Stealing Lincoln’s Body
This is a great book about what happened to Abraham Lincoln after John Wilkes Booth pulled the trigger. It is absolutely chock full of useful and interesting tidbits about Lincoln’s last night, his funeral in Washington, the trip back to Springfield, Ill., and the attempts to steal his body for ransom. The volume goes into detail about Lincoln’s autopsy and how the body was treated and prepared for the funeral and long train ride. It also describes the ordeal the body went through once it got to Springfield. Initially Lincoln was placed in a small receiving vault in Oak Ridge Cemetery. Here controversy comes in to play as Illinois politicians wanted to bury the president in Springfield itself. This was opposed and eventually the Lincoln Memorial was built in Oak Ridge. Then in 1867 a Springfield attorney decided to steal Lincoln’s body and hold it for ransom. The plan fizzled when two of the men who were supposed to help backed out due to their honesty. The biggest plot occurred in the 1870s and the memorial was actually broken into and the sarcophagus containing Lincoln’s body was damaged. Unfortunately for the grave robbers Lincoln’s coffin was too heavy to handle. The men were discovered and hightailed it out of the cemetery. They were later caught, tried and sent to Joliet Penitentiary. To guard against having this happen again a group of men took on the task of protecting the body of the slain president, removing him from the sarcophagus and hiding him in the basement behind a pile of lumber. Here Lincoln remained for a year until he was buried in a shallow grave in another part of the basement. When Mary Lincoln died in 1882 a massive funeral was held for her and then she was placed in the memorial. However, after everyone left Lincoln’s protectors took her body and placed it in a shallow grave next to her husband. Eventually the bodies were placed back in the main part of the memorial and in 1901 the coffins were moved once more to where they sit today under 10 feet of concrete. I did get a bit confused at one point when the author went into length on counterfeiting in the United States. I couldn’t figure out why he was going into such detail until the light bulb went on. He was writing like Victor Hugo in Les Miserables where Hugo spends 50 pages introducing a character who may or may not play an important role in the story. In Craughwell’s story he was introducing a counterfeiter who was the mastermind behind the break-in and his helpers —brilliant! The author includes fascinating little stories like who saved Mary Todd Lincoln from serious injury or even possible death when she was returning from France and lost her balance, almost falling down a staircase on the ship she was sailing — the Sarah Bernhardt. When Fleetwood Lindley died in 1963 he was the last person alive who had gazed on Abraham Lincoln’s face when the coffin was opened before being placed in its final resting place in 1901. This is a great book and I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you have an interest in Lincoln and want to know about what happened to him after the assassination this is the book for you. Blake A. Magner
Blake A. Magner is the Book Review Editor of Civil War News. He makes his living as an editor, writer, cartographer and photographer of Civil War history. He is author of Traveller & Company: The Horses at Gettysburg.
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Illustrated, notes, bibliography, index, 250 pp., 2007. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 79 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138, $24.95 plus shipping.