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Mourning Lincoln
How did individual Americans respond to the shock of President Lincoln’s assassination? Diaries, letters, and intimate writings reveal a complicated, untold story.
Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, a Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2015, and a long list finalist for the National Book Award “[A] lyrical and important new study.”—Jill Lepore, New York Times Book Review
"Richly detailed and exquisitely written, . . . it immerses the readers in the world of 1865.”—Anne Sarah Rubin, Journal of American History
The news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 15, 1865, just days after Confederate surrender, astounded the war-weary nation. Massive crowds turned out for services and ceremonies. Countless expressions of grief and dismay were printed in newspapers and preached in sermons. Public responses to the assassination have been well chronicled, but this book is the first to delve into the personal and intimate responses of everyday people—northerners and southerners, soldiers and civilians, black people and white, men and women, rich and poor.
Through deep and thoughtful exploration of diaries, letters, and other personal writings penned during the spring and summer of 1865, Martha Hodes, one of our finest historians, captures the full range of reactions to the president’s death—far more diverse than public expressions would suggest. She tells a story of shock, glee, sorrow, anger, blame, and fear. “’Tis the saddest day in our history,” wrote a mournful man. It was “an electric shock to my soul,” wrote a woman who had escaped from slavery. “Glorious News!” a Lincoln enemy exulted. “Old Lincoln is dead, and I will kill the goddamned Negroes now,” an angry white southerner ranted. For the black soldiers of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, it was all “too overwhelming, too lamentable, too distressing” to absorb.
There are many surprises in the story Hodes tells, not least the way in which even those utterly devastated by Lincoln’s demise easily interrupted their mourning rituals to attend to the most mundane aspects of everyday life. There is also the unexpected and unabated virulence of Lincoln’s northern critics, and the way Confederates simultaneously celebrated Lincoln’s death and instantly—on the very day he died—cast him as a fallen friend to the defeated white South.
Hodes brings to life a key moment of national uncertainty and confusion, when competing visions of America’s future proved irreconcilable and hopes for racial justice in the aftermath of the Civil War slipped from the nation’s grasp. Hodes masterfully brings the tragedy of Lincoln’s assassination alive in human terms—terms that continue to stagger and rivet us one hundred and fifty years after the event they so strikingly describe.
Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, a Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2015, and a long list finalist for the National Book Award “[A] lyrical and important new study.”—Jill Lepore, New York Times Book Review
"Richly detailed and exquisitely written, . . . it immerses the readers in the world of 1865.”—Anne Sarah Rubin, Journal of American History
The news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 15, 1865, just days after Confederate surrender, astounded the war-weary nation. Massive crowds turned out for services and ceremonies. Countless expressions of grief and dismay were printed in newspapers and preached in sermons. Public responses to the assassination have been well chronicled, but this book is the first to delve into the personal and intimate responses of everyday people—northerners and southerners, soldiers and civilians, black people and white, men and women, rich and poor.
Through deep and thoughtful exploration of diaries, letters, and other personal writings penned during the spring and summer of 1865, Martha Hodes, one of our finest historians, captures the full range of reactions to the president’s death—far more diverse than public expressions would suggest. She tells a story of shock, glee, sorrow, anger, blame, and fear. “’Tis the saddest day in our history,” wrote a mournful man. It was “an electric shock to my soul,” wrote a woman who had escaped from slavery. “Glorious News!” a Lincoln enemy exulted. “Old Lincoln is dead, and I will kill the goddamned Negroes now,” an angry white southerner ranted. For the black soldiers of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, it was all “too overwhelming, too lamentable, too distressing” to absorb.
There are many surprises in the story Hodes tells, not least the way in which even those utterly devastated by Lincoln’s demise easily interrupted their mourning rituals to attend to the most mundane aspects of everyday life. There is also the unexpected and unabated virulence of Lincoln’s northern critics, and the way Confederates simultaneously celebrated Lincoln’s death and instantly—on the very day he died—cast him as a fallen friend to the defeated white South.
Hodes brings to life a key moment of national uncertainty and confusion, when competing visions of America’s future proved irreconcilable and hopes for racial justice in the aftermath of the Civil War slipped from the nation’s grasp. Hodes masterfully brings the tragedy of Lincoln’s assassination alive in human terms—terms that continue to stagger and rivet us one hundred and fifty years after the event they so strikingly describe.
408 pages, Hardcover
First published February 24, 2015
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830 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
December 14, 2022
Where were you when… the 9/11 attacks happened? Or when JFK was shot? Or when Pearl Harbor was attacked…?
Every generation seems to have its moment, where everyone remembers where they were, what they were doing and how they felt when it happened. Martha Hodes goes back a few more generations to give the “where were you when” treatment to the Lincoln assassination.
"The story of the nation's first presidential assassination has been told many times over," she writes, and public reaction is often gauged by quoting from editorials, speeches and other public displays of mourning. But Hodes aims to show the reactions not of authors and orators, but of everyday Americans. In a time before TV, radio or the internet allowed news events to become a shared, real-time experience, how did the average person find out about, and react to, the shocking and sudden death of the president?
It seems like a simple enough idea for a book, but the execution appears to have been anything but simple. Hodes describes how she "read through perhaps a thousand diaries, collections of letters, and other relevant writings” in compiling reactions from Northerners, Southerners, men, women, whites, Blacks, and others. Even then, that still left “thousands of relevant sources unconsulted, and indeed I could have researched this book for another decade," she explains.
As the most loquacious of the bunch, a Northern abolitionist couple and a proslavery Southerner become the main characters, whose observations serve as the through line around which the book is structured.
The story starts out strong, with the one-two punch of the surrender of Robert E. Lee, quickly followed by news of the Lincoln assassination. Those who were celebrating or mourning the former, ended up doing the opposite for the latter.
