LINCOLN'S PORTENT OF DOOM

Election Day 1860

On November 6, 1860, former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln defeated three other candidates for the American presidency: John Breckenridge, John Bell and Stephen Douglas and became the most beloved -- and most hated -- president in American history. And later that night, experienced an eerie vision that he believed was a premonition of the future.

In November 1860, Lincoln was home in Springfield, Illinois. The city had a carnival-like atmosphere and Election Day dawned with rousing cannon blasts, with music and contagious excitement. Lincoln spent the day and evening with friends at the telegraph office. By midnight, it was clear that he had been elected President of the United States. A late night dinner was held in his honor and then he returned to the office for more news. Guns fired in celebration throughout the night.

Lincoln finally managed to return home in the early morning hours although news of victory and telegrams of congratulations were still being wired to his office. He went into his bedroom for some much needed rest and collapsed onto a settee. Near the couch was a large bureau with a mirror on it and Lincoln stared for a moment at his reflection in the glass. His face appeared angular, thin and tired. Several of his friends suggested that he grow a beard, which would hide the narrowness of his face and give him a more “presidential” appearance. Lincoln pondered this for a moment and then experienced what many would term a “vision” --- an odd vision that Lincoln would later believe had prophetic meaning.

He saw in the mirror, that his face appeared to have two separate, yet distinct, images. The tip of one nose was about three inches away from the tip of the other one. The vision vanished but appeared again a few moments later. It was clearer this time and Lincoln realized that one of the faces was actually much paler than the other, almost with the coloring of death. The vision disappeared again and Lincoln dismissed the whole thing to the excitement of the hour and his lack of sleep.

The next morning, he told Mary of the strange vision and attempted to conjure it up again in the days that followed. The faces always returned to him and while Mary never saw them, she believed her husband when he said that he did. She also believed she knew the significance of the vision. The healthy face was her husband’s “real” face and indicated that he would serve his first term as president. The pale, ghostly image of the second face however was a sign that he would be elected to a second term --- but would not live to see its conclusion.

Lincoln dismissed the whole thing as a hallucination, or an imperfection in the glass, or so he said publicly. Later, that strange vision would come back to haunt him during the turbulent days of the war. It was not Lincoln’s only brush with prophecy either. One day, shortly before the election, he spoke to some friends as they were discussing the possibilities of Civil War. “Gentlemen,” he said to them, “you may be surprised and think it strange, but when the doctor here was describing a war, I distinctly saw myself, in second sight, bearing an important part in that strife.”

THE CURSED LIFE OF MARY LINCOLN

A Story of Sadness, Spiritualism and Sorrow

On November 4, 1842, future president Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd in Springfield, Illinois. It was a complicated and often turbulent marriage, but Mary remained devoted to Abraham throughout his entire life – and even after his death.

A young Mary Todd, who Lincoln fell in love with in Springfield and married in 1842

The two met at a Christmas party in Springfield in 1839. They were attracted to each other from the start. Mary’s sister soon noted with disapproval that when Lincoln would call, he would sit in rapt attention to everything Mary said. She believed the young man, who the wealthy family considered to be unsuitable, was paying far too much attention to Mary. Mary seemed to be returning his attentions for a time, but the following year found her still being courted by other men (including Lincoln’s rival, Stephen Douglas) and Lincoln still pining away after her. At the close of the year, he made his decision, he would marry her. Whether or not Lincoln formally proposed to her or not, Mary promised to become his wife. For some reason, though, on New Year’s Day 1841, Lincoln decided to break off the engagement.

Some have speculated that Lincoln was intrigued by the idea of marriage, but afraid of it also. He feared his loss of freedom but was unsure that he wanted to live without Mary. His friend and law partner, William Herndon, noted that Lincoln was acting as “crazy as a loon”. He didn’t eat, he didn’t sleep, he let his work slide and refused to meet and dine with friends. Another friend, Dr. Anson Henry, suggested that Lincoln take a trip out of town and try to ease his state of mind.

A short time before, one of Lincoln’s closest friends, Joshua Speed, had moved to Louisville, Kentucky and so Lincoln decided to travel there and stay with him for a little while. Unfortunately, things were no better for him in Louisville. Speed was also in the midst of a turbulent relationship with a local woman named Fanny Henning. After a short visit, Speed returned to Springfield with Lincoln and wrapped up his business affairs to move to Kentucky permanently. He would soon be marrying Fanny, but he left his good friend with one piece of advice: either give up Mary for good or marry her and be done with it.

In the summer of 1842, Lincoln again turned his attentions to Mary Todd. A friend cleverly arranged a surprise dinner so the two of them would meet again and it worked. By November, marriage was on Lincoln’s mind again. In fact, it was so much on his mind that on the morning of November 4, he and Mary announced they were going to be married --- that same evening.

Their friends were in great haste to make the preparations, surprised by the announcement. There was no time for Joshua Speed to travel from Kentucky, so Lincoln asked another friend, James Matheny, to stand in as best man. Matheny would later write that during the ceremony, Lincoln “looked and acted like a lamb being led to the slaughter.” While he was getting dressed, his landlord’s son asked him where he was going and Lincoln answered, “To Hell, I suppose.”

Despite the haste in making arrangements and Lincoln’s obvious foreboding, the ceremony proceeded without a hitch and Lincoln was now a husband.

The Lincolns had their honeymoon at the Globe Tavern, where they lived during the first years of their marriage. There was every indication that their marriage was a happy one, despite Mary losing track of her socialite friends and her sister’s warnings that her husband was unsuitable. It was not long before they were expecting their first child and Robert was born just three days short of nine months after the wedding.

During the Civil War and the Lincoln’s years in the White House, their son Willie died, a loss from which Mary never recovered. It was during this time that she turned to Spiritualism and séances began to be held at the White House. Mary seemed to feel great relief from her contact with the dead but later, after Lincoln was assassinated and Spiritualism fell out of popular favor (it would revive again in the early 1900s), Spiritualism would become her undoing.

For months after Lincoln’s death, Mary spoke of nothing but the assassination until her friends began to drift away, their sympathy at a breaking point. She began to accuse her husband’s friends and his Cabinet members of complicity in the murder, from his bodyguards to Andrew Johnson.

Mary lay in her bed for 40 days after the assassination and in the years that followed, she deteriorated mentally and physically into a bitter old woman who wore nothing but black mourning clothing for the rest of her life. Her attachment to Spiritualism turned into a dangerous obsession, reaching a point where she could not function without aid from her “spirit guides.”

Mary had a great fear of poverty. She often begged her friends to help her with money. Unlike the widows of generals and governors, for whom money was easily raised, Mary’s handful of supporters found it impossible to raise funds on her behalf because she was just too unpopular. In fact, she was despised across America. Newspapers wrote unflattering stories about her and she was ridiculed by members of Washington society.

In 1868, she abandoned America and took her son Tad to live in Germany. They lived there in hiding for three years before coming home. In July 1870, Congress approved a lifetime pension for Mrs. Lincoln of $3,000 per year. This pension awaited her when she returned to America, as did an inheritance from Lincoln’s estate. She was finally wealthy woman. This fear was over, but heartbreak soon followed.

Travel and an ocean crossing had dire circumstances for Tad. He developed tuberculosis and his health began to fail. He lingered for many weeks and then died in July 1871. Tad’s death, which followed the death of two other children and her husband, further aggravated Mary’s grief, which was enhanced by her previous history of mental instability.

Mary turned to the only thing that she believed that she had left – Spiritualism. For a time, she moved into a commune, where she began to develop her psychic “gifts,” which enabled her to see “spirit faces” and “communicate beyond the veil.” She claimed to have daily conversations with her late husband. Many took advantage of her, tricking her out of money and using her name to promote their own “abilities.” One of these was so-called “spirit photographer” William Mumler, who produced thousands of blatantly fake photographs of ghosts during his infamous career. Although he claimed not to recognize Mary when she called at his studio, he “miraculously” managed to produce a photo of her and her late husband by deft manipulation of the photographic plates.

The infamous photograph taken by William Mumler, which Mary believed showed the phantom image of her late husband. Although Mumler claimed that he had no idea who the veiled woman was who visited his studio that day -- until the moment she removed the veil, that is -- Mumler was a notorious fraud, who produced thousands of blatantly fake "spirit" photographs.

Mary’s sole surviving son, Robert, a rising young Chicago lawyer, was alarmed as his mother's behavior became increasingly erratic. In March 1875, during a visit to Jacksonville, Florida, Mary became absolutely convinced that Robert was deathly ill. She traveled to Chicago to find him in fine health. On her arrival, she told her son that someone had tried to poison her on the train and that a “wandering Jew” had taken her pocketbook but would return it later.

While staying with Robert in Chicago, Mary spent money lavishly on useless items, such as draperies that she never hung and elaborate dresses that she never wore, due to the fact that she only wore black after her husband's assassination. She often walked around the city with $56,000 in government bonds sewn into her petticoats. She was afraid of banks and still feared losing all her money. After Mary had an “episode” during which it was feared she would jump out of the window to escape a non-existent fire, the family began to feel that she was going insane.

