Ward Hill Lamon

Ward Hill Lamon (January 6, 1828 - May 7, 1893) was a personal friend and 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. While Lamon had southern sympathies and attacks against 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 physically imposing and guarded Lincoln. He accompanied Lincoln when the president elect sneaked to Washington on a midnight train ride through Baltimore. Lamon later supervised security at the White House, as other plots against Lincoln were hatched, sleeping by Lincoln's bed-chamber. Lincoln appointed Lamon marshall 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.

Lincoln's dream of his own assassination was related to Lamon, who himself related it in a book, well after the event, Lincoln's story as Lamon related it is worth telling:

"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."

Of course, as a highly controversial figure, many people wanted to kill Lincoln, and he was superstitious, had other odd dreams throughout his stay in the White House, and this cannot be taken as evidence of prophetic dreams.

See also: Gettysburg Address for a grainy image of Lamon with Lincoln.

After Lincoln's death Lamon published several works about the 16th President. The most famous is a biography that was largely ghostwritten by Chauncey Black, the son of a legal associate of Lamon. The book contained many revealing allegations and pieces of personal information about Lincoln that were deemed scandalous by nineteenth century society and 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.

External links and references

• A site on Lamon (http://www.tulane.edu/~latner/Lamon.html)
• mrlincolnswhitehouse.org on Lamon (http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/templates/display.search.cfm?ID=61)