But when exactly one reacted to news of the assassination depended how far one was from Washington. In parts of the North, the news spread quickly by word of mouth and by newspapers printed within hours of Lincoln’s death. In the Deep South, some didn’t hear of the assassination until weeks later, and still weren’t even sure whether to believe it.
Hodes’ research finds that average people from all walks of life felt compelled to memorialize the event in journals, diaries and letters, some capturing their thoughts at great length, others simply notating the date of death, or transcribing details from newspaper reports, as if "recording the facts helped them cope with their shock."
The gist of the reactions are about what you might expect - Northern sorrow, Southern glee, complicated a bit by Northern Radicals who hid their glee that the kind, lenient Lincoln would not be around for Reconstruction, and Southern Confederates who feared they would be treated more harshly without Lincoln as president.
So the initial “where were they when” reactions that Hodes uncovered are interesting, if not necessarily surprising. But without a mass medium to gather around for up-to-the-minute updates, most people recorded their thoughts and then went on with their lives. So sustaining this as a story becomes more difficult as the book goes on. In chapters that are organized thematically, around topics like religion, public mourning rituals and fears for the future, Hodes captures reactions to Lincoln’s funeral, Booth’s death, Jefferson Davis’s arrest, the assassination conspirators’ executions, and the early stages of Reconstruction.
Yet all of this can essentially be summarized as “most Northerners were sad about Lincoln, but hopeful for the future, while most Southerners were not sad about Lincoln, but fearful for the future.” You don’t need to read a thousand diaries to reach that conclusion. The research that Hodes did here is tremendous and laudable, and a few anecdotes do stand out. But by compiling it all into a narrative, I didn’t find the sum to be much greater than its parts - you get the gist pretty early on, and then the opinions and reactions start to seem the same after a while, and there’s not really a grand conclusion to be gleaned from all of it.
So Hodes gets five stars for her research, and for discovering heretofore-unconsulted sources for the benefit of posterity and future historians. I wish I could give the book as glowing a review. Instead, I can only give it a middling rating - but a sincere “A for effort.”
Every generation seems to have its moment, where everyone remembers where they were, what they were doing and how they felt when it happened. Martha Hodes goes back a few more generations to give the “where were you when” treatment to the Lincoln assassination.
"The story of the nation's first presidential assassination has been told many times over," she writes, and public reaction is often gauged by quoting from editorials, speeches and other public displays of mourning. But Hodes aims to show the reactions not of authors and orators, but of everyday Americans. In a time before TV, radio or the internet allowed news events to become a shared, real-time experience, how did the average person find out about, and react to, the shocking and sudden death of the president?
It seems like a simple enough idea for a book, but the execution appears to have been anything but simple. Hodes describes how she "read through perhaps a thousand diaries, collections of letters, and other relevant writings” in compiling reactions from Northerners, Southerners, men, women, whites, Blacks, and others. Even then, that still left “thousands of relevant sources unconsulted, and indeed I could have researched this book for another decade," she explains.
As the most loquacious of the bunch, a Northern abolitionist couple and a proslavery Southerner become the main characters, whose observations serve as the through line around which the book is structured.
The story starts out strong, with the one-two punch of the surrender of Robert E. Lee, quickly followed by news of the Lincoln assassination. Those who were celebrating or mourning the former, ended up doing the opposite for the latter.
But when exactly one reacted to news of the assassination depended how far one was from Washington. In parts of the North, the news spread quickly by word of mouth and by newspapers printed within hours of Lincoln’s death. In the Deep South, some didn’t hear of the assassination until weeks later, and still weren’t even sure whether to believe it.
Hodes’ research finds that average people from all walks of life felt compelled to memorialize the event in journals, diaries and letters, some capturing their thoughts at great length, others simply notating the date of death, or transcribing details from newspaper reports, as if "recording the facts helped them cope with their shock."
The gist of the reactions are about what you might expect - Northern sorrow, Southern glee, complicated a bit by Northern Radicals who hid their glee that the kind, lenient Lincoln would not be around for Reconstruction, and Southern Confederates who feared they would be treated more harshly without Lincoln as president.
So the initial “where were they when” reactions that Hodes uncovered are interesting, if not necessarily surprising. But without a mass medium to gather around for up-to-the-minute updates, most people recorded their thoughts and then went on with their lives. So sustaining this as a story becomes more difficult as the book goes on. In chapters that are organized thematically, around topics like religion, public mourning rituals and fears for the future, Hodes captures reactions to Lincoln’s funeral, Booth’s death, Jefferson Davis’s arrest, the assassination conspirators’ executions, and the early stages of Reconstruction.
Yet all of this can essentially be summarized as “most Northerners were sad about Lincoln, but hopeful for the future, while most Southerners were not sad about Lincoln, but fearful for the future.” You don’t need to read a thousand diaries to reach that conclusion. The research that Hodes did here is tremendous and laudable, and a few anecdotes do stand out. But by compiling it all into a narrative, I didn’t find the sum to be much greater than its parts - you get the gist pretty early on, and then the opinions and reactions start to seem the same after a while, and there’s not really a grand conclusion to be gleaned from all of it.
So Hodes gets five stars for her research, and for discovering heretofore-unconsulted sources for the benefit of posterity and future historians. I wish I could give the book as glowing a review. Instead, I can only give it a middling rating - but a sincere “A for effort.”
June 7, 2015
Synopsis: We all know that our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, was assassinated by South sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth, but what was our nation's reaction to this tragedy on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line?
My rating: 5 Stars
My opinion: As someone who has read several hundred books on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, I had always wondered about the reaction to Lincoln's assassination by John Wilkes Booth. The material that I read had never done a deep study of it...until now.
