The Night Lincoln Died

At a cabinet meeting on April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln reported that he had had a most unusual dream. He had felt himself floating along the ocean, as the sun shone brightly in the background. He was on some sort of ship, drifting, searching for direction. It was the same dream he had had many times since being elected president, and every time, he claimed, it had served as an omen for some major event or disaster.

Nonsense, his cabinet officers proclaimed. The war is over, they noted (Lee had surrendered to Grant on the April 9), what could go wrong now? Still, Lincoln was concerned.

"Perhaps," suggested Assistant Secretary of State Frederick Seward, "at each of these periods there were possibilities of great change or disaster, and the vague feeling of uncertainty may have led to the dim vision in sleep." "Perhaps ..." Lincoln sighed.

He had neglected, however, to tell them about another dream he had had a few days earlier--a much more ominous one. He had described that dream to his wife and some friends, including Ward Hill Lamon, who recorded the president's telling:

"About 10 days ago," the president told them, "I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a deathlike stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully.

"'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers.