Abraham Lincoln Mourning Ribbon with Photograph of the President

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 9/22/2011

Fantastic Abraham Lincoln mourning ribbon, with fine postage albumen of him in brass matt, attached to black cloth, with period pin attached. A nice relic of this sorrowful period in American history.The assassination of United States President Abraham Lincoln took place on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, as the American Civil War was drawing to a close. The assassination occurred five days after the commanding general of the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee, and his battered Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated, though an unsuccessful attempt had been made on Andrew Jackson thirty years before in 1835. The assassination was planned and carried out by well-known actor John Wilkes Booth as part of a larger conspiracy intended to rally the remaining Confederate troops to continue fighting. Booth plotted with Lewis Powell and George Atzerodt to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson as well. By simultaneously striking down the top three in the line of succession, Booth and his co-conspirators hoped to throw the Union government into disarray. Lincoln was shot while watching the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. He died the next morning. The rest of the plot failed. Powell only managed to wound Seward, while Atzerodt, Johnson's would-be assassin, lost his nerve and fled. Following his death by assassination, the body of Abraham Lincoln was borne from Washington, D.C. to its final resting place in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois, by funeral train, accompanied by dignitaries and Lincoln's eldest son Robert Todd. The remains of his son, William Wallace Lincoln, were also placed on the train, which left Washington, D.C., on April 21, 1865 and traveled 1,654 miles to Springfield, arriving on May 3, 1865. Several stops were made along the way, in which Lincoln's body lay in state. The train retraced the route Lincoln had traveled to Washington as the president-elect on his way to his first inauguration, and millions of Americans viewed the train along the route. Lincoln's wife Mary Todd Lincoln remained at the White House because she was too distraught to make the trip; she returned to Illinois about one month later. Lincoln was interred at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield.

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