Stealing Lincoln's Body by Thomas J Craughwell

Stealing Lincoln's Body by Thomas J Craughwell

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 19th 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 honoured their native son by keeping a valuable, burdensome secret for decades offers a riveting glimpse into late-19th Century America, and underscores that truth really is sometimes stranger than fiction.

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.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780674024588
ISBN 10	0674024583
Title	Stealing Lincoln's Body
Author	Thomas J Craughwell
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Harvard University Press
Year published	2007-04-15
Number of pages	288
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable