Posted on 05/11/2007 7:15:20 PM PDT by BGHater
When it comes to Abraham Lincoln, apparently there's no such thing as enough. After countless books about his boyhood, his presidency, the hunt for his killer and yes, even his feet, maybe it was time for a new book devoted to what happened to Lincoln's body after he was done using it.
As its title implies, "Stealing Lincoln's Body" by Thomas J. Craughwell (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) is devoted to Lincoln after, as Craughwell writes in the first sentence, "the last tremor of life" left his body.
Craughwell details a little-known plot to steal the 16th president's remains from his tomb in Springfield, Ill., in 1876 — 11 years after he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
The plan, hatched in a Chicago tavern, was to take the coffin from the tomb, put it in a wagon, haul it 200 miles north to the Indiana Dunes and hold it until the state of Illinois paid $200,000 ransom to get it back.
The plot was doomed from the start, though, in large part because the criminals weren't very bright.
"They really were knuckleheads," said Craughwell, a Chicago native who now lives in Connecticut.
The ringleader was James "Big Jim" Kennally, a convicted counterfeiter and co-owner of a Chicago tavern called The Hub. The Secret Service, established precisely because counterfeiting was a huge problem at the time, knew that The Hub was a favorite watering hole for counterfeiters.
Enter Lewis Swegles, a small-time crook — and not such a good one at that — who by this time was working as a Secret Service informant.
Kennally and his cohorts asked Swegles if he wanted in on the heist of Lincoln's body, to which Swegles reportedly replied: "I'm the boss body snatcher of Chicago."
Today, a line like that might raise questions. At the time, though, there were plenty of medical schools eager to get their hands on cadavers. And they didn't ask a lot of questions about where their suppliers got them.
So Swegles had himself a job. He tipped off the feds and the two groups — crooks and cops — boarded the same train bound for Springfield on Nov. 6, 1876. Kennally didn't make the trip.
At the cemetery, the Secret Service agents and a couple of Pinkerton detectives they'd brought along hid and waited for Swegles to give them the word that the crime was in progress.
Meanwhile, the grave robbers and Swegles walked to the tomb.
"There was no night watchman ... and the custodian of the tomb lived in Springfield, two, three miles away," Craughwell said. "The only security, if you call it that, was a single padlock."
As for Lincoln's body, it was above ground, inside a sarcophagus sealed, not with cement, but plaster of Paris. When the robbers broke into the tomb and opened the sarcophagus, Swegles signaled the agents to move in.
If the crooks were a hapless Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, it was about to become clear they were up against the Keystone Kops.
Either before he started running across the lawn to capture the crooks or as they were running, a nervous Pinkerton detective cocked his pistol.
"It went off," said Craughwell. "In a quiet cemetery in the middle of the night it sounded like a cannon shot."
The robbers dropped their crowbars and saws and ran away. Not knowing the crooks were long gone, the lawmen searched the darkened cemetery. Before long, they were shooting at each other. Perhaps not surprisingly, their aim was as bad as their judgment and nobody was hit.
Meanwhile, the crooks scurried to the one place they should have avoided: The Hub. That's where they were picked up a couple days later.
None of this made much of a splash, Craughwell explains, because it took place on the night voters cast their ballots in the presidential race between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden — a hotly contested race that wasn't decided until the next year.
"In some cities the Lincoln break-in didn't get any coverage," said Craughwell. "And in some cases (newspapers) printed the story but they told their readers it wasn't true."
The attempt to steal Lincoln's body has been covered before. The first time was in 1890, when the custodian of the tomb wrote his own book, and most recently in 1990, with Bonnie Stahlman Speer's book, "The Great Abraham Lincoln Hijack."
But Craughwell's book shows there still is a hunger for anything to do with Lincoln. And just two years before the 200th anniversary of his birth, interest seems to be intensifying.
Craughwell acknowledges that if it weren't for Lincoln, a book about a bungled grave robbery wouldn't be quite so interesting — for the simple reason that Lincoln has a hold on people like nobody else in American history.