Fearing that his mother was a danger to herself, Robert was left with no choice but to have Mary committed to a psychiatric hospital in Batavia, Illinois in 1875. After the court proceedings had ended, Mary was so enraged that she attempted suicide. She went to the hotel pharmacist and ordered enough laudanum to kill herself. However, the pharmacist caught on to her plans and substituted the drug with a harmless liquid.

On May 20, 1875, she arrived at Bellevue Place, a private, upscale sanitarium in the Fox River Valley. With his mother in the hospital, Robert Lincoln was left with control of Mary Lincoln's finances. By this time, Robert was wealthy in his own right and had no plans for his mother’s money, which Mary refused to understand. She was sure that he planned to steal everything from her.

Three months after being installed in Bellevue Place, Mary Lincoln engineered her escape. She smuggled letters to her lawyer and his wife, who was not only her friend but also a feminist lawyer and fellow Spiritualist. She also wrote to the editor of the Chicago Times, known for its sensational journalism. Soon, the public embarrassments Robert had hoped to avoid were looming, and his character and motives were in question. The director of Bellevue, who at Mary’s trial had assured the jury she would benefit from treatment at his facility, now in the face of potentially damaging publicity declared her well enough to go to Springfield to live with her sister as she desired.

Mary was released into the custody of her sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards, in Springfield and in 1876 was once again declared competent to manage her own affairs. The committal proceedings led to Mary severing all ties with Robert. She called him a “wicked monster” and despised him for the rest of her life. Before she died, she wrote spiteful letters to him, cursing him and telling him that his father had never really loved him.

Mary went into exile again and moved into a small hotel in France. Her eyes were weakened by cataracts and her body was wracked with pain from severe arthritis. She refused to travel back to the United States until several bad falls left her nearly unable to walk. Her sister pleaded with her to come home and finally she returned to Springfield, moving into the Edwards house, the same house where she and Lincoln had been married years before.

Mary lived the last years of her life in a single room, wearing a money belt to protect her fortune. She kept all of the shades in her room drawn and spent her days packing and unpacking her 64 crates of clothing. She died in July 1882 at the age of 63 – a faded shell of the exuberant young socialite that she had once been and a sad victim of the Lincoln assassination who found herself cursed to live for 17 years after the death of her beloved husband.

STEALING LINCOLN'S BONES

The Plot to Steal the Body of Abraham Lincoln

On November 20, 1876, a special grand jury convened in Springfield, Illinois and returned a bill against two men, Terence Mullen and Jack Hughes, for attempted larceny and conspiring to commit an unlawful act. The charges angered many people, but there was simply nothing worse that the men could be charged with. You see, grave robbery was not a crime in Illinois at that time, no matter how famous the grave was that the two men had attempted to rob. They could not be charged with stealing the famous bones in the coffin – but only for planning to steal the coffin itself. You see, the famous bones that they attempted to make off with belonged to President Abraham Lincoln!

After Lincoln had been assassinated in 1865, his body traveled west from Washington, spending several weeks visiting towns and cities along a circuitous route. His funeral service in Springfield did not take place until May 4 and it followed a parade route from the former Lincoln home to Oak Ridge Cemetery, on the far edge of the city. Oak Ridge Cemetery had been started in Springfield around 1860 and mostly consisted of woods and unbroken forest. In fact, not until after Lincoln was buried there was much done in the way of improvement, adding roads, iron gates and a caretaker’s residence. Lincoln himself had chosen the rural graveyard as his final resting place, a fact that city leaders initially balked out. However, pressure from his high-strung widow eventually forced them to go along with his wishes. 

Lincoln was placed in a temporary receiving vault in the cemetery with his sons, Willie, who had died during the presidency, and Eddie, who had died many years before. Willie’s body had accompanied his father’s from Washington, while Eddie’s had been exhumed and brought over from another cemetery. A short time later, a temporary vault was built for Lincoln and on December 21, he was placed inside. Six of Lincoln’s friends wanted to be sure the body was safe, so a plumber’s assistant named Leon P. Hopkins made an opening in the lead box for them to peer inside. All was well and Lincoln and his sons were allowed a temporary rest. Hopkins stated in a newspaper story of the time, “I was the last man to look upon the face of Abraham Lincoln.” Of course, he had no idea at the time just how many others would look upon the president’s face in the years to come. 

Construction on a permanent tomb for Lincoln lasted more than five years and on September 19, 1871, the caskets of Lincoln and his sons were removed from the hillside crypt and taken to the catacomb of the new tomb. The plumber, Leon P. Hopkins, opened the coffin once more and the same six friends peered again at the president’s face. There were several crypts waiting for Lincoln and his sons, although one of them had already been filled. Tad Lincoln had died in Chicago a short time before and his body had already been placed in the nearly finished monument.

On October 9, 1874, Lincoln was moved again. This time, his body was placed inside a marble sarcophagus, which had been placed in the center of the semi-circular catacomb. A few days later, the monument was finally dedicated. The citizens of Springfield seemed content with the final resting place of their beloved Abraham Lincoln. But then a threat arose from a direction that no one could have ever predicted – a plot to steal the body and hold it for ransom! This event became one of the strangest stories in the annals of Illinois crime.

The events began with the arrest of Benjamin Boyd, a petty criminal who had, by 1875, established himself as one of the most skilled engravers of counterfeit currency plates in the country. Boyd had been doggedly pursued by Captain Patrick D. Tyrell of the Chicago office of the U.S. Secret Service for eight months before he was finally captured in Fulton, Illinois, on October 20. Following his trial, Boyd was sentenced to a term of ten years at the Joliet Penitentiary. 

Shortly after Boyd’s arrest, the strange events concerning the body of Abraham Lincoln began in Lincoln, Illinois. The city was a staging point for a successful gang of counterfeiters run by James "Big Jim" Kneally. The place was an ideal refuge for Kneally's "shovers," pleasant-looking fellows who traveled around the country and passed, or "shoved," bogus money to merchants. Following Boyd’s arrest, in the spring of 1876, business took a downturn for the Kneally Gang. With their master engraver in prison, the gang’s supply of money was dwindling fast. Things were looking desperate when Kneally seized on a gruesome plan. He would have his men kidnap a famous person and for a ransom, negotiate for the release of Benjamin Boyd from Joliet prison. Kneally found the perfect candidate as his kidnapping victim: Abraham Lincoln, or at least his famous corpse.

Kneally placed Thomas J. Sharp in charge of assembling the gang and leading the operation. Sharp was the editor of the local Sharp’s Daily Statesman newspaper and a valued member of the counterfeiting gang. Meanwhile, Kneally returned to St. Louis, where he owned a legitimate livery business, so that he could be far away from suspicion as events unfolded and have an airtight alibi. In June, the plan was hammered together at Robert Splain’s saloon in Lincoln. Five of the gang members were sent to Springfield to open a saloon that could be used as a base of operations. 

This new place was soon established as a tavern and dance hall on Jefferson Street, the site of Springfield’s infamous Levee District, a lawless section of town where all manner of vice flourished. Splain served as the bartender while the rest of the gang loitered there as customers. They made frequent visits to the Lincoln Tomb at Oak Ridge, where they found the custodian, John C. Power, more than happy to answer questions about the building. On one occasion, he innocently let slip that there was no guard at the tomb during the night. This clinched the last details of the plan, which involved stealing the body and spiriting it away out of town. It would be buried about two miles north of the city, under a Sangamon River bridge, and then the men would scatter and wait for Kneally to negotiate the ransom. They chose the night of July 3, 1876 to carry out their plan.

The Springfield saloon was up and running by the middle of June, leaving the men with several weeks with to do nothing but sit around the tavern, drink, and wait. One night, one of the men got very drunk and spilled the details of the plan to a prostitute, who worked at a nearby "parlor house." He told her to look for a little extra excitement in the city on Independence Day. He and his companions planned to be stealing Lincoln's body while the rest of the city was celebrating the holiday. The story was too good to keep and the woman passed it along to several other people, including the city's Chief of Police, Abner Wilkinson, although no record exists how these two knew one another. The story spread rapidly and Kneally's men disappeared.

Kneally didn't give up on the plan, however. He simply went looking for more competent help. He moved his base of operations to a tavern called the Hub at 294 West Madison Street in Chicago. Kneally's man there was named Terence Mullen and he operated a secret headquarters for the gang in the back room of the tavern. One of Kneally's operatives, Jack Hughes, came into the Hub in August and learned that a big job was in the works. Kneally was anxious to carry out his plan, but balking at stealing a corpse, Hughes and Mullen brought another man into the mix. His name was Jim Morrissey and he had a reputation for being one of the most skilled grave robbers in Chicago. They decided he would be perfect for the job. Unknown to the gang, “Morrissey” was actually a Secret Service operative named Lewis Swegles. He was an undercover agent for Captain Patrick Tyrell and he began posing as a grave robber, claiming to have obtained dozens of cadavers for medical schools. 

