Smallscreen Reviews

History’s 'Stealing Lincoln's Body' a no miss Feb. 16

By April MacIntyre Feb 15, 2009, 16:21 GMT

Abraham Lincoln's family life was fraught with tragedy, as he and his aristocratic southern wife Mary Todd lost three of their children.

This devastation, combined with her husband's assassination prompted Todd to blame the “ambitiousness of their lives’ for the crushing loss.The 16th American president Abraham Lincoln’s term of office is wrapped in mixed views of glory and rumor, conspiracy and admiration. History channel provides a behind-the-scenes look to reveal the gruesome plot that made the body of Lincoln a pawn of counterfeiters, Chicago mobsters and relic collectors who literally body snatched the president and along with a fledgling Secret Service, moved his remains repeatedly until his final resting place 36 years later in the year 1901."Stealing Lincoln’s Body" airs Monday night on the History channel at 9 pm ET/PT.The special reveals the bizarre and little-known episode that was omitted from most history books. The macabre plot hatched by Irish immigrant Chicago counterfeiters was to steal the president's body years after his assassination and hold it for ransom. The plot begins in 1876, 11 years after Lincoln's murder by John Wilkes Booth, a racist actor, when the Irish counterfeiters in Chicago plotted to free their best engraver from prison. They intended to dig up the president's remains from the unguarded tomb in Springfield, bury poor Abe in the sand dunes in northern Indiana at the base of Lake Michigan, then swap the Lincoln body for their jailed engraver plus $200,000 in ransom money.The tomb raiders planned their strike for election night of 1876.It was the unwieldy lead-lined coffin wedged inside a skintight marble sarcophagus that held up their plans. Also the Eliot Ness-like Secret Service agents were hot on the counterfeiters trail to end the body theft. History details the chain of events in which these well-intentioned, self-appointed guardians took it upon themselves to protect Lincoln's remains by any means necessary.Side note: At this time in American history, U.S. currency was not secure; there were reportedly over 10,000 variations of paper American money, and Lincoln created the Secret Service to secure the currency. Also at this very time in history, the rare act of embalming was quickly becoming popular thanks to the Civil War. Embalmers were dispatched by families to battlefronts to preserve their children’s remains so the family could see them again before interment. Lincoln himself used embalming for his son Willie, a favorite child who passed while he was president.Producers for the History channel has made much of the "virtual motion pictures" that are featured in it, as you will see movement in historical pictures of Lincoln.Also used are hundreds of archival pictures interspersed with numerous experts extolling the historical and forensic details surrounding Lincoln's death.History producers reveal: A doctor who rushed to Lincoln's side right after the shooting at Ford's Theatre stuck his finger into the bullet hole at the back of the President's head and pulled out a blood clot, reviving the mortally wounded Lincoln at the theater.When Lincoln finally died some nine hours later in a house across the street from the theater, he was surrounded by senior aides, but his wife was missing. She was ordered out of the room by Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, because of distracting hysterics.During the autopsy, Lincoln's brain was weighed to see if it was heavier than average, which some thought might account for his great intelligence. (It was no heavier.) In the process, the slow moving bullet lodged behind Lincoln’s left eye fell out of the president's brain.After preservation of Lincoln with Zinc Chloride, tuning him an eerie white marble color, he lay in state at the White House and the Capitol. Lincoln's body was carried by train in the longest railroad funeral procession through several states, its final destination the town where he grew up, Springfield, Ill.
The train stopped in a dozen cities, and in each the coffin would be unloaded, opened, and driven through the streets so people could get a glimpse. An estimated 7 million people - about a fifth of the nation's population at the time - were able to see the coffin roll by.In one photograph, the coffin is shown on the streets of New York City, passing by a house owned by businessman Cornelius Roosevelt. When the camera zooms in on a second-floor window of the house, two young boys can be seen looking down on the procession. A narrator identifies them as Roosevelt's grandsons, Elliott and his brother Teddy.The president finally was laid to rest in 1901 - 36 years after the president's death - remaining living son Robert Todd Lincoln was able put his father’s remains in a massive concrete vault, where he lays today.“Stealing Lincoln's Body” is a recommended glimpse of Lincoln’s bizarre little known post-death history.