By Robin M. Strom-Mackey
President, Abraham Lincoln, aside
from being one of America’s greatest leaders was also probably the country’s
most accepting of the spiritual realm. Honest
Abe, as he was nicknamed, was a man of great personal convictions. He left a lucrative career in the law to
enter politics in order to halt the spread of slavery, a practice he felt
abhorrent. He was as equally invested in
maintaining the union, and felt the country should not be divided. The Civil War became his personal cross to
bear, and accounts describe his dejection at the loss of so many lives. Those who knew the president best verify that
he felt the division of the country and the loss of life due to the Civil War
keenly, as if each boy lost were his own.
Lincoln’s personal life was no
life as no less riddled with tragedy and loss. It was during his presidency
that he lost his own son; young Willie. All
told, his presidency was a period of extreme personal duress, and sleepless
nights and stress quickly took their toll on his already craggy
countenance.
As the war progressed the
president appeared to withdraw further into himself, and was described as
acting melancholy and silent. A man
bearing the loss of so many souls could only be searching for answers to the
universe’s deeper mysteries, and there is evidence that he did seek out
guidance in those years from well-known spiritualists, many of whom were
invited to the White House by the first lady herself.
Personal
Loss
Lincoln’s personal losses were
both devastating and life-changing. His
mother died when Lincoln was only a child, struck down by a frontier-epidemic
called “Milk Sickness.” The willowy, Nancy Hanks Lincoln nursed family friends
Tom and Betsy Sparrow who had succumbed to the illness, at which time she
herself was infected. Nancy died shortly
after, leaving a husband and two children behind. Lincoln, devastated by the loss, reportedly
helped to build her coffin, and lower it into the ground. Afterwards, Lincoln buried his head in his
hands and wept for hours, despairing that he was now, “completely alone in the
world.”
Lincoln funneled his despair into
hard work, laboring at odd jobs to pay his way through college and law school. It was in the law that Lincoln developed his
greatest talents. He had both an ability for political maneuvering and a genius
for oration and debate. Once he established his career he met his future wife,
the young Mary Todd. After a rocky courtship beginning in 1839, Lincoln finally
married Mary in 1842.
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| Mary Todd Lincoln |
The early years of their marriage were
strained, however, with Lincoln’s constant and lengthy absences from home as he
traveled on business. Nevertheless, Mary gave Abe four sons, Robert Todd
Lincoln (1843-1926), Edward “Eddie” Baker Lincoln (1846-1850), William Wallace
“Willie” (1850-1862) and Thomas “Tad” (1853-1871). Eddie lived only to the age of four, and died
shortly before the birth of Willie. Incidentally, Robert was the only son of
the four to survive to adulthood. He would
follow in his father’s footsteps and became first a lawyer and eventually
Secretary of War and Minister to Great Britain.
Oddly, Robert was probably the son least close to the president. He was
born at a time when the Lincoln was constantly away on business and had very
little contact with Lincoln as a child. When Robert turned 16 his father won
the White House, but Robert was departing for school. Robert later reported
that he had had about 10 minutes of the president’s attention while Lincoln was
in the White House, as the President was constantly preoccupied.
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| Robert Lincoln |
Lincoln dedicated most of his
early years with his own education in the law, and later at establishing his
reputation as a lawyer. His law practice was extremely successful, and the more
successful he became the further afield he went, trying cases the length and
breadth of Illinois. He’d served a stint as a Congressman in the early 1840’s,
but gave it up because of the demand on his time. He was adamantly against slavery,
but he was satisfied with the Missouri Compromise which made slavery illegal anywhere
west than the line drawn by the Louisiana Territory, as he felt that the future
of the country resided to the west.
When that same compromise was
challenged by a congressional act spearheaded by an old rival, Stephen Douglas,
Lincoln felt that the time had come for another run at politics, he threw in
his hat for Douglas’s senate seat. A
fiercely contested campaign ensued in which Lincoln and Douglas squared off in
several heated debates, so heated in fact that they aroused the attention of
the news media across the country. Lincoln
displayed his finest oratorical talents in eloquent and passionate arguments. At
a time when passions throughout the country were running high, Lincoln spoke for
reason and compromise. Though he lost
the seat to Douglas in the 1858 election, he had garnered the attention of many
political pundits including the newly formed Republican Party. In May 1860, in
Chicago, Illinois, Abe Lincoln became the Republican Party’s candidate for
president.
