 In the cities where the train stopped , 1 @.@ 5 million people viewed Lincoln in his coffin . Aboard the train was Clarence Depew , president of the New York Central Railroad , who said , " As we sped over the rails at night , the scene was the most pathetic ever witnessed . At every crossroads the glare of innumerable torches illuminated the whole population , kneeling on the ground . " Dorothy Kunhardt called the funeral train 's journey " the mightiest outpouring of national grief the world had yet seen . " 