I found this book to be incredibly well developed through the research that this author done. This book is loaded with first person accounts, as well as quotes from both the North and South. The author did an excellent job in not presenting a bias (which is one thing I always look for in the works I review), she had a nice balance of both outrage and support of the assassination. The author managed to accomplish this in a book that flowed well and was inviting to its readers.
While I wouldn't call this book the best book ever written on our 16th President or that period of time in US history, I would state that it is on my top twenty for engagement of readers and the depth and quality of the research.
Source: Netgalley for publisher
Would I recommend? : Already have done so to numerous Lincoln enthusiasts, as well as library acquisitions.
Stand Alone or Part of a Series: Stand Alone
My rating: 5 Stars
My opinion: As someone who has read several hundred books on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, I had always wondered about the reaction to Lincoln's assassination by John Wilkes Booth. The material that I read had never done a deep study of it...until now.
I found this book to be incredibly well developed through the research that this author done. This book is loaded with first person accounts, as well as quotes from both the North and South. The author did an excellent job in not presenting a bias (which is one thing I always look for in the works I review), she had a nice balance of both outrage and support of the assassination. The author managed to accomplish this in a book that flowed well and was inviting to its readers.
While I wouldn't call this book the best book ever written on our 16th President or that period of time in US history, I would state that it is on my top twenty for engagement of readers and the depth and quality of the research.
Source: Netgalley for publisher
Would I recommend? : Already have done so to numerous Lincoln enthusiasts, as well as library acquisitions.
Stand Alone or Part of a Series: Stand Alone
March 12, 2015
"Mourning Lincoln"is an amazing book that deals with the emotions, feelings and fears of the Americans who experienced the horror of their beloved President being killed just as the Civil War ended. The author used many sources for this book including the diaries and letters of both Northern and Southern Americans to describe the climate of the country at this important period in our history. "Mourning Lincoln" is a must for all who are into the Civil War, Lincoln and American history.
November 15, 2015
A lot, a lot, a lot of detail. Incredibly researched. But the problem is, there's really only two points of view about the Lincoln assassination, so we find out that a lot of different people have the same things to say. But one thing will stick with me - the freed slave, a woman who lived to be over 100, into the 1930's, and continued to wear a black arm band every day in memory of Abraham Lincoln. So, a worthwhile read if you already know a lot about the assassination itself, as you don't learn a lot of details, but amazing first hand contemporary comments from journals and letters.
May 23, 2016
This could have been an interesting book but for each point made by the author, the next 4-15 pages are just quotes from her research to illustrate the point. It just got to be too much. After 106 pages I gave up. Add to that, the two- three people she follows throughout the book are not terribly interesting. The idea for the book was good. It just needed to read a little less like a term paper.
February 21, 2015
Truly one of the best "Lincoln Books" that I have had the pleasure of reading.
Rather than just showing the side of America (and the world at large) that felt sorrow for the loss of the sixteenth president, this author researched, learned and wrote a book that shows both sides of the after effects the death of Lincoln had.
Whilst some were angry, disbelieving and sorrowful over the new of the president's assassination, others were jubilant, relieved or even boastful. This book defines the boundaries between the belief systems of the North and South in a way that I have seen no other book attempt.
Through a multitude of first person accounts, the author manages to paint a picture of the American public after the death of Lincoln and show the reader what was really happening in the minds and hearts of those who survived the event.
From describing the feeling of some that mourning the loss of the president was a collective effort of everyone, to the reality that it was not, the author does a brilliant job of recounting history.
I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who is looking for further information about Lincoln, and the period after his death. A smartly researched, intelligently written book.
This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
Rather than just showing the side of America (and the world at large) that felt sorrow for the loss of the sixteenth president, this author researched, learned and wrote a book that shows both sides of the after effects the death of Lincoln had.
Whilst some were angry, disbelieving and sorrowful over the new of the president's assassination, others were jubilant, relieved or even boastful. This book defines the boundaries between the belief systems of the North and South in a way that I have seen no other book attempt.
Through a multitude of first person accounts, the author manages to paint a picture of the American public after the death of Lincoln and show the reader what was really happening in the minds and hearts of those who survived the event.
From describing the feeling of some that mourning the loss of the president was a collective effort of everyone, to the reality that it was not, the author does a brilliant job of recounting history.
I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who is looking for further information about Lincoln, and the period after his death. A smartly researched, intelligently written book.
This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
May 13, 2015
This is an amazing piece of historical scholarship.I met the author last week in Springfield, IL for the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's funeral. She gave a wonderful talk on her book (more than 750 people attended) and then had a book signing. In this book she assesses more than 1000 diaries, personal letters, and newspaper accounts of how people (both Confederate and Union) mourned Lincoln's passing. The book is a compilation of every day stories. A wonderful piece of archival research!
December 25, 2025
Archivists must have found the first-person diaries and brought them to the author’s attention. But after a short while, these passages become repetitive and predictable.
It is a lovely bit of historiography and clearly the writer’s heart is in her work. But like Lincoln’s procession of Lincoln’s body from DC to Springfield, there is a sameness that goes on too long.
It is a lovely bit of historiography and clearly the writer’s heart is in her work. But like Lincoln’s procession of Lincoln’s body from DC to Springfield, there is a sameness that goes on too long.
December 27, 2015
I received MOURNING LINCOLN as an ARC through NetGalley.com.
Mourning Lincoln is an extremely well-researched book, drawing from a multitude of sources; men and women, Union and Confederate, black and white, rich and poor. Using diaries/journals, personal correspondence, and editorials from black newspapers, the author cobbles together a picture of the nation's reactions to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln that they don't show us in American schools.