Swegles, pretending to be “Jim Morrissey,” came into the Hub and discussed the methods of grave robbery with the other two men. The three of them quickly devised a plan. They would approach the Lincoln monument under the cover of night and pry open the marble sarcophagus. They would then place the casket in a wagon and drive northward to the Indiana sand dunes. This area was still remote enough to provide a suitable hiding place for however long was needed. Swegles, being the most experienced of the group, agreed to everything about the plan except for the number of men needed. He believed the actual theft would be harder than they thought and wanted to bring in a famous criminal friend of his to help them. The man's name was Billy Brown and he could handle the wagon while the others pillaged the tomb. The other two men readily agreed.

On November 5, Mullens and Hughes met with Swegles in his Chicago home for a final conference. They agreed the perfect night for the robbery would be the night of the upcoming presidential election. The city would be packed with people and they would be in downtown Springfield very late, waiting near the telegraph and political offices for news. Oak Ridge Cemetery, over two miles away and out in the woods, would be deserted and the men could work for hours and not be disturbed. It would also be a perfect night to carry the body away, as the roads would be crowded with wagons and people returning home from election celebrations. One more wagon would not be noticed.

The men agreed and decided to leave for Springfield on the next evening's train. Swegles promised to have Billy Brown meet them at the train, but felt it was best if he didn't sit with them. He thought that four men might attract too much attention. Hughes and Mullen conceded that this was a good idea, but wanted to at least get a look at Brown. Swegles instructed them to stay in their seats and he would have Brown walk past them to the rear car. As the train was pulling away from the station, a man passed by the two of them and casually nodded his head at them. This was the mysterious fourth man. Brown, after examination, disappeared into the back coach. Hughes and Mullen agreed that he looked fit for the job.

While they were discussing his merits, Billy Brown was hanging onto the back steps of the train and waiting for it to slow down at a crossing on the outskirts of Chicago. At that point, he slipped off the train and headed back into the city. "Billy Brown" was actually Agent Nealy of the United States Secret Service. 

As Nealy was slipping off the train, more agents were taking his place. At the same time the conspirators were steaming toward Springfield, Tyrell and half a dozen operatives were riding in a coach just one car ahead of them. They were also joined on the train by a contingent of Pinkerton detectives, who had been hired by Robert Lincoln after he got word of the plot to steal his father's body. The detectives were led by Elmer Washburne, one of Robert Lincoln’s law partners.

A plan was formed between Washburne and Tyrell. Swegles would accompany the grave robbers to Springfield and while assisting in the robbery, would signal the detectives, who would be hiding in another part of the monument. They would then capture Mullen and Hughes in the act.

When they arrived in Springfield, Tyrell contacted John Todd Stuart, Robert's cousin and the head of the new Lincoln National Monument Association, which cared for the tomb. He advised Stuart of the plan and together, they contacted the custodian of the site. The detectives would hide in the museum side of the monument with the custodian. This area was called Memorial Hall and it was located on the opposite side of the structure from the catacomb. They would wait there for the signal from Swegles and then they would rush forward and capture the robbers.

The first Pinkerton agent arrived just after nightfall. He carried with him a note for John Power, the custodian, which instructed him to put out the lights and wait for the others to arrive. The two men crouched in the darkness until the other men came inside. Tyrell and his men explored the place with their flashlights. Behind the Memorial Hall was a damp, dark labyrinth that wound through the foundations of the monument to a rear wall of the catacomb, where Lincoln was entombed. Against this wall, in the blackness, Tyrell stationed a detective to wait and listen for sounds of the grave robbers. Tyrell then returned to the Museum Room to wait with the others. Their wait was over as darkness fell outside. 

A lantern flashed outside the door and sounds could be heard as the grave robbers worked at the lock. Almost immediately, Mullen broke the saw blade that he was using on the lock and so they settled in while he resorted to the long and tedious task of filing the lock away. After some time, Mullen finally removed the lock and opened the door to the burial chamber. Before them, in the dim light, they saw the marble sarcophagus of President Lincoln. Now, all they had to do was to remove the lid and carry away the coffin, which turned out to be much harder than they had anticipated. The stone was too heavy to move, so using an ax, they broke open the top, then moved the lid aside and looked into it. Swegles was given the lantern and was stationed nearby to illuminate the work area. Left with no other option, he complied, although he was supposed to light a match at the door to alert the Secret Service agents that it was time to act. Meanwhile, Mullen and Hughes lifted out the heavy casket. Once this was completed, Mullen told Swegles to go and have the wagon moved around. He had assured Mullen and Hughes that Billy Brown had it waiting in a ravine below the hill.

Swegles raced around to the Memorial Hall, gave the signal to the detectives, and then ran outside. Tyrell whispered to his men and, with drawn revolvers, they rushed out and around the monument to the catacomb. When they arrived, they found the lid to the sarcophagus was moved aside and Lincoln's casket was on the floor --- but the grave robbers were gone!

The detectives scattered outside to search the place. Tyrell ran outside and around the base of the monument, where he saw two men near one of the statues. He whipped up his pistol and fired at them. A shot answered and they fought it out in a hail of gunfire, dodging around the monument. Suddenly, one of the men at whom he was shooting called out Tyrell's name --- he was firing at his own agents!

Mullen and Hughes had casually walked away from the tomb to await the return of Swegles, Brown and the wagon. They never suspected the whole thing had been a trap. They had only wanted to get some air and moved into the shadows where they wouldn't be seen in case someone wandered by. After a few minutes, they saw movement at the door to the tomb and had started back, thinking that Swegles had returned. They heard the pistol shots and saw a number of men around the monument. They took off running past the ravine and vanished into the night. 

Assuming that Swegles had been captured, they fled back to Chicago, only to be elated when they found him waiting for them at the Hub tavern. He had returned with the horses, he told them, but found the gang gone. He had come back to Chicago, not knowing what else to do, to await word of what had happened. Thrilled with their good fortune, the would-be grave robbers spent the night in drunken celebration.

The story of the attempted grave robbery appeared in the newspaper following the presidential election but it was greeted with stunned disbelief. In fact, only one paper, the Chicago Tribune, would even print the story because every other newspaper in the state was sure that it was not true. To the general public, the story had to be false and most believed that it had been hoaxed for some bizarre political agenda. Most people would not believe that the Secret Service and Pinkerton agents would be stupid enough to have gathered all in one room where they could see and hear nothing, and then wait for the criminals to act. The Democrats in Congress charged that the Republicans had hoaxed the whole thing so that it would look like the Democrats had violated the grave of a Republican hero and in this way, sway the results of the election. To put it bluntly, no one believed that Lincoln's grave had been, or ever could be, robbed!

The doubters became believers on November 18, when Mullen and Hughes were captured. The newspapers printed the story the following day and America realized the story that had appeared a short time before had actually been true. Disbelief turned into horror. Letters poured into the papers, laying the guilt at the feet of everyone from the Democrats, to southern sympathizers, to the mysterious John Wilkes Booth Fund. 

The people of Illinois were especially outraged and punishment for the two men would have been severe --- if the law had allowed it. Mullen and Hughes were charged with two minor crimes. The public was aghast at the idea that these men would get off so lightly, even though the grand jury had returned a quick indictment. Continuances and changes of venue dragged the case along to May 1877, when it finally came to trial. The jury was asked by the prosecution to sentence the men to the maximum term allowed, which was five years in prison. On the first ballot, two jurors wanted the maximum; two of them wanted a two-year sentence; four others asked for varying sentences; and four others even voted for acquittal. After a few more ballots, Mullen and Hughes were incarcerated for a one-year stay in Joliet.

And Abraham Lincoln was once more left to rest peacefully in his grave, at least for a while. 

It was not long before the story of the Lincoln grave robbery became a hotly denied rumor, or at best, a fading legend. The custodians of the site simply decided that it was something they did not wish to talk about. Of course, as the story began to be denied, the people who had some recollection of the tale created their own truth in myths and conspiracies. The problem in this case, however, was that many of these "conspiracies" happened to be grounded in the truth.

Hundreds of people came to see the Lincoln burial site and many of them were not afraid to ask about the stories that were being spread about the tomb. From 1876 to 1878, custodian John C. Power gave rather evasive answers to anyone who prodded him for details about the grave robbery. He was terrified of one question in particular and it seemed to be the one most often asked: was he sure that Lincoln’s body had been returned safely to the sarcophagus after the grave robbers took it out?

Power was terrified of that question for one reason, because at that time, Lincoln’s grave was completely empty!

On the morning of November 1876, when John T. Stuart of the Lincoln National Monument Association learned what had occurred in the tomb with the would-be robbers, he rushed out to the site. He was not able to rest after the incident, fearing that the grave robbers, who had not been caught at that time, would return and finish their ghoulish handiwork. So, he made a decision. He contacted the custodian and told him that they must take the body from the crypt and hide it elsewhere in the building. Together, they decided the best place to store it would be in the cavern of passages which lay between the Memorial Hall and the catacomb.

