Popular.com

In October 1876, the United States and Europe were startled by the attempt of a band of Illinois criminals to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln,

buried in the shifting sand dunes of northern Indiana,

and have its recovery affected through an agency of a convict then in the Joliet penitentiary.

The plot had two purposes, the release of the convict through the agency of a public grateful

for his aid in recovering the sacred remains of the great emancipator, and the agency of a public grateful for his aid in recovering the sacred remains of the great

emancipator, and the securing of $200,000 in the form of ransom, either from the federal government

or from a fund which the conspirators believed would be quickly raised to recover the body.

The plot, the most ghoulish and daring of its kind in

history, is but a faint memory to the present generation. To the men of those days the flashing

over the world of the news that ghoul's hands had marked the Lincoln tomb for desecration

came as a shock, the memory of which will

ever remain with them. North and South alike, as well as Europe, shared the deep indignation

and heaped unspeakable anathemas on the members of the band that conceived and sought to

carry out the plot to its base end.

But even at that time, while the country was still at the white heat of indignation and details of the affair were eagerly sought by the public,

the long and tangled chain of criminal events that had its culmination in the attempted body snatching was comparatively

unknown to the public at large. In a general way, it was known that a band of criminals had

attempted to use the theft of the Lincoln body to secure the release of a pal, and incidentally, to make

money. It was known that the plot had been

frustrated, and the body of the beloved Lincoln rendered secure from any future attempt of the same

kind. This satisfied the public and the whirl of work-a-day life swept the incident from popular

...