Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln's Dream

We are coming upon the birth date of a man who was without question America's greatest president.  February 12th marks the anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.  However, few know much about the final days of this man who once begged his fellow citizens to be guided by the "better angels of their nature."  

Lincoln was constantly receiving death threats and soon began to put them out of his mind.  He even once remarked that he would rather be assassinated then to live to see even one star removed from our flag.  His paramount goal in life was to preserve the Union he loved so much. 

  Nevertheless, several days before his death at the hands of John Booth, Lincoln told his friend Ward Laymen of a very disturbing dream he had the night before.  In his dream, sobbing coming from the downstairs portion of the White House awakens Lincoln.  He rises from his bed and walks down the stairs where the crying becomes even loader.  Yet the President sees no one there but a single Union soldier standing at attention. 

  "Who is crying," Mr. Lincoln asks of the soldier?  "Have you not heard," the Union Captain replies?  "The Nation weeps," he says.  "And why does the Nation weep," the President inquired?

  Lincoln goes on to tell his friend Ward that in his dream the soldier appeared confused by the question.  "There has been a great death in the White House," the Captain told his commander in chief.  "Who is it," Lincoln asked?  "Why Sir, it is the President who has died," the soldier replies and points to a coffin sitting just a short distance away. 

  When Lincoln looked he saw himself resting in the coffin; a bullet wound in his head.

  The next evening Abraham Lincoln, 16th president and savior of the American Union was felled by a bullet fired by John Wilkes Booth to the back of his head.  He was carried from Ford's Theater to a rooming house across the street and for most of night laid quietly dying.  His wife Mary screamed and cried so loudly that she was removed from the room.  His son Robert stood by the bedside and wept silently as he stared at his father and moved only occasionally to wipe tears from his eyes.  By morning, the death struggle had begun.  The President suddenly lurched his chest upward, gasped, gurgled and died. The room was silent except for Secretary of War Stanton who softly said: "Now he belongs to the ages."

  Lincoln died April 15, 1865.  

World History Project