That afternoon, Adam Johnson, a Springfield marble-worker, took some of his men and they lifted Lincoln’s casket from the sarcophagus. They covered it over with a blanket and then cemented the lid back into place. Later that night, Johnson, Power and three members of the Memorial Association stole out to the monument and carried the 500-pound coffin around the base of the obelisk, through Memorial Hall and into the dark labyrinth. They placed the coffin near some boards that had been left behind in the construction. The following day, Johnson built a new outer coffin while Power set to work digging a grave below the dirt floor. It was slow work, because it had to be done between visitors to the site, and he also had a problem with water seeping into the hole. Finally, he gave up and simply covered the coffin with the leftover boards and wood.

For the next two years, Lincoln lay beneath a pile of debris in the labyrinth, while visitors from all over the world wept and mourned over the sarcophagus at the other end of the monument. More and more of these visitors asked questions about the theft, questions full of suspicion, as if they knew something they really had no way of knowing.

In the summer and fall of 1877, the legend took another turn. Workmen arrived at the monument to erect the naval and infantry groups of statuary on the corners of the upper deck. Their work would take them into the labyrinth, where Power feared they would discover the coffin. The scandal would be incredible, so Power made a quick decision. He called the workmen together and swearing them to secrecy, showed them the coffin. They promised to keep the secret, but within days everyone in Springfield seemed to know that Lincoln’s body was not where it was supposed to be. Soon, the story was spreading all over the country.

Power was now in a panic. The body had to be more securely hidden and in order to do that, he needed more help. Power contacted two of his friends, Major Gustavas Dana and General Jasper Reece, and explained the situation. These men brought three others, Edward Johnson, Joseph Lindley and James McNeill, to meet with Power. 

On the night of November 18, the six men began digging a grave for Lincoln at the far end of the labyrinth. Cramped and cold, and stifled by stale air, they gave up around midnight with the coffin just barely covered and traces of their activity very evident. Power promised to finish the work the next day. These six men, sobered by the responsibility that faced them, decided to form a brotherhood to guard the secret of the tomb. They brought in three younger men, Noble Wiggins, Horace Chapin and Clinton Conkling, to help in the task. They called themselves the Lincoln Guard of Honor and had badges made for their lapels.

After the funeral of Mary Lincoln, John T. Stuart told the Guard of Honor that Robert Lincoln wanted to have his mother’s body hidden away with his father’s. So, late on the night of July 21, the men slipped into the monument and moved Mary’s double-leaded casket, burying it in the labyrinth next to Lincoln’s.

Visitors to the tomb increased as the years went by, all of them paying their respects to the two empty crypts. Years later, Power would complain that questions about Lincoln’s empty grave were asked of him nearly every day. Finally, in 1886, the Lincoln National Monument Association decided that it was time to provide a new tomb for Lincoln in the catacomb. A new and stronger crypt of brick and mortar was designed and made ready.

The press was kept outside as the Guard of Honor, and others who shared the secret of the tomb, brought the Lincoln caskets out of the labyrinth. Eighteen persons, who had known Lincoln in life, filed past the casket, looking into a square hole that had been cut into the lead coffin. Strangely, Lincoln had changed very little. His face was darker after twenty-two years but they were still the same sad features these people had always known. The last man to identify the corpse was Leon P. Hopkins, the same man who had closed the casket years before. He soldered the square back over the hole, thinking once again that he would be the last person to ever look upon the face of Abraham Lincoln.

The Guard of Honor lifted Lincoln’s casket and placed it next to Mary’s smaller one. The two of them were taken into the catacomb and lowered into the new brick and mortar vault. Here, they would sleep for all time.

"All time" lasted for about thirteen more years. In 1899, Illinois legislators decided the monument was to be torn down and a new one built from the foundations. It seemed that the present structure was settling unevenly, cracking around the "eternal" vault of the president.

There was once again the question of what to do with the bodies of the Lincoln family. The Guard of Honor came up with a clever plan. During the fifteen months needed for construction, the Lincolns would be secretly buried in a multiple grave a few feet away from the foundations of the tomb. As the old structure was torn down, tons of stone and dirt would be heaped onto the gravesite both to disguise and protect it. When the new monument was finished, the grave would be uncovered again.

When the new building was completed, the bodies were exhumed once more. In the top section of the grave were the coffins belonging to the Lincoln sons and to a grandson, also named Abraham. The former president and Mary were buried on the bottom level and so safely hidden that one side of the temporary vault had to be battered away to reach them.

Lincoln’s coffin was the last to be moved and it was close to sunset when a steam engine finally hoisted it up out of the ground. The protective outer box was removed and six construction workers lifted the coffin onto their shoulders and took it into the catacomb. The other members of the family had been placed in their crypts and Lincoln’s casket was placed into a white marble sarcophagus.

The group dispersed after switching on the new electric burglar alarm. This device connected the monument to the caretaker’s house, which was a few hundred feet away. As up-to-date as this device was, it still did not satisfy the fears of Robert Lincoln, who was sure that his father’s body would be snatched again if care were not taken. He stayed in constant contact with the Guard of Honor, who were still working to ensure the safety of the Lincoln remains, and made a trip to Springfield every month or so after the new monument was completed. Something just wasn’t right. Even though the alarm worked perfectly, he could not give up the idea that the robbery might be repeated.

He journeyed to Springfield and brought with him his own set of security plans. He met with officials and gave them explicit directions on what he wanted done. The construction company was to break a hole in the tile floor of the monument and place his father’s casket at a depth of 10 feet. The coffin would then be encased in a cage of steel bars and the hole would be filled with concrete, making the president’s final resting place into a solid block of stone.

On September 26, 1901, a group assembled to make the final arrangements for Lincoln’s last burial. A discussion quickly turned into a heated debate. The question that concerned them was whether or not Lincoln’s coffin should be opened and the body viewed one last time. Most felt this would be a wise precaution, especially in light of the continuing stories about Lincoln not being in the tomb. The men of the Guard of Honor were all for laying the tales to rest at last, but Robert was decidedly against opening the casket again, feeling that there was no need to further invade his father’s privacy. In the end, practicality won out and Leon P. Hopkins was sent for to chisel out an opening in the lead coffin. The casket was placed on two sawhorses in the still-unfinished Memorial Hall. The room was described as hot and poorly lighted, as newspapers had been pasted over the windows to keep out the stares of the curious.

A piece of the coffin was cut out and lifted away. According to diaries, a "strong and reeking odor" filled the room, but the group pressed close to the opening anyway. The face of the president was covered with a fine powder made from white chalk. It had been applied in 1865 before the last burial service. It seemed that Lincoln’s face had turned inexplicably black in Pennsylvania and after that, a constant covering of chalk was kept on his face. Lincoln’s features were said to be completely recognizable. The casket’s headrest had fallen away and his head was thrown back slightly, revealing his still perfectly trimmed beard. His small black tie and dark hair were still as they were in life, although his eyebrows had vanished. The broadcloth suit that he had worn to his second inauguration was covered with small patches of yellow mold and the American flag that was clutched in his lifeless hands was now in tatters.
There was no question, according to those present, that this was Abraham Lincoln and that he was placed in the underground vault. The casket was sealed back up again by Leon Hopkins, making his claim of years ago true. Hopkins was the last person to look upon the face of Lincoln.

The casket was then lowered down into the cage of steel and two tons of cement was poured over it, forever encasing the president’s body in stone.

This should have been the end of the story but as with all lingering mysteries, a few questions still remain. The strangest are perhaps these: does the body of Abraham Lincoln really lie beneath the concrete in the catacomb? Or was the last visit from Robert Lincoln part of some elaborate ruse to throw off any further attempts to steal the president’s body? And did, as some rumors have suggested, Robert arrange with the Guard of Honor to have his father’s body hidden in a different location entirely?

Most historians would agree that Lincoln’s body is safely encased in the concrete of the crypt, but rumors persist. Some might ask whose word we have for the fact that Lincoln’s body is where it is said to be. We only have the statement of Lincoln’s son, Robert, his friends and of course, the Guard of Honor. But weren’t these the same individuals who allowed visitors to the monument to grieve before an empty sarcophagus, while the president’s body was actually hidden in the labyrinth, beneath a few inches of dirt? 

I don’t think we will ever really know for sure.

"DO YOU EVER FIND YOURSELF TALKING TO THE DEAD?"

The Death of Willie Lincoln, or Seances in the White House

The Civil War took a terrible toll on Abraham Lincoln but there is no doubt that the most crippling blow that he suffered in the White House was the death of his son, Willie, on February 20, 1862. Lincoln and his wife, Mary, grieved deeply over Willie’s death. Their son Eddie had passed away a number of years before and while they didn’t know it at the time, another son, Tad, would only live to be age eighteen. Robert was the only Lincoln son to see adulthood. Lincoln was sick at heart over Willie’s death and it was probably the most intense personal crisis in his life. Some historians have even called it the greatest blow he ever suffered. Even Confederate President Jefferson Davis sent a letter to Washington to express his condolences over the boy’s death.

