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Early, unsigned book: History of an Attempt to Steal the Body of Abraham Lincoln (Late President of the United States of America), Including a History of the Lincoln Guard of Honor, with Eight Years Lincoln Memorial Services (Editor: John Carroll Power). Springfield, Illinois: H. W. Rokker Printing and Publishing House, 1890. Brown cloth-bound hardcover with gilt devices and text to boards and spine, 6.25 x 9.25, 287 pages. Book condition: VG/None, with bumped corners and the card of Edward S. Johnson, second custodian of Lincoln's tomb, affixed inside the front cover.
John Carroll Power, first custodian of Lincoln’s tomb at Oak Ridge Cemetery, played a central role in thwarting one of the most bizarre episodes in the president’s afterlife: the 1876 plot by a band of Chicago counterfeiters to steal Lincoln’s body and ransom it for the release of an imprisoned engraver. Acting on intelligence from an informant and coordinating with the Secret Service, Power helped watch over the tomb as the conspirators struck on election night, removing the sarcophagus lid and beginning to pull the coffin free before being forced to flee. In the uneasy aftermath, Power and his associates took extraordinary precautions by secretly relocating and concealing the remains within the tomb; efforts that led to the formation of the Lincoln Guard of Honor and the permanent safeguarding of Lincoln’s body.
