A Plot to Steal Lincoln's Body
A Posthumous Kidnapping Attempt Shaped the Secret Service
Code of honor. None of the men who buried the coffin that night had known Lincoln. They were ordinary guys—one was a railroad ticket agent, another was a hotelkeeper, and a third worked as a bank clerk. Yet it had fallen to them to safeguard the remains of Lincoln, and they took that obligation seriously, swearing never to reveal the location of the martyred president's body. And in the years that followed, they kept that secret faithfully.
They were finally relieved of their obligation in 1901, when, under instructions from Robert Lincoln, the president's only surviving child, Lincoln's body was placed inside a steel cage, lowered into a 10-foot-deep vault, and buried under tons of wet concrete. He's still there, in his tomb on the grounds of Oak Ridge Cemetery.
While Tyrrell was the undisputed hero of the hour, the Secret Service perhaps benefited most of all from the failed crime. Protecting Lincoln's body led them to protecting the office of the presidency.
Craughwell is the author of Stealing Lincoln's Body (Harvard University Press, 2007). He lives in Bethel, Conn.
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