Seemingly beyond all hope of comfort, Mary Lincoln turned to the one of the most popular movements in America at the time – Spiritualism, which offered communication with the dead. She began to hold séances in the White House and communed with her dead son. And according to others in attendance, so did President Lincoln.

In the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suffered greatly. Exhausted, he prowled the White House corridors at night, visiting the War Room and reeling under the great responsibility that he felt sending thousands of young men to their deaths. Perhaps his greatest solace during those times was his cherished sons, Willie and Tad. As the war dragged on, Lincoln found them to be one of his only antidotes to the depression and anxiety of his position. He treasured the moments that he could spend with them, when he could forget about the bumbling generals and the bickering politicians and relax with his sons, reading them stories and sharing their wild fun and antics. He loved to beleaguer his visitors with tales of his “two little codgers” and bragged about them to all who would listen.

This mezzotint print of the Lincoln family in 1861 produced by New York engraver John Chester Buttre in 1873. It was based on a composite portrait by New York artist, Francis B. Carpenter. Carpenter relied on a photograph taken at Mathew Brady’s Washington studio on February 9, 1864, for his representation of President Lincoln and Tad. The images of Mary Todd, Willie, and Robert Lincoln are his own creation.

Both Willie and Tad found the White House to be a place of constant revelry and Lincoln let them run wild with very few restraints. They ran and shouted in the corridors and burst into Lincoln’s office in the middle of conferences, chasing one another through the room and darting in between stiff politicians who were not amused. Tad, who instigated most of the mischief, once fired his toy cannon at a Cabinet meeting and also liked to stand at the front of the grand staircase and collect a nickel “entrance fee” from those who came to see the President. Also, with Lincoln’s help, the boys converted the White House lawn into a zoo, with animals consisting of ponies, kittens, white rabbits, a turkey, a pet goat (which often slept in Tad’s bed) and a dog named Jip, who had a habit of sleeping in Lincoln’s lap during meals. When the boys were not chasing animals through the Executive Mansion, they were holding fairs and minstrel shows in the attic. One day, Tad discovered the White House bell system, which had cords running to various rooms so that Lincoln or the staff could summon servants whenever they needed anything. Tad set all of the bells clanging at once, sending the White House into bedlam. It took a few minutes for them to figure out what was going on, but eventually members of the staff climbed into the attic and found Tad yanking all of the bells and giggling madly.

Inspired by the martial atmosphere in Washington, the boys waged mock battles with neighborhood children on the White House lawn. They also held military parades through the corridors of the house, with the boys and their friends marching in a single line, blowing on old horns and banging tin drums. They carried out secret missions on the White House roof, hiding out and watching for “rebs” with their telescopes.

On another occasion, they held a solemn court martial for a soldier doll named Jack, found him guilty, shot him for desertion and buried him in the White House garden. One day, though, they burst into Lincoln’s office during a meeting and explained in a breathless voice that they had shot Jack for desertion and buried him but that the White House gardener wanted the doll removed because they had dug up some roses. So, they wanted “Paw” to fix up a pardon for Jack. Lincoln said that he reckoned that he could do that and took out a piece of official stationary. “The Doll Jack is pardoned by order of the President” and signed it “A. Lincoln.”

President Lincoln with his son, Tad

Because the boys loved the Army, Lincoln often took them along when he went to visit General George McClellan’s camps across the Potomac. They looked up to the soldiers with wide-eyed reverence and watched the marching bands and the drilling regiments in awe. When Lincoln was presented to the troops, the boys rode with him in his carriage and tipped their hats to the troops just as their father did.

In spite of how it sounds, though, life for the Lincoln boys was not all play. Tad was a nervous boy, like his mother, and a hyperactive child with a speech impediment. He was slow to learn and many did not believe that he could read. Mary hired tutors for the boys but Tad had “no opinion of discipline” and teacher after teacher resigned in frustration. But Lincoln refused to worry about Tad, insisting that he would learn his letters over time. The boys might be a little spoiled but he was determined to let them have as much fun as they could. They would have to grow up far too soon.

Willie Lincoln

In contrast to Tad, Willie had a very serious side and often behaved like an adult. He had turned eleven in December 1861 and many of the Lincoln’s friends and staff members commented on his precociousness. The young man would sit in church, listening to the minister with rapt attention while Tad played with a jackknife on the floor of his mother’s pew. When he was tired of romping with this younger brother, Willie liked to lock himself in Mary’s room, where he would curl up in a chair and read a book or write stories on a writing pad, just as his father used to do when he was growing up. He also kept scrapbooks about historical and significant events, filled with clippings on his father’s inauguration, the war, and deaths of important people. Willie was much like his father in so many ways and because of this, was his father’s special favorite. He and Willie shared many interests, especially reading, humor and a love for animals. Lincoln had bought Willie a pony for his birthday and it became the pride of the boy’s life. Mary loved Willie’s gentleness and he was so affectionate that she often counted on him desperately for family companionship. He would, she prayed, “be the hope and stay of her old age.”

Tragically, this was not meant to be.

  

By spring of 1862, the tide of the war was slowly starting to turn for the Union. Lincoln’s generals were finally starting to triumph on the battlefield. Buell had actually managed to defeat the rebels in a battle in eastern Kentucky and Halleck had finally come alive and had sent a column down the Tennessee River. Neither man was cooperating as Lincoln had directed but at least they were fighting. Even better news soon followed. A Brigadier General named Ulysses S. Grant had driven into northwestern Tennessee and had captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and then had stormed Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. He pounded the garrison until it met his terms of unconditional surrender. Lincoln and Stanton congratulated one another when they read the news and Lincoln noted happily that Grant and many of his men hailed from Illinois. Subsequent reports also maintained that Grant’s victories had broken the Confederate line in Kentucky and forced the rebels to retreat into Tennessee. Though Halleck, who was sitting behind a desk in St. Louis, claimed most of the credit, Lincoln himself nominated “Unconditional Surrender” Grant for a promotion to major general. After a long and dismal winter, Grant had given the president something to look forward to.

While Grant was busy hammering the river garrisons in Tennessee, both Willie and Tad became sick. The onset of their sickness occurred during the last days of January 1862. The boys were out playing in the show and both developed a fever and a cold. Tad’s illness soon passed, but Willie seemed to get worse. He was kept inside for a week and finally put into bed. A doctor was summoned and he assured Mary that the boy would improve, despite the fact that Willie’s lungs were congested and he was having trouble breathing. Day after day passed and Willie grew more and more sick. He developed chills and soon his fever spiked out of control. White House secretaries later told of hearing his cries in the night.

The reports of what Willie actually died from vary by account. In the end, it remains a mystery. He was said to have been a delicate child, despite his rough play with his brother and his outdoor activities. Like his brother Eddie, he may have suffered from “consumption” or, according to some accounts; he contracted either an acute malarial infection or typhoid. In either case, the lack of proper sanitation was likely a factor. During this time period, Washington had open sewers and a filthy canal for drinking water. The city garbage was dumped into the water just a short distance from the White House.

Before the boy had taken sick, the Lincolns had planned a large reception with over eight hundred people in attendance. The lavish party included dinner, music and dancing and the invitations had already gone out, leaving Mary no opportunity to cancel. The evening turned out to be a dismal affair for the worried parents as they continually took turns climbing the stairs to check on Willie.

His condition did not improve. The doctor was summoned back and by then, everyone in the household and the offices knew that Willie was seriously ill. More doctors were called in to consult and soon, Willie’s illness made the newspapers. The reporters conjectured that he may have contracted bilious fever. One parent stayed with the frightened and sick boy at all times and a nurse came to spell them from one of the local hospitals. After a week of this, Mary was too weak and exhausted to rise from her own bed but Lincoln never left the boy’s side, sleeping and eating in a chair next to his bed. All he could do was to bathe Willie’s face with a wet cloth and look on helplessly as his son’s life slowly slipped away. The doctors had no hope for the child as he grew worse. Soon, Willie’s mind wandered and he failed to recognize anyone, including his beloved father.

Death came for Willie on the afternoon of February 20, 1862. Lincoln covered his face and wept in the same manner that he had for his mother many years before. He looked at Willie for a long time, refusing to leave his bed side. “My poor boy,” the President is reported to have said. “He was too good for this earth. God called him home. I know that he is better off in heaven, but then we loved him so. It is hard.... hard to have him die.”

Mary collapsed in convulsions of sobbing and her closest confidante, her black seamstress Lizzie Keckley, led her away to comfort her. The talented Mrs. Keckley, a former slave who previously worked for Mrs. Jefferson Davis, had become an almost constant companion of Mrs. Lincoln after completing her ball gown for the inauguration. She was one of the few people who possessed the patience and strength needed to deal with the high-strung First Lady. Mary trusted her implicitly, confided in her, and called the woman her best living friend. Keckley listened to Mary, sympathized with her and advised her as best she could. She would soon influence Mary greatly when it came to her beliefs in Spiritualism.