Lincoln won the presidency
handily in the Electoral College. The
popular vote, however, revealed a different story; a story of a country
divided. Lincoln gained just 40% of the
popular vote, and the numbers were even grimmer in the south, where Lincoln won
none of the popular votes. He became a
minority president.
In his home state of Illinois,
however, the day of the election had a carnival atmosphere. There was a parade which wound its way past
Lincoln’s house and lasted for hours. Later there was a picnic with tubs of
lemonade and roasted whole steers.
Clearly Illinois was proud of their presidential hopeful. An evening
dinner was held with political allies, and then Lincoln repaired to the local
telegraph office to await last minute messages.
In the very early hours it became clear that Lincoln had won the
election in the Electoral College. After an intense and tiresome twenty-four
hour marathon, Lincoln returned home.
The
Prophetic President
Lincoln was exhausted. Too tired
to remove his clothes, he lay down on the first flat surface he could find, a
small settee. Near the couch was a bureau with a mirror on top. Lincoln was shocked at his appearance in the
mirror. His face looked wan and thin and bleached of all color. When he later recounted this to his friends
they suggested he grow a beard to hide the narrowness of his countenance and to
give him a more presidential image. It was then that Lincoln felt he had his
first vision, what he felt later was a vision of prophetic import. He realized
that when he looked in the mirror what he saw was two distinct images of
himself superimposed. He could tell there were two images because they didn’t
quite align with one another, and he could tell distinctly that the tip of one
nose was about three inches beyond the other.
As he stared in the mirror the vision disappeared, but reappeared a few
moments later more strongly outlined. Staring at the dual images he realized
that one of the images was far paler than the other, as pale as the face of
death. The vision disappeared again and Lincoln dismissed it to sleep
deprivation and the excitement of the last few days.
He did, however, recall the
visions to his wife Mary, who felt she knew the significance of the two
faces. The healthier face, Mary felt,
was the face of her husband during his first term as president. The fact that
the face had more color and appeared healthier she felt indicated that he would
live out his first term as president.
According to legend, Mary interrupted the second paler face to indicate
her husband’s second term of office. She felt he would achieve a second term,
but would not live to see it through.
Over the course of the next few days, Lincoln apparently tried to
recreate the vision in the mirror, which he was able to do on several occasions.
He did scoff at the notion of
prophecy later to friends and colleagues saying that it must have been an
anomaly in the glass or a hallucination brought on by lack of sleep. However, this apparently was not his only
prophetic moment. Shortly before winning
the election Lincoln apparently was talking to a group of friends when he said
about the probability of the Civil War, “Gentlemen, you may be surprised and
think it strange, but when the doctor here was describing the war, I distinctly
saw myself, in second sight, bearing an important part in that strife (Taylor, 2003).”
According to union war documents,
late one night during his presidency Lincoln burst into a local telegraph
office demanding information. He told
the operator to immediately contact Lincoln’s union commanders as he was quite
sure the Confederates were about to cross federal lines. When the stunned operator asked the president
how he had obtained such information the president blurted out, “My God, man, I
saw it!”
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| Willie Lincoln |
Tragedy
Befalls a President
Mary and Abe’s second son Edward
had died in 1850, but it was the death of Lincoln’s third son Willie in 1862
that nearly derailed the president.
Willie was the son that most resembled his father, and therefore was his
parent’s favorite. He was reportedly reading and writing proficiently by the
age of eight, while his more athletic brother, Tad, did not achieve such
distinction until the age of twelve. William Wallace, named for a doctor in
Springfield, Illinois, had been a quiet and thoughtful child who excelled in
reading and academics. With a wonderful
memory, Willie had been able to recite whole bible passages by rote, and often
told his parents that he intended on becoming a minister when he grew up.
While so many Americans were losing
their own sons to the war, perhaps the death of Willie was a tragedy that
resonated with the populace. Even the Confederate President, Jefferson
Davis, sent condolences after the death of the boy.
