By Dale Thomas
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2008, All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in the spring of 2002.
On the way to Washington, three days after his 53rd birthday, President-elect Abraham Lincoln stopped overnight in Cleveland for his only visit to the city. (Three days later in Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated President of the Confederacy.) To feel the immediacy of the times, the story is best told directly from the pages of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which was then an evening newspaper. These accounts are quoted over a two-day period beginning on Friday evening, February 15, 1861.
Continue reading “Lincoln Visits Cleveland”