral ceremonies took place in the East Room of the Executive Mansion at noon on the 19th of April, and the remains were then escorted to the Capitol, where they lay in state in the Rotunda.

On the morning of April 21 the remains were taken from the Capitol and placed in a funeral car, in which they were taken to Springfield, Ill. Halting at the principal cities along the route, that appropriate honors might be paid to the deceased, the funeral cortege arrived on the 3d of May at Springfield, Ill., and the next day the remains were deposited in Oak Ridge Cemetery, near that city.

GUARD OF HONOR.

GENERAL ORDERS, NO. 72.

WAR DEPARTMENT,

ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE,

Washington, April 20, 1865 .

The following general officers and guard of honor will accompany the remains of the late President from the city of Washington to Springfield, the capital of the State of Illinois, and continue with them until they are consigned to their final resting place:

Brevet Brigadier-General E. D. Townsend, Assistant Adjutant-General, to represent the Secretary of War.

Brevet Brigadier-General Charles Thomas, Assistant Quartermaster-General.*

Brigadier-General A. B. Eaton, Commissary-General of Subsistence.

Brevet Major-General J. G. Barnard, Lieutenant-Colonel of Engineers.

Brigadier-General G. D. Ramsay, Ordnance Department.

Brigadier-General A. P. Howe, Chief of Artillery.

Brevet Brigadier-General D.C. McCallum, Superintendent Military Railroads.

Major-General D. Hunter, United States Volunteers.

Brigadier-General J. C. Caldwell, United States Volunteers.

Twenty-five picked men, under a captain.

By order of the Secretary of War:

*Brevet Brigadier-General James A. Ekin, Quartermaster's Department, United States Army, substituted.

E. D. TOWNSEND,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

Special Order.

APRIL 20, 1865.

The following officers of the Navy and Marine Corps will accompany the remains of the late President from the city of Washington to Springfield, the capital of the State of Illinois, and continue with them until they are consigned to their final resting place:

Rear-Admiral Charles Henry Davis, Chief Bureau Navigation. Captain William Rogers Taylor, United States Navy. Major Thomas Y. Field, United States Marine Corps.

GIDEON WELLES,

Secretary of the Navy.

ACTION OF CONGRESS.

President Johnson, in his annual message to Congress at the commemcement of the session of 1865-66, thus announced the death of his predecessor:

To express gratitude to God in the name of the people for the preservation of the United States is my first duty in addressing you. Our thoughts next revert to the death of the late President by an act of parricidal treason. The grief of the nation is still fresh. It finds some solace in the consideration that he lived to enjoy the highest proof of its confidence by entering on the renewed term of the Chief Magistracy to which he had been elected; that he brought the civil war substantially to a close; that his loss was deplored in all parts of the Union, and that foreign nations have rendered justice to his memory.

Hon. E. B. Washburne, of Illinois, immediately after the President's message had been read in the House of Representatives, offered the following joint resolution, which was unanimously adopted:

Resolved , That a committee of one member from each State represented in this House be appointed on the part of this House, to join such committee as may be appointed on the part of the Senate, to consider and report by what token of respect and affection it may be proper for the Congress of the United States to express the deep sensibility of the nation to the event of the decease of their late President, Abraham Lincoln, and that so much of the message of the President as refers to that melancholy event be referred to said committee.

On motion of Hon. Solomon Foot, the Senate unanimously concurred in the passage of the resolution, and the following joint committee was appointed, thirteen on the part of the Senate and one for every State represented (twenty-four) on the part of the House of Representatives:

Senate: Hon. Solomon Foot, Vermont; Hon. Richard Yates, Illinois; Hon. Benjamin F. Wade, Ohio; Hon. William Pitt Fessenden, Maine; Hon. Henry Wilson, Massachusetts; Hon. James R. Doolittle, Wisconsin; Hon. James H. Lane, Kansas; Hon. Ira Harris, New York; Hon. James W. Nesmith, Oregon; Hon. Henry S. Lane, Indiana; Hon. Waitman T. Willey, West Virginia; Hon. Charles R. Buckalew, Pennsylvania; Hon. John B. Henderson, Missouri.

House of Representatives: Hon. Elihu B. Washburne, Illinois; Hon. James G. Blaine, Maine; Hon. James W. Patterson, New Hampshire; Hon. Justin S. Morrill, Vermont; Hon. Nathaniel P. Banks, Massachusetts; Hon. Thomas A. Jenckes, Rhode Island; Hon. Henry C. Deming, Connecticut; Hon. John A. Griswold, New York; Hon. Edwin R. V. Wright, New Jersey; Hon. Thaddeus Stevens, Pennsylvania; Hon. John A. Nicholson, Delaware; Hon. Francis Thomas, Maryland; Hon. Robert C. Schenck, Ohio; Hon. George S. Shanklin, Kentucky; Hon. Godlove S. Orth, Indiana; Hon. Joseph W. McClurg, Missouri; Hon. Fernando C. Beaman, Michigan; Hon. John A. Kasson, Iowa; Hon. Ithamar C. Sloan, Wisconsin; Hon. William Higby, California; Hon, William Windom, Minnesota; Hon. J. H. D. Henderson, Oregon; Hon. Sidney Clarke, Kansas; Hon. Kellian V. Whaley, West Virginia.

The joint committee made the following report, which was concurred in by both Houses nem. con. :

Whereas the melancholy event of the violent and tragic death of Abraham Lincoln, late President of the United States, having occurred during the recess of Congress, and the two Houses sharing in the general grief and desiring to manifest their sensibility upon the occasion of the public bereavement: Therefore,

Be it resolved by the Senate ( the House of Representatives concurring ), That the two Houses of Congress will assemble in the Hall of the House of Representatives on Monday, the 12th day of February next, that being his anniversary birthday, at the hour of 12 m., and that, in the presence of the two Houses there assemble,. an address upon the life and character of Abraham Lincoln, late President of the United States, be pronounced by Hon. Edwin M. Stanton,* and that the President of the Senate pro tempore and the Speaker of the House of Representatives be requested to invite the President of the United States, the heads of the several Departments, the judges of the Supreme Court, the representatives of the foreign governments near this Government, and such officers of the Army and Navy as have received the thanks of Congress who may then be at the seat of Government to be present on the occasion.

* Mr. Stanton having declined, Hon. George Bancroft, of New York, in response to an invitation from the joint committee, consented to deliver the address.

And be it further resolved, That the President of the United States be requested to transmit a copy of these resolutions to Mrs. Lincoln, and to assure her of the profound sympathy of the two Houses of Congress for her deep personal affliction and of their sincere condolence for the late national bereavement.

Abraham Lincoln, Official Arrangements for the Funeral of President Lincoln Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/202363