54 pages • 1 hour read
Steve SheinkinLincoln's Grave Robbers
Nonfiction | Book | Middle Grade | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “First Try”
Abraham Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, was a shocking event at a time of resurgent hope for much of the nation: The Civil War had just ended, and the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment had officially outlawed slavery. To provide some succor to the grieving populace, the train carrying the president’s body to his burial place in Springfield, Illinois, made many stops along the way; over 1.5 million mourners filed past to view the body before it reached Springfield.
The bullet from the assassin’s gun had made bruises on Lincoln’s skin, and at first these were not covered up, at the insistence of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who maintained that they were “part of the history of the event” (51). With time, though, the bruises became so severe that an undertaker was asked to mask them with cosmetics. At Springfield, the president’s body was laid to rest in a small graveyard, in accordance with what Mary Todd Lincoln, Lincoln’s wife, said were her husband’s wishes. However, Lincoln’s friends, who had envisioned a more stately resting place for the president, raised funds to construct a large edifice for him at Oak Ridge Cemetery. Known as the Lincoln Monument, this “majestic tomb,” complete with obelisk, was completed in 1874, and Lincoln’s coffin was sealed into a large sarcophagus inside. John Carroll Power, the monument’s caretaker, conducted tours for visitors. In 1876, some of these tourists include members of the Logan County Gang, who have come to plan their heist.
Not knowing who these men are, Power shows them the maze-like granite corridors of the monument’s interior, and the separate “catacomb” that houses the bodies of Lincoln and members of his family. The catacomb can only be entered from the outside; its portal lies on the opposite side of the building from the main entrance and consists of a simple wooden door concealing an inner door of thick steel bars. The gang members do not anticipate much difficulty with breaking in and absconding with the president’s coffin. Power also tells them that the tomb and surrounding cemetery are left unguarded during the night.
Excited by this news, the would-be graverobbers are impatient to get to work; however, they still have two weeks to wait until July 4th. While killing time by hanging out in bars and trying to impress the local women, their leader, Thomas Sharpe, drunkenly spills the entire plot to a group of people that includes a young woman named Belle Bruce. Belle immediately tells the police, as well as several acquaintances, and soon the news is all over town. Panicked, the Logan County Gang drops everything and flees Springfield, putting an end to Kennally’s graverobbing plot. However, this close call does not lead to increased security for Lincoln’s tomb: A combination of events, including the massacre of General Custer’s army in Montana and the build-up to the contentious US presidential election in November, bury the news of the planned robbery. Though John Carroll Power tries to persuade the government or any wealthy backers to provide guards for the monument, he does not succeed; even many of Lincoln’s friends do not believe his story. Meanwhile, sizing up the situation from his home in St. Louis, Kennally travels to Chicago to round up a new gang of graverobbers for the job.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Boodle Game”
In Chicago, Jack Hughes, a young man with a thick black beard, works as a “shover” for Kennally’s counterfeiting ring; Hughes passes coney at local stores, one phony bill at a time. Typically, he will buy a low-cost item and pocket the change. Following discreetly behind him is his “boodle carrier,” a teenager who carries Hughes’s supply of fake money so he will not be caught with it. If the cashier spots Hughes’s bill as fake, Hughes can show that the rest of the money in his pocket is real and claim that he must have gotten the bogus bill as change somewhere.
After Hughes has finished “shoving” his full cache of counterfeit money, he heads over to the Hub, the bar where he collects his coney. The young bartender, Terrence Mullen, who co-owns the Hub with Kennally, uses the bar as a front to distribute coney through a large network of shovers like Hughes. Mullen has a long criminal record and carries a pistol, and the police consider him hotheaded and dangerous. Still, there are more than 2,500 bars in Chicago, many of them shady, and the police and Secret Service can’t watch them all. However, Patrick Tyrrell, the Secret Service’s district chief, catches a break when Hughes’s teenage boodle carrier gets arrested. To lighten his sentence, the teenager tells Tyrrell all about Hughes and the Hub, which, true to its name, is the hub of the local counterfeiting racket.