This book doesn't divide the country simply into the North and the South, where everybody held the same opinions. Instead, it uses language that subtly reminds us that there were people physically in the Union who did not support abolition, and that not everybody on Confederate land owned and benefited from slaves. And not everyone mourned Lincoln.
Perhaps the most fascinating thing to me was how both Lincoln's mourners and those who celebrated (sometimes _literally_ celebrated!) his death interpreted the assassination's cause and predicted its impact on the future in such a wide variety of ways. It was God's way to keep the Union from being too smug in their victory, or as retribution for their undeserved success. It was because Lincoln had shown the potential for mercy before, and God had to get him out of the way so that his successor would be sufficiently hard on the Confederates. It was good for the South because their opponent was out of the way. It was terrible for the South because Lincoln would have pardoned their crimes and negotiated with them. The array of reasons is mind-boggling.
The bar has been set for my most interesting non-fiction book of 2015, and I suspect I may end up reading it again, because I'm definitely buying a copy for my dad, who is especially interested in this period in history.
Mourning Lincoln is an extremely well-researched book, drawing from a multitude of sources; men and women, Union and Confederate, black and white, rich and poor. Using diaries/journals, personal correspondence, and editorials from black newspapers, the author cobbles together a picture of the nation's reactions to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln that they don't show us in American schools.
This book doesn't divide the country simply into the North and the South, where everybody held the same opinions. Instead, it uses language that subtly reminds us that there were people physically in the Union who did not support abolition, and that not everybody on Confederate land owned and benefited from slaves. And not everyone mourned Lincoln.
Perhaps the most fascinating thing to me was how both Lincoln's mourners and those who celebrated (sometimes _literally_ celebrated!) his death interpreted the assassination's cause and predicted its impact on the future in such a wide variety of ways. It was God's way to keep the Union from being too smug in their victory, or as retribution for their undeserved success. It was because Lincoln had shown the potential for mercy before, and God had to get him out of the way so that his successor would be sufficiently hard on the Confederates. It was good for the South because their opponent was out of the way. It was terrible for the South because Lincoln would have pardoned their crimes and negotiated with them. The array of reasons is mind-boggling.
The bar has been set for my most interesting non-fiction book of 2015, and I suspect I may end up reading it again, because I'm definitely buying a copy for my dad, who is especially interested in this period in history.
April 8, 2015
Incredibly well researched book, based largely on diaries and letters, documenting the reaction of the nation to Lincoln's assassination. Starting with Lee's surrender and culminating with the end of Reconstruction, Hodes writes about Unionists, Copperheads, Confederates and freedmen as they struggle with Lincoln'd death, the end of the Civil War, and the reality of the end of slavery. A wonderful picture of our nation.
April 3, 2019
I loved reading exact wording from Civil War era diaries that were inserted around events of the war. I also appreciated that the author highlighted two diarists in more detail. Still I wanted more of the story to hang together without seeming so piecemeal and redundant.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 3, 2018
Evidently well researched - Hodes dove deep into archives of letters, diaries, and newspapers of the time. But in limiting the book to the period of April - June 1865, the sources can provide no perspective on the events of that period and there is much repetition of sentiments and ideas, particularly the ambiguity as to whether Lincoln's apparently liberal attitude toward former Confederates should be followed through, or whether his death was divinely ordained to prevent such an approach. Much wrestling with theodicy, but no atheist or agnostic viewpoints are cited.
Only in the last section, more of an epilogue, does Hodes look at the conspiracy trial, executions, and beyond into reconstruction and its collapse. The last sentence really marks the beginning of another book, not a summing up of this one.
Only in the last section, more of an epilogue, does Hodes look at the conspiracy trial, executions, and beyond into reconstruction and its collapse. The last sentence really marks the beginning of another book, not a summing up of this one.
The blast of the derringer at Ford's Theatre on the night of April 14, 1865, was the first volley of the war that came after Appomattox - a war on black freedom and equality. That war still ebbs and flows in American history, a century and a half after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
August 12, 2017
My undergrad thesis (written a long time ago) focussed on how African Americans created a politically useful memory of Lincoln between 1863 and 1913. I wish I had this book back then. It's easy to read as Hodes weaves a variety of primary sources into the story of the Civil War with ease. Appropriately the book ends by placing the mourning of Lincoln in a contemporary context and how that still shapes the nation, particularly race relations. The only reason reading this took me so long is because I kept reading other random books and taking on projects in between.
The best thing about Hodes work is her use of primary sources in the form of journals and diaries. These people become characters that you follow through the story. No spoilers, but you'll want to know just how cranky one Rodney Dorman can get.
The best thing about Hodes work is her use of primary sources in the form of journals and diaries. These people become characters that you follow through the story. No spoilers, but you'll want to know just how cranky one Rodney Dorman can get.
June 25, 2017
We are a deeply divided nation. You have to go back to the period of the Civil War to find parallels, where there are both similarities and the original unresolved conflicts that are still echoing in our political discourse. The part where northerners thought non-slave owning whites would eventually realize that the Civil War was not in their best interests, but of course these are the people who 150 years later still wrap themselves in their Confederate flag. 150 years from now, history will talk about how universally unpopular the Trump administration and show pictures of the frequent protest marches. But that won't be true any more than we should expect that southerners mourned Lincoln's murder.
August 25, 2025
Really giving the fifth star for the innovative and exhaustive research the author put into the book. The canvassing of thousands of diary entries, letters, and both public and private statements about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln is a monumental research task. At times the text of the book itself felt less engaging then the story of how the book came about. I could have done with a long author's note, or even a chapter on method. That being said, Hodes presents one of the most discussed events in American history through a new lens. Giving complexity to mourning and a realistic and less heroic cast to the age. This is destined to be a classic read by generations of scholars and students of the Civil War era.
