Lincoln Funeral, Invitation to the Springfield Funeral

Description

Dignitaries is Springfield decided to have Lincoln buried there before Mary Lincoln had made her decision where to bury her husband – Chicago being the major contender. 

On 20 April, a public meeting named a “Committee on Arrangements,” a day after the Springfield City Council had appropriated $20,000 for funeral expenses (it would later rise above $35,000).  On 21 April the Committee met at the State House.  It was on this day that close Lincoln Springfield friend Ozias M. Hatch boarded the funeral train and probably let Springfield know that both Mary and Robert Todd Lincoln had designated their city for the final resting place for the 16^th President and insisting on Oak Ridge to be the final resting place.

The Committee then had this invitation printed for “relatives and personal and loving friends and neighbors of our late lamented Chief Magistrate,” still hoping and still building an in-town burial vault. 

A space just below the date and above the printed cursive invitation verbiage was left to write in the invitee’s name; here it is blank (most likely kept by the printer as a mournful souvenir).  The Committee “deemed it not inappropriate to instruct us to express to you an earnest hope that you may join with them in paying the last earthly tribute of respect to his mortal remains….”

Very good, even with a ½” cellophane tape at one edge and some water tiding at the bottom; the blank pages also show soiling and tiding.

(Lincoln Funeral Invitation). “Springfield, Illinois, April 21, 1865” (caption).  Octavo, 7-3/4” x 5-1/8”; 1(3)p.; black mourning border; entirely printed in black ink.  Signed in type by Jesse K. Dubois and sixteen others, all on the “Committee (of Invitations).”