David Donald On Abraham Lincoln

David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered

(New York: Vintage Books; 1961), pp. 145, 146.

ʻThe times and events of the [American] Civil War had made a great popular leader necessary.

There had been the emotional strain of war, the taut peril of defeat, the thrill of battles won, the release of peace.

Then had come the calamitous, disastrous assassination.

The people's grief was immediate and it was immense.

Properly to describe it one would need the eloquence of a Whitman or a Sandburg. Men had a lost feeling. “The news of his going,” mourned William H. Herndon, “struck me dumb, the deed being so infernally wicked . . . so huge in consequences, that it was too large to enter my brain. Hence it was incomprehensible, leaving a misty distant doubt of its truth. It yet does not appear like a worldly reality.”

ʻMourning intensified grief.

The trappings of death the black-draped catafalque, the silent train that moved by a circuitous route over the land, the white-robed choirs that wailed a dirge, the crepe-veiled women, the stone-faced men made Lincoln's passing seem even more calamitous. Over a million persons took a last sad look at the face in the casket and went away treasuring an unforgettable memory. They became of that select group who had seen Lincoln plain.’

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