Since Tyrrell is unable to enter the Hub himself without being recognized, he begins looking for a “roper” to infiltrate the counterfeiters’ den. Essential to the investigation of gangs, a roper is a convincingly suspicious-looking character, often a former criminal, who is hired by the police to act as an undercover agent. Meanwhile, Kennally, using the alias “Cornelius,” makes a rare visit to the Hub to tell his business partner Mullen about his continuing efforts to get Ben Boyd released from jail. When Hughes comes in with Herbert Nelson, a coney distributor, Kennally informs the three of them that no guards or security measures have been added to Lincoln’s tomb since the Logan County Gang’s aborted attempt to rob it. He tells them that the job will be easy and will net them $200,000 in cash (approximately $6 million in today’s money). The three men eagerly agree to rob the tomb; but after a few days, Nelson changes his mind, and Hughes and Mullen begin looking for a third man to replace him.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Prince of Ropers”
Meanwhile, Tyrrell is searching for a roper to infiltrate the Hub. He settles on a former horse thief and ex-con named Lewis Swegles. Young, gregarious, and a born entertainer, Swegles has rubbed elbows with coney men in prison and roughly knows how the racket operates. Eager to make an honest buck for a change, Swegles accepts the dangerous mission and begins frequenting the Hub, keeping a low but friendly profile. Eventually, he sees Hughes enter and discreetly slips away to inform Tyrrell, who seizes the chance to arrest Hughes for jumping bail and other past crimes. Hughes’s friends quickly bail him out again, but Tyrrell, impressed with Swegles, keeps the roper on at the Hub—Tyrrell hopes Swegles can get him solid evidence against Hughes and the gang’s higher-ups, and maybe even Kennally himself. Swegles begins flashing money at the Hub, boasting of robbing a Wisconsin tannery, and Mullen ponders hiring him as the third man in the gang’s graverobbing operation. First, he and Hughes check his background by way of their criminal contacts and even a knowledgeable policeman, who gushes that Swegles is “one of the biggest horse thieves in the country” (80). Satisfied, they decide to let him into their criminal scheme.
Meanwhile, the presidential election is heating up, with the Republican and Democratic parties casting scurrilous accusations at each other on the “battlefield” of the printed page. In this era, partisan newspapers, rather than the candidates themselves, launch political broadsides of the most inflammatory sort. The other candidate’s or party’s alleged misconduct during the Civil War is a favorite mode of attack.
Around the middle of October, Hughes and Mullen approach Swegles and test his trustworthiness by proposing a bodysnatching job—however, this is not the Lincoln assignment. Swegles consults with one of his handlers, who tells him this job is a “test;” so, Swegles refuses the job. After a week, Hughes and Mullen do not hear any rumors about their fake bodysnatching job on the local grapevine, so they believe that Swegles is discreet and can be trusted. They invite him into a back room of the Hub and give him the details of the Lincoln plot, including Boyd’s release and the ransom of $200,000 in cash. They tell Swegles that until the ransom is paid, Lincoln’s body will be buried 220 miles northeast, in the sand dunes by Lake Michigan. Shocked into a long silence, Swegles finally blurts out that he is the “boss body snatcher of Chicago” (85). He follows this false statement with a few made-up anecdotes about his expertise in the trade, and Hughes and Mullen enthusiastically welcome him onto the team.
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Trap”
Swegles rushes to Tyrrell’s office to give him the news. Hearing that Tyrrell is out of town on another case, Swegles breaks down and tells a friend, Charles Deane, about the bizarre conspiracy. Deane, in turn, tells another friend, and word soon reaches the Lincoln Monument Association, which is the group that built Lincoln’s massive tomb. Alarmed, the Association appoints two armed guards to watch the tomb at night.