Mary Lincoln’s close friend and confidante, seamstress Lizzie Keckley

After Willie’s death, it was Lizzie who washed the boy’s body and dressed him in a plain brown suit of clothes for the funeral. She herself had lost her only son and understood Mary’s mother’s pain at the loss of Willie. 

President Lincoln was unable to stomach his own loss. He managed to stand after Mary was led away by Lizzie Keckley and stumbled into John Nicolay’s office to share the horrible news. Then, sobbing, he walked to Tad’s room. He sat down with the boy and tried to tell him that Willie would not be able to play with him anymore; that his brother had died. Tad refused to believe it for a time and then he too began to cry.

Orville Browning, Lincoln’s longtime friend from Illinois, and his wife, Elizabeth, immediately came to the White House when they heard the news. Elizabeth stayed with Mary throughout the night and Orville began taking care of funeral arrangements. It was a tragic time in the White House and according to the tradition of the day, the mirrors in the house were covered and the mansion was draped in black. The Lincolns hardly stirred from their rooms. If not for their friends and Lincoln’s most trusted staff, the White House would have come to a standstill.

On February 24, a minister conducted the funeral in the East Room, while Willie lay in a metal coffin in the nearby Green Room. It was said that the boy only appeared to be sleeping as his friends and family passed slowly by him, their faces twisted in grief. Lincoln stood with Robert by his side but Mary did not attend the funeral. She was in such a state of shock that she was unable to leave her room. Most of official Washington was there, including Seward, who wept openly, Lincoln’s Cabinet, dozens of politicians and George McClellan, who was so moved by the President’s suffering that he later sent Lincoln a compassionate note expressing his sorrow and thanking him for standing by him during failure after failure on the military front. When the service was concluded, the pallbearers and a group of children from Willie’s Sunday school class carried the coffin outside and to the waiting hearse.

 The day of the funeral was a stormy one, as if the forces of nature reflected the anguish in the Lincoln’s hearts. The procession to the cemetery was several blocks long and it ended at Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown. Throughout the day, rainstorms wreaked destruction upon the city. Steeples had fallen from churches, roofs had been torn form houses, trees and debris littered the roadways, and even the funeral procession cowered under the torrents of rain. But as soon as they reached the cemetery, the storm passed over and the air became silent, almost as in deference to Willie Lincoln.

The service was short. Willie had been embalmed to make the trip back to Springfield and be buried beside his brother, but Lincoln changed his mind about that at the last minute. He accepted an offer made to him by a friend, William Thomas Carroll, to place the body of Willie in one of the crypts in the Carroll family tomb. This would be until Lincoln retired from the presidency and returned to live in Springfield himself. He could not bear the idea of having Willie so far away from him just yet.

In fact, Lincoln returned to the cemetery the next day to watch the body as it was moved from the cemetery chapel to the crypt itself. The tomb was located in a remote area of the cemetery and was built into the side of a hill. It was a beautiful and peaceful spot, but Lincoln wouldn’t be able to leave his son unattended there for long.

Word spread that Lincoln returned to the tomb on two occasions and had Willie’s coffin opened. The undertaker had embalmed Willie so perfectly that he appeared to be merely asleep. The President claimed each time that he opened the casket that he wanted to look upon his boy’s face just one last time.

After the funeral, Lincoln tried to go on about his work, but his spirit had been crushed by Willie’s death. One week after the funeral, he closed himself up in his office all day and wept. It has often been said that Lincoln was on the verge of suicide at this point, but none can say for sure. He did withdraw even further into himself though and he began to look more closely at the spiritual matters that had interested him for so long.

Although many Lincoln scholars dismiss, or openly scoff, at the idea, it is not only likely that Abraham Lincoln believed in the supernatural, but that he actually participated in it through séances and attempts to contact the spirit world. Many have ignored this part of Lincoln’s life or have said that Lincoln had no time for ghosts and spirits, but there are others who say that he actually attended séances, which were held in the White House. Whether he accepted the idea of spirit communication or not, it is a fact that many Spiritualists were often guests there.

After Willie died, Lincoln treasured small items and drawings given to him by his son, sometimes putting them all over his desk while he worked, hoping to capture his essence. Small toys that had belonged to Willie were placed on his fireplace mantel, along with a framed picture that Willie had done for his father. Lincoln would tell visitors that it had been painted by “my boy, who died.” His friends stated that Lincoln would often watch the door while he worked, as if expecting the boy to run through it and give his father a hug, as he often did in life. One afternoon, he asked Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, “Do you ever find yourself talking with the dead? I do... ever since Willie’s death. I catch myself involuntarily talking to him as if he were near me..... And I feel that he is!”

Willie’s death left a permanent hole in Lincoln’s heart. Often he would dream that Willie was still alive and would see the boy playing in the leaves on the White House lawn and calling out to him --- only to awaken in his darkened bedroom and realize that it was only a dream.

Lincoln also began to speak of how Willie’s spirit remained with him and how his presence was often felt in his home and office. Some mediums theorized that Lincoln’s obsession with the boy’s death may have caused Willie’s spirit to linger behind, refusing, for his father’s sake, to pass on to the other side.

Even if Lincoln did become involved with Spiritualism, as so many have claimed, he largely avoided them in public. However, after Willie’s death, Mary embraced them openly. This is not surprising with the atmosphere that existed in the White House at that time. The President managed to escape from his despair with work, even though his moments with Mary and Tad tended to bring back his pain again. Tad, who until his brother’s death thought life was nothing more than a game, now broke into bouts of crying because Willie “will never speak to me anymore.” But it was Mary who seemed to be more affected by her son’s death. Always high-strung and emotional in the best of times, she suffered what was likely a nervous breakdown and she shut herself in her room for three months. She took to her bed, broke into fits of weeping and begged Willie to come back to her. Lizzie Keckley would later recall how tender President Lincoln was with his anguished wife but he worried about her as well, fearful that she would lapse into insanity. One day, he took her to the window of her room and pointed out to a distant structure where mental patients were confined. “Try and control your grief,” he told her, “or it will drive you mad and we may have to send you there.”

With care from her husband, and Lizzie’s friendship and kindness, Mary began to slowly improve, although the mention of Willie’s name or a reminder of him would send her into violent sobs. Unable to bear any memory, she gave away all of his toys and anything that might make her think of him. She never again entered the guest room where he died or into the Green Room where he had been laid out in his coffin. She canceled all but the most important social functions and lived in veritable seclusion for some time, trying anxiously to hold on. Five months after her son’s death, she was still so shaken that she could barely write to her friends in Springfield about “our crushing bereavement”. Sometimes, she wrote, when she was alone, she realized again that “he is not with us” and the terror of the thought “often for days overcomes me”.

As time wore on, Mary began to find small ways to alleviate her grief. Following Lizzie Keckley’s advice, she began visiting the military hospitals in Washington, distributing food and flowers to the wounded soldiers. She also developed a deep compassion, thanks to her own suffering and her friendship for Lizzie Keckley, for all of the “oppressed colored people”. She helped Lizzie to care for “contraband” blacks who were now streaming into Washington and even convinced President Lincoln to donate $200 to her cause because “humanity requires it”. Mary also did everything that she could to find jobs for the refugees.

All of this did only so much to ease her pain, though, and Mary remained unstable. Her mood swings, headaches and explosive temper were worse than ever. In addition, she began to see political conspiracies against her husband everywhere, especially on the part of William Seward, the “dirty sneak” who had tried, and was still trying, to take her husband’s job. She despised the man and hated him even more for the fact that he cheerfully ignored her hatred for him. She believed that all of the Cabinet members were evil and was bothered by the fact that her husband seemed to be so unaware of it. Mary also fretted about his safety, begging Lincoln to take guards along when he went out on his nocturnal walks to the War Department. She begged him to be careful and worried about him so much that it seemed to Lizzie that Mary “read impending danger in every rustling leaf, in every whisper of the wind.”

Perhaps the only thing that really provided Mary with any comfort at all was her embrace of Spiritualism, a movement that claimed contact with the dead and which had enjoyed a revival during the years of carnage during the Civil War. But this period did not mark the Lincolns first exposure to Spiritualism or contact with the dead. By the summer of 1862, Mary was meeting with a number of different Spiritualist mediums and invited many to the White House, as each claimed to be able to “lift the thin veil” and allow Mary to communicate with Willie.

Through Lizzie Keckley, Mary made the acquaintance of a Miss Bonpoint, a journalist who was writing about Spiritualism in the papers. It was she who introduced Mary to the Lauries, a husband and wife medium team that lived in Georgetown.  After that, the black presidential carriage was often seen outside of the Lauries’ brownstone.

Nettie Colburn Maynard

Later that year, Mary met the woman who became her closest Spiritualist companion, Nettie Colburn Maynard, a medium that President Lincoln also met with. Many are familiar with a tale told about a séance attended by Nettie Maynard in 1863 where a grand piano levitated. A medium was playing the instrument when it began to rise off the floor. Lincoln and Colonel Simon Kase were both present and it is said that both men climbed onto the piano, only to have it jump and shake so hard that they climbed down. It is recorded that Lincoln would later refer to the levitation as proof of an “invisible power.”

