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Stealing Lincoln’s Body
Another in our series of posts about how strange doings seemed to follow the Lincoln family. We discussed Abraham Lincoln’s son, but even after his death curious twists of fate followed the slain president. The Secret Service was created under the Department of the Treasury in 1865 and mainly dealt with counterfeiters. However, in 1876, they briefly touched on their future role of presidential security, albeit in a strange way. One of the counterfeiters the secret service was after was a gang from Chicago led by Big Jim Kennally. Early in 1876, the gang’s best counterfeiter, Benjamin Boyd, got pinched and sent to prison for ten years. Kennally needed his…
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The Battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac
When people think of the American civil war, most of them think of great and bloody army battles. There was a naval side of the war too. This was the time when ironclad made their first auspicious appearance. The Confederates started first by raising the wreck of the USS Merrimac. The had converted the Merrimac into an iron clad ram and rechristened her the CSS Virginia. She was the first ironclad steam powered ship built by the Confederate Navy. Commanded by Captain Buchanan she made her debut on March 8, 1862. She sailed into Hampton Roads and engaged the Union fleet blockading the harbor. The first ship she engaged was…
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The Strange Life of Robert Todd Lincoln
Everyone knows about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but what is not very well known is the strange coincidences that plagued the life of his son, Robert Todd Lincoln. For one thing, he would not have been alive except for a member of the Booth family. In 1863 or 1864, Robert Lincoln was on a break from college at Harvard and was travelling home to Washington DC by train. He had gotten off the train at Jersey City, and found himself on a crowded platform. Lincoln moved back to make room for the other passengers and was leaning against a train car at the back of the platform. Suddenly, the…
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David Walker- Radical for Justice
David Walker was an Abolitionist who wrote one of the most radical pamphlets of the anti-slavery movement. Born in Wilmington, North Carolina on September 28, 1785, his father was a slave and his mother was free. Because of his mother, David grew up free as well and was given an education. However, growing up free did not protect him from the ugly side of slavery. One incident that left a mark on him was being forced to watch a son whip his mother to death. He moved to Boston, where there was a bit more freedom, but there was still discrimination. David set up a used clothing store in…
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John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry
John Brown had failed at everything he had ever done. Born on May 9, 1800, he had failed 20 times in six states and defaulted on all his debts. Yet somehow, he believed he was God’s instrument in to end slavery. In 1837 after the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy, an Abolitionist newspaper owner in Alton, Il, Brown declared, “Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery!” In Massachusetts, he formed the militant group The League of Gileadites to prevent the capture of escaped slaves under the Fugitive Slave Act. In Kansas, he and his sons hacked…
