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I'm Saint Andrews, and what you're
about to hear is a true story.

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The United States Secret Service was founded
in eighteen sixty five, originally not to

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protect presidents. Originally, the Secret
Service was designated for finding and prosecuting counterfeitters.

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But after the nineteen oh one assassination
of President William McKinley, Congress expanded

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the role of the Secret Service to
include the protection of the President and the

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vice president, and also of foreign
dignitaries on US soil. And we certainly

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could have used the protective powers of
the Secret Service well before nineteen o one,

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and not just for the assassination attempts
against presidents. There were so many

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kidnapping attempts, including an attempt to
kidnap Abraham Lincoln. Now that's a piece

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of history that few of us were
ever taught. Everybody knows about the assassination

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and John Wilkes Booth and Ford Theater
and the great National Morning on that terrible

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April day in eighteen sixty five,
and some people even know about the other

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unsuccessful assassination attempts against Lincoln. There
was one in eighteen sixty one that happened

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after the election, but before he
was even inaugurated. On that occasion,

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there was apparently a group of men
who wanted to assassinate Lincoln with knives on

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one of his train stops as he
traveled to Baltimore. The President snuck into

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the city secretly for that reason.
Later on, a country doctor, a

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guy named Luke Prior Blackburn, he
hated Abraham Lincoln so much that he took

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clothes off of yellow fever victims,
right malaria victims, and he sent them

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to the White House for personal delivery
to Lincoln. He was hoping to infect

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Lincoln with yellow fever. We had
not yet learned yellow fever is not spread

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through touch but via the blood.
Less than one week before John Wilkes booth

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at Ford Theater, there was a
Confederate sergeant. His name was Thomas Haney.

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He tried to blow up the White
House dining room while Lincoln was having

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dinner. He was caught before his
bomb could be placed and detonated. Yeah,

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those stories about the attempt at assassinations, those are in the history book,

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certainly more familiar to the culture.
But the kidnapping of Abraham Lincoln,

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I will admit it was news to
me. Why had I not ever learned

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about that plots by those Chicago gangsters
recruited to kidnap the sixteenth President for a

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two hundred thousand dollar ransom and the
guaranteed pardon of a fellow mobster. Now

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these were counterfeitters, they were really
good at counterfeiting. But one in the

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gang had been caught sent to prison, So the remaining mobsters wanted to kidnap

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Abraham Lincoln and use him as a
bargaining chip to get their friend out of

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jail. It was a bold plan. Counterfeitter James Conneely devised the plan.

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Partners Jack Hughes and Terence Mullen would
carry out the plan. They would travel

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secretly to where Lincoln would be Springfield, Illinois, approach the secure location,

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breakthrough the gates and locks using crowbars, they would grab the president, load

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him into a waiting horse drawn carriage, drive him some two hundred miles to

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the sand dunes that border Lake Michigan, and from a secret location there they

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would hide the President and make their
demands. That was the plan, But

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there had been some rumblings about this
plot. A few insiders had whispered information

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to the authorities who were on alert
and during the attempted kidnapping, one of

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the kidnappers guns accidentally fired. Police
nearby heard that shot. They thought the

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shot was directed at them. They
fired back. There was a gun battle,

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the shots heard four miles chaos,
confusion, and amid the confusion of

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that moment, these would be kidnappers
got away until they were found and jailed

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less than two weeks later, sent
to trial. That trial lasted only two

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days. The verdict was guilty.
Both Hughes and Mullen sentenced to one year

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and one day at Illinois State Penitentiary. One year and one day. It

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sounds suspiciously short for the attempted kidnapping
of a United States president. Of course,

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it might make more sense to you
when you realize that these kidnappers were

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grave robbers. That crowbar was for
cracking the gate at oak Ridge Cemetery and

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breaking the padlock on the chamber door
of Abraham Lincoln's tomb. These men who

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would hope to bargain with the body
of a presidents, they attempted their kidnapping

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of a RPS in eighteen seventy six, a full eleven years after Abraham Lincoln

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had been killed. And that is
a true story. True Stories podcast dot com