The return of Lincoln's body to the White House

[Rhatkinson]

I am reading a great two volume book entitled, "The President's House" by William Seale. It was recommended to me by Dr. Bill Bushong who spoke at the fall Surratt conference, and it is excellent. In it, I learned some new information that I thought I would share:

• Lincoln's body was brought in to the White House via the South Portico, through the Blue Room and then left to the main stairwell (the stairwell then was where the State Dining Room is now.) I had always assumed that the body was brought through the North Portico as JFK's body had been.

• As most know, Lincoln was brought to be autopsied in the Prince of Wales Room, which was the room where Willie Lincoln died and is the current private family dining room for the First Family.

• Mrs. Lincoln refused to enter any room where Lincoln had been. I had long wondered which room she was in, but Seale states that during the autopsy Benjamin French was sent to make sure she didn't accidentally come in the room, and he found Mary "down the hall bedroom across from the Oval room." Here is the map of the second floor as it appeared in 1865:
   
This must mean that Mary was in the East Bedroom, as the other bedroom was a right next to the Prince of Wales room, so it is unlikely she would have been that close. (that other bedroom, the West Bedroom, was where Andrew Johnson slept during his presidency.) Anyway, the East bedroom was then unoccupied and historically has been the bedroom of presidential children such as Chelsea Clinton. It was Caroline Kennedy's bedroom and was the room she was in when she was informed of her father's death. Here is how the room looked in 1962:
   
It is from this room that Mary Lincoln cried out during the next two nights as workers hammered nails to make bleachers for guests to stand on during Lincoln's funeral. She apparently begged them to stop as the hammering sounded like a gun shot. One can only imagine how difficult that must have been to endure in her condition.

• The night before the funeral, Lincoln's body was moved from the Prince of Wales Room into the coffin in the East Room. The men carrying the body took their shoes off so as not to alert Mary that they were moving the body.

• When the White House was opened for citizens to come view the body, the mourners entered through the North Portico and moved into the East Room. The odd part is where they exited. After breaking into two lines as they moved past the coffin, the guests left the East Room though a set of stairs built to allow them to leave through a WINDOW in the East Room!

• Andrew Johnson did not move his office (or his family) into the White House until long after Lincoln's death. In an odd twist of fate, his office at the Treasury Building was decorated with the flags that had draped the box at Ford's when Booth shot Lincoln, including the Treasury Guard flag that bore the tear from Booth's spur.

• Mary Lincoln left the White House for the first time since leaving for Ford's on May 22nd. Elizabeth Keckley wrote that when she left for the train station, "there was scarcely a friend to tell her good-bye."

• Willie Lincoln died on what we call today "The Lincoln Bed", but was then known as "The Prince of Wales Room Bed."
   

Anyway, I thought some of these points were very interesting and wanted to share them. I love White House and Washington history, and know that many here feel the same.

Heath