Rumors spread that Lincoln had an interest in the spirit world. In England, a piece of sheet music was published which portrayed him holding a candle while violins and tambourines flew about his head. The piece of music was called “The Dark Séance Polka” and the caption below the illustration of the president read “Abraham Lincoln and the Spiritualists.”

It was also rumored that Lincoln consulted with these mediums and clairvoyants to obtain information about future events in the war. He found that sometimes they gave him information about matters as mundane as Confederate troop movements -- information that sometimes matched his own precognitive visions. There is much written about Lincoln and the Washington Spiritualists of the day in the accounts and diaries written by friends and acquaintances. One such acquaintance would even claim that Lincoln’s plans for the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the southern slaves, came to him from the spirit of Daniel Webster and other abolitionists of the spirit world.

Although a number of prominent Washington City Spiritualists wrote of their experiences with President Lincoln, most of the information about his interest in Spiritualism came from Nettie Colburn Maynard, who published a manuscript on the subject in 1891. According to Nettie, she first met President Lincoln on February 5, 1863, during a séance in Georgetown that he was not scheduled to attend. The medium would later claim that her “spirit guide” told her that Lincoln would be in attendance. The host of the party declared that this was unlikely to happen, as Lincoln rarely attended séances away from the White House. To his surprise, though, the President did come and the host exclaimed upon seeing him that he had been expected. Lincoln was reportedly shocked and stated that he had not been planning to come but only accompanied Mary that night on a whim.

During the séance, Lincoln was allegedly contacted by an “old Dr. Bramford”, who is said to have given him information about the state of the war. Nettie later quoted the spirit as saying, “a very precarious state of things existed at the front, where General Hooker had just taken command. The army was totally demoralized; regiments stacking arms, refusing to obey orders and do duty; threatening a general retreat; declaring their purpose to return to Washington.” She wrote that the vivid picture of this terrible state of affairs seemed to surprise everyone but Lincoln, who spoke up to the spirit. “You seem to understand the situation,” he said. “Can you point out the remedy?”

Dr. Bramford replied that he had one, but only if Lincoln had the courage to use it. The President smiled and challenged the eerie voice that was coming to him from the darkness. According to the spirit, the remedy for success lay with Lincoln himself. He spoke: “Go in person to the front; taking with you your wife and children; leaving behind your official dignity, and all manner of display. Resist the importunities of officials to accompany you and take only such attendants as may be absolutely necessary; avoid the high grade officers, and seek the tents of the private soldiers. Inquire into their grievances; show yourself to be what you are -- ‘The Father of Your People’. Make them feel you are interested in their sufferings, and that you are not unmindful of the many trials which beset them in their march through the dismal swamps, whereby both their courage and numbers have been depleted.”

Lincoln is said to have replied that if this would do the soldiers good, that such a thing was easily done. The mysterious voice explained that it would do all that was required to unite the soldiers again. In April, Lincoln paid the Army of the Potomac a lengthy visit, arriving at Aquia Creek and traveling by train to Falmouth where Hooker’s men were camped. From there, Lincoln could see with a spy glass across the Rappahannock to Fredericksburg, where Robert E. Lee’s Army of Virginia waited, less than a half mile away. A short time later, the overconfident Hooker led the Union to one of the costliest defeats of the war at Chancellorsville. In the midst of this disaster, though, his men followed him bravely into battle. It was believed that their courage had been restored by the visit from President Lincoln.

Nettie Maynard later recalled that after the advice given by Dr. Bramford, the spirit and the President continued to speak about the state of affairs in regards to the war. The spirit also told him that “he would be re-nominated and re-elected to the Presidency.” This was more unusual than most modern readers might believe because, at that point in history, no President had ever been elected to a second term. Lincoln was not shocked by the news. He smiled sadly, however, and said, “It is hardly an honor to be coveted, save one could find it his duty to accept it.”

 It was during this very séance that the famous incident with the levitating piano took place. The medium said to have performed this wonder was Mrs. Belle Miller, a prominent Washington Spiritualist. Mrs. Miller was playing the piano and under her influence, it “rose and fell”, keeping time to her touch in a regular manner. One of those present suggested that, as an added test of the invisible power causing the instrument to move, Belle should place her hand on the piano and stand at an arm’s length from it. This would show that she was in no way connected to it except as an agent of the mysterious power. President Lincoln then placed his hand underneath the piano, at the end that was closest to Mrs. Miller, who placed her hand upon his to demonstrate that neither strength nor pressure was being used. In this position, the piano rose and fell a number of times, seemingly at their bidding. Lincoln even changed places to stand on the other side of the piano, but the same thing continued to happen.

The President was reported to have grinned at the display and said that he believed he could hold the instrument to the floor. He climbed up onto it, sitting with his long legs dangling over the side, as did a Mr. Somes, Colonel Simon Kase and a Federal Army officer. The piano, ignoring the enormous weight now upon it, continued to wobble up and down until the sitters were obliged to “vacate the premises”.

The audience was, by this time, satisfied to the fact that no mechanical means had been used to move the instrument and Lincoln himself declared that he was sure the motion was caused by some “invisible power”.

Mr. Somes spoke up, “Mr. President, when I have related to my acquaintances that which I have experienced tonight, they will say, with a knowing look and a wise demeanor, ‘you were psychologized and as a matter of fact, you did not see what you in reality did see.’”

“You should bring that person here,” Lincoln quietly replied, “and when the piano seems to rise, have him slip his foot under the leg and be convinced by the weight of the evidence resting upon his understanding.”

His sly comment brought a wave of laughter to the room but when the chuckles died down, the President wearily sank into an armchair, “the old, tired, anxious look returning to his face.”

Nettie Maynard held a number of séances with the Lincolns during the latter days of February and early March 1863. The séances all took place by appointment and after the close of each session, Mary made another appointment to come at a certain hour of another day, usually around the time that the President took his lunch in the afternoon.

On one occasion, Nettie was summoned to a séance by Mr. Somes, who told her that the meeting was of such a private nature that he was not at liberty to say more. Somes picked her up in a carriage that evening and informed her that her destination was the White House. He explained that while at the War Department that afternoon, he had met President Lincoln coming from Secretary Stanton’s office. Somes spoke to him briefly and Lincoln asked him if he knew whether or not Nettie was in the city and if so, would it be possible for her to visit the White House that night. When Somes told him that Nettie was indeed in Washington, Lincoln asked that she come that evening, but that the matter should be kept confidential.

By the time that Somes had finished explaining what had occurred, the carriage had arrived at the White House. A waiting servant ushered them inside and they were hurried up to the President’s office, where Lincoln and two other men were waiting. The President sent the servant out of the room and a few moments later, Mary entered the chamber. Lincoln told Nettie that he wished for her to give the visitors an opportunity to witness something of her “rare gift” and he added that “you need not be afraid, as these friends have seen something of this before.”

Nettie described the men as being military officers, although their coats had been buttoned to conceal any insignia or mark of rank. One of the men was tall and heavily built, with auburn hair and dark eyes. He had thick side whiskers and carried himself like a soldier. The other man was of average height and she had the impression that he was of a lesser rank than his companion. He had light brown hair and blue eyes and was quick in manner but deferential towards his companion.

The group sat quietly for a few moments and then Nettie entered a trance. One hour later, she became conscious of her surroundings and was standing at a table upon which was a large map of the Southern states. She held a lead pencil in her hand and Lincoln and the two men were standing close to her, bending over the map. The younger man was looking curiously and intently at her.

“It is astonishing,” Mr. Lincoln was saying to the larger of the soldiers, “how every line she has drawn conforms to the plan agreed upon.”

“Yes,” answered the other man. “It is astonishing.”

Looking up, both of the men saw that she was awake and they instantly stepped back. Lincoln took the pencil from Nettie’s hand and eased her into a nearby chair. Mary soon appeared at her side to offer some comfort.

“Was everything satisfactory?” Somes asked the assembled men.

“Perfectly”, Lincoln replied. “Miss Nettie does not seem to require eyes to do anything.”

Shortly after, the conversation turned to more mundane matters and after a brief time, the military men took their leave and then it came the President’s time to depart. He carefully shook Nettie’s small hand and said to her in a low voice: “It is best not to mention this meeting at the present.”

This was the last time that the private séance was ever mentioned and Nettie never learned the identity of the two men who were with President Lincoln that night --- or just what the spirits may have revealed with the map of the Confederacy.

According to accounts, Nettie Maynard’s contact with the next world was said to have brought relief to Lincoln on more than one occasion. She was at the White House to visit Mrs. Lincoln in May 1863, around the time that the battle of Chancellorsville was being fought. Nettie was brought into Mary’s bedroom and found the First Lady wearing only her dressing gown. Her hair was loose and she was pacing back and forth in a distracted manner. “Oh Miss Nettie,” Mary cried, “such dreadful news; they are fighting at the front; such terrible slaughter; and all our generals are killed and our army is in full retreat; such is the latest news. Oh, I am glad you have come. Will you sit down a few moments and see if you can get anything from the beyond?”

