The Dubuque Daily Times for April 16, 1865, delivered a three-deck headline to its Iowa readers:

Horrible news:

Culmination of Southern fanaticism and barbarism

Latest and most hellish exhibition of pro-slavery spirit

Source: Dubuque Daily Times, April 16, 1865

Residents all over Washington, D.C., removed their celebratory red, white and blue bunting from their homes on the morning of April 15 and replaced it with black crepe in honor of the president.

Crepe trimmed doorways in the Deep South as well. The more violently secesh and more thankful a family was for Lincoln’s death, the more profusely their houses were decorated with symbols of woe.

Men who hated LIncoln with all their souls tied black crepe from every practicable point to save their homes and save themselves from imprisonment.

Source: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman, edited by Charles East, Simon and Schuster, 1991

Mary Lincoln, who loved to entertain, planned birthday celebrations for her four sons.

She also planned a very special birthday dinner for her husband on Feb 12, 1862, just a little over a week before their son Willie would die.

The menu included boned truffle-stuffed turkey, stewed scalloped oysters, pate de fois gras, aspic of tongue, canvasback duck, partridge, fillet of beef, ham, venison, pheasant terrapin, chicken salad, sandwiches, jellies, cakes, ices and champagne punch.

Mr. Lincoln’s favorite birthday cake was his wife’s almond white cake. Here’s her recipe:

Mary Todd Lincoln’s White Cake

(Recipe from Lincoln’s Table by Donna D. McCreary adapted by Janice Cooke Newman)

1 cup blanched almonds, chopped in a food processor until they resemble a coarse flour
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
3 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup milk
6 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
confectionary sugar

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a Bundt cake pan.
• Cream butter and sugar. Sift flour and baking powder 3 times. Add to creamed butter and sugar, alternating with milk. Stir in almonds and beat well.
• Beat egg whites until stiff and fold into the batter. Stir in vanilla extract.
• Pour into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Turn out on a wire rack and cool. When cool, sift confectionary sugar over top or use a basic white frosting sprinkled with almonds.

Source: The National Park Service

On April 17, 1865, John Deery wrote about the scene in Washington, D.C.:

“Gloom and horror have settled over the community such as I never saw or imagined before. All the government buildings are draped in black, and every face wears an expression of sorrow which tells too plainly the great bereavement which the whole world has experienced.

I saw him distinctly, heard the report of the pistol. The murderer rushed across the stage in the direction of my seat, and if I had a pistol, I could have shot him dead. I am only sorry that I had not.

Mrs. Lincoln screamed. The audience rose in their seats and cried, ” Kill the murderer!” and rushed upon the stage.

Mrs. Lincoln seemed almost crazed, and kept saying, ‘Oh, God, that He had killed me!,”  thinking that her husband was already dead.”

Source: Ford’s Theatre files

The booming wartime economy in Washington did not last. Recession followed the end of the war.

The government budgeted 22.9 million for war expenditures in 1861, but that had climbed to 1.03 billion by 1865.

The War Department put the expenditure for the Civil War at 2.73 billion.

Source: “Of Duty Well and Faithfully Done: A History of the Regular Army in the Civil War” by Clayton R. Newell, Charles R. Shrader, Edward M. Coffman

The Todd family of Lexington, Ky., is an example of the suffering of ordinary families during the Civil War. Mary Todd Lincoln’s parents lost three sons and two sons-in-law to the war.

Samuel Briggs Todd was killed fighting for the Confederacy at the Battle of Shiloh.

David Todd died of wounds suffered while fighting for the South at Vicksburg.

Alexander Humphreys Todd, a Confederate soldier, died in a friendly fire incident in Baton Rouge.

Their son-in-law Benjamin Hardin Helm, a West Point graduate who fought for the Confederacy, was mortally wounded at Chickamauga.

And, on this day 148 years ago, they lost another son-in-law nine hours after a fatal shooting at Ford’s Theatre.

Dr. Charles Leale, the first doctor in the presidential box on the evening of April 14, 1865, said at the outset that the wound was fatal and there was no hope.

The president’s strong body took almost nine hours to shut down.

His friends and family stood by helplessly in a small back room of a Tenth Street boardinghouse while doctors ministered to him.

Later, Robert Todd Lincoln told his cousin Kate Helms that he thought the interminable agony of the night would never end.

Abraham Lincoln sent this resume when he was looking for a job in 1860:

6 ft., 4 in.  nearly

Lean in flesh

Weighing 180 pounds

Dark complexion

Coarse black hair

Gray eyes

Education: defective

Profession: a lawyer

Have been a captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk War

Postmaster at a very small office

Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature

Was a member of the lower house of Congress.

Yours, etc.

A Lincoln

President Lincoln’s wife and his law partner snipped at each other for decades.

William H. Herndon called Mary Todd Lincoln “cold as a chunk of ice,” a “she-wolf,”  and “the female cat of the age.”

She called him “a dirty dog.”

Their antagonism for each other is significant because Herndon compiled much of the information known about his law partner’s early adult life, and his dislike of Mrs. Lincoln’s may have influenced the information he included.

John Wilkes Booth and his friend Davy Herold stood on the Executive Mansion lawn on the evening of April 11, 1865, listening to President Lincoln speak from a second-story window.

It was the first time President Lincoln publicly called for the vote for African-Americans.

Booth became enraged. “That means nigger citizenship,” he said. “That is the last speech he will ever make.”

Dr. Charles Leale, the young army surgeon who would try to save the president after Booth shot him, was also standing on the lawn. Leale hadn’t intended to come to the speech. Out for a walk after work, he was swept up into the crowd walking down Pennsylvania Avenue.