American flag that covered Lincoln's casket during the funeral train tour

[RJNorton]

https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/history/...a-ds=sophi

'Too many maybes': Expert can't be sure of source of Lincoln casket flag
Steven Spearie
Springfield State Journal-Register

"An authority on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln said there may be holes in the story about an American flag that draped the casket of the 16th president from Springfield.

Keens, a New York City steakhouse, recently purchased the flag for over half a million dollars and first displayed it publicly on the Lincoln's birthday.

But Richard Sloan, an Emmy-winning audio engineer, said a big question lies with the person who supposedly obtained the flag, Edwin Denision Morgan, a one-time U.S. Senator from and governor of New York and a supporter of Lincoln.

Sloan, who lives in Massapequa, New York, said Morgan was never on any list he saw regarding persons on the Lincoln funeral train, which carried the body of the slain president from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, a route of over 1,600 miles, from April 21 to May 4, 1865.

Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across the street and died the next day.

Morgan, who served as chairman of the Republican National Committee when Lincoln was elected president in 1860, may have obtained the flag, but trying to figure that out "is something we'll never probably know," Sloan said in a recent phone interview with The State Journal-Register.

Nothing was indexed in Morgan's personal papers in the New York State Library in Albany about him being on the funeral train, Sloan said. Morgan did keep up correspondence with U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who issued orders about the funeral train, so that might be an opening as to how Morgan got the flag, Sloan said.

Two other New York institutions claim they have casket flags from the funeral train, Sloan pointed out.

The date on the hoist of the flag--April 14, 1865--was also puzzling to Sloan.

"Why wouldn't it have been a date like April 22 or something or whenever Morgan got the flag," Sloan insisted. "The train didn't start its trip until after the White House funeral."

Morgan gifted the flag to U.S. Army doctor Lewis Applegate, who died in 1870. The flag, known as "the Applegate flag," was in the family for more than a century. It landed with two other families before being obtained by a now-shuttered history museum in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1996 and only uncovered in 2023.

"I don't attach any significance to the way in which (the flag) was shoved away," Sloan said.

As for Morgan's getting the flag, that's a bit more of a mystery for Sloan.

"I don't think (Morgan) would have lied if he, in fact, was the guy who got the flag. I don't think he would lie, but I don't think that we can figure that out," Sloan said.

"There are too many maybes and too much conjecture on anybody's part, including my own, to know with any (definiteness) if Morgan got the flag and if it's legitimate."