Personal Mourning
Mourning lapel watch belonging to Mary Lincoln, the president's widow. She used this onyx watch as her personal timepiece for the rest of her life.
I feel as tho' I had lost a personal friend.
–Sidney Fisher, on viewing Lincoln's body in Philadelphia
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on Good Friday. That enabled many to find a spiritual and personal connection to his death. Some viewed Lincoln's murder as atonement for the sins of the nation after years of war and bitterness. Writers like Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed their pain and admiration in poetry and prose. Countless Americans wore pins, lockets, badges, and rings as public expressions of mourning and memory.
