Original Items. Only One Set Available. This is a very nice pair of items to complement any Civil War or Presidential collection, an original silk April 15, 1865 Mourning ribbon for President Abraham Lincoln and a circa-1900 reprint of the New York Herald April 15th, 1865 newspaper which shows enough wear to pass as an original, but it even has advertisements dating into the 1890s and has an article titled “Valuable Souvenir” in which it describes that the newspaper is a fac-simile of the original paper from that date.

The mourning ribbon is silk and reads:

WE MOURN
THE
NATION’S LOSS
ABRAHAM
LINCOLN.
April 15, 1865.

The ribbon has some heavy wear and material loss due to its fragile silk construction. It measures 2 x 5¼”. The back of it is inscribed Wanted in pencil.

The newspaper is a double-sided front page, so there are four pages total, but as mentioned it is a circa 1900 facsimile made as a souvenir piece. The original issue of the Herald did not feature a portrait of Lincoln, and there are articles on the back noting that this is not original to 1865. When folded to only show the front page, it measures 18 x 22½” and does have some heavy tearing along creases which does really give it the appearance of an original, but again please do note that this is a reproduction newspaper from around 1900.

Taken together, the original April 15, 1865 mourning ribbon and circa-1900 New York Herald facsimile form a visually strong and historically layered display. The ribbon’s fragile silk construction and period inscription provide a direct connection to the national mourning that followed Lincoln’s assassination, while the later newspaper illustrates the enduring public memory of the event decades afterward.