Ward Hill Lamon
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Ward Hill Lamon (January 6, 1828 - May 7, 1893) was a personal friend and frequent bodyguard of the American President Abraham Lincoln. Lamon was famously missing the night Lincoln was assassinated, having been sent by Lincoln to Virginia.
His association with Lincoln started in the 1850s, when he became a law partner and traveled with Lincoln. The two had a law office in Danville, Illinois up until 1858. While Lamon had Southern sympathies and his hatred of abolitionism set him apart from Lincoln, they remained friends, despite their very different characters. Lamon joined the then-young Republican Party and campaigned for Lincoln in 1860.
Lamon was a physically imposing man, and often guarded Lincoln. He accompanied Lincoln when the President-elect sneaked into Washington on a midnight train ride through Baltimore. Lamon later supervised security at the White House and was aware of many death threats against the President. He often slept on the floor outside Lincoln's bedroom door, wrapped in a blanket and armed to the teeth. Lincoln appointed Lamon United States Marshal of the District of Columbia; he served until June 1865. Lamon was not in Washington on the night of Lincoln's assassination, being on assignment in Richmond.
Lamon is known for the re-telling of one of Lincoln's dreams of an assassination, frequently cited as evidence that Lincoln believed in the paranormal. Typically, only a partial account of the dream is offered:
- "About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers, 'The President,' was his answer; 'he was killed by an assassin.' Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since." (Lamon 1895, 115-116)
It is worth noting that, according to Lamon, Lincoln didn't believe the dream was of his own death:
- Once the President alluded to this terrible dream with some show of playful humor. "Hill," said he, "your apprehension of harm to me from some hidden enemy is downright foolishness. For a long time you have been trying to keep somebody—the Lord knows who—from killing me. Don't you see how it will turn out? In this dream it was not me, but some other fellow, that was killed. It seems that this ghostly assassin tried his hand on some one else." (Lamon 1895, 116-117)
Lincoln, of course, was a highly controversial figure, and many people wanted him dead. He was also superstitious, and had other odd dreams throughout his time in the White House. Some contend, therefore, that Lincoln's assassination dream cannot be taken as evidence of prophetic dreams. However, there were eerie similarities between his dream and what actually transpired shortly thereafter, including the fact that Lincoln's body lay in state in the East Room. Further, the fact that Lincoln downplayed to Lamon the significance of the dream does not mean that Lincoln was not deeply troubled by it. His assertion that "it was not me, but some other fellow, that was killed" was illogical, considering that his dream was about the President being assassinated, and he—not some other fellow—was the President.
After Lincoln's death, Lamon published several works about the late President. The most famous is a biography that was largely ghostwritten by Chauncey Black, the son of former Attorney General of the United States Jeremiah Black. The book, published in 1872 by James R. Osgood and Company of Boston under the title "The life of Abraham Lincoln; from his birth to his inauguration as president", contained many revealing allegations and pieces of personal information about Lincoln that were deemed scandalous by nineteenth century society, and it was thus a financial failure. Lamon himself penned a second volume about Lincoln after falling out with Black, though it was deemed to be of poor quality and remains unpublished in the collections of the Huntington Library to this day. Lamon authored several smaller anecdotes and excerpts about Lincoln for newspapers and magazines. Shortly after his death Lamon's daughter collected and edited many of his unpublished writings about Lincoln into a posthumous biography of the president. This book is generally received with higher regard to its authenticity by the scholarly community than the earlier volume by Lamon and Black.
Today, in the town of Danville, Illinois, Lamon's former house is a museum in Lincoln Park that is open to the public during the warmer months.
