In Washington you can walk up Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the U.S. Capitol, the same route followed by Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession on April 19, 1865. Along the way, you will pass Mathew Brady’s old photography studio, which Lincoln visited many times to pose for pictures. At the U.S. Capitol, if you stand at the center of the rotunda, directly below the Great Dome, you will be in the exact spot where Abraham Lincoln’s coffin once rested, and where tens of thousands of mourners passed by to view his body. Nearby, in Statuary Hall, see if you can find the large, bronze sculpture of Jefferson Davis, former United States senator from Mississippi. There is a fine Lincoln exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and, near Ford’s Theatre at the National Portrait Gallery, in a building where Lincoln held his second inaugural ball, you will find an excellent display on the Civil War.
In Springfield, Illinois, you can visit the Old State Capitol where Lincoln served as a legislator, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, his home, one of his law offices, and his tomb, which is far grander than anything Lincoln himself would have ever wanted. Do not leave Springfield without visiting New Salem, the nearby pioneer village where Lincoln worked as a postmaster as a young man.
In Richmond, Virginia, be sure to visit the Museum of the Confederacy and, next door, the White House of the Confederacy, two of the finest Civil War sites in America. The museum displays hundreds of flags, uniforms, firearms, swords, and other relics. The White House looks almost exactly like it did when President Davis, his wife, Varina, and their young children lived there. If you go to Richmond’s famous Hollywood Cemetery, you will discover not only the graves of Jefferson Davis and his family, but those of Presidents James Monroe and John Tyler. And on Monument Avenue stand sculptures of President Davis, Robert E. Lee, and other Confederate leaders.
Near Biloxi, Mississippi, Jefferson’s Davis’s last home, Beauvoir, has been restored after having been damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In Georgia, at the lonely site near Irwinville where Jefferson Davis was captured on May 10, 1865, you will find a monument and small museum.
These are just a few of the places where the Civil War, and the lives of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, unfolded.
Acknowledgments
My wife, Andrea E. Mays, although busy writing her own book on the hunt for the rare, surviving copies of Shakespeare’s first folio, which collected his plays in 1623, seven years after his death, thus saving many of them from being lost forever, read the manuscript for Bloody Times several times and made numerous editorial suggestions and improvements. Our boys, Harrison and Cameron, ages twelve and thirteen, are my top advisors on writing for young people. They are our companions on visits to historic sites, my assistants at book signings, and coaches on storytelling. “Readers want blood,” said Cameron. “And knives,” added Harrison.
My agent, Richard Abate, encouraged me to reach out to a wider audience and write books not only for adults, but also for young people. One of the great pleasures of writing my first young adult book, Chasing Lincoln’s Killer, was to meet so many young adults who share a love of American history. I look forward to meeting more of you through the publication of Bloody Times.
I thank all my friends at HarperCollins for their hard work. I owe special thanks to my editors Phoebe Yeh and Alyson Day for their enthusiasm, support, and excellent work in translating my adult book Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln’s Corpse into the book you now hold in your hands. In the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, they exerted “the last full measure of devotion” in bringing this book to publication. And thanks to Tom Forget for designing the beautiful cover.
I wish that I could thank by name the many librarians, archivists, scholars, and curators who have assisted my research. I must, however, thank my friends at the Library of Congress, the Museum of the Confederacy, the Jefferson Davis home at Beauvoir, and the Papers of Jefferson Davis project for special assistance.
Finally, my father, Lennart Swanson, traveled with me for much of my journey back in time to Civil War America. In a way, he began this book by taking me on an unforgettable trip to Gettysburg when I was ten years old. We have been traveling on that path together ever since.
James L. Swanson
Washington, D.C.
November 2010
Copyright
Bloody Times: The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Manhunt for Jefferson Davis
Copyright © 2011 by James L. Swanson
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EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062036087
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James L. Swanson, Bloody Times: The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Manhunt for Jefferson Davis
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