ABRAHAM LINCOLN, LITTLE FALLS AND BEYOND

By Jeffrey Gressler

2025 marks both the 165^th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election to the presidency and the 160^th anniversary of his April 15th, 1865 assassination.

Lincoln twice passed through Little Falls, both times by rail, once upright in a passenger seat headed to Washington for his March,1861 inauguration and later, on April 26, 1865, laid out in a wooden coffin enroute back to Springfield, Illinois for burial in his hometown.

Our sixteenth President resonates in Little Falls, both historically and presently. The Gettysburg Address monument that graces the southeast corner of Ward Square is inscribed with Lincoln’s 272 immortal words. The purpose of this present piece of writing is to expand upon these historic events and this monument’s meaning, placement and purpose.

The Republican Party burst into existence in 1854 in the northern states in opposition to the then-dominant Democratic party. The Republicans’ 1860 party platform did not call for the abolition of slavery, only its opposition to slavery’s extension into new western states and territories. Their platform also opposed the right of any state(s) to secede from the Union and supported national financing of railroad construction and other infrastructure projects.

In 1858, Lincoln ran against incumbent Stephen Douglas for his United States Senate seat from Illinois. The two candidates took part in a series of seven debates. Although Lincoln lost this election, the high-profile debates thrust him onto the national stage.

The following 1858 debate quotation defined Lincoln’s core values: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This captures my idea of democracy.”Speaking about slavery and racial relations in 1860, Lincoln also stated: “These men ask for … the same thing: fairness, and fairness only. This, so far in my power, they, and all others, shall have.” And: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln secured the Republican Party’s nomination for President in 1860 and became the first Republican elected president. Most southerners saw his election as a direct challenge to their slave-owning, states’ rights-based culture. Secession was in the air; on December 20th, 1861, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union; ten additional southern states seceded later.

The ultimate irony is identifying the antebellum, slave-owning South with personal freedom. How could any idea of personal freedom be stretched to include the enslavement of fellow human beings? The Confederate flag stood for both slavery and secession, little else.

THE FIRST TRAIN VISIT – LINCOLN BY RAIL TO WASHINGTON

Inauguration day used to take place almost two months later than it now does. Enroute to his March 4th, 1861 first inauguration, Lincoln and a small traveling contingent passed by train through Little Falls at a time when the federal government was on guard against insurrection and possible assassination attempts against the newly-elected President.

As reported in the Herkimer County Journal on February 21, 1861: “… a large and enthusiastic crowd gathered in from the hills about, on Monday (February 18) to get a look at the great man who is soon to assume the management and control of our country’s executive.”

A New York Times correspondent traveling with Lincoln’s train wrote: “The prettiest display seen by the party since leaving Springfield was made at Little Falls. … the church bells chimed most sweetly, presenting a novel and very enjoyable feature to the pleasure of the trip. Several hundred ladies were upon the piazza of the hotel, and as the band played ‘Hail Columbia’ they waved their handkerchiefs in unison.” Village President Seth Richmond then introduced President-elect Abraham Lincoln.

Speaking from the rear of his train car, Lincoln offered the following comments: “Ladies and gentlemen, I appear before you merely for the purpose of greeting you, saying a few words and bidding you farewell. I can only say, as I have said before, that I have no speech to make and no time to make one if I had; neither do I have the strength to repeat a speech at all the places at which I stop, even though other circumstances were favorable. I am thankful for this opportunity of seeing you, and of you to see me. (Applause) And in this so far as regards the ladies I think I have the best of the bargain. (Applause) I don’t make that acknowledgement, however, to the gentlemen. (Laughter) And now, I believe that I have really made my speech and am ready to bid you farewell when the train moves off.”

The Herkimer County Journal went on to report that, “Loud cheering and renewed firing, music and ringing of bells, with the best wishes of an admiring crowd, greeted the departure of the statesman.” And so it went that memorable day as the President-elect made his way through Little Falls towards the nation’s capital in February 1861. A much different mood would grip our community four years later when Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train stopped at Little Falls.

FIRST INAUGURATION, INSURRECTION, WAR, EMANCIPATION

In his first inaugural speech, Lincoln clearly stated that he did not support calls for the complete abolition of slavery; his stated opposition to the extension of slavery into states and territories west of the Mississippi River were fighting words to most southerners. His stated opposition to the right of any state to leave the Union further antagonized southerners. Lincoln also stated that the federal government would not initiate war with  the South. The Confederate attack on Fort Sumpter on April 12th, 1861 is seen as the beginning of South against North hostilities  –  the Civil War lasted from 1861-65. Either directly or indirectly, slavery was the cause of that horrible conflict.

