I'm Saint Andrews, and what you're about to hear is a true story.
The United States Secret Service was founded in eighteen sixty five, originally not to
protect presidents. Originally, the Secret Service was designated for finding and prosecuting counterfeitters.
But after the nineteen oh one assassination of President William McKinley, Congress expanded
the role of the Secret Service to include the protection of the President and the
vice president, and also of foreign dignitaries on US soil. And we certainly
could have used the protective powers of the Secret Service well before nineteen o one,
and not just for the assassination attempts against presidents. There were so many
kidnapping attempts, including an attempt to kidnap Abraham Lincoln. Now that's a piece
of history that few of us were ever taught. Everybody knows about the assassination
and John Wilkes Booth and Ford Theater and the great National Morning on that terrible
April day in eighteen sixty five, and some people even know about the other
unsuccessful assassination attempts against Lincoln. There was one in eighteen sixty one that happened
after the election, but before he was even inaugurated. On that occasion,
there was apparently a group of men who wanted to assassinate Lincoln with knives on
one of his train stops as he traveled to Baltimore. The President snuck into
the city secretly for that reason. Later on, a country doctor, a
guy named Luke Prior Blackburn, he hated Abraham Lincoln so much that he took
clothes off of yellow fever victims, right malaria victims, and he sent them
to the White House for personal delivery to Lincoln. He was hoping to infect
Lincoln with yellow fever. We had not yet learned yellow fever is not spread
through touch but via the blood. Less than one week before John Wilkes booth
at Ford Theater, there was a Confederate sergeant. His name was Thomas Haney.
He tried to blow up the White House dining room while Lincoln was having
dinner. He was caught before his bomb could be placed and detonated. Yeah,
those stories about the attempt at assassinations, those are in the history book,
certainly more familiar to the culture. But the kidnapping of Abraham Lincoln,
I will admit it was news to me. Why had I not ever learned
about that plots by those Chicago gangsters recruited to kidnap the sixteenth President for a
two hundred thousand dollar ransom and the guaranteed pardon of a fellow mobster. Now
these were counterfeitters, they were really good at counterfeiting. But one in the
gang had been caught sent to prison, So the remaining mobsters wanted to kidnap
Abraham Lincoln and use him as a bargaining chip to get their friend out of
jail. It was a bold plan. Counterfeitter James Conneely devised the plan.
Partners Jack Hughes and Terence Mullen would carry out the plan. They would travel
secretly to where Lincoln would be Springfield, Illinois, approach the secure location,
breakthrough the gates and locks using crowbars, they would grab the president, load
him into a waiting horse drawn carriage, drive him some two hundred miles to
the sand dunes that border Lake Michigan, and from a secret location there they
would hide the President and make their demands. That was the plan, But
there had been some rumblings about this plot. A few insiders had whispered information
to the authorities who were on alert and during the attempted kidnapping, one of
the kidnappers guns accidentally fired. Police nearby heard that shot. They thought the
shot was directed at them. They fired back. There was a gun battle,
the shots heard four miles chaos, confusion, and amid the confusion of
that moment, these would be kidnappers got away until they were found and jailed
less than two weeks later, sent to trial. That trial lasted only two
days. The verdict was guilty. Both Hughes and Mullen sentenced to one year
and one day at Illinois State Penitentiary. One year and one day. It
sounds suspiciously short for the attempted kidnapping of a United States president. Of course,
it might make more sense to you when you realize that these kidnappers were
grave robbers. That crowbar was for cracking the gate at oak Ridge Cemetery and
breaking the padlock on the chamber door of Abraham Lincoln's tomb. These men who
would hope to bargain with the body of a presidents, they attempted their kidnapping
of a RPS in eighteen seventy six, a full eleven years after Abraham Lincoln
had been killed. And that is a true story. True Stories podcast dot com