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| Artemus Ward In 1857, Charles Farrar Brown became
the local editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and began to write
articles about an itinerant showman named Artemus
Ward. Later moving on to Vanity Fair in New York City, Brown's humorous
commentary of the news was admired and enjoyed by Lincoln. "With
the fearful strain that is on me night and day," he told his
Cabinet, "if I did not laugh I should die..."
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| Cover
of "Artemus Ward - His Travels" by Charles
Farrar Brown |
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| Charles Farrar Brown |
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| Weddell House
On his way to Washington in February of 1861, President-elect Lincoln
stayed over-night in Cleveland. On February 15, Lincoln stood on the
second floor balcony of the
Weddell House Hotel and spoke to a large crowd.
"A devotion to the constitution,
to the union and to the laws, to the perpetual liberty of the people of
this country. It is, fellow citizens, for the whole American people and
not for one single man alone to advance a great cause... If all do not
join now to save the good old ship of the Union this voyage, nobody will
have a chance to pilot her on another voyage."
A plaque marks the site now occupied by the
Rockefeller Building at the corner of West
6th and Superior.
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| Interior of the
Weddell House Hotel |
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| The Weddell House
Hotel, Cleveland, Ohio |
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| Academy of Music
In November of 1863, John Wilkes Booth
played the lead role in Shakespeare's Richard III on the stage of the
Academy of Music. The theater was located on Bank Street (West 6th), a
block north of the Weddell House.
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| Program from the Academy of Music
production of "Richard III" starring
John Wilkes Booth - reputedly Booth's last stage performance
prior to assassinating Abraham Lincoln 17 months later. |
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| The Cleveland
Academy of Music |
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| Lincoln Funeral
On the journey to Springfield in April
of 1865, the funeral train carrying the assassinated President stopped
in Cleveland. A hundred thousand mourners stood in the rain and paid
their respects on the city's Public Square.
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| The pagoda-like
catafalque erected in Cleveland's Monument Square (now Public
Square), for Lincoln's funeral service. |
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| Headlines from The
Cleveland Plain Dealer reporting on the April, 1865 Lincoln
funeral procession in Cleveland. |
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| John Milton Hay
John Hay held the position of assistant
personal secretary to President Lincoln. After marrying the daughter of
a wealthy Clevelander, he became a resident of the city. Hay co-authored
the ten-volume,
Abraham Lincoln: A History. He served as Ambassador to Great Britain and
Secretary of State. In July of 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt
attended Hay's funeral. The archangel Michael looks down at the grave
site in Lake View Cemetery on Cleveland's eastern border.
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| John Hay's grave
site at Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio. |
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| John Milton Hay |
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