East Meadow Library Explores Abe Lincoln and NYC

A surprisingly large and inquisitive audience braved rain and windy conditions to turn out Friday at the and hear Lincoln historian Richard Sloan give a presentation entitled “Abraham Lincoln and his NY Funeral.”

The presentation, in the form of a multimedia slide show and lecture, drew a lively discussion during the Q&A portion which followed.

It details how, on April 29 and 30, 1865, Lincoln's funeral train -- engaged in a multi-city procession from Washington, DC back to Springfield, Illinois -- pulled into New York and was greeted by throngs of people stricken with grief.

Sloan, a resident of Massapequa, long-time student of the Lincoln assassination and a founding member of the Lincoln Group of New York, has given this presentation throughout the region, as well as at locations along the Eastern Seaboard, from Washington to Boston.

For many years the editor of a popular newsletter about Lincoln, Sloan has had articles about the assassination and Lincoln in the Cinema published in books and magazines, including, "Lincoln Legends," in which he is credited with having helped debunk two controversial Lincoln discoveries. Sloan has also appeared on an episode of the PBS series, "History Detectives," which dealt with John Wilkes Booth.

Most recently, his contribution to the book “The Lincoln Assassination: Crime and Punishment, Myth and Memory” has drawn attention. One of 10 contributors to turn their attention to the great Civil War president's assassination in the book, Sloan’s is a unique and convincingly first-person, present tense account of the procession and pageantry which accompanied the funeral tour of Lincoln’s body through Manhattan a few days after he was assassinated.

His account of the procession -- which took Lincoln’s body from a Hudson River depot and down Broadway in lower Manhattan to City Hall Park for viewing, and from there in parade up Broadway to a midtown rail depot -- is drawn from newspapers and other accounts.

It is also the basis for his lecture, which he illustrated Saturday with period music and slides of photographs, news articles and woodcuts used in magazines during the era.

Sloan notes that he’s been interested in the Lincoln assassination “ever since I was thirteen years old,” but it took hold in a unique way for him when he began to accumulate images of the events surrounding the post-assassination tour.

“As a New Yorker, my interest expanded to Lincoln’s NYC funeral, Lincoln’s prior trips to NY, Mrs. Lincoln’s NYC shopping sprees and John Wilkes Booth’s activities in the city,” he added.

In one sense the presentation is an overview, but it is not without anecdotal interest -- for example, Sloan is convinced that in one photograph, taken at Union Square, the young Teddy Roosevelt and his brother Eliot (father of Eleanor Roosevelt) are looking out of the window of their grandfather's mansion.

The presentation is also full of colorful specifics, including the number of members of the choral group on the ferry which brought Lincoln’s body to Manhattan, the color of the horses that pulled his hearse, and the famed buildings of the era which Lincoln’s hearse passed -- including the Astor House, the AT Stewart Department Store and the Barnum Museum.

“This program has incredible geographic, political and political connotations,” noted Jude Schanzer, program director of the East Meadow Library, in introducing Sloan to the audience.