The loss was exceptionally
painful to the president. Lincoln
reportedly locked himself in his office for several hours after the death and
would not answer the door. The boy’s
body was supposed to be sent to a grave in Springfield, Illinois. However, a
family friend, William Thomas Carroll, offered a place in his family’s tomb where
Willie’s body could be put temporarily while Lincoln remained in Washington,
and later moved back home. Apparently Lincoln could not suffer to let the boy
be too far from him. Reportedly Lincoln returned on two separate occasions
demanding the casket opened. The
embalmer apparently had done a good job, and Willie looked as if merely asleep.
It is said that after Willie’s
death that the President withdrew further within himself. With the gloom of the Civil War upon his
back, coupled with his own loss, some speculate that he might have contemplated
suicide shortly after the death. He was
often said to work at his desk with one eye on the door as if waiting for
Willie to come in and give him a hug, as the boy had done in real life. He also
began to speak about how he felt the boy’s presence lingering in his office and
bedroom. It was perhaps his concerted love that kept the spirit of the boy
connected with him throughout what remained of his presidency.
The
Spiritualist Movement
It is not surprising that Lincoln
would have distanced himself from the Spiritualist Movement of the day, seeing
such involvement as being damaging to his political career. Mary Todd Lincoln,
however, was a firm believer in the Spiritualist movement and furthermore had
lost two children prematurely. Todd Lincoln
is often cited as having mediums to the White House for séances. Lincoln, was never officially claimed a member
of such, but private diaries and accounts by attendees indicate that he at
least occasionally attended.
Some historians have postulated
that Todd Lincoln’s involvement with the spiritualists may have caused her
mental instability. Certainly the death
of two sons would have left her seeking solace from whatever source available.
It is noted that after Willie’s death Todd Lincoln never again entered the
guest room in which the boy had died, nor would she enter the room in which the
viewing had been held. It is reported
that she had increasing bouts of headaches, mood swings, and irrational
exchanges of temper.
It was during this time that she
began to invite mediums to the White House. Nettie Colburn Maynard, a celebrated medium,
was invited to the White House on several occasions. During one sitting, Maynard
began playing the grand piano in the room when it began to levitate off the
ground. According to accounts, both
Lincoln and Colonel Simon Kase climbed on top of the instrument only to have it
buck and shake, causing them to climb back down. He later referred to the event as, “proof of
an invisible force (Taylor, 2003).”
Lincoln may have consulted with
mediums at the White House, asking them about the war. He appears to have questioned them for
tactical information and troop movements, and noted that sometimes the
information they gave him correlated with his own precognitive visions and the
events as they happened.
Entering his second term Lincoln
appeared to fear some type of doom.
Besides his own premonition there were constant death threats that kept
his bodyguards on constant alert and himself on edge. At another séance with the celebrated Nettie
Colborn Maynard, Maynard reportedly told the president, “The shadows that
others have told of still hang over you.”
Lincoln apparently replied that he had received letters from mediums all
over the country that warned him of the same thing. When Maynard prepared to leave the president
graciously extended an invitation for the following fall. Maynard accepted with
some hesitation saying, “I shall come of course, that is…if you are still among
us.”
Premonition
of Death
Ward Hill Lamon had been a
colleague from Illinois and close friend of the President for many years.
During his White House years Lincoln appointed Lamon his personal head of security. The tireless Lamon was said to take his
duties very seriously, often chiding the president for not taking proper
precautions when he left to go to the theater or out to dinner. Lamon, unfortunately, was on an errand for
the president in Richmond, Virginia on the night of the Ford’s Theater
assassination. Many historians have
speculated that the assassination may have been thwarted had Lamon been on
duty. As it was, Lamon felt bitter
regret and personal responsibility for years after the assassination,
especially as he had been forewarned of the event by the president himself. Years
after the assassination Lamon would recount Lincoln’s words:
“About
ten days ago I retired late, and soon began to dream. There seemed to be a deathlike stillness
about me. Then I began to hear subdued
sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and
wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same painful sobbing,
but the mourners were invisible. I went
from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds
of distress met me as I passed along.
It
was light in all the rooms, every object familiar to me but where were all the
people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and
alarmed. What could be the meaning of
all this? Determined to find the cause of the state of things, so mysterious
and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room which I entered.
Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments.
Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a
throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse whose face was
covered, others weeping pitifully.