On October 26, two days after Swegles first discovered the plot, Tyrrell returns, and at first he cannot believe the roper’s story. However, Swegles provides convincing details, such as the fact that Hughes and Mullen researched the law and learned that the penalty for graverobbing in Illinois was only one year in county jail. Stunned, Tyrrell immediately writes to James Brooks, chief of the Secret Service, about the “damnable” plot, and the next day, he meets with Robert Lincoln, the sole surviving son of Abraham Lincoln. Hesitantly, Tyrrell informs him of Kennally’s plot and advises him to remove the guard detail from his father’s monument, so the graverobbers can be lured in and arrested. Catching the plotters in the act, he tells Robert, is the only way to put an end to their continuing threat, and the graverobbers will not strike if they know guards are watching the tomb. Reluctantly, Robert Lincoln agrees to call off the guards.
Soon after, Tyrrell writes to Chief Brooks in Washington, DC, for permission to proceed with this unusual business, which falls somewhat outside the Secret Service’s usual purview. However, Brooks believes Tyrrell is ”overreacting” and sets his letter aside and does not answer it. Meanwhile, the body-snatching plot proceeds apace: Swegles and the others have established that Lincoln’s tomb is still unguarded and that the only obstacles to their crime are the catacomb’s steel-barred door and the marble sarcophagus that holds the president’s coffin. Swegles advises Hughes and Mullen to add a fourth man to the team—an experienced safecracker who can employ explosives and other tools of his trade to shatter the steel door and crack the sarcophagus. Swegles suggests Billy Brown, claiming that the man helped him rob the tannery in Wisconsin. In reality, Brown is a law-abiding bricklayer named Bill Neely who has agreed to help foil the Lincoln conspiracy. A former hack driver who has absorbed much of the “crooked” slang of the underworld, Brown convincingly plays the part of a seasoned criminal for the gangsters and helps them gather the necessary tools for the job, like saws, drills, files, and gunpowder.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Last Details”
Days pass, and Tyrrell still has not received any response from Chief Brooks. On October 31, Tyrrell writes to him again, saying that the plotters will soon be visiting the Monument grounds to finalize their plans. Brooks still does not respond. Swegles tells Tyrrell that the Hub gang plans for him and Brown to smuggle Lincoln’s body over the Canadian border and lie low for a while, until Kennally can negotiate with the government for its return. The plotters are also trying to get Boyd’s wife to pay their expenses, since they are running low on cash, but she has refused to have anything to do with their bizarre plot.
Tyrrell once again writes to Brooks on November 2, and he finally receives the chief’s halfhearted permission to “go ahead.” That night, as the plotters work out the last details of the heist, Mullen comes up with a way for them to prove to the authorities that they have Lincoln’s body when the time comes. It involves a torn newspaper, half of which they will leave in Lincoln’s empty tomb; Mullen hides the paper’s matching half in a plaster bust of Lincoln in the Hub, so they can produce it later if needed. Tyrrell, who is following the men’s plot closely, now needs an additional piece of crucial information from Swegles: the date of the heist. On November 5, while Tyrrell searches in vain for his roper, Swegles and the plotters are holed up in a hotel room, debating that very question. They finally settle on the night of November 7, which is Election Day and only two days away. They think the busy traffic of that special day will allow them to escape unnoticed, and the ground will still be soft enough for them to dig a hole to hide the body.
Quickly, they make arrangements to catch a late train to Springfield on the night of the 6th. That morning, Swegles finds Tyrrell and gives him the update, and the latter tells him to go along with the plot. When the burglars break into the tomb, he says, he and his men will be waiting. Improvising rapidly, Tyrrell goes to his former boss, Elmer Washburn, who is no longer with the Secret Service but who agrees to assist him in any way he can. He also visits the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which lends him two of its best agents as backup. He also sends a telegram to John McDonald, who helped Tyrrell capture Ben Boyd in Fulton, to jump on a train to Springfield. Lastly, he fires off a message to the skeptical Chief Brooks, updating him on the case and declaring that the conspiracy to steal Lincoln’s body is very real.
