Customer Reviews

Stealing Lincoln's Body

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

It was an incident that I had never heard of or read about anywhere. Indeed, when I asked about a dozen friends and relatives not one of them had ever heard about it either. On Election Night 1876 Terrence Mullen and Jack Hughes attempted to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln from the sarcophagus inside the Lincoln Monument at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Il. It was all part of a bizarre plot concocted by a two-bit counterfeiter known as Big Jim Kennally. "Stealing Lincoln's Body" recalls this somewhat obscure tidbit of history. This is a fascinating tale that will go a long way to help the reader understand just what was going on in these United States back in 1876 and in the years that followed.

Perhaps the most important fact that you will come across in "Stealing Lincoln's Body" is that in 1876 nearly half of the money in circulation was counterfeit. I found this to be absolutely incredible! This was a serious problem that was wreaking havoc with the nation's economy as we attempted to bounce back from the Civil War. One of the most accomplished counterfeiters of that era was a man named Benjamin Boyd who hailed from Cincinnati, OH which at that time was recognized as the counterfeit capitol of the nation. It was his arrest and incarceration in October, 1875 that would eventually lead to the plot to steal the body of President Lincoln.

"Stealing Lincoln's Body" reveals the intimate details of how the plot to steal the President's body and hold it for ransom was hatched. You will be introduced to Elmer Washburn, chief of the Secret Service and to detective Patrick Tyrrell who were both instrumental in foiling the plot to steal Lincoln's body. And you will meet John Carroll Power, the custodian of the Lincoln Monument and the group of men who were part of a secret society that would come to be known as "The Lincoln Guard of Honor". In addition, you will discover the fascinating secret about the actual whereabouts of President Lincoln's body in the years following the attempt to steal it. You will also learn a bit about what was going on in the very sad life of Abraham Lincoln's widow Mary. She would never get over the assasination of her husband. In addition, you will gain some new insights into the life of the Lincoln's only surviving son Robert Todd Lincoln. Robert would have to be classified as somewhat of an enigma and his life certainly would take any number of strange twists and turns along the way.

I found "Stealing Lincoln's Body" to be an extremely engrossing read. I also would be remiss if I failed to mention the 20 pages of photographs included here that really seemed to bring these events to life for me. Thomas Craughwell has done a fine job of bringing to light an important piece of American history. Recommended!

A nice slice of Abraham Lincoln's story not covered by most of the vast number of books devoted to the great president. What became of Mr. Lincoln's body after April 15, 1865 is the domain of this interesting book. Along the way, a reader picks up arresting bits of information on such subjects as counterfeiting money, the U.S. Secret Service, and embalming the dead.

I recall from when I was young my reading a Life magazine article (1963) on the last man alive who saw Abraham Lincoln's face. It struck me then as highly interesting, and I am glad to have now read Mr. Craughwell's book--the tale remains odd, slightly macabre, but a significant one for those who enjoy American history.

(I rate as excellent the book's clean but evocative jacket as designed by Annamarie Why.)

This is a fascinating story, and in the process of telling it the author explores lots of interesting stuff about the politics, sociology, and lifestyles of people of the periods discussed. The GOOD part is, lots of that is very, very interesting and unexpectedly amusing. The BAD part is, he shares EVERY detail with a kind of obsessive dot-every-eye-cross-every-tee density of facts that sometimes gets in the way of the narrative and makes this a slower, denser read than it could have been. But in a story that begins with Lincoln's last breath and ends with the death in modern times of the last person to see his face when he was re-buried for the last time after decades of turmoil in between, you kind of expect to be pummelled with detail a bit...and some of the side-trips, notably the telling of the story of the Pullman railroad coach company and its founder and the famous strike (told because Lincoln's son was Pullman's lawyer) are interesting, too. SO....if you can plod through some of the dense jungle of facts, you'll find this book intriguing and enlightening and very, very interesting...but a light summer read it is not.

Many people do not know the historical story of the burial of Abraham Lincoln. The body itself was moved numerous times. In 1876 the body was almost abducted to be held for ransom. As fascinating as the assassination of Lincoln, the body and its whereabouts is an even more amazing story.

I learned a lot from this book and the tragic retelling of these events.

(Ultimately the body was buried in a cage and covered with thousands of pounds of cement--23 people viewed the corpse's head to ensure it was Lincoln)

Its said that a million visitors go to see the Lincoln burial site.

