Stealing Lincoln's Body
Author: 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 nineteenth-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 honored their native son by keeping a valuable, burdensome secret for decades offers a riveting glimpse into late-nineteenth-century America, and underscores that truth really is sometimes stranger than fiction.
Michael Kammen - Chicago Tribune
There is no end of fascinating context and detail in this engrossing, often zany, yet poignant tale.
Philip Hoare - Sunday Telegraph
Stealing Lincoln's Body is worth reading for its account of the president's funeral cortege alone...[A] quirky, diverting book.
John McBratney - Irish Times
Stealing Lincoln's Body tracks an unlikely series of events, reminiscent of a silent, black-and-white, cops-and-robbers movie, with passion and erudition.
James Srodes - Washington Times
A fascinating [tale] that is well told.
Eric Fettmann - New York Post
Thomas J. Craughwell has rescued this bizarre episode from the dustbin of history...It does more than simply retell a forgotten story; it sheds new light on the incident, thanks to the long-neglected original handwritten reports of Patrick Tyrrell, the Secret Service agent who handled the case...Thomas Craughwell tells the story in a work that is sometimes morbid and creepy, but never less than fascinating.
Harold Holzer - Washington Post Book World
[A] spirited narrative...Craughwell brings off the entire enterprise by making readers feel, hear and smell the atmosphere of the fetid Chicago taverns where the crooks hatched their demonic plot--not to mention the creepy interior of the shoddy Lincoln tomb, crumbling all around the family corpses as an aging guard of honor struggles both to conceal Lincoln's body in the dank cellar and to rescue the cheaply made temple for posterity...Summoning the raw spirit of crime novels and horror stories, as well as the forensic detail of a coroner's inquest, Thomas J. Craughwell has turned the eerie final chapter of the Lincoln story into a guilty pleasure.
John Corry - American Spectator
Thomas J. Craughwell has given us a richly detailed, highly entertaining, and broad slice of our history.
Thomas Lynch - The Times
The plot that gives Stealing Lincoln's Body its title, hatched by a crew of hapless Irish publicans and counterfeiters in Cicago, unfolds with equal doses of Martin Scorsese and the Three Stooges, the fecklessness of the robbers nearly trumped by that of the cops, on election night 1876, more than a decade after the President's assassination...It is a marvelous look into Gilded Age America and the wellsprings of many of our modern vexations. Immigrant and urban culture, robber barons and financial hoodlums, the bread-and-circuses numbing of the electorate, political scandal and presidential intrigues, the war between the ridiculous and the sublime that seems to infect our nations are all subtexts to this readable book.
A. W. Purdue - Times Higher Education Supplement
Stealing Lincoln's Body is a fascinating thriller, and it provides a macabre footnote to American history, but the real strength lies in the way the context--the dynamic but turbulent society of America in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War--is so skillfully described.
Frontpage Online
Thomas Craughwell's Stealing Lincoln's Body abounds with information about the amazingly goof-ball plot and about such things as the transformation of the Secret Service into being the presidential body guard.
Kathy Ward - Juneauempire.com
Craughwell brings together counterfeiters, lawyers, corpse-stealers, Lincoln’s Guard of Honor, and Abraham Lincoln himself in this intriguing novel that brings to light a little-known historical incident.
Table of Contents:
- Prologue: “Lay My Remains in Some Quiet Place”
- The World of the Counter feiters
- Big Jim’s Kennally’s Big Idea
- The Boss Body Snatchers of Chicago
- “The Devils Are Up Here”
- The Body in the Basement
- “The Tools of Smarter Men”
- The Lincoln Guard of Honor
- A Pullman-Style Burial
- Epilogue: Safe and Secure at Last
- Notes
- Bibliography
Book about: I Cant Get Over It 2d or AyurVeda
My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir
Author: Clarence Thomas
Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.
Thomas was born in rural Georgia on June 23, 1948, into a life marked by poverty and hunger. His parents divorced when Thomas was still a baby, and his father moved north to Philadelphia, leaving his young mother to raise him and his brother and sister on the ten dollars a week she earned as a maid. At age seven, Thomas and his six-year-old brother were sent to live with his mother's father, Myers Anderson, and her stepmother in their Savannah home. It was a move that would forever change Thomas's life.
His grandfather, whom he called "Daddy," was a black man with a strict work ethic, trying to raise a family in the years of Jim Crow. Thomas witnessed his grandparents' steadfastness despite injustices, their hopefulness despite bigotry, and their deep love for their country. His own quiet ambition would propel him to Holy Cross and Yale Law School, and eventually "despite a bitter, highly contested public confirmation" to the highest court in the land. In this candid and deeply moving memoir, a quintessential American tale of hardship and grit, Clarence Thomas recounts his astonishing journey for the first time, and pays homage to the man who made it possible.
Intimately and eloquently, Thomas speaks out, revealing the pieces of his life he holds dear, detailing the suffering and injustices he has overcome, including the acrimonious and polarizing Senate hearing involving a former aide, Anita Hill, and the depression and despair it created in his own life and the lives of those closest to him. My Grandfather's Son is the story of a determined man whose faith, courage, and perseverance inspired him to rise up against all odds and achieve his dreams.
The New York Times - William Grimes
His critics might not be moved by his political arguments, but his memoir gives them a man, not a caricature, to attack…Justice Thomas describes his intellectual journey, and his struggle to keep body and soul together on meager government pay, in some of the book's most absorbing and self-critical chapters.
The Washington Post - Jabari Asim
My Grandfather's Son ends triumphantly as Thomas prepares for his first conference as a member of the Supreme Court. This memoir will not sway those who oppose his fierce, unapologetic conservatism, but it does provide a fascinating glimpse into a tortured, complex and often perplexing personality. Near the end of the book he discusses a desire to allow his life "to be seen as the story of an ordinary person who, like most people, had worked out his problems step by unsure step." In that he has succeeded.
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