Lincoln exhumed: “...and his face was chalky white.”

As a follow-up to yesterday’s 1956 article from American Heritage, this is an article from the February 15, 1963 issue of Life. In 1901 Abraham Lincoln was exhumed because of stories that his body had been stolen. He was then reburied, but onlookers, including the boy mentioned in the article, were witnesses. A description of the state of Lincoln’s corpse is given.

Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt and her son, Philip Kunhardt, Jr., wrote the book Twenty Days, mentioned in the article, about the events following the assassination of Lincoln. Dorothy Kunhardt was a children’s book author (Pat the Bunny), and a historian who wrote about Lincoln. The article in American Heritage mentioned above is also by the Kunhardts.

Twenty Days is currently out of print, but is still available as a used book from Amazon.com.