When the tomb was completed in 1874, Lincoln's coffin was placed in a white marble sarcophagus in a burial room behind only a steel gate locked with a padlock, where he remained undisturbed for two years.
After the foiled theft, tomb custodian John Carroll Power was concerned at how close the amateurs had come to stealing the body, and worried what would happen if professional graverobbers made a similar attempt to steal Lincoln's body.