As no news of the battle had yet reached the public, Nettie was surprised by what she heard. She put her things aside and sat down with Mary to let her “spirit guide” take control of her. In a few moments, she was able to reassure Mary that her fears were groundless. A great battle was being fought but the Union forces were holding their own and while many thousands had been killed, none of the generals, as she had been informed, were slain or injured. She would, Nettie assured her, receive better news by nightfall.

This calmed Mary somewhat but when President Lincoln entered the room a short time later, it was obvious that he was still anxiously worrying about what was occurring at the front lines. He greeted Nettie with little enthusiasm but Mary insisted that he listen to what the medium had to say. Lincoln listened attentively to what had been passed on from Nettie’s “spirit guide”, recounting the true conditions at the front and assuring him of the good news that he would receive before nightfall. The battle would be costly, the spirits said, but not disastrous, and though not decisive in any way, it would not be a loss to the Union cause. Lincoln brightened visibly under the assurances that he was given and he later learned that Nettie’s information had been correct. Chancellorsville resulted in the lives of many men lost and effectively ended the career of General Joseph Hooker but no real ground was lost by the Union. Hooker had marched into a Confederate controlled area and his outnumbered army was sent into retreat but regrouped to fight another day.

Perhaps the most notorious White House séance attendee, who also had an encounter with Nettie Maynard, was General Daniel Sickles. The colorful and controversial politician and Civil War officer spent nearly three months in Washington in the summer of 1862 and became well acquainted with the Lincolns. Sickle was an unusual man and as an antebellum New York politician, was involved in a number of public scandals, most notably the killing of his wife's lover, Philip Barton Key, son of Francis Scott Key. Sickles was acquitted with the first use of temporary insanity as a legal defense in American history. He became one of the most prominent political generals of the Civil War and at the battle of Gettysburg; he insubordinately moved his troops to a position in which it was virtually destroyed. His combat career ended at Gettysburg when he lost a leg to cannon fire.

Daniel Sickles

Sickles was interested in Spiritualism before the war. In fact, on the night that he learned that his wife was cheating on him with the handsome widower Phillip Barton Key (February 24, 1859), Mr. and Mrs. Sickles had given a dinner party at their Washington home that was enlivened by the presence of the Scottish wife of New York Herald editor James Gordon Bennett, an ardent Spiritualist. Mrs. Bennett had attended many séances in Washington and spoke openly of them.

A few years later, during the summer after Willie Lincoln’s death, Sickles often joined Mary at séances in the city. He returned to Washington after losing his leg at Gettysburg and continued the regular visitations. In fact, in early 1864, Sickles concocted a ruse to test the mediumistic powers of Mary’s young medium, Nettie Maynard. Mary agreed to go along with the ruse, perhaps to teach a lesson to the arrogant general.

Nettie had recently returned to Washington after a brief absence and was living at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Somes. Nettie soon called at the White House, to pay her respects to the President and the First Lady, and was warmly received. Lincoln expressed the hope that she had come to Washington to spend the rest of the winter.

A few days later, Nettie and the Someses were invited back to meet a friend – Daniel Sickles in a disguise. Mrs. Lincoln, in her invitation to Nettie, mentioned her desire to see if Nettie’s “spirit guide” would be able to tell who the friend was.

The party arrived at half past eight and was welcomed by the First Lady, who introduced them to a distinguished, soldierly gentleman, who was wrapped in a long cloak, completely concealing his person. Mrs. Lincoln did not call him by name, apologizing for not doing so, and explaining that she wanted to see if her spirit friends could recognize him. She promised to present him afterward. Mr. Somes recognized Sickles immediately, but gave no hint of the general’s identity.

President Lincoln had a late-night cabinet meeting and after joining the group, asked that the proceedings be brief. Silence fell on the group and Nettie entered into a trance. The spirits that spoke through her turned all of their attentions on Lincoln. Their remarks related to the condition of free black people in Washington, declaring that their condition was deplorable – half fed and half clothed – and that the manner of their existence should be an embarrassment to the country. The spirits called on Lincoln to form a special committee to investigate the condition of their people, and to organize a bureau to control and regulate the affairs of the freedmen. (The bureau was eventually formed in March 1865)

It was only after this communication that the spirit, through Nettie, turned to Sickles and referred to him as “General” and praised him for the “noble sacrifice” of his leg at Gettysburg. A few moments later, another presence took control of Nettie – her usual “spirit guide”, an Indian maiden – and she turned to Sickles and addressed him as “Crooked Knife”, her Native American name for him, which was close enough to “Sickles” that everyone present was satisfied.

After Lincoln hurried off to his meeting and Nettie awoke, Mary made the promised presentation of General Sickles, who put aside the cloak, revealing his uniform and concealed crutch. Sickles had no choice but to confess that he was impressed with Mary’s young medium.

As time and the war marched on, Lincoln came to believe that a portent of doom hung over his head. The constant threats of death and violence that he received kept his personal bodyguards on edge at all times. It is also believed that some of his Spiritualist friends felt the end was near.

During the winter of 1864 and 1865, though, the war was nearing its end. In February 1865, Washington was filled to capacity with people who had come to witness the second inauguration of President Lincoln and Nettie Maynard received a dispatch from home, informing her that her father had taken ill. She was asked to come home at once. Having an appointment to meet with Mary soon after, she made a trip to the White House to tell her that she had to leave town. Mary was out, so Nettie proceeded upstairs to have a word with the President instead.

It was the early part of the afternoon, and during the last days of the expiring Congress, and the waiting room was filled with members of both Houses, all anxious to get a word with the President. Nettie soon became doubtful that she would obtain any time with Mr. Lincoln, especially in light of the fact that many of the prominent men had been waiting for several hours. Edward, Lincoln’s devoted usher, was walking back and forth and collecting calling cards to take into the President and Nettie called him over. She explained that she needed only a brief moment with Lincoln and asked for any opportunity to tell him why she would have to cancel her appointment the following week.

Half an hour went by and Edward appeared and asked Nettie to follow him. Several of the senators that Nettie knew personally laughed to her and asked with a smile that she put in a good word for them. She was soon in the presence of the President. He stood at his desk, looking over some papers but laid them down and greeted her with a genial smile. In as few words as possible, knowing how precious his time was, she informed him of her unusual call and told him that she had been summoned out of town because her father was seriously ill. Lincoln looked at her with a curious smile. “But cannot our friends from the upper country tell you whether his illness is likely to prove fatal or not?”

Nettie replied that she had already consulted with her “friends” and that they had assured her that his treatment was wrong and that her presence was needed to affect a cure.

Lincoln laughed and turned to his secretary. “I didn’t catch her, did I?” he teased Nettie and then seriously added that he was sorry that she would be away during the inauguration.

“I would enjoy it,” she assured him, “but the crowd will be so great that we will not be able to see you, Mr. Lincoln, even if I remain.”

“You could not help it,” he answered, drawing his lean figure to its full height and glancing at her in an amused way. “I will be the tallest man there.”

“That is true, in every sense of the word.”

Lincoln nodded pleasantly at the compliment and then asked Nettie what her “friends” predicted for his future.

“What they predicted for you, Mr. Lincoln, has come to pass and you are to be inaugurated for the second time.” He nodded his head and she continued. “But they also reaffirm that the shadow they have spoken of still hangs over you.”

Lincoln shook his head impatiently. “Yes, I know,” he said quickly. “I have letters from all over the country from your kind of people --- mediums, I mean --- warning me against some dreadful plot against my life. But I don’t think the knife is made, or the bullet run, that will reach it. Besides, nobody wants to harm me.”

A feeling of sadness overwhelmed Nettie. It was a feeling that she could not account for and also one that she could not conceal. She spoke to the President boldly: “Therein lies your danger, Mr. President --- your overconfidence in your fellow men.”

The old melancholy look that Nettie had grown so used to in her time of friendship with the President and his wife descended over his face. His voice was quiet and subdued. “Well, Miss Nettie,” he said, “I shall live until my work is done and no earthly power can prevent it. And then it doesn’t matter so that I am ready and that I ever mean to be.” Then, brightening a little, he extended his hand to her. “Well, I suppose that I must bid you goodbye but we shall hope to see you back again next fall.”

“I shall certainly come,” Nettie told him, “if you are still here.”

With another cordial shake of the President’s hand, Nettie passed out of Lincoln’s presence for the last time. “Never again,” she later wrote, “would we meet his welcome smile.”

The full story of Abraham Lincoln and his many connections to the supernatural can be found in Troy Taylor’s book, The Haunted President, available from Whitechapel Press in print and Kindle editions. And coming in summer 2014, Disconnected from Death by April Slaughter and Troy Taylor will offer a look at the way the Civil War and the death of Abraham Lincoln forever changed mourning in America.