 While Federal troops combed the rural area 's woods and swamps for Booth in the days following the assassination , the nation experienced an outpouring of grief . On April 18 , mourners waited seven abreast in a mile @-@ long line outside the White House for the public viewing of the slain president , reposing in his open walnut casket in the black @-@ draped East Room . A cross of lilies was at the head and roses covered the coffin 's lower half . Thousands of mourners arriving on special trains jammed Washington for the next day 's funeral , sleeping on hotel floors and even resorting to blankets spread outdoors on the Capitol 's lawn . Prominent abolitionist leader and orator Frederick Douglass called the assassination an " unspeakable calamity " for African Americans . Great indignation was directed towards Booth as the assassin 's identity was telegraphed across the nation . Newspapers called him an " accursed devil , " " monster , " " madman , " and a " wretched fiend . " Historian Dorothy Kunhardt wrote : " Almost every family who kept a photograph album on the parlor table owned a likeness of John Wilkes Booth of the famous Booth family of actors . After the assassination Northerners slid the Booth card out of their albums : some threw it away , some burned it , some crumpled it angrily . " Even in the South , sorrow was expressed in some quarters . In Savannah , Georgia , where the mayor and city council addressed a vast throng at an outdoor gathering to express their indignation , many in the crowd wept . Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston called Booth 's act " a disgrace to the age " . Robert E. Lee also expressed regret at Lincoln 's death by Booth 's hand . 
