14. Abraham Lincoln and the creation of the Secret Service
It is often erroneously reported that Abraham Lincoln signed the legislation which created the Secret Service as one of his last acts as President on the day he was shot at Ford’s Theater. The legislation was on his desk that evening, but was unsigned, and the succeeding President Johnson created the agency the following July. Nor was the Secret Service created to protect the President and his family. It was instead an agency created to control the rampant counterfeit currency in the American economy, much of it created by agents of the Confederacy (one of the reasons Johnson delayed signing it was the war being over). The Secret Service did not assume the role of protecting the President until after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901.
The link between Lincoln and the Secret Service is thus tenuous at best, though frequently cited as one of the eerie coincidences involved in the Lincoln assassination. Lincoln did actively push for an agency to battle the counterfeit currency during the war, but his protection was from privately hired agents from the Pinkerton Agency and other bodyguards. He was also assigned a detail from the Washington police, from which one guard was absent from his post, drinking in a bar next to the theater, when John Wilkes Booth entered Lincoln’s box. He was never prosecuted nor disciplined for his dereliction of duty. Four American presidents have been assassinated while in office, three of whom were without Secret Service protection. Several attempts have been made on the president’s life since, including on Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, JFK, Gerald Ford (twice) and Ronald Reagan, and untold plots have been thwarted by the agency which Lincoln died before he could authorize.
Also Read: How Killing President William McKinley Changed the Presidency Forever!