Lincoln's Horse

When Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, joyous citizens decorated Abraham Lincoln's horse, Old Bob, with flags and led him triumphantly through the streets of Springfield. A week later, on April 14, Lincoln was shot and died the next day, and on May 5 Old Bob was decorated again, this time in a black mourning blanket, and marched through Springfield for the last time as part of Lincoln's funeral procession. Horses and their care carried important cultural meaning in Lincoln's day, and while a neighbor recalled that Lincoln kept his own horse and also fed and milked his own cow, the horse-related work fit accepted custom even among his Southern-background neighbors in pre-Civil War Illinois. Lincoln's bodyguard said he was passionately fond of fine horses, his opponents mocked his awkward appearance in the saddle, yet he was apparently a skilled rider who matched Gen. George B. McClellan's horsemanship at Civil War troop reviews, and years later Gen. Ulysses S. Grant called him a fine horseman after seeing him handle Grant's own mount, Cincinnati. According to next-door neighbor James Gourley, Lincoln loved his horse well, and over the years he owned Tom, Belle, Old Buck, and finally Robin, whom he nicknamed Old Bob to distinguish him from his son Robert, Young Bob. Old Buck and especially Old Bob carried him over many miles of Illinois prairie when he was a circuit-riding lawyer, although another lawyer's description of Lincoln riding an indifferent, raw-boned horse probably referred to Old Buck, since others remembered Old Bob as a pretty horse of bright reddish brown. When Lincoln visited Springfield in 1836, while still living in New Salem, his horse strayed or was stolen, and he placed a newspaper advertisement for a large bay horse with a star on its forehead, marked by harness, about eight years old, that trotted and paced.

Springfield, Illinois · United States