On April 19th, 1865 a eulogy was held in Hanover Square in Syracuse to honor President Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated less than a week earlier. Two days later, Lincoln’s body was placed on a train that would carry it to Springfield, Illinois to be laid to rest. On April 26, the funeral train passed through Syracuse. It stopped in the city for only a brief time, but tens of thousands of people gathered at Vanderbilt Square Station to pay their last respects to the beloved president.
Charles B. Sedgwick gave the eulogy, which you can read in its entirety below. One line in particular gives an accurate summation of the sentiment the country was feeling at this time, “He went at the call of duty to the post of danger, and although wrecked, his life is by no means lost.”
Sedgwick was born in born in Pompey, NY on March 15th, 1815 and attended Pompey Hill Academy and Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y. where he studied law. In 1848 he was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Syracuse. He was elected as a Republican to the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congresses (March 4th, 1859-March 3rd, 1863) where he was the chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs (Thirty-seventh Congress). After an unsuccessful candidacy for renomination in 1862, he engaged for the next two years in codifying naval laws for the Navy Department at Washington, D.C. and, afterwards, resumed the practice of law in Syracuse, N.Y., where he died February 3rd, 1883. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery.
Bibliography: Charles B. Sedwick information – http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=S000221