“Who
is dead in the White House,” I demanded one of the soldiers.
“The
President,” was his answer. “He was killed by an assassin.”
Then
came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it
was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since (Taylor,
2003).”
At eleven in the morning of the
day that Lincoln was to attend the play Our
American Cousin at Ford’s Theater, April 14, 1865, Lincoln called a cabinet
meeting. The union was close to winning
the war. Just days before General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Union
General, Ulysses S. Grant. Lincoln was
awaiting word from North Carolina of a further surrender by Joseph E. Johnston. Word was in the morning paper that Lincoln
was to attend the play that evening with General Grant and his wife. Prophetically, Grant’s wife supposedly felt a
foreboding of the night’s events, and begged her husband to break the
engagement. Lincoln would instead invite
Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancé Clara Harris.
Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton
missed the first twenty minutes of the cabinet meeting, and arrived with the
meeting in full swing. Afterwards in a
conversation with Attorney General, James Speed, Stanton noted that the meeting
had been very productive. Speed
undoubtedly gave Stanton a peculiar look before stating,
“But
you were not her at the beginning. When we entered the council chamber, we
found the president seated at the top of the table with his face buried in his
hands. Presently, he raised it and we saw that he looked grave and worn.
“‘Gentlemen,
before long you will have important news…I have heard nothing, but you will
hear tomorrow. I have had a dream. I have dreamed three times before; once
before the Battle of Bull Run; once on another occasion; and again last night.
I am in a boat, alone on a boundless ocean. I have no oars, no rudder, I am
helpless. I drift!”
One of the members of Lincoln’s
security team, Colonel William H. Crook begged the President not to go the theater
that evening. Lincoln had shared his
prophetic dream with Crook, and Crook who was doggedly protective of the
President felt he should not discount the meaning of the dream. The President, however, said that he needed a
night away, and that he had already promised his wife. Crook who had already worked a full day, then
offered to accompany Lincoln to the theater himself, but Lincoln refused
telling Crook he couldn’t possibly work around the clock. Crook would later
recount that Lincoln would always wish Crook, “good night,” upon retiring. But
on this fateful evening, upon leaving for the theater Lincoln instead said,
“Good bye, Crook.”
When Crook got word of the
assassination hours after, the President’s fateful words took on a new
significance.
"It
was the first time that he neglected to say ‘Good Night’ to me, and it was the
only time that he ever said ‘Good-bye’. I thought of it at that moment and, a
few hours later, when the news flashed over Washington that he had been shot,
his last words were so burned into my being that they can never be
forgotten."
Lincoln had further informed
Crook that there would naturally be a guard outside the presidential box at the
theater. And there was. Police guard John Parker was stationed outside the door
to the box. A notorious drinker, shortly into the first act started Parker left
his post to go across the street to get a drink. It was sometime in the third act that the
assassin, John Wilkes Booth approached the unmanned door to the President’s box
and finding it unguarded let himself in. He approached the president unencumbered, put
a derringer pistol to the head of the president and shot him. Dropping the gun
he then took out a knife and stabbed Major Rathbone, slashing his arm to the
bone. In trying to depart, Booth got the
spur of his boot caught in a flag. He fell over the railing of the box and
crashed to the stage floor, breaking his leg.
Somehow he still managed to escape out a back stage door, despite
Rathbone’s demands he be detained.
The bullet entered Lincoln’s
skull just behind his left ear and traveled across his brain, mortally wounding
him. Alive but unconscious his body was carried across the street to the
Peterson House. Several surgeons were
called to attend him. One such doctor broke the news to Secretary Stanton that
Lincoln would not survive the night. Indeed, he passed away sometime in the
early morning hours of April 15th. The first coherent statement Mary
Todd Lincoln made following her husband’s assassination was regarding the
accuracy of his dream. Lincoln’s body
was displayed in the East Room to hundreds of mourners.
The
Ghost of Lincoln
His haunted existence and his
failure to finish the war might account for Lincoln’s continued presence at the
White House. There are other spirits
that apparently continue to reside in the edifice, but none have made so many
appearances as the late president. Winston
Churchill, during a stay at the White House in 1941, had just come out of the
shower wearing nothing but a towel and a halo of cigar smoke. Emerging into
what is now known as The Queen’s bedroom, he found Lincoln leaning against the
mantel of the fireplace. With his usual
aplomb, Churchill responded, “’Good evening, Mr. President. You seem to have me
at a disadvantage.’” After the odd encounter, Churchill started sleeping in the
bedroom across the hall.
