This is an IHeart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories,

the show where America is the star and the American people.

For his inauguration in 1861, Abraham Lincoln took a 13-day train ride from Springfield, Illinois,

to Washington, D.C., facing assassination attempts and a union splitting apart at the seams along the way.

Four years in a Civil War later, he'd take the same trip in reverse under very different circumstances.

Here to tell the story of Lincoln's assassination and funeral train

is Louis Picone, author of The President Is Dead,

the extraordinary stories of presidentials, Final Days,

Burials, and Beyond. Take it away, Lewis. On April 14, 1865, this was Good Friday, and it was also

the first Friday since Robert E. Lee's surrender to General Grant at Appomattox.

This was a very festive and jubilant Washington, D.C., as well as a jubilant Abraham Lincoln.

For his entire presidency, Abraham Lincoln had been fighting the Civil War.

One of his children died too. Willie died while in the White House.

So this was a man whose entire presidency was filled with misery.

And for the first time, he can be happy. He could celebrate. He can be joyful.

So even though it was Good Friday,

which is probably the most solemn day on the Christian calendar, Abraham Lincoln, at the suggestion of Mary Todd Lincoln, decided that evening he was going to go see a comedy play called Our American

Cousin at Ford's Theater.

So he woke up that morning in a good mood, and the people who saw him said that Abraham Lincoln was more cheerful and jubilant than he had been in a long time than probably they had really

ever seen him. He had breakfast with his son Robert Todd in the last months of the Civil War.

Robert Todd had convinced his father and mother to allow him to go into the military

...