Lincoln was interested in Spiritualism and had his own exceptional human experiences including premonitions of his death.
Lincoln’s White House Séances
Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits (Facts on File Inc. 1992), writes that Lincoln had an interest in Spiritualism that might have influenced his politics. His wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, was also deeply interested in the subject. After the death of their son Willie, Lincoln had séances held to try to contact the boy’s spirit.
While Lincoln was President, he had séances given by the famous mediums of the day including Cora Maynard and Nettie Colburn who both claimed credit for the Emancipation Proclamation. Maynard said Lincoln wrote it with the help of her spirits. Colburn claimed that she went into a trance and informed him the Civil War would not be over until the slaves were freed. Historians find these claims unlikely and refuted the claim by Cora Richmond, another medium, that Lincoln and Congress’ Reconstruction Committee asked her to advise them.
Lincoln’s Premonitions
Before Lincoln’s 1860 re-election, he saw his own vision in mirrors several times. He saw two images of himself. One was very pale and disappeared when he looked at it. Mary believed that this was a sign he would not survive his second term.
Ten days before his assassination, he had a precognitive dream which he journalized.
He fell asleep and started to dream and felt an uneasy stillness. He heard sobbing and imagined he arose from bed and walked downstairs. He wandered from one room to another, yet, he saw no one, but heard the weeping.
When he reached the East Room, he saw a catafalque with a body on top and soldiers stationed around it as guards. There were many mourners in the room, looking upon the body. The face was covered. When he asked one of the soldiers who was upon the catafalque, the reply was that it was the President who had been assassinated. A loud expression of grief from the throng woke him up. Lincoln wrote he was eerily “annoyed” by the dream.
The night before the assassination, Lincoln told a member of his cabinet about the dream. The day of the tragedy, he told W. H. Crook, his bodyguard, that he had dreamt about his assassination three nights in a row. Crook begged him not to go to the Ford Theater, but Lincoln had promised Mary they would attend.
When the Lincolns left for the theater, Lincoln said “Good-bye” to Crook, not the usual “Good night.”
The rest is history.
