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On the night of the presidential election in 1876, a gang of counterfeiters out of Chicago attempted to steal the entombed embalmed body of Abraham Lincoln and hold it for ransom. The custodian of the tomb was so shaken by the incident that he willingly dedicated the rest of his life to protecting the president's corpse.
In a lively and dramatic narrative, Thomas J. Craughwell returns to this bizarre, and largely forgotten, event with the first book to place the grave robbery in historical context. He takes us through the planning and execution of the crime and the outcome of the investigation. He describes the reactions of Mary Todd Lincoln and Robert Todd Lincoln to the theft—and the peculiar silence of a nation. He follows the unlikely tale of what happened to Lincoln's remains after the attempted robbery, and details the plan devised by the Lincoln Guard of Honor to prevent a similar abominable recurrence.
Along the way, Craughwell offers entertaining sidelights on the rise of counterfeiting in America and the establishment of the Secret Service to combat it; the prevalence of grave robberies; the art of nineteenth-century embalming; and the emergence among Irish immigrants of an ambitious middle class—and a criminal underclass.
This rousing story of hapless con men, intrepid federal agents, and ordinary Springfield citizens who honored their native son by keeping a valuable, burdensome secret for decades offers a riveting glimpse into late-nineteenth-century America, and underscores that truth really is sometimes stranger than fiction.
Review:
"Craughwell (Saints Behaving Badly) provides an intriguing glimpse at a macabre but interesting footnote to the story of Abraham Lincoln: the tale of how, on election night of 1876, several Chicago counterfeiters attempted to abduct and hold for ransom the 16th president's corpse. As Craughwell demonstrates, authorities received advance warning, and Lincoln's bones never, in the end, left his Springfield, Ill., tomb — even though the would-be abductors did succeed in wresting the casket from its sarcophagus. In telling this story, Craughwell also provides something of a biography of Lincoln's cadaver, chronicling its long voyage to final rest. After the 1876 attempt, the 'sacred remains' spent 11 years half-buried in a subbasement of the tomb, covered with boards, as a security measure, while thousands of pious citizens paid their respects to the empty sarcophagus above. Then, from 1887 through 1889, the dead president's body lingered in a specially constructed catacomb immediately beneath the sarcophagus room (again, secretly). Not until 1901 — after several prominent Springfieldians opened the casket and verified the identity of its occupant — was Lincoln's corpse permanently installed within his monument beneath several feet of poured cement, never again to be disturbed. Craughwell offers an entertaining account of one of the stranger incidents in American history." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"Grave-robbing is rather a lost art. It is hard to recall a single well-publicized instance since thieves snatched Charlie Chaplin's remains in Switzerland 30 years ago. Medical students seem to enjoy unfettered access to corpses these days, and kidnappers can earn bigger profits from living victims. But Abraham Lincoln, the object of one kidnapping plot in life (Thomas J. Craughwell... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) doesn't mention it, but John Wilkes Booth resorted to assassination only after abandoning his original plan to capture and ransom the president for imprisoned Confederate soldiers), proved an irresistible candidate for kidnapping in death. For one thing, his became perhaps the most venerated corpse in American history. Mourners in city after city thronged his multiple April 1865 public funerals. Easter and Passover sermons likened him to Jesus and Moses. Eulogists compared him favorably to George Washington. The president's widow spoke for many Americans when she wrote of his 'sacred remains' in waging a battle to bury him in the rural cemetery outside their Springfield, Ill., home town, the dedication of which she and her husband had attended years before. Ironically, had Springfield's city fathers prevailed and entombed the martyred president in the bustling heart of the town, the kidnappers would never have been emboldened to hatch their plan. Resting out in bucolic Oak Ridge Cemetery, the 'sacred remains' were an easy target. And ghouls will be ghouls. As Craughwell recalls in this spirited narrative, the town should never have let its guard down. An earlier plot to snatch the corpse had failed only because