625 Lincoln Funeral Car

625 Lincoln Funeral Car

The Lincoln Funeral Car – Souvenir – 42nd National Encampment G.A.R.
On the 14th of April, 1865, (exactly four years after the surrender of Fort Sumter) when everything looked hopeful and the war was over, President Lincoln was shot and a day later passed away, and the nation was plunged into mourning. The car illustrated on this card had recently been built for the President and his cabinet. It became his funeral car, and on April 21st, aster most impressive obsequies, this car (bearing the President’s remains,) with six other cars and the locomotive all heavily draped with black, slowly moved out of Washington amid a vast crowd of silent and sad spectators. History does not record a more touching spectacle than the passing of this funeral train through the most populous states of the Union. At every point along the route vast throngs stood with uncovered heads while the train passed by. In city and country buildings were draped in mourning and flags drooped at half mast. On May 3rd the train reached Springfield, Ill., and on the following day, as a chorus sang “Peace, Troubled Soul,” the casket was closed forever. Myron H. Lamson, the father of the Lamson Brothers, an enlisted mechanic , served as assistant foreman during the construction of this car and the remodeling to receive the President’s remains. The photograph has been in the family for 43 years and now that a untied nation reveres the memory of Lincoln and everything connected with his life and death, we thought it appropriate that we should present this picture to the brave men to whom our nation is so greatly indebted.