Lincoln's Grave Robbers

Lincoln’s Grave Robbers is a nonfiction book for young readers by Steve Sheinkin. It describes how a gang of counterfeiters attempted to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln from his tomb in Springfield, Illinois, in order to hold it for ransom. Sheinkin’s retelling features rich historical detail, a colorful cast of characters, and probing insights into the fractiousness of the 1870s, as well as some striking parallels to contemporary events. Set in the aftermath of the Civil War and the waning years of Reconstruction, when the nation’s economy was beset by a flood of counterfeit money, Sheinkin’s book traces the history of the US Secret Service and the complex legacy of one of America’s most beloved presidents. First published in 2012, Lincoln’s Grave Robbers also includes a brief primer on bodysnatching—which was once an endemic crime—as well as a selection of over 30 historical photos, drawings, and diagrams.

This guide refers to the 2012 Scholastic Focus paperback edition of Lincoln’s Grave Robbers.

Summary

The United States Secret Service is an agency created in 1865 to combat the rampant counterfeiting of the nation’s money. In 1875, Patrick Tyrrell, an operative for the Secret Service, comes up with a shrewd strategy to arrest a notorious engraver named Benjamin Boyd. Boyd creates the finest plates for printing bogus money in the country. To catch him red-handed, Tyrrell turns to Boyd’s former mentor, an engraver and counterfeiter named Nat Kinsey, who agrees to act as a “roper” (undercover agent) for the Secret Service. Acting on tips from Kinsey, Tyrrell and his men raid Boyd’s house in Fulton, Illinois, just as the latter begins work on a new set of plates, arresting him and his wife. Boyd tries, as usual, to pay the officials off, but Tyrrell and his men will accept no bribes.

Boyd’s arrest and two-year jail sentence deal a devastating blow to the criminal empire of James “Big Jim” Kennally, who relied on the near-perfection of Boyd’s plates to flood the Midwest with his “coney” (counterfeit money). For over a decade, the greed, tenacity, and brilliant organization of counterfeiters like Kennally have been chipping steadily away at the US economy: In 1864, half of the money in circulation was fake. However now, thanks to Tyrrell, first-rate coney is in short supply, and Kennally, in desperate straits, settles on a last-ditch plan to get Boyd released from prison. Kennally hires the Logan County Gang, who are regular customers of his, to steal Abraham Lincoln’s body from his tomb in Springfield, Illinois, so he can hold it for ransom for Boyd’s release. They plan the heist for July 4, 1876—America’s Centennial—anticipating that the festivities will provide them with cover. However, the gang members get drunk at local bars and boast of their plans; word quickly gets around, and the would-be graverobbers are forced to flee town, empty-handed.

Angry but undaunted, Kennally assembles another plot to steal Lincoln’s body, this time enlisting two men who belong to his counterfeiting outfit in Chicago: Jack Hughes and Terrence Mullen. Hughes is a “shover” (a criminal who passes counterfeit money in shops and banks). Mullen co-owns a Chicago bar called the Hub with Kennally and is a “distributor” (someone who buys coney from counterfeiters and sells it, in turn, to shovers). Needing a third man for the operation, Hughes and Mullen invite Lewis Swegles into their plot; he is a silver-tongued horse thief who has recently started drinking at their bar. Unbeknownst to them, Swegles is a police spy—a “roper”—hired by Patrick Tyrrell to get dirt on Kennally’s counterfeiting ring at the Hub. The heist is planned for Election Day, November 7, 1876.

When the men board their train to Springfield on November 6, Tyrrell and his detectives tail them. The three men make careful preparations to break into the Monument after dark. Tyrrell, determined to catch Hughes and Mullen in the very act of pulling the president’s coffin out of his sarcophagus, hides with his detectives in the labyrinth portion of the tomb. Unfortunately, he waits a little too long to spring his trap, and the thieves, alerted by an accidental gun discharge by one of the detectives, flee the scene. In the tomb’s catacomb, Lincoln’s coffin has been pulled about a foot of the way out of the sarcophagus, and burglary tools are scattered about; but the only eyewitness to the crime is Swegles, who is a former criminal himself.

Ten days later, Tyrrell and his detectives arrest both Hughes and Mullen at the Hub, but the evidence against them is largely circumstantial. Worse, their combative lawyer argues, in court and in the media, is that Tyrrell has falsely framed the men. However, Mullen incriminates himself by writing letters to cronies, offering to pay them for fake alibis for the night of the crime. Both Hughes and Mullen are found guilty, and are sentenced to one year each. Upon Hughes’s release in 1878, Tyrrell re-arrests him on outstanding charges, sending him to prison for an additional three years. In 1880, Mullen is arrested for passing coney, and agrees to inform against “Big Jim” Kennally, helping the Secret Service to finally nab Kennally. His coney empire in ruins, Kennally goes to jail for two years. Meanwhile, Lewis Swegles, whom the newspapers dubbed “the Prince of Ropers” for his undercover work, succumbs once again to a life of crime, and is sentenced to 12 years for burglary. By contrast, Boyd, the brilliant coney engraver, reforms completely upon his release from prison, finding honest work in a factory.

In Springfield, John Carroll Power, the caretaker and guide for Lincoln’s tomb, worries incessantly about the safety of the president’s body. Over the years, he and others, including Lincoln’s son Robert, exhume and rebury it several times, always within the Monument, and mostly in secret. Finally, in 1901, the Lincoln Guard of Honor—a group of volunteers dedicated to the protection of the president’s remains—hoist Lincoln’s coffin from his sarcophagus and, in a public ceremony, bury it deep beneath the floor of the catacomb, surrounded by an iron cage and encased in tons of concrete.