Lincoln Accounts Found at Warner House

Lincoln Funeral Train

Most of us study history at one time in our lives or another. But we rarely think of it as something of which we are a part. In point of fact, we spend our lives right in the middle of history. We are, of course, most familiar with our own experience. Our personal history. This is made up of all of life’s significant events. Births of children, graduation from school, jobs, marriage, death of friends and loved ones and all the important events that happen to our immediate family and loved ones. The society we live in marks similar events on a national scale.

The events we all remember become history with a capital “H.” This includes momentous events such as the beginning of wars, the end of wars, elections, and the assassinations of important people. These events are often referred to as “Where were you when….”

In a large archive such as that of the Constitution Island Association, we find records of both types of events: personal and national. Every historian hopes to find a document that has been overlooked or lost in time that refers to one of these great events. That happened to us in 1972.

Two manuscripts were found in the historic Warner House on Constitution Island among the Warner family papers. These manuscripts were written by Anna Warner and contain eyewitness accounts of events concerning President Abraham Lincoln. Anna and her sister, Susan, were famous 19th-century authors who wrote over 100 books between 1851 and 1909. The two accounts told about Lincoln’s visit to New York City just after he became president and viewing President Lincoln’s funeral train in Garrison after his assassination. These eyewitness accounts represent the convergence of personal and National history and tell us about two of the most important days in America’s history.

The election was held in November, 1860 and the Electoral College met February 11, 1861. On February 13th the results of the election were officially announced and Lincoln certified as the new President. Several days later he left Illinois on his way to Washington and his Inauguration. He arrived in New York on February 19, 1861. Presidential aide John G. Nicolay later remembered the scene, “Broadway had been kept clear, so that the double line of carriages which made up the procession moved from the depot where the train arrived down the whole length of that magnificent street to the Astor House in perfect order and with plenty of room, giving to the people who crowded the side streets, doors, balconies, windows, and lined even the roofs of buildings with a continuous fringe of humanity, a clear view of the President-elect.”

Anna Warner remembered the day, ” I remember how dark the street grew as we waited: all grey above, and below the dense, black throng. I have seen New York crowds a many: Processions that could hardly process for the human masses around them as at General Sherman’s funeral when the people closed in about the very horses of the mounted police. But I never saw any crowd like the one which watched Mr. Lincoln that wintry day…. I do not know how long we stood there before any sound came to lighten the stillness. Then distant shouts caught up and repeated nearer and nearer, and then close at hand all hats flew off, all voices filled the air, and slowly down the open pathway came the squad of mounted police in regular order, then the open carriage. If there were other carriages with other men (and I suppose there were) I forgot them; but not while I live shall I cease to remember the one that held Mr. Lincoln. For surely no other man looked like him nor a picture have such a setting. Yet, it is extremely difficult to describe. The brooding, lowering sky, the strange stillness broken by shouts as strange that leapt and died and leapt again like veritable flames of excitement, telling of hearts at white heat. I think men hardly knew they cheered, taking no note of their own voices, losing everything in their eager gaze. I can see it, feel it all again over the lapse of years and the figure upon which all eyes were bent is vividly clear to me still.”

Further on Anna relates, “We stood there on the street corner, with the grey cloud ranks crowding, hurrying up their forces; no inept image of the gray musters even then beginning, and the carriage passed slowly out of sight and we strained our eyes to follow. And long as we could see it Mr. Lincoln was still standing erect and bareheaded in the wind. The tall figure grew indistinct , the cheering sounded far off, the silence fell and the wonder of the century was out of sight. Of all the many photographs of Mr. Lincoln just one that I have seen looks like him as he stood that day, a small ‘carte de visite’ kept on our table throughout the war.”

Mourning Flag for Abraham Lincoln by Susan & Anna Warner

At the end of the war the Warners were among those meeting the funeral train at Garrison. Anna wrote, ” The pilot engine looked so black! – her flags muffled, her outlines draped, her errand such a strange one; to see that the track was clear and no possible obstruction to the passing of the President through the land for which he died. The train soon followed. And now the guns came minute by minute; nay if half-minute guns ever fired I should say that these were such, while the [pilot] train paused at Garrison. The little ferry boat with many a mourning banner had carried the whole Corps of Cadets that they might once see the President’s face. And it took a long time during which those incessant guns seemed to measure and lengthen out.

At last, slowly, curls of smoke blew circling out of the tunnel and the [funeral] train itself came on. Slowly, silently, it swept round the curve and across the south bay and came looming up towards us as we stood there bareheaded and weeping. We could see the black festoons on the open car, the folds of red, white, and blue and the long low couch where Mr. Lincoln lay. The cadets, in full dress with their officers, went over — and now, as the train stood waiting, passed through that car. Then it was all past. lost in the green woods of Constitution Island, winding along over the north bay. But the guns kept firing until sundown.”

–Richard de Koster