The Dream Lincoln Couldn't Shake

Not long before his death, Abraham Lincoln told a small group of friends about a disturbing dream.

In the dream, he wandered through the White House and heard muffled sobbing. He followed the sound into the East Room, where a body lay on a raised platform, guarded by soldiers. Flowers surrounded the corpse. Mourners stood silently nearby.

 

Lincoln asked the guard who had died.

 

“The President,” he said. “He was killed by an assassin.”

 

Lincoln rarely spoke about it publicly, but those close to him noticed he couldn’t shake it. The war was ending. Threats were everywhere. Lincoln knew better than most how fragile his safety was.

 

On April 14, 1865, he was shot at Ford’s Theatre. Days later, his body lay in state in the White House’s East Room—just as it had in the dream.

 

History remembers the assassination. It forgets that Lincoln had seen it coming.