1865: News of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln shocks Syracuse

Imagine living in Syracuse on April 15, 1865 and opening that morning’s edition of the city’s Daily Courier and Union newspaper.

On page one of the four-page paper, editor W.W. Green had written a hopeful note, under the headline “Peace! Peace and Union!” exulting in the fact that the nation’s long, bloody Civil War was nearly over.

On page two, there were local notices, including a note about the formation of a new city baseball club and an advertisement for a performance of Prof. J.M. McCallister at Shakespeare Hall. He was proclaimed the most “Myraculous (sic) Illusionist of the Age.”

But on the third page, the reader was in for shock. The President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, was dying, shot by an assassin, John Wilkes Booth, while attending a play in Washington the night before.

Today, we are used to getting our news almost instantaneously, through our phones, television, and computers.

News, of course, traveled much slower in 1865. The reader would have gone to bed the night before with no idea of the world-changing events going on in Washington.

On this morning in 1865, telegraph brought the news from the capital to the newspaper’s office by 3 a.m.

(Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15.)

The story began this way:

“Our telegraph dispatches of last night are of the most startling character. President Lincoln while occupying a private box with Mrs. Lincoln at the theatre, to witness the play ‘Our American Cousin,’ was assaulted during the interim of the Third Act, by a fiend who rushed upon the private apartments of Mr. Lincoln.”

Some officials knew what had happened before newspaper readers.

When Mayor William Stewart was alerted, he ordered that City Hall should be “draped in mourning” and by early morning, the building’s pillars were wound with black and white crepe. Its flag was at half-mast and draped in black.

People gathered in the streets to discuss what had happened, doubly horrified to learn that Secretary of State William Seward, of Auburn, had been stabbed multiple times in his bed by a Booth accomplice. Eventually, crowds began congregating outside of newspaper offices, hoping to catch the latest dispatch from Washington.

Many began wearing “emblems of mourning” on their clothing.

There was no formal order to close businesses and shops, but owners did so on their own. All social entertainment was canceled.

“One by one shutters went up or shades were lowered,” the Syracuse Herald remembered in 1915, “until the business streets bore an appearance of complete inactivity, heightened by the dreariness of the mourning decorations.”

Bells from Syracuse churches and City Hall tolled throughout the day.

The next day was Easter Sunday and at Syracuse churches the usual rejoicings for the holiday were silenced. In Catholic churches, flowers were omitted from the altar.

The assassination was mentioned in every preacher’s sermon.

The celebrations of the day and the jubilation over the end of the war were all but forgotten.

“It is indeed a time of gloom,” the Daily Courier and Union wrote on April 17, “the day appointed for National rejoicings over the downfall of the rebellion, Thursday next, is now changed when the funeral obsequies of the President are to occur.”

In Syracuse, those rites were “conducted in the most solemn and imposing manner,” the Courier said, and “we doubt if a more imposing pageant has ever been witnessed in our city.”

The day was warm and bright and began with the booming of cannon at sunrise which was the signal for the city’s bells to be tolled for 30 minutes. A blast of artillery was fired every half hour until the start of the funeral parade.

“The front of nearly every house in the city was appropriately draped with black and white which with the flags drooping at half-mast, and the general expression of sorrow visible everywhere rendered the occasion one never to be forgotten.”

A handsome funeral hearse had been borrowed from a local undertaker for the occasion and was pulled by six grey horses.

The procession lined up on East Genesee Street and, at 2 p.m., began moving towards Hanover and Clinton Square, crossing the Erie Canal at Clinton Street.

Mayor Stewart, the Common Council, other public and military officials, Onondaga County soldiers home on furlough and a delegation from the Onondaga Nation were in the march.

“The entire space in Hanover Square and the adjacent streets commanding a view of it, was filled with a dense crowd of people,” the Courier mentioned.

“It was the largest, the most intelligent appearing, and most orderly assemblage ever convened in this city.”

Syracuse was given another chance to say good-bye to Abraham Lincoln a week later, when the train carrying his casket stopped for a brief visit on its way to Springfield, Illinois.

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This feature is a part of CNY Nostalgia, a section on syracuse.com. Send your ideas and curiosities to Johnathan Croyle at jcroyle@syracuse.com or call 315-427-3958.

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