Outdoor landscape CDV of President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral hearse in Chicago, Illinois, ca. 1 May 1865. Presented on a horizontal-format mount featuring a double-ruled border. The verso displays an elegant backmark for S.M. Fassett’s New Gallery, 114 & 116 South Clark St., Chicago, accompanied by a faint period pencil notation reading "Lincoln."

An extraordinary photograph capturing the nationwide outpouring of grief following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The horizontal street view resolves the monumental, custom-built funeral car parked along a dirt thoroughfare, flanked by blurred onlookers and municipal buildings in the left background. The magnificent hearse is a masterpiece of Victorian mourning culture, featuring a massive, intricately carved canopy draped in heavy black velvet festoons, decorative white satin trim, and an ornate center oval silver sunburst shield. Towering over the roofline are eight massive, cascading black ostrich plume pompons, matching the eight-horse hitch tasked with drawing the martyred president through the city.

Following his death in Washington, Lincoln’s body traveled on a legendary 1,600-mile funeral train journey back to Springfield, Illinois. The train arrived in Chicago on 1 May 1865, where the coffin was transferred to this spectacular, custom-constructed hearse built specifically by the city’s leading artisans for the occasion. Samuel M. Fassett, one of Chicago's premier pioneer photographers, rushed his heavy camera equipment into the streets to capture this precise view of the vehicle before it joined the massive procession toward the courthouse, where over 125,000 citizens waited in lines stretching for miles to view the body. Fassett distributed these cards immediately following the procession to a public desperate for a tangible token of mourning. Original, non-copy horizontal street views documenting Lincoln's funeral in the West are scarce, representing a poignant moment of early photojournalism in America.

Very good. The albumen print retains exceptional tone with strong contrast and excellent clarity. The mount remains structurally flat, clean, and untrimmed, showing only faint, honest age-toning and very minimal edge dusting near the corners.