September 20, 2017
This history covers the reactions of people, mostly common people, to the end of the Civil War and especially to the assassination of Lincoln. It is well researched, well written, and well organized. My only problem with it is that it gets boring. Perhaps it will appeal to people who enjoy reading other people's letters and diaries, but I would say that the information presented is at least twice as much as is necessary to give a good idea of what people's views were.
August 3, 2023
This book details the expressions of grief and joy that we’re chronicled by people in the north and south after Lincoln’s assassination.
It was interesting but nothing surprising or captivating about it.
Rec: Jtrb
It was interesting but nothing surprising or captivating about it.
Rec: Jtrb
January 19, 2021
Very good first outing!
August 22, 2024
Fairly deep dive into the simple enough topic that different people in the post-civil war era had different views on Lincoln’s death.
February 5, 2025
for history 232: history of death
July 5, 2025
Gets 5 stars for the work Hodes did alone. A fascinating read as well. Thanks Dr Schantz
August 8, 2025
MOAR LIKE BORING LINCOLN AMIRITE
Repetitive and trite; a country like today full of morons;
A horrowshow of snipped quotes and parenthetical;
Had to force myself to finish.
Repetitive and trite; a country like today full of morons;
A horrowshow of snipped quotes and parenthetical;
Had to force myself to finish.
September 12, 2024
I wanted to love this book because I attended a class led by Hodes who was an engaging speaker. Her book though needs an editor. She clearly did prodigious snd impressive research, but Hodes shows through a multiplicity of characters often the same idea that could be just clearly illustrated through fewer characters. Her analysis is certainly smart and convincing, but she often describes the situations after the assassination of Lincoln rather than analyzing her evidence fully. Still I would recommend it to those who like to read about the Civil War and Reconstruction.
April 18, 2016
A Fascinating Fresh Look At the Aftermath of the Lincoln Assassination
I first learned of this book's existence from the Civil War Talk Radio podcast hosted by Gerry Propokovicz, a civil war historian and auther. He interviewed Martha Hodes in the spring of 2016, and I was immediately drawn to the book based on that interview. Miraculously enough, I found it in my public library's Kindle collection, and I chose to read most of it during the anniversary of Lincoln's assassination and the days that followed it. This book is so good that, no matter what time of year it is, be it April 15 or Christmas day, you shouldn't put off reading it.
Without reading this book, you can figure out the thirty-thousand-foot picture. Unionists mourned Lincoln's death; Confederates celebrated it. Ah, but this book is anything but the thirty-thousand-foot picture. Indeed, its magic is that you get a highly readable rather granular view of what Americans were thinking and feeling in the aftermath of the assassination. And what you will read will both fascinate you and perhaps cause some pain and dissonance. This is wonderfully researched and nicely organized. Despite the voluminous amount of sources quoted here, you'll never feel like you've developed a case of reader whiplash or timeline confusion. Because of the way the book is organized, you'll be able to follow the chronology and the sources quoted without feeling a need to constantly look back at earlier entries or your notes. While this isn't some kind of mind candy beach read, it is compelling by every measure, and indeed you'll want to read it in a place where you can focus on it and absorb the message.
Each chapter begins with glimpses into the journals of two sets of individuals--A pro-Lincoln couple and a particularly vitriolic anti-Lincoln lawyer and judge, a transplant to Jacksonville, Florida from the north. From those perspectives, the book then looks at other journals and letters. More than a thousand sources are included here, but at no time will you become lost or bored with the book.
You'll be fascinated by the juxtaposition of assassination writing with lines about the ongoing sameness of life. Lincoln's death is marked by these writers, as are comments on common things like wood chopped or laundry completed.
Hodes goes to great length here to look at numerous cross sections of the country. You'll read reaction to Lincoln's death from rich and poor southerners, former slaves, copperheads, pro-Lincoln northerners, and reactions from as far away as San Francisco, the Utah territory, and Britain--all far-flung places when you remember that the 24-hour cable news cycle was nonexistent. In addition to comments from former slaves worried that Lincoln's death would also end emancipation, you'll read a tender letter from Britain's Queen Victoria to a distraught Mary Lincoln in which the queen expresses her sense of profound loss when Prince Philip died.
In short, this is a well-researched well-balanced look at the lives, thoughts, and feelings of ordinary Americans on every side of the conflict and how they felt about Lincoln's death. Southerners saw it as both a glorious day and a terrible day. They rejoiced over the assassination, but simultaneously feared that the South had lost its best friend in Lincoln. People in every section of the nation under very disparate life circumstances sought to understand why God would let such a death happen. Freed slaves wore black armbands marking their mourning for the 16th president. One former slave who lived well into the 20th century, wrote that not a day had passed since Lincoln's death that she hadn't worn her black armband. You'll read the disquieting details of Lincoln's funeral train. There are stories about mourners who greeted the train at all hours, and there are quoted sources that describe Lincoln's obvious decomposition by the time the train reached Chicago. There is information here on the aftermath of Lincoln's death that you won't find in any other volume, and the author admits that at some point, she had to stop researching, leaving an almost innumerable quantity of sources she simply couldn't include here.
I first learned of this book's existence from the Civil War Talk Radio podcast hosted by Gerry Propokovicz, a civil war historian and auther. He interviewed Martha Hodes in the spring of 2016, and I was immediately drawn to the book based on that interview. Miraculously enough, I found it in my public library's Kindle collection, and I chose to read most of it during the anniversary of Lincoln's assassination and the days that followed it. This book is so good that, no matter what time of year it is, be it April 15 or Christmas day, you shouldn't put off reading it.
