The Plot to Steal Lincoln's Body Quiz

Answer: Springfield, Illinois

"Now he belongs to the ages," said Secretary of War Edwin Stanton when Lincoln breathed his last, but he belonged to the country, too. His funeral train made stops in ten cities before it reached Springfield, each time lingering for a procession, a public viewing, and a funeral ceremony; even so, there was great disappointment in cities that had not made the list. Towns along the route of the funeral train devised their own send-off ceremonies for the train as it moved through: twenty-seven towns built archways for the train to pass under, and others arranged for groups of thirty-six young women, wearing white dresses and black sashes, to stand by the tracks and represent the states of the Union.

In Springfield itself, capital of Illinois and the home of Lincoln's old law office, most buildings were draped in black bunting by the time the train arrived.

Answer: A quiet, leafy cemetery outside the city

Oak Ridge Cemetery is located two miles from downtown Springfield, an early exemplar of the rural cemetery movement -- a trend away from crowded (and often neglected) city churchyards. The pretty landscaping, open-air feel and quiet atmosphere appealed to Mary Lincoln, who later said that Lincoln had asked her to "lay [his] remains in some quiet place." The town fathers of Springfield wanted their most famous son in a more central location -- even going so far as to build a suitable hilltop tomb near a downtown mansion they'd signed a contract to buy.

In order to force them to respect her wishes, the widow of the President had to call on the Secretary of War and eventually make threats to move the body to Chicago or to Washington DC -- with "violent efforts" if necessary.

A pretty tomb with a marble sarcophagus was finally erected at Oak Ridge, near a tall obelisk and a memorial center.

Answer: Counterfeiting money

Benjamin Boyd was an engraver, a good one, but he saw no reason to limit his talents to good works. It was much more lucrative to engrave detailed, high-quality plates corresponding to federal and local banknotes, and to rely on a network of "shovers" to insert these counterfeits, at high profit, into the local economy. He was part of a pressing national problem. In 1865, of all the paper money circulating in Union states, approximately half was counterfeit -- and a lack of public trust in the money could lead to catastrophe for the government using it to fund the Civil War. The impending crisis led to the birth of the Secret Service, a group of government lawmen charged with protecting the currency (they were not given presidential protection duties until after the 1901 assassination of President McKinley).

Boyd's arrest was a major Secret Service triumph, but it left his network of distributors and shovers (including Big Jim Kennally) high and dry. Naturally, he decided to get creative ...

Answer: To a prostitute

Thomas Sharp, a newspaper editor, was the head of this gang, based thirty miles north of Springfield. In preparation for the crime, they stayed in Springfield for some time, opening a bar and dance hall in a rented building -- and joining more innocent tourists in inspecting Lincoln's tomb at Oak Ridge. They were cheered by the fact that Lincoln's sarcophagus was above ground, and even more delighted by the fact that the door to the tomb had but one padlock. They planned to break into the tomb on the eve of Independence Day, in July, and bury the body in a gravel bar two miles north of Springfield.

All was going well for our anti-heroes until June, when Thomas Sharp got a bit too friendly with local prostitute Belle Bruce. He told her that he was about to strike it rich, shared the details of his sure scheme, and promised to shower her with gifts once he had received his payoff. Belle listened, and smiled, and went the next morning to visit a close friend of hers, the Springfield chief of police. As the tomb custodian was trying to get the monument association to take the threat seriously, Sharp -- realizing the game was up -- led his band sheepishly out of town; all they walked away with was the rent they hadn't yet paid.

Answer: A Secret Service informer

Kennally and Mullen knew each other well -- in fact, they were partners in running the Hub, a shady saloon and billiard hall famed as a hangout spot for counterfeiters. Hughes was also a longtime friend. But Lewis Swegles, the man Mullen and Hughes turned to for additional help, was not so well-known to them. Mullen and Hughes were reassured by his track record as an oft-suspected, never-convicted horse thief -- but what they didn't know was that he had recently accepted employment as a Secret Service informant, with a daily salary of five dollars.

The instant they finished telling him about their plot to steal Lincoln's body, he raced to lawyer Charles Deane and Secret Service agent Patrick Tyrrell to inform them of the dastardly scheme. From then on, the lawmen knew of the gang's plans almost as soon as they were made.

Answer: By burying it, still in its coffin, in a shallow grave in sand dunes

It was a strange plan, requiring some ten days of travel with the coffin to the sand dunes of Indiana. They could be stopped at any time by a roadblock, or found out by the men tending their horses at inns along the way. Kennally's first plan -- burying the coffin in a gravel bar in a river near Springfield -- was a better one. Since Thomas Sharp and the first gang of conspirators knew that plan, however, Kennally must have decided it was less risky to choose a new hiding spot.

Answer: Election night

November 7, 1876, was election day in a hard-fought race. (Rutherford Hayes went on to win the Presidency over Samuel Tilden, in a highly contested result that spelled the end of Reconstruction.) Mullen liked the symbolism, calling it an "elegant time to do it." There were also practical advantages: they could expect a great deal of traffic out of Springfield that evening, and one more wagon would hardly be noticed.

The gang caught the overnight train from Chicago to Springfield November 6; alerted by his informant Swegles, Secret Service agent Tyrrell was on that same train with two hired Pinkerton detectives.

Answer: It was encased in lead.

Lincoln had traveled the country in a lovingly crafted walnut coffin, lined in white satin, with a silver nameplate on the top. When Lincoln was laid to rest, however, his coffin went into a lead-and-cedar box, sealed with lead, which in turn went into the marble sarcophagus.

This box was hard to break into and even harder to carry. Swegles was sent to summon the fourth conspirator for help, which conveniently allowed the informant to slip away from his companions.

Answer: A hired detective's pistol accidentally went off.

Tyrrell and the Pinkerton detectives raced across the grass from the Memorial Hall -- where they had been hiding -- to the tomb where the grave robbers could be caught in the act. Unfortunately, one of the Pinkertons -- George Hay -- cocked his pistol as he left the Hall, resulting in its accidental discharge when he slipped near the tomb. This gave Mullen and Hughes just enough warning that they were able to escape, leaving their tools, the sawn-open sarcophagus, and the coffin of Abraham Lincoln -- slid more than a foot from its proper resting place.

Hughes and Mullen were not apprehended that night, but the lawmen need not have worried about losing them. Not the cleverest of conspirators, the pair quickly made their way back to the Hub, their Chicago bar, where they were arrested a few days later. Even worse, Mullen sent several letters from jail, requesting an alibi from friends of his, instructing them in what to say and even offering payment -- and these letters came into the hands of the government and were introduced at trial. They were sentenced to a year each at hard labor. Kennally was apprehended (with assistance from Mullen) in 1880; Swegles's cooperation with the law did not last, and he was convicted of burglary near the same time.

Answer: In the basement beneath his memorial obelisk

Terrified that the next ghoulish group of conspirators would succeed, Lincoln's Honor Guard secretly moved his coffin from its place of honor to the dank basement, burying it (after a few months) in a shallow grave there. When Mary Lincoln died almost six years later, she was buried with pomp and circumstance in the main tomb, and then quietly moved to lie next to her husband. The pair would not be permanently buried until 1901, when -- at the instructions of their son Robert -- their coffins were placed in a steel cage and lowered into an underground vault, which was then filled with concrete to a depth of ten feet. It would take a hardy set of grave robbers to break through these defenses, and no one seems to have tried.

Thank you for joining me in this look at one of the most bizarre criminal conspiracies in American history. For a fuller telling of the story, you may enjoy Thomas Craughwell's book "Stealing Lincoln's Body," to which I am indebted for this quiz.