"Dome of City Hall, Scene at Midnight" Obsequies of Abraham Lincoln, NYC.
This image was originally published on page 128 of the Obsequies of New York, (1866) by the Common Council of the City of New York. It is believed to be a faithful depiction of the events of Midnight on Monday the 24th of April 1865.

The drawing shows how the coffin of Abraham Lincoln was taken to New York City Hall, where an elaborate black velvet dais had been prepared to receive it atop of the staircase under the rotunda. It was while preparations were being made to receive the estimated 500,000 mourners gathered at city hall that the New York photographer, Jeremiah Gurney, took the only known post-mortem photograph of Abraham Lincoln. This act so enraged Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton that he ordered Major General Dix to destroy the prints and plates.

At 1:00 P.M. on the 24th, the public was admitted and New Yorkers filed past the casket in City Hall for the rest of the day. The crowd number was at its greatest at midnight, when, as the bells were tolling the hour, a male choir of about seventy Germans sang the Ode by Horace, Integer vitae, (Blameless Life). Over 150,000 mourners filed past the open casket for a final glimpse of Lincoln.

At 12:40 A.M., on Tuesday (25th), the doors to city hall were closed. At 1:00 P.M., the appointed pall-bearers, all sergeants, attired in the light-blue uniforms of the Veterans Reserve Corps, stepped forward, and to the tolling of the bell and the tap of the drum, bore the narrow black reliquary down the curved stairway, out to the esplanade, and placed it gently in the magnificent catafalque.
The Obsequies of the City of New York, the volume from which this print derives, was a printed record of the city's Lincoln funeral services and eulogies published in bound volumes for distribution by the Common Council of New York to libraries, schools and other institutions. The volume's release was opposed and vetoed by the Democratic Mayor of New York City, C. Godfry Gunther, who was, in turn, overridden by the New York Board of Aldermen and Councilmen.

Provenance: Acquired at auction 1996.

ZFC Important Flag

Sources:


Valentine, David T., Obsequies of Abraham Lincoln, in the City of New York, New York Edmund Jones & Co., 1866.
Kunhardt, Dorothy, & Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Twenty Days, Castle Books, Secaucus, 1977

Lincoln's Funeral in New York, The Abraham Lincoln Blog, 13 December 2011, from: http://abrahamlincolnblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/lincolns-funeral-in-new-york.html

The Funeral Train, Mr. Lincoln and New York, 13 December 2011, from:
http://www.mrlincolnandnewyork.org/inside.asp?ID=29&subjectID=2

Chapter Six, Mayor Gunther Presided at Lincoln Obsequies but Vetoed Their Publication, Correction History, 13 December 2011, from: http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/gunther/gunther06.html

Image Credits:
Zaricor Flag Collection