The Funeral of President Lincoln, New York, April 25th, 1865, Passing Union Square

Soldiers on foot, and horses draped in black cloth, pull an ornately decorated funeral car bearing the coffin of Abraham Lincoln through Union Square watched by crowds of pedestrians. Lincoln's body lay in state in New York's City Hall on April 24th and 25th, 1865. After the president's assassination on April 15th, three weeks of mourning ceremonies took place in a series of fourteen cities, the coffin carried by train between them, before burial in Springfield, Illinois on May 4th. In New York, public viewing took place on April 24th and 25th, with the coffin then taken taken on to Albany.

The New York firm of Currier & Ives grew from a printing business established by Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888) in 1835. Expansion led, in 1857, to a partnership with James Merritt Ives (1824–1895). The firm operated until 1907, lithographing over 4,000 subjects for distribution across America and Europe with popular categories including landscape, marines, natural history, genre, caricatures, portraits, history and foreign views. Until the 1880s, images were printed in monochrome, then hand-colored by women who worked for the company.