1. Some of the biographies on Lincoln's life used in this study include Oates, Stephen B., With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Harper and Row, 1978)Google Scholar; Sandburg, Carl, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954)Google Scholar; and Nicolay, John G. and Hay, John, Abraham Lincoln: A History (New York: Century, 1890)Google Scholar. For discussions that explore Lincoln in American memory, see Kammen, Michael, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991)Google Scholar and the more recent work that deals explicitly with Lincoln's presence in American culture, Peterson, Merrill D., Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

2. For a thorough discussion of demographic patterns during the Civil War, see Vinovskis, Maris A., “Have Social Historians Lost the Civil War? Some Preliminary Demographic Speculations,” in Toward a Social History of American Civil War: Exploratory Essays, ed. Vinovskis, Maris A. (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also see Livermore, Thomas L., Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America: 1861–1865 (1900; rept., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957)Google Scholar.

3. The relationship between this corpse and changes in attitudes and practices surrounding the dead in American culture is touched upon in various books, including Huntington, Richard and Metcalf, Peter, Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 190Google Scholar. For a more detailed discussion, see Laderman, Gary, The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799–1865 (New Haven, Conn., 1996)Google Scholar.

4. The two major cultural histories dealing with these issues are Vovelle, Michel, La Mort et l'Occident: De 1300 à Nos Jours (Paris: Gallimard, 1983)Google Scholar; and Ariès, Philippe, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Weaver, Helen (New York: Vintage, 1981)Google Scholar. For other studies in this area, see, for example, Hertz, Robert, “A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representations of Death,” in Death and the Right Hand, trans. R., and Needham, C. (New York: Free Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Rogin, Michel, The Space of Death: A Study of Funerary Architecture, Decoration, and Urbanism, trans. Sheridan, Alan (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983)Google Scholar; Thomas, Louis-Vincent, Rites de Mort; Pour la Paix des Vivants (Paris: Fayard, 1985)Google Scholar; Prior, Lindsay, The Social Organization of Death: Medical Discourse and Social Practices in Belfast (London: Macmillan, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chidester, David, Salvation and Suicide: An Interpretation of Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple and Jonestown (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

5. One of the best examinations of societal responses to the death of royal figures is discussed by Huntington and Metcalf, “The Dead King,” and “The Immortal Kingship,” in Celebrations of Death. Both Vovelle and Ariès explore these issues as well.

6. There are a number of excellent studies on the subject of death that raise these issues and have assisted me in my own work on the cultural history of death, including Vovelle, La Mort et l'Occident; Ariès, Hour of Our Death; Prior, Social Organization of Death; Richardson, Ruth, Death, Dissecton and the Destitute (London: Penguin, 1989)Google Scholar; and Kearl, Michael C., Endings: A Sociology of Death and Dying (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

For studies on the history of death in America see Stannard, David E., The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Stannard, , ed., Death in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Farrell, James J., Inventing the American Way of Death, 1830–1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Linden-Ward, Blanche, Silent City on a Hill: Landscapes of Memory and Boston's Mount Auburn Cemetery (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, Habenstein, Robert W. and Lamers, William M., The History of American Funeral Directing, rev. ed. (Milwaukee, Wisc.: Bulfin, 1962)Google Scholar; Jackson, Charles O., ed., Passing: The Vision of Death in America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1977)Google Scholar; Warner, Lloyd W., The Living and the Dead: A Study of the Symbolic Life of Americans (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959)Google Scholar; and Laderman, Sacred Remains.

7. Some of the works on the life of Mary Todd Lincoln that have been particularly useful for this paper include Baker, Jean H., Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987)Google Scholar; Turner, Justin G. and Turner, Linda Levitt, Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972)Google Scholar; Randall, Ruth Painter, Mary Todd Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953)Google Scholar; and Keckley, Elizabeth, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1868)Google Scholar.

8. Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 134–36, 181Google Scholar.

9. Ibid., 181. Most biographers discuss this characteristic of Mary Todd Lincoln; also see Anthony, Carl Sferrazza, First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents' Wives and Their Power, 1789–1961 (New York: W. Morrow, 1990), 168–200Google Scholar.

10. Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 77–79Google Scholar; Oates, , With Malice Toward None, 297Google Scholar; Randall, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 276Google Scholar; and Anthony, , First Ladies, 190Google Scholar.

11. Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 244–45Google Scholar; Oates, , With Malice Toward None, 470Google Scholar; and Kunhardt, Dorothy Meserve and Kunhardt, Philip B. Jr, Twenty Days: The Authoritative Account of Lincoln's Assassination, the Conspiracy, and Aftermath (North Hollywood, Cal.: Newcastle, 1985), 39–49Google Scholar.

12. Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 245Google Scholar. Stanton is identified as the one who states this, though in a slightly different way (“Take that woman out and do not let her in again!”), in Kunhardt, and Kunhardt, , Twenty Days, 79Google Scholar.

13. Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 247Google Scholar; and Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 223Google Scholar.

14. Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 248Google Scholar; and Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 224Google Scholar. She expressed some of these sentiments in a letter written to Senator Charles Sumner a few months later: “My belief, is so assured, that Death, is only a blessed transition, to the ‘pure in heart,’ that a very slight veil separates us, from the ‘loved & lost’ and to me, there is comfort, in the thought, that though unseen by us, they are very near” (Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 256)Google Scholar.

15. The preceding discussion was based on Kunhardt, and Kunhardt, , Twenty Days, 248–49Google Scholar; Randall, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 347–48Google Scholar; Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 240–41Google Scholar; and Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 251–52Google Scholar. The controversy resurfaced later when Mary Todd heard that the National Lincoln Monument Association was considering a monument at the site initially proposed in the center of the city. She threatened the governor that if the monument was built there rather than in Oak Ridge, she would move her husband's body to Washington or some other eastern city that was eager for his sacred remains. When there was a suggestion that they discuss the issue, Mary Todd reiterated her intentions to control the fate of her family:

My determination is unalterable, and … without I receive the 15th of this month a formal & written agreement that the Monument shall be placed over the remains of my Beloved Husband, in Oak Ridge Cemetery, with the written promise that no other bodies, save the President, his Wife, his Sons & Sons families, shall ever be deposited within the enclosure … If I had anticipated, so much trouble, in having my wishes carried out, I should have readily yielded to the request of many & had his precious remains, in the first instance placed in the vault of the National Capitol — A tomb prepared for Washington the Father of his Country & a fit resting place for the immortal Savior & Martyr for Freedom. (Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 243–44Google Scholar)

16. Keckley, , Behind the Scenes, 208Google Scholar; and Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 231Google Scholar.

17. Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 253Google Scholar; and McPherson, James M., Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Ballantine, 1988), 853Google Scholar.

18. See Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 275Google Scholar; Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 431–32Google Scholar; and Randall, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 367–79Google Scholar.

19. A book she enjoyed reading while in Europe was Phelp, Elizabeth Stuart's The Gates Ajar (Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1868)Google Scholar, one of the most popular books to come out after the Civil War. As Ann Douglas points out, this book — whose main character is named Mary, a woman devastated by the death of her brother during the war — epitomizes much of the consolation literature of the period, grounding heaven in a material, domestic realm, yet affirming the close, spiritual presence of those who have passed on (Douglas, , The Feminization of American Culture [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977], 269–70)Google Scholar.

20. Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 474–75Google Scholar; also see the discussion in Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 269–70Google Scholar.

21. Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 281–306Google Scholar. Her response to the gossip about her marriage plans can be found in a letter to Sally Orne in Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 537Google Scholar.

22. Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 295–302Google Scholar. Mary Todd's letters acknowledge the cruel treatment she received in the press. See, for example, Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 529Google Scholar.

23. Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 597–98Google Scholar.

24. On the imagery that brought Washington and Lincoln together, see Cunliffe, Marcus, The Doubled Images of Lincoln and Washington (Gettysburg, Pa.: Gettysburg College, 1988)Google Scholar. A brief description of Field's painting is found in Davidson, Abraham A., The Eccentrics and Other American Visionary Painters (New York: Dutton, 1978), 89Google Scholar.

25. “Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, Trial of the Question of Her Sanity in Chicago: A Verdict That She Is Insane Is Rendered,” New York Times, 05 20, 1987, 2Google Scholar; also see the discussion in Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 319–20Google Scholar.

26. Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 319–20Google Scholar.

27. Quoted in Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 321Google Scholar; also see Neely, Mark E. Jr, and McMurty, R. Gerald, The Insanity File: The Case of Mary Todd Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), 6–17Google Scholar.

28. New York Times, 2Google Scholar.

29. For further discussions about this episode in Mary Todd's life, see Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 608–14Google Scholar; Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 315–50Google Scholar; and Neely, and McMurtry, , Insanity FileGoogle Scholar.

30. Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 368Google Scholar.

31. Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 717Google Scholar.

32. Ross, Ishbel, The President's Wife, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1973), 333–34Google Scholar; Turner, and Turner, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 716–17Google Scholar; and Baker, , Mary Todd Lincoln, 368–69Google Scholar.

33. Chesebrough, David B., “No Sorrow Like Our Sorrow”: Northern Protestant Ministers and the Assassination of Lincoln (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1994), 53–65Google Scholar.