The impact and aftermath of the Civil War cannot be overstated. Estimates of the number of Americans killed range from 650,000 to 850,000, at least 2% of our 1860 population of around thirty million Americans. Around one in every fifty Americans died in the Civil War. Little Falls lost seventy Union soldiers in the War out of an 1860 population of 5989. David Krutz’s book DISTANT DRUMS offers the best account of Little Falls and Herkimer County troops in the Civil War.

Lincoln’s January 1^st, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation called for the end of slavery in the Confederate states as a matter of military necessity; he sought to deny Confederate troops the support services provided by slave labor  –  digging ditches, building fortifications, cooking, hauling, attending wounded soldiers, farming. His ten months later Gettysburg Address redefined the purpose of the deaths of so many Union soldiers.

The great Union victory at the July 1st-3rd,1863 Battle of Gettysburg all but sealed the fate of Confederate states’ rights-fueled dreams of an independent slave owning nation; Confederacy aspirations were torn asunder in the rolling fields and woods surrounding the small southern Pennsylvania village.

Delivered at a cemetery dedication ceremony some four months after that battle, Lincoln’s 272 well-chosen words in his November 19th, 1863 Gettysburg Address in many ways were as important as the Declaration of Independence and Constitution itself, the political timing was flawless. His words called for the complete equality of all Americans, cleansed the Constitution of legalized slavery, put the Declaration of Independence in a new light, and redefined the Union’s Civil War aims. Lincoln saw both himself and the fallen Union soldiers as continuing the work of our Founding Fathers to bring about equality for all Americans.

Author Gary Wills refers to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address at the time of the dedication of a Union burial ground as “an open-air sleight-of-hand” in that his words transformed the central purpose of the Civil War to a higher moral plane, from stopping Confederate secession to fighting for the freedom and equality of all Americans.

The 1917 placement of the Gettysburg Address monument in Ward Square (then Eastern Park) directly connects to the Union soldier monument inside the wrought iron fence enclosure in the center of the park.

REELECTION, SECOND INAUGURAL, SURRENDER, ASSASSINATION

The outcome at Gettysburg and the capture of Atlanta by Union troops propelled Lincoln to reelection for a second term in 1864. His March 4th, 1865 second inaugural address included the following words: “With malice toward none and charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive to finish the work we are in to bind the nation’s wounds, to care for him who has borne the battle and for his widow and orphan  –  to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

The cowardly, soon-to-be political assassin John Wilkes Booth stood near the front of the crowd on that day.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s April 9^th, 1865 surrender at Appomattox Court House in Virginia in effect ended the Civil War. A handful of battles followed Lee’s surrender, but Confederate dreams were all but extinguished on that day.

The Great Emancipator sought not to punish the South for secession and war, instead, he sought to affirm national unity and help the defeated Confederates rejoin the Union and rebuild their shattered lives and economic system without slavery. His untimely April 15^th, 1865 death derailed these ambitions and instead launched the nation on a very different trajectory.

All Americans knew, both white and black, that Lincoln’s role in ending slavery had spawned the murderous hatred that took his life.

Lincoln’s fateful trip to the theater, the pistol shot in the Presidential box, the actor-assassin’s melodramatic leap to the stage and death’s arrival in the back room of the cheap boarding house across the street from Ford’s Theater are well-known to most Americans.

Following the funeral train’s departure from Washington D.C., the next stop was at Philadelphia where Lincoln’s was laid out next to the black-shrouded Liberty Bell in Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution had been signed. Day and night, some 100,000 mourners filed through the chambers to pay their respects to the fallen President.

Ironically, enroute to his 1861 inauguration, Lincoln prophetically stated in Philadelphia in reference to the Declaration of Independence opening lines “All men are created equal…” “If this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle – I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on the spot than surrender it.”

Lincoln’s choice of the military governor of Tennessee Andrew Johnson as his second term Vice-President was an attempt to help persuade the soon to be defeated southerners to peacefully rejoin the Union. His death instead placed a southerner in the presidency; a much different post-Civil War reality emerged. Rather than peaceful reconciliation, forgiveness, and restoration of the Union, northern Congressional Radical Republicans instead chose punishment and federal occupation of the former Confederate states during Reconstruction. President Johnson declared the Civil War over on August 20^th, 1865.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN’S REMAINS AT LITTLE FALLS

In the 1860s, when the nation’s rail system was a tangle of small local lines, transporting Lincoln’s funeral car halfway across the continent was a technical feat. Two dozen different locomotives drew the train, including the General Zenas C. Priest, named for the Little Falls resident and railroad executive. Between Philadelphia and Springfield, Lincoln’s funeral train passed through dozens of cities and towns, including the Village of Little Falls.

