Last public speech Abraham Lincoln

[L Verge]

From http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org:

"Mr. Lincoln delivered few formal speeches as President. Besides the occasional "serenade" after a political or military victory or remarks to a visiting group, almost none were actually made at the White House. A notable exception occurred on April 11, 1865. From the hallway window between the two bedrooms, President Lincoln delivered his final speech with his family nearby and a large crowd outside. Noah Brooks, who was scheduled to become his new secretary, held a candle to provide reading light while Tad picked up the pages of the speech as the President dropped them. The next day, Brooks wrote a dispatch for the Sacramento Daily Union:

"Most people were sleeping soundly in their beds when, at daylight on the rainy morning of April 9th, a great boom startled the misty air of Washington, shaking the earth and breaking the windows of the houses about Lafayette Square, compelling the inhabitants once more to say that they would be glad when Union victories were done with, or celebrated somewhere else. But boom, boom, boom went the guns, until five hundred of them were fired. Some few people got up and raced around in the mud to see what the news was, and some few got up a procession of flags and things, wet as it was....

"The streets, horribly muddy, were alive with people, cheering and singing, carrying flags and saluting everybody, hungering and thirsting for speeches...

"Later in the forenoon [same time sequence as a fortnight, I believe]an impromptu procession came up from the Navy Yard, dragging six boat howitzers, which were fired through the streets as they rolled on; this crowd soon swelled to a formidable size, and filled the whole area in front of the President's house, where they patiently waited for a speech, guns firing and bands playing meanwhile. The young hopeful of the house of Lincoln - 'Tad' --made his appearance at the well known window from whence the President always speaks, where he was received with a great shout of applause; encouraged by which he waved a captured rebel flag, whereat he was lugged back by the slack of his trowsers by some discreet domestic, amidst the uproarious cheers of sovereign people below. The President soon after made his appearance, and for a moment the scene was of the wildest confusion; men fairly yelled with delight, tossed up their hats and screamed like mad. Seen from the windows, the surface of the crowd looked like an agitated sea of hats, faces and men's arms. Quiet restored, the President briefly congratulated the people on the occasion which had called out such unrestrained enthusiasm, and said that as arrangements were being made for a more formal celebration, he would defer his remarks until then; for, said he, 'I shall have nothing to say then if it is all dribbled out of me now,' whereat the crowd good humoredly laughed. He alluded to the presence of the band, and said that our adversary had always claimed one old good tune - Dixie - but that he held that on the 8th of April we fairly captured it - in fact, he said, he had submitted the question to the Attorney General, who had decided that the tune was our lawful property; and he asked that the band play 'Dixie,' which they did with a will, following with 'Yankee Doodle.' The President then proposed three cheers for General Grant and the officers and men under him, then three for the navy, all of which were given heartily, and the crowd dispersed."

This makes it clear that he spoke from the upstairs window, and I believe it was the one over the front door. In 1865, I believe I'm correct that there were no balconies at the White House. The one that we are familiar with was constructed during the major renovations done during the Truman era.

I'm trying to find a reference that I read somewhere that Tad begged to hold the candle and Brooks handed it to him. Before the advent of daylight savings time, it would have been dark enough by 5-6 pm to require additional light from a candle, especially for a man who needed glasses, I would think. I'm suspecting that the speech was given in the late-afternoon or very early-evening.

As for the crowd, we have to think in terms of what an "immense" crowd meant to people in 1865. We may think thousands, but I'm inclined to think more in terms of several hundred or up to five hundred. Pure guessing, however.