Word of Ellsworth’s death reached Washington very quickly. Among those deeply moved was Dr. Thomas Holmes, a New York physician who had been experimenting with embalming. Holmes used his connection with Secretary of State William Seward to gain access to the White House. There, he found President Lincoln in tears. Ellsworth had once worked as Lincoln’s law clerk in Springfield and had accompanied him on the tense inaugural train ride to the capital.
Holmes asked for permission to embalm Ellsworth’s body so it could be returned to his family. At the time, embalming was almost unknown in the United States. Railroads only agreed to transport dead bodies that were either embalmed or placed in sealed Fisk metallic coffins, which were rare and prohibitively expensive due to wartime shortages. Lincoln, unfamiliar with the process, agreed.
Ellsworth’s body was brought back up the Potomac River aboard the steamer James Gray and taken to the Washington Navy Yard. His remains were then placed in an engine house, a symbolic gesture, as many of his men had been recruited from the firehouses of New York. There, following an autopsy, Holmes performed the embalming procedure. The results were striking. Ellsworth’s features were preserved so well that when Mary Todd Lincoln saw him, she whispered to her husband that Ellsworth looked as if he were only sleeping.
Lincoln asked that Ellsworth be laid in state in the East Room of the White House. Around six hundred guests, including politicians, military officers, and foreign dignitaries, attended the funeral. The peaceful appearance of Ellsworth’s body made a lasting impression. For the first time, the American public began to understand the possibilities of embalming as a way to preserve dignity and create meaningful farewells.
Dr. Holmes went on to embalm more than four thousand soldiers and officers during the war, earning him the title “Father of American Embalming.” Although the technique had been introduced earlier by French chemist Jean Nicolas Gannal, it had never taken hold in the United States until war made it a necessity. Another Frenchman, Dr. Jean Pierre Sucquet, had developed a more effective formula using zinc chloride, which was later licensed in the United States by a Manhattan dentist named Dr. Charles Brown.