The journey of Abraham Lincoln’s body from Washington to Springfield, Illinois, was one of the most remarkable events in American history. Over the course of nearly two weeks, a funeral train traveled through the heart of the North, carrying the President’s casket across the landscape he had worked so hard to save. Millions of Americans stood by the tracks in silence, often in the dead of night, to catch a glimpse of the passing train. It was an unprecedented act of collective mourning. The train became a mobile monument, a funeral procession that allowed the nation to process the trauma of the war and the loss of its captain. By the time the train finally reached Springfield, the entire North had participated in a communal act of remembrance that transformed Lincoln from a politician into a near-mythic figure of the American spirit.