"People admire Washington but they love Lincoln," he said.
Bob Bender, senior editor at Simon & Schuster, which has published several books about Lincoln, agrees.
"He has been a best-selling subject since probably the month after he died .... (and) it's picking up. You are going to see all of the Lincoln books come back on the market in the next two years."
In fact, there's an old adage in publishing that the way to ensure a book is a best seller is to write about Lincoln, dogs or doctors — which prompted one author to title a book about publishing in the 1930s, "Lincoln's Doctor's Dog."
"The only requirement," Bender said, "is you have to have something fresh to say."
Let’s see, interest is coming back in Lincoln for what reason?
hope, war, ideals, leadership, big gov’t, power, republican, constitution...??? sell book??
I know only one thing for sure: that (1) a huge amount of money is going to be spent celebrating the Lincoln Bicentennial, and 2) the results are going to be disappointing.
how interesting....i’ve never heard about this
I agree. Very well done. A holograph?
There were only a few like him in all of history.
So which one of those is the one you're sure about? ;-)
Explain to blacks again why they erroneously believe in the Democrats’ ideals? In time for a national election where a black is running on that platform?
WARNING: Don’t read if squeamish:
I recall seeing an 1950s Life Magazine that had a picture of the last man alive who saw Lincoln’s corpse. After Lincoln’s son took control of the situation, the casket was hidden under the caretaker’s home. Eventually it was put into its current location and tons of cement poured on top of it. Before this was done, again according to LIFE, the casket was opened to verify it still contained the man’s body. It did. The face, according to this witness, bore a sad, melancholy expression.
(1) or (2) or both.
I remember this, too. It was about 1896, and Lincoln’s face was intact, except that the eyebows are partly missing. No wonder since they must have pumped his body with embalming fluids. It was seen by many thousands in an open casket in Philadelphia and New York, and took more than a week to get home. The article had a line that haunts me: something like the last man still alive who had seen the face of Abraham Lincoln. That meant something special to me. My great-grandmother was a child during the civil war and had spent time in a cave inside of a besieged Vicksburg. Her uncle, a Choctow indian, was kiled during the battle. So as late as WWII, the Civil War was a living memory, and when my great-aunts spoke of “the War,” they weren’t talking about World War II. I guess the South is the last part of the country to have a sense of history, despite the efforts of the New Age to reduce reality to myth. Anyway, in 1940 Abraham Lincoln stood as close to me in time as Franklin Roosevelt does today.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
“All 23 of the people who viewed the remains of Mr. Lincoln have long since passed away. The last one was Fleetwood Lindley who died on February 1, 1963. Three days before he died, Mr. Lindley was interviewed. He said, ‘Yes, his face was chalky white. His clothes were mildewed. And I was allowed to hold one of the leather straps as we lowered the casket for the concrete to be poured. I was not scared at the time but I slept with Lincoln for the next six months.’ Mr. Lindley was 75 when he died and 13 when he had viewed the body. He had been the only child to do so.”
http://members.aol.com/RVSNorton/Lincoln13.html
***The attempt to steal Lincoln’s body has been covered before. The first time was in 1890, when the custodian of the tomb wrote his own book, and most recently in 1990, with Bonnie Stahlman Speer’s book, “The Great Abraham Lincoln Hijack.” ***
I remember seeing a real old B movie about this, made possibly back in the late 40’s or 50’s. Can’t remember the name though.
**I recall seeing an 1950s Life Magazine ***
I remember that article also. It also mentioned that Lincoln’s face had been whitened with chalk as the skin had turned very dark.
“The color of an old saddle” is what I remember reading. Lincoln with a black face. Now that is fitting, isn’t it.
I don’t think so .... the library was behind glass and the battle scene was projected onto the glass...I think the actor was on a stage under the seats ...Disney does the same thing on their Haunted House ride .... anyway, something like that ...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.