thieves made off with the wrong skull. And Craughwell shows that a Lincoln plot was afoot as early as 1867. Body snatchers finally violated Lincoln's tomb on election night 1876 — such a contentious day that Republicans at first charged that the desecration was a Democratic plot. But politics played no role. The grave robbers were low-life counterfeiters who hoped only to make quick cash — of the authentic kind — by holding Lincoln's corpse for a $200,000 payoff. In the bargain, they would demand that a notoriously skillful bank-note forger be sprung from the penitentiary so he could rejoin their once-prosperous gang. In the end, their caper turned into black comedy. The conspirators managed to disturb the tomb but lacked the strength to pull Lincoln's heavy casket from its sarcophagus. Caught in the act, they fled the scene so quickly that pursuers nearly shot each other in a vain attempt to capture them. Only later were the failed grave robbers arrested, tried and sent off to prison, serving brief sentences before disappearing from history. Ordinarily, such a story might seem too thin for a book-length treatment. Indeed, at times 'Stealing Lincoln's Body' does show padding. Craughwell devotes an entire chapter to the history of counterfeiting, going back to the age of phony wampum in early New England. On the other hand, a section offering readers everything we ever wanted to know about embalming proves both irresistibly readable and grotesquely relevant. Craughwell brings off the entire enterprise by making readers feel, hear and smell the atmosphere of the fetid Chicago taverns where the crooks hatched their demonic plot — not to mention the creepy interior of the shoddy Lincoln tomb, crumbling all around the family corpses as an aging guard of honor struggles both to conceal Lincoln's body in the dank cellar and to rescue the cheaply made temple for posterity. The book ends hauntingly with the macabre 'official' unsealing of Lincoln's coffin — not once but twice — before each of its subsequent interments. First uncovered for identification purposes in 1887, the remains seemed to witnesses 'somewhat shrunken.' Examined yet again in 1901, the corpse looked like a bronze statue — though, 36 years after the assassination, there was no doubt it was Lincoln. Even his beard was intact. One of the invitees to that final exhumation had the audacity to summon his 13-year-old son from school to stand at his side when the coffin lid came off for the last time. When Fleetwood Lindley died in 1963, he was the last living soul to have looked upon Abraham Lincoln's face. (The coffin now lies under tons of impregnable cement.) Summoning the raw spirit of crime novels and horror stories, as well as the forensic detail of a coroner's inquest, Thomas J. Craughwell has turned the eerie final chapter of the Lincoln story into a guilty pleasure." Reviewed by Harold Holzer, author of 'Lincoln at Cooper Union,' which won a Lincoln Prize, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Thomas J. Craughwell is the author of several books on Catholic history and American popular culture, including Saints Behaving Badly, The Wisdom of the Popes, and Urban Legends.
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Craughwell (Saints Behaving Badly) provides an intriguing glimpse at a macabre but interesting footnote to the story of Abraham Lincoln: the tale of how, on election night of 1876, several Chicago counterfeiters attempted to abduct and hold for ransom the 16th president's corpse. As Craughwell demonstrates, authorities received advance warning, and Lincoln's bones never, in the end, left his Springfield, Ill., tomb — even though the would-be abductors did succeed in wresting the casket from its sarcophagus. In telling this story, Craughwell also provides something of a biography of Lincoln's cadaver, chronicling its long voyage to final rest. After the 1876 attempt, the 'sacred remains' spent 11 years half-buried in a subbasement of the tomb, covered with boards, as a security measure, while thousands of pious citizens paid their respects to the empty sarcophagus above. Then, from 1887 through 1889, the dead president's body lingered in a specially constructed catacomb immediately beneath the sarcophagus room (again, secretly). Not until 1901 — after several prominent Springfieldians opened the casket and verified the identity of its occupant — was Lincoln's corpse permanently installed within his monument beneath several feet of poured cement, never again to be disturbed. Craughwell offers an entertaining account of one of the stranger incidents in American history." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
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