150 Years Ago: April 15, 1865

On this day, April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. At his passing, Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who had pleaded with Lincoln not to go out the previous evening for fear of his safety, uttered the famous lines, "Now he belongs to the ages. . . . There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world had ever seen."

Painting circa 1865|Getty Images

About two weeks before his assassination, Lincoln had a prescient nightmare, which he told to his wife and a few friends three days before his death. Present when Lincoln recounted his dream was his bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon, who later retold what Lincoln said. In the dream, Lincoln wanders the White House, going from room to room hearing pitiful sobbing but finding no living person in sight. Finally he enters the East Room:

Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. "Who is dead in the White House?" I demanded of one of the soldiers, "The President," was his answer, "he was killed by an assassin." Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.

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