Without reading this book, you can figure out the thirty-thousand-foot picture. Unionists mourned Lincoln's death; Confederates celebrated it. Ah, but this book is anything but the thirty-thousand-foot picture. Indeed, its magic is that you get a highly readable rather granular view of what Americans were thinking and feeling in the aftermath of the assassination. And what you will read will both fascinate you and perhaps cause some pain and dissonance. This is wonderfully researched and nicely organized. Despite the voluminous amount of sources quoted here, you'll never feel like you've developed a case of reader whiplash or timeline confusion. Because of the way the book is organized, you'll be able to follow the chronology and the sources quoted without feeling a need to constantly look back at earlier entries or your notes. While this isn't some kind of mind candy beach read, it is compelling by every measure, and indeed you'll want to read it in a place where you can focus on it and absorb the message.
Each chapter begins with glimpses into the journals of two sets of individuals--A pro-Lincoln couple and a particularly vitriolic anti-Lincoln lawyer and judge, a transplant to Jacksonville, Florida from the north. From those perspectives, the book then looks at other journals and letters. More than a thousand sources are included here, but at no time will you become lost or bored with the book.
You'll be fascinated by the juxtaposition of assassination writing with lines about the ongoing sameness of life. Lincoln's death is marked by these writers, as are comments on common things like wood chopped or laundry completed.
Hodes goes to great length here to look at numerous cross sections of the country. You'll read reaction to Lincoln's death from rich and poor southerners, former slaves, copperheads, pro-Lincoln northerners, and reactions from as far away as San Francisco, the Utah territory, and Britain--all far-flung places when you remember that the 24-hour cable news cycle was nonexistent. In addition to comments from former slaves worried that Lincoln's death would also end emancipation, you'll read a tender letter from Britain's Queen Victoria to a distraught Mary Lincoln in which the queen expresses her sense of profound loss when Prince Philip died.
In short, this is a well-researched well-balanced look at the lives, thoughts, and feelings of ordinary Americans on every side of the conflict and how they felt about Lincoln's death. Southerners saw it as both a glorious day and a terrible day. They rejoiced over the assassination, but simultaneously feared that the South had lost its best friend in Lincoln. People in every section of the nation under very disparate life circumstances sought to understand why God would let such a death happen. Freed slaves wore black armbands marking their mourning for the 16th president. One former slave who lived well into the 20th century, wrote that not a day had passed since Lincoln's death that she hadn't worn her black armband. You'll read the disquieting details of Lincoln's funeral train. There are stories about mourners who greeted the train at all hours, and there are quoted sources that describe Lincoln's obvious decomposition by the time the train reached Chicago. There is information here on the aftermath of Lincoln's death that you won't find in any other volume, and the author admits that at some point, she had to stop researching, leaving an almost innumerable quantity of sources she simply couldn't include here.
June 21, 2015
A bit dry in the telling, but still interesting. I did learn a few things:
Think about today, and how we obtain news. Now, take yourself back to 1865, long before radio, television, and the internet. As of late May and early June, the news of Lincoln's assassination was still ricocheting around the world.
Everyone was not sad about Lincoln's death. Many across the Confederacy AND the Union saw Lincoln's murder as an occasion for celebration.
People thought of Lincoln as a father, a symbol that held religious as well as familial meaning. There is a brief discussion about this in chapter 4.
As for the vanquished, they gave their love to General Robert E. Lee.
The interlude illustrating Lincoln as a "Best Friend" to the south was very interesting.
Mourners came to Washington by the thousands. They arrived on foot, on horseback, in carriages, and on special trains that the railroad companies added to their timetables. You wouldn't see that today, where airlines are constantly cutting flights to meet "the bottom line."
The funeral of George Washington, in 1799, served as the model for the funeral of Lincoln.
The path of the funeral train was also interesting. Transcontinental railroads were a product of the Civil War, and to many of the victors-turned-mourners, Lincoln's funeral train pointed the way to triumph of industry and free labor (and, less happily, corruptions and greed). The lack of a federal railroad system in 186, meant that no single funeral train traveled the route from start to finish. Rather, over nearly 1,700 miles, planners had to coordinate as many as eighty different passenger cars from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Hudson River Railroad, the Buffalo & Erie Railroad, the Columbus and Indianapolis Central Railroad, and the Chicago and Alton Railroad, among others.
Tracks were also not standardized.
There also weren't any standardized time zones in 18, meaning the planners had to calculate arrivals and departures according to an array of schedules, in order to permit newspapers to print the local hour and minute of passage through each town and village. (p.150) I can't even imagine how they coordinated all of this.
Many in the Union, including a Copperhead private in the Thirty-Sixth Ohio, loudly proclaimed that they wee glad Lincoln was dead, and often praised his assassin, John Wilkes Boothe.
Ministers spoke of Lincoln as the last casualty of the Civil War, but that was true only symbolically. After the surrender and the assassination, after the funeral and the funeral train, soldiers kept dying, in hospitals, in camp, and back at home from disease, infection, and mortal wounds.
Lincoln's assassination continued to figure in the white-on-black violence in the South after Appomattox. The brief history of the Ku Klux Klan was fascinating. When you think of the politics of today, our first black President is a democrat, and yet, it was radical and moderate Republicans who saw that blacks attained more freedom during and just after Reconstruction.
By 1870, the 14th and 15th Amendments had become part of the US Constitution, enshrining the rights of citizenship for ALL African-Americans and the right of suffrage for all black men.
Finally, at the very end of this book is a question that people (including me) have been asking for years: What would have happened if Lincoln had lived?
Think about today, and how we obtain news. Now, take yourself back to 1865, long before radio, television, and the internet. As of late May and early June, the news of Lincoln's assassination was still ricocheting around the world.
