For months, Lincoln had looked pale and haggard, but on the morning of the assassination he told people how happy he was.
First Lady Mary Lincoln felt such talk could bring bad luck. Lincoln told his cabinet that he had dreamed of being on a "singular and indescribable vessel that was moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore", and that he had had the same dream before "nearly every great and important event of the War" such as the Union victories at
Antietam,
Murfreesboro,
Gettysburg, and
Vicksburg.