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  Book details plot to steal Abe's [Lincoln] body
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ContributorThe Sunset Provision 
Last EditedThe Sunset Provision  May 07, 2007 12:05pm
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MediaWebsite - Yahoo News
News DateMonday, May 7, 2007 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionWhen it comes to Abraham Lincoln, apparently there's no such thing as enough. After countless books about his boyhood, his presidency, the hunt for his killer and yes, even his feet, maybe it was time for a new book devoted to what happened to Lincoln's body after he was done using it.

As its title implies, "Stealing Lincoln's Body" by Thomas J. Craughwell (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) is devoted to Lincoln after, as Craughwell writes in the first sentence, "the last tremor of life" left his body.

Craughwell details a little-known plot to steal the 16th president's remains from his tomb in Springfield, Ill., in 1876 — 11 years after he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.

The plan, hatched in a Chicago tavern, was to take the coffin from the tomb, put it in a wagon, haul it 200 miles north to the Indiana Dunes and hold it until the state of Illinois paid $200,000 ransom to get it back.

The plot was doomed from the start, though, in large part because the criminals weren't very bright.

"They really were knuckleheads," said Craughwell, a Chicago native who now lives in Connecticut.

The ringleader was James "Big Jim" Kennally, a convicted counterfeiter and co-owner of a Chicago tavern called The Hub. The Secret Service, established precisely because counterfeiting was a huge problem at the time, knew that The Hub was a favorite watering hole for counterfeiters.

Enter Lewis Swegles, a small-time crook — and not such a good one at that — who by this time was working as a Secret Service informant.
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