At 7:30 PM on April 26, 1865, eleven days after his assassination, Lincoln’s remains with funeral cortege passed by rail through Little Falls on their way to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois. The passing of Lincoln’s funeral train was witnessed by throngs of deeply saddened onlookers who had gathered to pay their final solemn farewell to the President who had sacrificed so much and profoundly changed the nation.

The Herkimer County Journal later reported that: “… and now add that all parties alike belong the sorrow and mourning which this terrible calamity has spread over the land – for in four eventful short years of eventful scenes, of trials such as never before surrounded a Chief Executive, Abraham Lincoln has won alike the hearts of friend and foe.”

Long before the arrival of Lincoln’s funeral train, an immense crowd of village residents and others had gathered at the train depot. The Journal reported: “The buildings were most beautifully festooned and draped with black and white crepe and with scores of flags trimmed with the emblems of mourning.”

Perhaps a million Americans filed past the open coffin at various stops   –  millions more, as much as 1/3 of the North’s population, watched the funeral train pass. In Little Falls, a reception committee of eight ladies offered the following note to Colonel James Bowen, a former Little Falls resident, and General McCollum: “Little Falls, April 26^th, 1865 – Col. James Bowen: Sir: The ladies of Little Falls, through the committee, present these flowers. The shield is an emblem of the protection which our beloved President has ever proved to the liberties of the American people: the cross of his ever-faithful trust in God: and the wreath as the token that we mingle our tears with those of an affected nation.”

The committee of women and three or four gentlemen were admitted to the funeral car to view Lincoln’s remains. Flowers were deposited upon the coffin around which the mournful group stood briefly with sobs and tears before exiting the opposite end of the train car. In the front of the same car were the remains of the President’s son ‘Little Willie’ who passed away in Washington on February 20^th, 1862, from typhoid fever. Willie was but eleven years old.

The Herkimer County Journal reported: “The funeral train consisted of engine, baggage car, and eight coaches, all draped in mourning. … After a stop of about five minutes the train passed slowly away, and the large concourse mournfully dispersed.”

As Lincoln’s funeral train made its way westward towards Springfield, a nation mourned with heavy hearts and troubled minds.

The 13^th Amendment was ratified on December 6^th, 1865 abolishing slavery in the entire nation. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had initiated this outcome. The 1868 14^th Amendment granted citizenship to former slaves; the 1870 15^thAmendment granted African American suffrage.

MONUMENT PLACEMENT

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address granite monument fronted with his 272 words on a bronze plaque was put in place in the southwest portion of Ward Square during a Memorial Day observance in 1917. President Woodrow Wilson had only a few weeks earlier led America into World War I. In 2010, the monument was moved to the southeast corner of the same park to make space for the new American military service monuments.

CONCLUSION

As we pass by the historic Gettysburg Address monument near Benton Hall Academy, let us once again read Abraham Lincoln’s timeless words and reflect upon their meaning. Our sixteenth President’s central role in our nation’s history helps us define who we are and what we believe. His hallowed words urging forgiveness, unity and reconciliation can have renewed purpose in 2025 as Americans seek to uphold our democratic ideals and system of government.

April 26^th marks the 160^th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train passing through and pausing for a brief time in Little Falls. Let us take a moment and both reflect on his immense impact on American history and find renewed application of his spoken and written words.

On literally the last day of his life, April 14, 1865, speaking about the winding down Civil War, Lincoln told his assembled cabinet members: “Enough lives have been sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union.”

Perhaps there are lessons for Americans today in Lincoln’s final words. If he could set aside the desire to punish southerners for their Civil War actions, perhaps we can today find common unifying ground for Americans of all political positions.

It is entirely appropriate to see Lincoln’s 1863 words as tying together our three Ward Square monuments. For it was Lincoln who saw the Civil War soldier as fighting for the equality of all Americans, so too can we see all of America’s war veterans as giving their all for freedom, liberty and equality.

Hopefully, funding can be obtained to both repair the Civil War soldier statue and add a NYS blue and yellow historic marker inside that same wrought iron fence enclosure honoring the role played by Little Falls Union troops in that struggle.

Jeffrey Gressler is a member of the Little Falls Historical Society.

Gettysburg Address
Delivered at Gettysburg, Pa.
Nov. 19th 1863.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

“But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”