Diary of Orrin Brown, New Bern, North Carolina
Wednesday–Apr. 19th
We had a pretty heavy thunder storms in the night it lasted about two hours. We were all called out today and our names taken together with our Co. Regt. and Corps so we could get our discriptive Roll. We heard a few days ago that Johnson had surrendered and Jeff Davis was captured but that is proved to be untrue. I feel a little better today. We have had a very pleasant day with a gentle S. wind. We drew our cup of coffee and 1/2 loaf soft Bread again tonight. I read 4 Chapt. today.
The Library of Congress had an excellent online resource in their 2009 exhibition “With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition”. Lincoln’s Long Journey Home begins today, 19 April 1865.
Abraham Lincoln’s long journey home began with a historic funeral procession from the White House to the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. Large crowds viewed the procession from sidewalks along the mile-and-a-half route. Spectators occupied windows, porticos, rooftops, and all elevated places along Pennsylvania Avenue. The procession, headed by a detachment of “colored troops” included President Andrew Johnson, senators, members of the House of Representatives, Lincoln’s two surviving sons, soldiers, and maimed veterans, among others. The late president’s body was placed in the Rotunda under the Capitol dome, where he would lie in state as a mournful nation paid its respects.
Read More:
- Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln by Edward Steers Jr (Univ Press of Kentucky, 2001)
- Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War by Michael Vorenberg (Knopf, 2025)
- Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox by Caroline E. Janney (University of North Carolina Press, 2021)
- Sherman’s March Through the Carolinas by John Gilchrist Barrett (Univ North Carolina Press, 1956)
- Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman by Robert L. O’Connell (Random House, 2014)
- The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns by Joseph T. Glatthaar (New York University Press, 1985)
- The Memoirs Of General William T. Sherman by W.T. Sherman (Library of America, 1990)
Watch Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln, 2012 (Blu-ray) based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals (Simon & Schuster, 2005).
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