'News of Lincoln's death was withheld from Seward. The doctors feared that he could not sustain the shock. On Easter Sunday, however, as he looked out the window towards Lafayette Park, he noticed the War Department flag at half-mast. "He gazed awhile," Noah Brooks reported, "then, turning to his attendant," he announced, "The President is dead." The attendant tried to deny it, but Seward knew with grim certainty. "If he had been alive he would have been the first to call on me," he said, "but he has not been here, nor has he sent to know how I am, and there's the flag at half-mast." He lay back on the bed, "the great tears coursing down his cheeks, and the dreadful truth sinking into his mind." His good friend, his captain and chief was dead.'
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, p.744.