Chapters 5-9 Analysis
These chapters of the book develop the theme of The Hazards of Police Work by showing the personal danger that undercover agents like Swegles and Bill Neely/ Billy Brown faced daily, as well as all the bureaucratic challenges that Tyrrell confronted. The criminal network the undercover agents were trying to infiltrate was full of dangerous men like Kennally, who was powerful and wealthy with widespread contacts in many criminal circles around the nation, and Mullen, who was a seasoned criminal known for his violent nature. Despite the perilous nature of their mission, Swegles and Brown confronted it with courage and always kept their wits about them. Swegles, especially, entered the Hub as a police informant and kept a low profile for a while before slowly making his way up and catching the eye of the kingpins. When Hughes and Mullen eventually took him into confidence and filled him in on the details of the Lincoln heist, Swegles was, at first, so shocked by the information that he was rendered speechless. Still, he recovered quickly and even claimed to be the “boss body snatcher of Chicago” (85). He made up several anecdotes on the spot to support this claim, which led to Hughes and Mullen immediately asking him to join their team. Later, Swegles managed to convince them to recruit Brown, as well. If the criminals, at any point, suspected these men of being Secret Service informants, they would have certainly eliminated them. All these events are not only a testament to these men’s courage but also their impressive resourcefulness.
To complicate matters further for the law enforcement team, the Secret Service itself was a new agency and was not yet very efficient. When Tyrrell became aware of Kennally’s plan to steal Lincoln’s body, he immediately wrote to the chief of the Secret Service to ask for permission to thwart the scheme, but his boss did not respond to his request for weeks. Tyrrell found this especially frustrating since time was of the essence for his plan to work. Since the Secret Service was formed to combat counterfeit currency, this new job would technically be outside their purview. Though the operation was planned by a kingpin of the counterfeiting racket in order to bargain with the government and secure the release of Boyd, a talented counterfeiter, the Secret Service was not supposed to be guarding presidential gravesites. As a nascent agency, the Secret Service was filled with bureaucratic inefficiencies that compromised the work of the agents.
Despite the challenges thrown their way, the Secret Service agents and their undercover informers displayed Dedication and Perseverance for a Cause and pursued their tasks with singlemindedness. However, the criminals, too, were equally determined, which made the situation challenging for those on both sides. Kennally was very committed to the idea of stealing Lincoln’s body to leverage the release of his associate, Boyd. Kennally first recruited the Logan County Gang to carry out his plan on July 4, 1876, but when that fell through, he didn’t give up. He contacted another associate, Mullen, whom Kennally thought would be more capable of pulling off the heist, and he tempted Mullen to commit to the plan by promising him a lot of money if he succeeded. Money was the factor that had the criminal elements persevering to carry out their tasks—Mullen and Hughes were tempted to agree to Kennally’s plan because they believed they would be rich after, and Kennally only wanted Boyd out of prison because Boyd was his cash cow. However, the Secret Service agents’ motivations were more complex and ranged from duty and ethics (Tyrrell) to a more ambiguous desire for thrill-seeking and trying something different (Swegles).
The perseverance of the Secret Service agents reflects the broader desire to guard the sanctity of national symbols and maintain order at a time of societal crisis in the post-war period. Sheinkin develops the idea of a nation reeling from destruction and trauma by highlighting the scale of mourning after Lincoln’s death. Millions of Americans paid their respects as the funeral train wound its way through 300 cities on its way to Springfield. Lincoln’s funerary tour was a palliative for a grieving nation. Later, the late president’s friends raised money to erect a stately monument to enshrine him. Tyrrell and other law enforcement agents wanted to guard against the desecration of this monument and of the president’s body, knowing that it would symbolize an appalling lapse in the nation’s security and honor.
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