The Plot to Steal the Body of Abraham Lincoln

What It Covers

In 1876, a Chicago counterfeiting gang attempted to steal Abraham Lincoln's corpse from Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois, planning to ransom it for $200,000 and the release of imprisoned engraver Benjamin Boyd.

Key Questions Answered

• •Security through obscurity: After the 1876 attempt, Lincoln's coffin was relocated at least 17 times between 1876 and 1901 within the monument to prevent further theft attempts, with only a small circle of trusted individuals knowing its precise location at any given time.
• •Legal gaps enable leniency: Illinois had no law prohibiting corpse theft in 1876, forcing prosecutors to charge conspirators Mullen and Hughes with minor conspiracy and attempted coffin larceny. Both received only one-year sentences at Joliet, despite nearly ransoming a president's remains.
• •Informants as the decisive factor: The plot failed entirely because body snatcher Louis Swiggles was a Secret Service informant. Authorities allowed the crime to proceed to catch perpetrators in the act — a deliberate controlled operation authorized by Robert Todd Lincoln himself.
• •Permanent security via engineering: In 1901, officials ended 25 years of vulnerability by encasing Lincoln's coffin in a steel cage buried under 10 feet of concrete beneath the monument floor, a solution still in place today at the publicly accessible Oak Ridge Cemetery tomb.