Lincoln's First Inaugural Address - Journey To Washington

Journey To Washington

An entourage of family and friends left Springfield with Lincoln on February 11 to travel by train to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration. This group included Lincoln's wife, three sons, and brother-in-law, as well as John G. Nicolay, John M. Hay, Ward Hill Lamon, David Davis, Norman B. Judd, and Edwin Vose Sumner.

For the next ten days Lincoln traveled widely throughout the North, including stops in Indianapolis, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany, New York City, and south to Philadelphia, where on the afternoon of February 21 he pulled into Kensington Station. Lincoln took an open carriage to the Continental Hotel, with almost 100,000 spectators waiting to catch a glimpse of the president-elect. There he met Mayor Alexander Henry, and delivered some remarks to the crowd outside from a hotel balcony. Lincoln continued on to Harrisburg.

During the trip, Lincoln's son Robert was entrusted by his father with a carpetbag containing the speech. At one stop, Robert mistakenly handed the bag to a hotel clerk, who deposited it behind his desk with several others. A visibly chagrined Lincoln was compelled to go behind the desk and try his key in several bags, until finally locating the one containing his speech. Thereafter, Lincoln kept the bag in his possession until his arrival in Washington.

Because of an alleged assassination conspiracy, Lincoln traveled through Baltimore, Maryland on a special train in the middle of the night before finally completing his journey to the capital.