Abraham Lincoln’s legacy was of profound significance as he paved the way for the abolition of slavery and was one of the most influential politicians of his time. Lincoln became the 16th President of the United States, but unfortunately, he was soon assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. After his death, Lincoln’s former law partner and friend Ward Hill Lamon told a famous story about the president’s premonition of his death, reported HISTORY.
Lamon shared the full story behind this mysterious theory. A few days before his assassination on April 14, 1865, Lincoln shared his latest dream with a small group that included his wife Mary Todd and Lamon. Lincoln described the visuals of his dream in which he said that he walked into the East Room of the White House to find a covered corpse guarded by soldiers and surrounded by a crowd of mourners.
Out of curiosity, Lincoln asked one of the soldiers who had died, and the soldier replied, “The president. He was killed by an assassin.” Another interesting point revealed by Lincoln was that the corpse he had seen in his dream did not resemble his— his dream, however, gave a potent sign that something bad was supposed to happen to him.
Historians have refrained from buying into Lamon’s story. The story was published in the 1880s, nearly 20 years after the assassination. Lamon claimed to have reconstructed the incident on the basis of the notes he made in 1865. But to many, it seemed odd that neither he nor Mary Lincoln mentioned the dream after the president’s murder – making it less credible for historians to buy into.
Whether Lamon was right about Lincoln’s story depends entirely on the discretion of the historians but one undeniable fact is that Lincoln was heavily invested in deciphering his dreams. A glaring example of his curiosity could be found in the 1863 letter to his wife, who, at the time, was in Philadelphia with their 10-year-old son Tad. Lincoln had written that Mary had better “put Tad’s pistol away” as he “had an ugly dream about him.”
However, this was not the first time that President Lincoln dreamt of his death, as per HISTORY. After the 1860s election, he saw a double image of his face reflected in a mirror in his Springfield, Illinois, home. Out of the double image, one was his real face and the other was a faint, ghostlike version. His superstitious wife was deeply troubled by her husband’s account. According to her, the sharper image was a sign that the president would serve out his first term. The ghostlike image, however, indicated that he would be renominated for a second term, but would not live to complete it.
The final straw in this death premonition of Lincoln came when his cabinet reported that on the morning of his assassination, the president told them he’d dreamt of sailing across an unknown body of water at great speed – hence referring that life was coming to a close for him. According to his cabinet, Lincoln had revealed that he had seen the same dream repeatedly on previous occasions before any major event of the Civil War. These theories, however, do not confirm that Lincoln predicted his death.
