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fandomhigh2009-12-04 07:57 am
makesfaces.livejournal.com) wrote in fandomhigh2009-12-04 07:57 am
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Humorous History: Friday, Period 1, Class 12
"Last time we talked about Abraham Lincoln before he was President. This time we're going to fast forward a bit and get to a bit of weirdness after he died," Jim said.
"Counterfeiting money was apparently big business during and after the Civil War. One of the biggest counterfeiting rings was based in Illinois, Lincoln's home state and also where he was buried. So when one of their best men got arrested, it was bad for business and real money stopped coming in. So the gang's leader, a guy named Big Jim Kennally, figured they'd make up for the lost business by stealing Lincoln's corpse and ransoming it for two hundred thousand dollars and the release of their guy in prison. Completely reasonable, right?"
"Kennally ended up taking two shots at this. The first time, one of them got drunk and told someone at a brothel about what they were doing. Since she was a good American despite working in a brothel, she told a lot of people, killing the plan there. A couple years passed and Kennally got a new group to try it again."
"The plan was pretty much this: on Election Day in 1876, they would saw the lock off the tomb and sneak in, which would be easy since there wasn't any security. They would throw the body in a sack and leave behind part of the front page of a British newspaper that could be bought in Chicago as a marker. That way they could show the rest of the paper to prove that they were the guys who stole the body so they could get their money. Then they'd throw the body on a wagon, drive it to Indiana, and bury it in some sand dunes where nobody would find it."
"The whole thing went off the rails pretty early, though, because one of the guys Kennally recruited was a Secret Service informant who had done some work busting up counterfeiting rings before. After the gang got into the tomb, the informant went outside and told the authorities that it was time to move in. The gang managed to escape without Lincoln's body, but they were arrested in Chicago a week later."
"The weird part is that they only got a year in jail because that was the maximum sentence for grave robbing. So remember, if you're going to rob a grave, why not go for a Presidential grave? It's going to get you the same sentence as any other grave, but you might get mentioned in a history class a century and a half later."
"Counterfeiting money was apparently big business during and after the Civil War. One of the biggest counterfeiting rings was based in Illinois, Lincoln's home state and also where he was buried. So when one of their best men got arrested, it was bad for business and real money stopped coming in. So the gang's leader, a guy named Big Jim Kennally, figured they'd make up for the lost business by stealing Lincoln's corpse and ransoming it for two hundred thousand dollars and the release of their guy in prison. Completely reasonable, right?"
"Kennally ended up taking two shots at this. The first time, one of them got drunk and told someone at a brothel about what they were doing. Since she was a good American despite working in a brothel, she told a lot of people, killing the plan there. A couple years passed and Kennally got a new group to try it again."
"The plan was pretty much this: on Election Day in 1876, they would saw the lock off the tomb and sneak in, which would be easy since there wasn't any security. They would throw the body in a sack and leave behind part of the front page of a British newspaper that could be bought in Chicago as a marker. That way they could show the rest of the paper to prove that they were the guys who stole the body so they could get their money. Then they'd throw the body on a wagon, drive it to Indiana, and bury it in some sand dunes where nobody would find it."
"The whole thing went off the rails pretty early, though, because one of the guys Kennally recruited was a Secret Service informant who had done some work busting up counterfeiting rings before. After the gang got into the tomb, the informant went outside and told the authorities that it was time to move in. The gang managed to escape without Lincoln's body, but they were arrested in Chicago a week later."
"The weird part is that they only got a year in jail because that was the maximum sentence for grave robbing. So remember, if you're going to rob a grave, why not go for a Presidential grave? It's going to get you the same sentence as any other grave, but you might get mentioned in a history class a century and a half later."