Everyone was not sad about Lincoln's death. Many across the Confederacy AND the Union saw Lincoln's murder as an occasion for celebration.
People thought of Lincoln as a father, a symbol that held religious as well as familial meaning. There is a brief discussion about this in chapter 4.
As for the vanquished, they gave their love to General Robert E. Lee.
The interlude illustrating Lincoln as a "Best Friend" to the south was very interesting.
Mourners came to Washington by the thousands. They arrived on foot, on horseback, in carriages, and on special trains that the railroad companies added to their timetables. You wouldn't see that today, where airlines are constantly cutting flights to meet "the bottom line."
The funeral of George Washington, in 1799, served as the model for the funeral of Lincoln.
The path of the funeral train was also interesting. Transcontinental railroads were a product of the Civil War, and to many of the victors-turned-mourners, Lincoln's funeral train pointed the way to triumph of industry and free labor (and, less happily, corruptions and greed). The lack of a federal railroad system in 186, meant that no single funeral train traveled the route from start to finish. Rather, over nearly 1,700 miles, planners had to coordinate as many as eighty different passenger cars from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Hudson River Railroad, the Buffalo & Erie Railroad, the Columbus and Indianapolis Central Railroad, and the Chicago and Alton Railroad, among others.
Tracks were also not standardized.
There also weren't any standardized time zones in 18, meaning the planners had to calculate arrivals and departures according to an array of schedules, in order to permit newspapers to print the local hour and minute of passage through each town and village. (p.150) I can't even imagine how they coordinated all of this.
Many in the Union, including a Copperhead private in the Thirty-Sixth Ohio, loudly proclaimed that they wee glad Lincoln was dead, and often praised his assassin, John Wilkes Boothe.
Ministers spoke of Lincoln as the last casualty of the Civil War, but that was true only symbolically. After the surrender and the assassination, after the funeral and the funeral train, soldiers kept dying, in hospitals, in camp, and back at home from disease, infection, and mortal wounds.
Lincoln's assassination continued to figure in the white-on-black violence in the South after Appomattox. The brief history of the Ku Klux Klan was fascinating. When you think of the politics of today, our first black President is a democrat, and yet, it was radical and moderate Republicans who saw that blacks attained more freedom during and just after Reconstruction.
By 1870, the 14th and 15th Amendments had become part of the US Constitution, enshrining the rights of citizenship for ALL African-Americans and the right of suffrage for all black men.
Finally, at the very end of this book is a question that people (including me) have been asking for years: What would have happened if Lincoln had lived?
June 12, 2016
Rarely can a nation have experienced such emotional whiplash as the United States did in the April of 1865 - for the Union, emotions veered from jubilation over victory in the Civil War to shock, grief, despair and pain at the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; for the defeated Confederates, their gloom was alleviated by grim satisfaction and even glee in many cases.
Martha Hodes charts all these emotions and more, tracing the experiences of the people of the United States in the days and weeks after Lincoln's death through letters, diaries, newspaper articles, telegrams and memoirs. Coming at the close of the titanic conflict, on Good Friday no less, Lincoln's death seemed to have a significance beyond itself, and many accounts of the period focus on people's struggle to come to terms with it in a way that would make any sense to a nation already reeling from bloodshed and loss.
Many people looked for answers in religion, seeking to find some kind of meaning in Lincoln's death. For loyal Unionists, it was cast as a task completed, a heavenly reward, or God's intended purpose, in removing a man many saw as too kind-hearted and lenient to oversee the peace, a shocking murder meant to stiffen the spine of the government in keeping down the rebel Confederates once and for all. Indeed, one of the most curious aspects of Lincoln's death is how two almost diametrically-opposed groups could mourn his loss as that of their 'best friend' - that both the freed slaves and many Confederates could see Lincoln in this light is telling. Die-hard Confederates, on the other hand, saw it as some kind of confirmation that God had not forsaken them, that perhaps their defeat could be reversed or over-turned, or at the last ditch as some kind of final consolation in their misery.
Today, alas, we are all too familiar with assassination, public figures cut down by conspiracy or fanaticism. But to the United States at the close of the Civil War, even to a country benumbed by violence, it was an act especially shocking and it is no wonder that so many accounts mirror one another in their belief that 'time stood still', 'the whole world mourned', even their surprise that in the midst of mourning for fathers, husbands, brothers or sons, there was yet room to mourn a man most had never met.
Martha Hodes charts all these emotions and more, tracing the experiences of the people of the United States in the days and weeks after Lincoln's death through letters, diaries, newspaper articles, telegrams and memoirs. Coming at the close of the titanic conflict, on Good Friday no less, Lincoln's death seemed to have a significance beyond itself, and many accounts of the period focus on people's struggle to come to terms with it in a way that would make any sense to a nation already reeling from bloodshed and loss.
Many people looked for answers in religion, seeking to find some kind of meaning in Lincoln's death. For loyal Unionists, it was cast as a task completed, a heavenly reward, or God's intended purpose, in removing a man many saw as too kind-hearted and lenient to oversee the peace, a shocking murder meant to stiffen the spine of the government in keeping down the rebel Confederates once and for all. Indeed, one of the most curious aspects of Lincoln's death is how two almost diametrically-opposed groups could mourn his loss as that of their 'best friend' - that both the freed slaves and many Confederates could see Lincoln in this light is telling. Die-hard Confederates, on the other hand, saw it as some kind of confirmation that God had not forsaken them, that perhaps their defeat could be reversed or over-turned, or at the last ditch as some kind of final consolation in their misery.
Today, alas, we are all too familiar with assassination, public figures cut down by conspiracy or fanaticism. But to the United States at the close of the Civil War, even to a country benumbed by violence, it was an act especially shocking and it is no wonder that so many accounts mirror one another in their belief that 'time stood still', 'the whole world mourned', even their surprise that in the midst of mourning for fathers, husbands, brothers or sons, there was yet room to mourn a man most had never met.
