SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - At Abraham Lincoln's death, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton declared, "Now he belongs to the ages," but the meticulous, 150th anniversary funeral procession his hometown presented Saturday proved how profoundly the prairie city still considers the slain president its own.

Thousands of people, including many in period costume, gathered at the Old State Capitol, where the 16th president lay in state, to pay tribute to the simple, country lawyer who saved the Union and thrust the nation toward abolishing slavery.

Ranks of soldiers in Union blues and pallbearers, including several direct descendants of those who accompanied Lincoln's casket in 1865, retraced the route from a downtown train station to the old capitol square, where the coffin was taken from a replica hearse and placed on a catafalque during opening ceremonies.

Drums pounded out a funeral march and many of the 1,250 Civil War re-enactors strode by while a costumed chorus sang the "Star-Spangled Banner," and a man in a top hat with a black mourning sash trailing from it ran kid gloves over the coffin to prepare it for a bouquet of flowers.

At the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln served in the Legislature and in 1858 riveted a deteriorating union with his "House Divided" speech, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner opened the weekend's activities, declaring that Lincoln returned to Springfield a hero for saving the nation and setting its future course.

"His legacy has withstood the test of 150 years, and our love for him has only grown stronger," the Republican said.

The re-enactment brought onlookers from far and wide, including many men donning top hats and women in hoop skirts carrying parasols. Even a century and a half later, some felt compelled to attend.

"Lincoln is a magnet to draw all types of people together for the common good, and we need some common good in our country with all the upheaval lately," said Bob Churchill, of Riverton, referring to the unrest over police shootings around the nation.

It was a natural place to be for Noah Vaughn, a Springfield native steeped in Lincoln from childhood visits to the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg National Park and Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., where Lincoln was fatally shot.

"Lincoln is just a big part of our lives," said Vaughn, who was at the train station with his wife, Megan, and daughters Klaire, 8, and Kennedy, 5. "This is about his legacy and honoring everything he meant to our country and what he means to Springfield."

The nation lost a leader, while in Springfield, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Catholic Diocese of Springfield said in his opening-ceremony invocation, residents grieved for "not only an esteemed and respected statesman, but their beloved friend and neighbor."

The period pageantry was juxtaposed with bottled-water sales, onlookers sipping gourmet coffee, and a sea of camera phones stretched above heads to catch glimpses of the action. Before presenting to Rauner a ceremonial coin his country minted for the occasion, Paolo Rondelli, ambassador from San Marino to the U.S., even turned his camera phone on the throng for an image to send home to the southern European country.

The Great Emancipator's hometown has a checkered history on race. A 1908 race riot spawned the birth of the NAACP, the nation's oldest civil-rights organization and, 99 years later, on this same capitol square, another politician who had been a little-known state legislator, Barack Obama, announced his intention to become the nation's first black president.

Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame noted in his keynote address that on April 11, 1865, two days after the Confederate surrender, John Wilkes Booth made up his mind to kill Lincoln after he heard the president say blacks should have at least limited voting rights.

As much as Martin Luther King and others who were slain during the 1960s push for equality, Burlingame said, "It is appropriate for us in the 21st Century to regard Abraham Lincoln as a martyr to black civil rights."