The torrential spring rains that had washed over President Abraham Lincoln's funeral train since leaving Cleveland subsided just before it reached Union Depot in Columbus.


It was 7:30 a.m., April 29, 1865, a Saturday somberly re-created at the Statehouse yesterday.

It was a day when Ohio's capital would pay its final respects to the fallen leader. Lincoln had campaigned here in 1859 and had spoken to the General Assembly just before his inauguration in 1861.

Along with the rest of the country north of the Mason-Dixon line, Columbus went into mourning on April 15 when word was received of Lincoln's death at the hands of assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Two weeks later, about 50,000 people viewed Lincoln's "repose" in the Rotunda over 6 1/2 hours; it remains the largest event in Statehouse history. About 8,000 people an hour filed silently by the 6-foot, 6-inch solid-walnut casket with silver handles and a white satin interior.

William Turner Coggeshall, a former state librarian who had been editor of the Ohio State Journal, a predecessor of The Dispatch, gave a detailed account of the day's activities in his book Journeys of Abraham Lincoln.

He wrote of the "countless multitude, composed of every class, age and color" who stood four abreast in lines that extended from Long Street to Rich Street. It was, Coggeshall observed, "a steady stream of humanity (that) poured through the channel, all eager to gaze at the martyred President on his bier."

The huge turnout wasn't limited to Columbus. About 100,000 people viewed the body in Public Square in Cleveland, the only outdoor viewing on the 1,700-mile roundabout trip from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, Ill. An estimated 1 million people braved downpours followed by blazing heat to catch a glimpse of the body or the train as it rolled through nine states and 444 cities. Bonfires lighted the night, and throngs stood silently along the tracks in small towns and settlements all along the route.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Team of Rivals, a scholarly work about Lincoln's presidency, said Americans were overwhelmed by emotion and turned out in huge numbers to simultaneously mourn and show their pride in their fallen leader.

"The Civil War had just ended ... and then a president was assassinated for the first time in our history. What people realized when he died was what he actually meant to them."

Although yesterday's crowd wasn't nearly as large, a steady stream of visitors passed through the Rotunda to see a five-hour re-creation of Lincoln's viewing. Members of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery Battery A, a group of Civil War re-enactors, kept guard over the casket, changing every 20 minutes.

Just as it did in 1865, the painting Perry's Victory, by William Henry Powell, overlooked the solemn scene in the Rotunda. The state had bought the painting just a few weeks earlier.

Some people came yesterday to hear amateur historian John Ward's presentations about Lincoln's funeral train. The Columbus man became interested in Lincoln's life and death after finding that Marshall Ray Hobbs, the Army bugler who played taps at Lincoln's funeral, was his great-great-great-grandfather.

Like Kearns, Ward said the public suffered a double shock, going suddenly from "joy to sorrow." In some cities, mourners pushed and shoved to see Lincoln's hearse, causing near-riots, he said.

The scene on April 29 was calm and somber in Columbus as the specially designed hearse, 17 feet long, 8 1/2 feet wide and 17 1/2 feet to the top of the canopy, was pulled down High Street by six white horses, each with a handler in a white hat and gloves.

Coggeshall particularly noted the mourning signs posted by Marcus Childs, owner of a clothing store in the Neil House building opposite the Statehouse. One read, "East, West, North and South mourn. The greatest friend of suffering humanity is gone."