April 5, 2016
Martha Hodes is a wonderful writer. She paints a very precise picture, she recreates the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in clear detail. It is a pleasure reading her work. Yet, she also has the unique talent of overstating the obvious. With a little thought we all might realize that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was received with mixed emotions. This is where she fails in the book Mourning Lincoln.
“In fact, though, not everyone was included in this vision of a monolithic grieving nation, nor did everyone wish to be” (pg. 10). It doesn’t take much thought to realize a good majority of individuals living south of the Mason-Dixon Line were not overjoyed but relieved that Lincoln was dead. And, there were political enemies in the North that although they did not celebrate his death, they were not grieving.
Doctor Hodes developed interesting sources that highlight the roller coaster of emotions at Lincoln’s death. So that the strength of her book is not so much her thesis but the sources she presents to support her thesis. Dr. Hodes claims to have read “perhaps a thousand diaries, collections of letter and other relevant writings” (pg 275). She acknowledges though, hers is not a comprehensive study. She has cited some interesting sources, including the Browne Family Papers at the Schlesinger Library and the Dorman Papers at the Library of Congress.
I would recommend this book for the quality of the writing. But for the serious student of the Civil War and Reconstruction, there are no ground shaking ideas in these pages.
“In fact, though, not everyone was included in this vision of a monolithic grieving nation, nor did everyone wish to be” (pg. 10). It doesn’t take much thought to realize a good majority of individuals living south of the Mason-Dixon Line were not overjoyed but relieved that Lincoln was dead. And, there were political enemies in the North that although they did not celebrate his death, they were not grieving.
Doctor Hodes developed interesting sources that highlight the roller coaster of emotions at Lincoln’s death. So that the strength of her book is not so much her thesis but the sources she presents to support her thesis. Dr. Hodes claims to have read “perhaps a thousand diaries, collections of letter and other relevant writings” (pg 275). She acknowledges though, hers is not a comprehensive study. She has cited some interesting sources, including the Browne Family Papers at the Schlesinger Library and the Dorman Papers at the Library of Congress.
I would recommend this book for the quality of the writing. But for the serious student of the Civil War and Reconstruction, there are no ground shaking ideas in these pages.
September 29, 2016
The author researched diaries, journals, newspapers, and more for reactions to the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865. Spoiler Alert: Not everyone was upset about the loss. She provides enough historical context to make sense of some regional response to both the end of the civil war, and the death of the President. I found it very informative as one who is far from an expert on the subject (I didn't know the assassination of Lincoln was intended to be executed simultaneously with the murders of Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward). Hodes read through hundreds of diaries, but I don't think many of those were from black people. Otherwise, she found substantial and personal content to frame varied responses to the loss of President Lincoln (it's not all black and white). Hodes also considered the religious positions of mourners and celebrators alike. It seems people on both sides of the civil war prayed to their god for victory in the war and death to their enemy. Some even praised god for the killing of the president. Others justified the assassination of Lincoln - if god hadn't have allowed that, Lincoln would have been too compassionate to the confederates who lost the war.
The only downside of the book was that a lot of people shared the same view on the loss of Lincoln, and sometimes it felt like the author was significantly repeating herself. 4.6/5.
The only downside of the book was that a lot of people shared the same view on the loss of Lincoln, and sometimes it felt like the author was significantly repeating herself. 4.6/5.
August 1, 2016
Pros: Hodes has done an incredible amount of primary source research for this book: contemporary letters, journals, newspaper accounts.
Cons: Hodes appears to have included every last bit of that research in the book through extensive use of quotations.
Perhaps a more scholarly reader would like this book, but for me it just went on and on. Rather than synthesize the reactions of people to Lincoln's death, she uses the quotations to prove her point. A woman in IL wrote in her journal ..... a man in Georgia wrote in a letter to his sister...... a former slave said ...... Almost as if the reader wouldn't believe her conclusions without seeing all the data. I found myself overwhelmed and losing the thread of the argument.
This would have been excellent as a 25 page chapter in a collection of essays. As a 400 page book though, I felt like I got the point after 150 pages and gave up.
Even though I didn't like this book, I still gave it 2 stars based on the depth of the research. I may just not be the right audience.
Cons: Hodes appears to have included every last bit of that research in the book through extensive use of quotations.
Perhaps a more scholarly reader would like this book, but for me it just went on and on. Rather than synthesize the reactions of people to Lincoln's death, she uses the quotations to prove her point. A woman in IL wrote in her journal ..... a man in Georgia wrote in a letter to his sister...... a former slave said ...... Almost as if the reader wouldn't believe her conclusions without seeing all the data. I found myself overwhelmed and losing the thread of the argument.
This would have been excellent as a 25 page chapter in a collection of essays. As a 400 page book though, I felt like I got the point after 150 pages and gave up.
Even though I didn't like this book, I still gave it 2 stars based on the depth of the research. I may just not be the right audience.
April 8, 2015
The author carefully searched for personal diaries, journals and letters to discover more about the reactions and feelings about Lincoln's assassination. Combining two major examples from each side of the American Civil War and countless other sources, we can discover the people's reactions, not just the public accounts. Although often portrayed as universal mourning, similar to the mood after Kennedy's assassination, the truth is far from that. The book is well researched and written and fills us in with historic details about the assassination various other plots, the fate of the convicted conspirators and the nation (or nations if you prefer). As the author notes, there are thousands of other sources available but in order to get the book written, he needed to arbitrarily decide when to stop reading and start writing.
I received my copy of this book from netgalley.com
I received my copy of this book from netgalley.com
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