Lincoln, the unknown

250 •LINCOLN THE UNKNOWNDangerous? Not at all. For Illinois had upon her statute-bookno law against the purloining of bodies.So in June, 1876, Big Jim set about clearing the decks foraction. He despatched five of his conspirators to Springfield,where they opened a saloon and dance-hall, masquerading asbartenders while making their preparations.Unfortunately for him, one of his "bartenders" drank toomuch whisky one Saturday night in June, drifted into a redlighthouse in Springfield, and talked too much. He boasted thathe was soon going to have a barrelful of gold.He whispered the details: on the eve of the next fourth ofJuly, while Springfield was shooting off rockets, he would beout in the Oak Ridge Cemetery, "stealing old Lincoln's bones,"as he put it; and late that night he would bury them in a sandbarunder a bridge spanning the Sangamon.An hour later the parlor-house madam was hurrying to thepolice, to tell her thrilling news. By morning she had blabbedit to a dozen other men. Soon the whole town had the story, andthe masquerading bartenders dropped their towels and fled thecity.But Big Jim was not defeated. He was only delayed. Heshifted his headquarters from Springfield to 294 West MadisonStreet, Chicago. He owned a saloon there. In the front roomhis man, Terrence Mullen, dispensed liquor to working-men;and in the back he had a sort of club-room, a secret rendezvousfor counterfeiters. A bust of Abraham Lincoln stood over thebar.For months a thief named Lewis G. Swegles had been patronizingthis saloon and working himself into the good graces ofBig Jim's gang. He admitted that he had served two terms in thepenitentiary for stealing horses, and boasted that he was now"the boss body-snatcher of Chicago." He declared he suppliedthe medical schools of the town with most of their cadavers.That sounded plausible enough then, for grave-robbing was anational horror; medical colleges, in order to obtain bodies fordissection in their class rooms, were forced to buy them fromghouls who sneaked up to the rear door at two o'clock in themorning, with caps pulled low over their eyes and bulging sacksslung across their backs.Swegles and Kinealy's gang perfected the details of their planfor rifling Lincoln's tomb. They would stuff the body into along sack, pitch it into the bottom of a spring-wagon, and,