34. For a brief discussion of the reaction to Lincoln's death in the South, see Davis, Michael, The Image of Lincoln in the South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971), 98–104Google Scholar; and Turner, Thomas Reed, Beware the People Weeping: Public Opinion and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 90–99Google Scholar.

35. “Particulars of the Killing of Lincoln and Seward,” Augusta, Ga., Daily Constitutionalist, 04 23, 1865, 2Google Scholar.

36. Kunhardt, and Kunhardt, , Twenty Days, 1Google Scholar.

37. Quoted in ibid., 80.

38. My own research on cultural attitudes toward death and the dead addresses many of these shifting patterns in American culture (see Laderman, Sacred Remains).

39. Kunhardt, and Kunhardt, , Twenty Days, 93Google Scholar.

40. Ibid., 95; also see Shea, John Gilmary, ed., The Lincoln Memorial: A Record of the Life, Assassination, and Obsequies of the Martyred President, (New York: Bunce and Huntington, 1865), 111Google Scholar.

41. “Treatment of the President's Body,” PittsburghDaily Post, 04 22, 1865, 1Google Scholar.

42. Kunhardt, and Kunhardt, , Twenty Days, 120Google Scholar; and Sandburg, , Abraham Lincoln, 735Google Scholar.

43. For one account of many of the activities around the country, see Shea, Lincoln Memorial.

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47. “Account of the Presidents Funeral Train,” New York Times, 04 25, 1865, 2Google Scholar; also see remarks in Sandburg, , Abraham Lincoln, 739Google Scholar.

48. “Report on Body and Funeral,” Cleveland Daily Plain Dealer, 04 26, 1865, 2Google Scholar.

49. Kean, Ellen, Death and Funeral of Abraham Lincoln: A Contemporary Description by Mrs. Ellen Kean (London, privately printed, 1921), 22Google Scholar. (Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield, Ill.).

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51. Ibid., 256–57.

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54. Ibid., 231. For a recent analysis of the religious discourse that appeared in the North after the assassination, see Chesebrough, “No Sorrow.”

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56. In their discussion of the dead king, anthropologists Huntington and Metcalf write that “royal death rites are special because they are part of a political drama in which many people have a stake. Especially in kingdoms in which the state is personified by the monarch, the king's funeral was an event that reverberated with far-reaching political and even cosmological implications” (Celebrations of Death, 122). They also briefly discuss the significance of Lincoln's death in the conclusion of their book.

57. Others who have written on Lincoln's symbolism in death include Bellah, Robert, “Civil Religion in America,” in Beyond Belief: Essays in Religion in Post-Traditional World (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 168–89Google Scholar; Rogin, Michael, “The King's Two Bodies: Lincoln, Wilson, Nixon, and Presidential Self-Sacrifice,” in Ronald Reagan, the Movie, and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and Huntington, and Metcalf, , Celebrations of Death, 206Google Scholar.

58. Shea, , Lincoln Memorial, 103Google Scholar.

59. Ibid., 98.

60. Rogin, , “King's Two Bodies,” 83Google Scholar.

61. Ryan, Mary, “The American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order,” in The New Cultural History, ed. Hunt, Lynn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 143Google Scholar.

62. Kantorowicz, Ernst H., The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 429Google Scholar.

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64. For a recent analysis of this predisposition in 19th-century literature, see Reynolds, David S., Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville (Cambridge, Mass: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989)Google Scholar.

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66. The association of her afflictions with feminine characteristics was a common medical diagnosis in the gendered rhetoric of sickness and disease in the period. For one of the best analyses of these issues, see Ehrenreich, Barbara and English, Deirdre, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women (New York: Anchor, 1979)Google Scholar. On gender and mourning, see Halttunen, Karen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

67. As so many people who have heard or read this paper have remarked, the parallels and differences with the experience of Jackie Onasis Kennedy in the mid-20th century are worth exploring. Her life and recent death, as well as the passing of Richard Nixon, are contemporary case studies that continue to illustrate the relationship between the deaths of national figures and the necessary work of defining and redefining the meaning of America.

68. Sklar, Kathryn Kish, “Victorian Women and Domestic Life: Mary Todd Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet Beecher Stowe,” in Women and Power in American History: A Reader, Vol. I to 1880, ed. Sklar, Kathryn Kish and Dublin, Thomas (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1991), 240Google Scholar.

69. On the history of women and the domestic sphere in American life, see, for example, Welter, Barbara, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Cott, Nancy F., The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman's Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Clinton, Catherine, The Other Civil War: American Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984)Google Scholar; and Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.