As the president’s body was transported across the continent, Americans gathered in cities and towns, on prairies and hilltops, at train depots and along anonymous stretches of track, to say goodbye. Cowboys on the high plains removed their hats as the train rumbled past, bound for Washington, D.C., where the chief executive’s remains would lie in state in the East Room of the White House and then the Capitol Rotunda. Thousands of people turned out in Iowa towns that had only hundreds of residents to pay their respects to the passing train. Tens of thousands gathered in Omaha at 3 a.m. to honor the cortege. In Morrison, Ill., a town of barely 5,000 residents, an estimated 16,000 onlookers said goodbye to their president. Floral arrangements lined both sides of the train tracks leading into dozens of communities. The deceased president’s dedicated train fell well behind schedule as the sprawling crowds that swelled around it from coast to coast forced the conductor to slow up constantly.
Virtually every publication and public figure in the country intoned on the greatness of the man. Their consensus was that their president had died well before his time. He had been a friend to all and a force for stability in an uncertain age. Cities as large as New York and San Francisco considered building monuments to him. Dozens of towns across the country’s vast midsection sanctioned shrines of their own.
“It is believed to be the most remarkable demonstration in American history of affection, respect, and reverence for the dead,” an unnamed New York Times editorialist wrote of the response to the president’s death. The president’s life was an unfinished one and so was his life’s work.
“From the moment that he was called to serve until the last hour of his life, he was building the America of his faith and dreams. For those who must take up his unfinished task, he will stand as an inspiration, a courageous, unshaken presence, a standard-bearer who never lowered the colors,” the San Francisco Chronicle declared when news of his death broke.
“Our whole nation is bound together in the bond of a common grief,” the Episcopal Bishop of New York sermonized before the packed-in pews at St. John the Divine. Protestants, Catholics, and Jews alike had ventured up to Manhattan’s Morningside Heights neighborhood to honor a man the Bishop called a brother to the nation. “If I could write one sentence upon his monument, it would be this—he taught us the power of brotherliness,” the Bishop said as he prayed that the nation could one day find another leader as noble in spirit as the one who had just left them.
Once the president’s body reached Washington, an official period of mourning followed. His flag-draped coffin remained in place for a week before venturing back to the president’s hometown. Flags remained at half-mast. Buildings were swathed in black. Virtually every major American city held a memorial in the president’s honor as his body was commended in the sure
