Lincoln's Grave Robbers

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.