Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avregan.

This day, November 7th, 1876, a group of men enter a tomb in Springfield, Illinois to steal

the body of one Abraham Lincoln, who had been assassinated about a decade or so earlier.

This plot to steal Lincoln's body was put together by a group of Chicago area counterfeiters

who were hoping to use the body as ransom to free one of their colleagues who had been arrested for counterfeiting earlier that year.

Did this plan work?

Uh, listener, I will tell you that this plan did not work.

And one way you know that it didn't work is because you

probably would have heard of this story had Lincoln's body actually been

stolen but most of us have not heard of this story so let's fix that let's hear

about it because it is a very interesting story and scheme so here to discuss as

always are Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley hello there

hello Jody hey there So Kelly I guess one one question here is it's 11 years after Lincoln has been assassinated this attempt to steal his body. Do we think of this as a politically motivated act or is it something

else? You know, it's a little bit of both, I would say. It's political and that, you you know Lincoln still is probably one of the most beloved

presidents well at least by northerners at this time and the fact that he you know

was assassinated there's just so much of a powerful and visceral memory that is tied to Abraham Lincoln.

So using him as a specific target, capturing his body to use it as ransom, I think is a pretty powerful weapon in the way that people have thought about Lincoln and Lincoln's legacy, I can't think of someone at the time that might have a greater profile, certainly someone who's no longer living that they might have access to their body for.

But at the end of the day I think this is really just about making money and

and getting concocting some sort of scheme that will enable them to get the $200,000 ransom

prize that they want to secure the release of Benjamin Boyd who is this

counterfeiter who's been locked up

...