This is a must read!!!

American history is literally packed with oddball characters and bizarre storylines so strange that no one would ever believe them -- if it weren't for the documentary proof. "Stealing Lincoln's Body" is another excellent example of this genre we might call "Stranger than Fictionistory."

If you enjoyed books like "The Devil in the White City" and "The Shakespeare Riots," you won't want to miss this little gem. On one level, it's about a gang of criminal misfits who tried to steal Abraham Lincoln's body from his tomb in Springfield, Illinois, in order to set free an imprisoned comrade.

On a higher level, it's about the vast criminal underworld that circulated around America during the mid- to late-19th century. We're talking counterfeiters, murderers, con men, thieves, roughnecks, prostitutes and grave robbers. In some areas, like the immigrant neighborhoods of west Chicago, the boundary line between "respectable citizen" and conniving rogue was often non-existent. Tavern owners frequently collaborated with felons when they weren't collaborating with the cops or corrupt local politicians. You've heard of "The Wild West." This book could be subtitled "The Wild Midwest."

Along the way, we learn fascinating details about 19th century burial practices, the birth of the Secret Service and rapid advances in counterfeiting technology, not to mention the grizzly details of grave robbing for profit. If you have the patience to get through Craughwell's long "set up" (about 90 pages), the payoff is definitely worth it as the story progresses from the marbled halls of Washington to the dank hovels of working-class life in 1870s Illinois.

No, Craughwell isn't the greatest popular historian on Earth and he does sometimes stumble, but for the most part this is one incredibly fun read and it certainly would make a fantastic movie. I nominate Jack Nicholson for the lead role. Enjoy!

I had just finished American Brutus and was hungry for more on the subject when I came across this charming and extremely well told narrative of the plot to steal Lincoln's body. Mr. Craughwell has a pitch perfect ear, capturing both the tragedy of the assassination and the rollicking comedy of a young country where enterprise and illegality often overlapped. Counterfeit wampum, the tricks of the embalming trade, the excesses of tabloid journalism...this is the kind of book that gets you hooked on history for life and delights those of us who got hooked so many years ago.

Lincoln is my favorite president and I have learned things that I did not know about his life--more accurately, his death and the years after he was shot. I am not much of a history buff for the most part, but this book has been intriguing and very much of a page turner! Well researched and reads like a thriller.

The first half of this book was a bit of a rough start because of what I found to be initially overly simplistic writing (I doubled checked to see if this was a book for young adults) and the somewhat awkward introductions of major themes and bumpy segues between supporting material. For example, author Craughwell's initial references to the Secret Service and Operatives (Secret Service agents) come out of nowhere, without a proper build up to the agency or its staff. In addition, weaving of the supporting dramas and history around the attempt to steal Lincolns body - the role of counterfeiters; the development of embalming techniques - is not handled well, and I felt as if I was reading a separate tract on those two subjects, rather than supporting material for the main drama. Until about half-way through the book, it seemed as if all this information was filler to push the work beyond 200 pages.

Fortunatly for the reader, the pace and coherence of the writing picks up, as Craughwell exhibits greater skills in weaving the various threads of the history together, as he brings the numerous players to center stage - the plot conspirators and the law enforcement officials who pursued them; the Lincoln family, particularly Lincoln's wife Mary and their son Robert; the lawyers and other players in the courtroom drama; the caretaker of Lincoln's monument in Springfield, Illinois. Craughwell's second half comeback, so to speak, leaves the reader with a satisfying sense of having learned about the plot to steal Lincoln's body, the efforts to prevent future attempts, the role of the various individuals involved, and the historical context in which the events occurred. The book is a great supplement for Lincoln history buffs.

If history is a mighty river, this book is about one of the smaller eddies. Books of this type can be great fun and provide a view that you seldom see. We all know the story of Lincoln's murder, state funeral and the train to Springfield. What we do not know is the story of Lincoln's body, how Springfield tried to capitalize on it and how it came to a final resting place.
Along the way, the author treats us to a short history of the Secret Service, Counterfeiting, Lincoln's wife and son. This is included in a look at the underworld in Illinois, manners and morals. These little side trips place the main story in the larger picture providing a more complete story.
The main story is what happened to Lincoln's body from 1865 to 1901. The attempt to steal the body, while important, is only part of the story. Springfield's attempts to make a tourist attraction and Mary Lincoln's plans collide at once. Robert Lincoln is detached but involved making him a question mark for history. Lincoln's associates, Springfield's leading citizens, members of the underworld, fear, greed and respect all combine in history that reads like a novel.
This is an easy and fun read. The author has a very readable style that can move from subject to subject with few problems. He has the ability to produce word portraits of the people that make them understandable. This is well worth reading for Civil War buffs, Lincoln admirers and those that enjoy history.

