& an antidote

altgeld #2
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

I am not discouraged. Things will right themselves. The pendulum swings one way, and then another, but the steady pull of gravitation is toward the center of the earth. Any structure must be plumb to endure. So it is with Nations: Wrong may seem to triumph. Right may seem to be defeated, but the gravitation of eternal justice is toward the throne of God. Any political institution which is to endure must be plumb with that line of justice.

From a speech Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeldt gave once upon a time, now etched into his tombstone at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

Wikipedia sums up Altgeldt as follows: "As governor he spearheaded the nation's most stringent child labor and workplace safety laws, appointed women to important positions in the state government, and vastly increased state funding for education. However, he is best remembered for pardoning the three surviving suspects of a bombing who were convicted after the Haymarket Riot. He also strongly disagreed with President Grover Cleveland's decision to send federal troops to Chicago during the Pullman Strike, a highly unusual stance for a state governor at that time."

So. Not all bad.

the missing mr. lincoln

Pullman's monument
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Anyone familiar with Chicago bossman George Pullman knows that he was so concerned his grave would be defiled that he went to extreme measures to reinforce it with lead and concrete so that no one would be able to steal his body after it had been laid to rest at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

I heard a fellow speak on the Pullman neighborhood not too long ago – the company town that Pullman built to support his business and that erupted into a historic strike when his self-serving policies at last got to be too much for the folks in his employ -- and when the lecturer mentioned this well traveled trivia I asked him: Was there a good reason for Pullman to feel this way? Was there a precedent at the tail end of the 1800s in Chicago for people to dig up the graves of folks they despised? (And I was thinking: Or was Pullman, like so many men with extreme power and wealth who believe the world revolves around them, just nuts?)

Sure, the lecturer answered: Lincoln’s body had been stolen not too long before that.

HUH?

Turns out it was actually only almost stolen.

Of course, Pullman outfitted the Pullman Car that carried Lincoln across the country on his whistle-stop corpse tour after the assassination (I mean no disrespect –- I have a huge crush on Lincoln -– but according to Sarah Vowell in Assassination Vacation the tour turned out to be a highly successful endorsement for the nascent embalming industry -- they were at it for a really long time), so I’m going to do some more digging. Could be that something unseemly (and entirely intriguing) happened along the way.