How did people respond to Lincoln's assassination ?

The Confederate soldiers still at War reported in their diaries that the beaten-down men, emotions blunted from seeing so much carnage, hardly reacted, "though some mourned". Southern men mourned the death of the Union President.
 
The OP posted quite an open ended question so I may be a little off target here but these are my thoughts.
I think this quote probably says it all.
When the news of Lincoln's death first reached the public, the reactions were as varied and visceral as the reactions to his life and career. Many people mourned — some even sought out his bloodied clothing and other relics. But others, in both the North and South, celebrated and reveled in the president's death. And many people simply didn't believe it was real.

I think what we need to remember is that rumours were faster than the telegraph, it took a long time for the truth to filter through to people, some telegraph messages were apparently sent that claimed the President was alive and well and for some people it was just another rumour that was doing the rounds, people had heard similar rumours which had claimed that General Grant had died or that Secretary of War Edward Stanton had been killed and they probably thought this was just another piece of gossip.
When I read the OP's question I thought perhaps that there would be parallels between the publics reaction to the assassination of Lincoln and JFK but I realise that any comparison is useless because the JFK assassination was immediately placed in the public's consciousness through modern media, nobody was left in any doubt about how and when JFK had died.
My point being that the news of Lincolns assassination was initially blunted because of the rumour mill which in turn made it very difficult to confirm the assassination, so in that respects perhaps the trauma or excitement was not immediate and as shocking as perhaps it was with the JFK assassination. I also suspect that people had become somewhat desensitized to death, killing and horror, maybe they were a lot tougher emotionally than we are today and nothing could shock them, not even the death of a president.
 
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