Bungling thieves who fail in an attempted heist, and bungling cops who eventually catch them, might seem to be improbable subjects for a detailed book on the whole botched affair. There is no lack of interesting detail, however, in _Stealing Lincoln's Body_ (Belknap / Harvard). Thomas J. Craughwell has illuminated a bizarre crime, and has also cast light on many subjects that would seem unconnected to it but all of which are brought in to play their parts. The crime itself was a petty affair, not just a failure; it was hardly even begun before it was halted. Craughwell's spirited story, however, takes in the history of counterfeiting and embalming in America, grave robbing, the founding of the Secret Service, the rural cemetery movement, the Pullman strikes, and much more. It is a tribute to Craughwell's narrative skill that this story of a small, ghoulish, thwarted crime can hold all the digressions and show how the diverse themes are all connected.

Craughwell's story starts with Lincoln's death. Even if there had been no grave-robbing, Lincoln's was among the best travelled and most fussed-over of cadavers, so there is a description of the history of embalming here, and of the body's travels to Springfield, Illinois. Then Craughwell gives us the history of American counterfeiting, an activity that was busily pursued long before we had our own currency. The reason that this is a justifiable digression in the story is that it was counterfeiters that plotted the theft of Lincoln's corpse, and the Secret Service that took charge of bringing them in. A big crook hired minor crooks for the job of getting Lincoln's corpse for ransom, and they took on a small-time crook to help them in their effort, only he was a stool-pigeon for the Secret Service which had been put on alert after the first conspirators fled. Thus, on election day in 1876, the conspirators took the tour of the Lincoln mausoleum, with the custodian fully aware of who they were and why they were there. They returned that night, ill-equipped to saw through the one padlock that secured the place, and when they finally got in and broke into the sarcophagus, they found the lead and cedar coffin too heavy to carry. They were relieved from having to do so by the Secret Service which was lying in wait for them in stocking feet so that their footsteps didn't echo in the tomb chamber. Unfortunately, one of the detectives accidentally fired his pistol, alerting the would-be grave robbers who got away. This left the lawmen nothing to do but engage in a futile hunt within the cemetery, and along the way mistakenly shoot at each other, with aim fortunately as bad as the rest of their night's doings. No one was hurt.

The perpetrators were eventually caught and imprisoned in Joliet prison. The wild story of the attempted theft in the graveyard was buried beneath the bigger story of the attempted theft (by both Republicans and Democrats) of the Tilden / Hayes election. Also, the story of the tomb robbers was simply too incredible for the public to believe. Lincoln's body did not rest easily for some further decades. The custodians within the secret fraternal organization the Lincoln Guard of Honor decided to keep it safe by secretly burying it in the basement of the mausoleum, allowing tourists to continue to be moved by viewing an empty sarcophagus. (Rumors flew around Springfield that the tomb was empty.) Mary Todd Lincoln joined him there after her death in 1882. The custodians opened the coffin in 1887 to make sure it was really Lincoln in there and then reburied it. There was a final reburial in 1901, and the style of reburial was borrowed from that of George Pullman, who because of his relations with labor at his company was one of the most despised men in America and who fretted that his own grave would be robbed. The Lincolns, with the blessing of their son Robert, were encased in lead, then in a cage of steel, and then in tons of cement. It's a good bet that they will rest in peace now, but the story does not quite end there. The sarcophagus that had previously held the body was being held for history's sake when the tomb was repaired in 1930. The sarcophagus was left outside, and was smashed to bits by vandals, parts of it carried off, possibly for souvenirs. Perhaps it was as close to robbing the graves as the vandals could get. Craughwell's wide-ranging, brightly written history puts this and other bizarre incidents into context. The story of Lincoln postmortem is surprisingly full of lively incidents and hilarious, macabre folly.