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| Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands |
Queen Wilhelmina of the
Netherlands also noted seeing Lincoln in her bedroom. The Queen was sleeping when she was awoken by
a knock at the door. Upon opening the
door she found Lincoln looking back at her from the hallway. I’ve found no mention whether she asked to be
moved, although Lincoln did have the decency to knock first.
Lincoln has most often been spotted
in the aptly named Lincoln bedroom, though this is not the only place he has
been seen. It should be noted that the
bedroom was actually Lincoln’s office during his tenure at the White House, the
Oval Office and entire West Wing of the White House being a later addition
started in 1901 by Theodore Roosevelt. I speculate that this may account for
its activity, this being the room in which he spent the most time ruminating
over the war which was ravaging the nation. Lincoln actually slept in the room
now referred to as the ‘Master Bedroom’, with Mrs. Lincoln sleeping in an
adjoining room which is today a private living room.
People that have witnessed
Lincoln in the now famous Lincoln bedroom include Claudia ‘Lady Bird’ Johnson,
Grace Coolidge and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Coolidge also reportedly witnessed Lincoln in the Yellow Oval Room. Reagan regaled a room-full of dinner guests
in 1986 with a story about his dog, Rex.
Rex was discovered barking unaccountably in the Lincoln bedroom, upon
which he backed out of the room refusing to enter it again. Rex also ungraciously interrupted an evening
of television watching by barking furiously at the ceiling for no obvious
reason. However, it was Reagan’s
daughter Maureen and her husband that actually saw a ghost. They both reported
seeing a transparent form in the Lincoln bedroom, oddly on different occasions.
Lincoln’s specter has been seen
by other witnesses at the White House as well, by both ordinary household staff
and celebrities. Tony Savoy, Whitehouse
Operations Foreman in the 1980’s witnessed Lincoln in the hallway outside his
office and gave a rather detailed account in an interview on the official White
House Website. Savoy who was watering plants on the second floor happened to
run into Lincoln rather unexpectedly.
“’When I turned the light on one
morning, he was sitting there outside his office with his hands over the top of
each other, legs crossed, and was looking straight ahead (Ruickbie, Belanger).’”
Savoy’s account was quite detailed.
He noted the late president was wearing, “’a grey, charcoal, pin striped suit,
and a pair of three-buttoned spats turned over on the side with black shoes. He was sitting there, and he startled me, and
I stopped. And when I blinked he was gone. And I left there and went down the
stairs and told Assistant Usher, Nelson Pierce, what I had seen. And he said
I’m just one of the other ones that had seen him throughout the house over the
past years.’”
Other
Sightings
Lincoln’s ghost is a restless
spirit, however. Aside from the White House reports he has reportedly been
sighted at his home in Springfield, Illinois and also at his tomb. He has also
been reported at Fort Monroe, Virginia and Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C.
Resources
Belanger, Jeff (2004). The World’s Most Haunted Places. Fall
River Press. NY, NY.
Eye Witness History (1999,
revised 2009). The Death of President
Lincoln, 1865.Retrieved on January 21, 2015 from http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/pflincoln.htm
Haining, Peter, editor (2008). The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings.
Constable and Robinson Ltd. London, UK. Pg. 74.
Robert
Todd Lincoln. (2015). The Biography.com website. Retrieved 02:52, Jan 18, 2015,
from http://www.biography.com/people/robert-todd-lincoln-20989843.
Melton, Gordon J. editor (2001). Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology.
5th edition. Gale Group, Inc. Farmington Hills, Michigan. Vol. 1 A-L.
Pg. 924
Steiger, Brad (2003). Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted
Places. Visible Ink Press. Canton, Michigan. Pg. 288.
Taylor, Troy (2003) Séances in
the White House? Lincoln and the Supernatural. The Haunted Museum. Ghost of the
Prairie. Retrieved January 2, 2015 from http//www.prairieghosts.com_lincoln.html
