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A Day of Mourning

By Elizabeth Keckley

This is a letter from a woman who was a friend and seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln. She was a rather close friend of the Lincoln's and could be found at the White House almost daily. Receiving an invitation just hours after President Lincoln died, this friend and ex-slave penned the terrible experience of her visit that day:

" "When [Mrs. Lincoln] became a little quiet, I asked and received permission to go into the Guests' Room, where the body of the President lay in state. When I crossed the threshold of the room, I could not help recalling the day on which I had seen little Willie lying in his coffin where the body of his father now lay. I remembered how the President had wept over the pale beautiful face of his gifted boy and now the President himself was dead. The last time I saw him he spoke kindly to me, but alas! The lips would never move again. The light had faded from his eyes, and when the light went out the soul went with it! What a noble soul was his–noble in all the noble attributes of God. Never did I enter the solemn chamber of death with such palpitating heart and trembling footsteps as I entered it that day. No common mortal had died. The Moses of my people had fallen in his hour of triumph...When I entered the room, the members of the Cabinet and many distinguishing people were grouped around the body of their fallen chief. They made room for me, and approaching the body, I lifted the white cloth from the white face of the man I had worshipped as an idol...There lurked the sweetness and gentleness of childhood, and the stately grandeur of godlike intellect. I gazed long at the face and turned away with tears in my eyes and a choking sensation in my throat. Ah! never was a man so widely mourned before. The whole world bowed their heads in grief when Abraham Lincoln died."