An Incommensurable Grief... Louis Moreau Gottschalk on Lincoln's Assassination

This week marks the 150th anniversary of the final battles of the Civil War, followed all too closely by the anniversary of President Lincoln’s assassination. LPA staff can be blogging this week about performing arts and Abolitionism, plays and films about Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth’s career, or whether the Civil War actually ever ended. But I want to commemorate the anniversary with this contemporary response to the news of Lincoln’s death. We discovered it while researching Touring West. It comes from Jeanine Behrend’s translation of Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s diary.

Gottschalk was a piano virtuoso and composer active in America, the Caribbean and Europe in the mid-19th century. His diary (which is at the Music Division) is primarily concerned with horrible traveling conditions and badly tuned pianos. On this date, he was traveling to California, which, at that time, meant sailing West around Central America.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk on hearing about Lincoln's assassination

April 23, 1865, on board The Constitution, off Baja California.

“A steamer in sight! It is the Golden City, which left San Francisco two days ago. The captain comes on board, and, in the midst of questions from all the passengers who crowd the staircase hurls these words like thunderbolts: Richmond is taken, Lee has surrendered, Lincoln has been assassinated.

“The news, more or less true, which has been transmitted to us since the commencement of the war, has rendered us incredulous. Nothing is more probable than that Lee has surrendered, since, on the morning of our departure from New York, the news of the taking of Petersburg was confirmed—but the death of Lincoln! Some ask for the papers; a passenger has mounted in the rigging and has been requested to read with a loud voice. Alas! There is no longer any doubt Lincoln is dead. We do not know the details of the horrible outrage—the name only of the assassin is mentioned—Wilkes Booth. I remember having seen him play a year ago in Cleveland, I was struck at that time with the beauty of his features, and at the same time by a sinister expression in his countenance. I would even say that he had something deadly in his look…

“I never recollect having seen a more affecting sight than that presented by the immense deck of the Constitution. The sky is blue, the sun resplendent, the sea is calm, all nature seems to smile above our heads, to render the contrast of our grief more striking with the stillness of all that surrounds us. …Around me, rude features of the seamen leave the badly effaced traces of their tears to be seen. A judge, sitting in the corner, his head in his hands, weeps as if he had just lost a father. All the men seem crushed, overwhelmed under the weight of an incommensurable grief…”

Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Notes of a Pianist.
translated by Jeanne Behrend (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1964)