Lincoln lay in state at the White House and the Capitol building for two days. Over 50,000 mourners waited in lines for up to six hours to pay their respects. After the funeral, a hearse drawn by six white horses slowly made its way from the White House to the Capitol Building. Thousands of Union soldiers and 40,000 newly-freed slaves marched behind the coffin while over 100,000 more lined the funeral route.

On Friday, April 21, barely a week after his death, Lincoln's body was put on a train for the long trip back to Springfield, IL, leaving behind the city that he had called his home for the past five years.

“Here was place for no holiday magistrate, no fair-weather sailor; the new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four years, – four years of battle-days, – his endurance, his fertility of resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting. There, by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the centre of a heroic epoch. He is the true history of the American people in his time. Step by step he walked before them; slow with their slowness, quickening his march by theirs, the true representative of this continent; an entirely public man; father of his country, the pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their minds articulated by his tongue.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, eulogy for Abraham Lincoln