Abraham Lincoln has fascinated me since I
was a child. A few years ago, I went on a marathon of reading Lincoln
biographies and those of his military and political contemporaries. I learned a
lot of interesting facts about the man, outside of his presidency.
 |
Abraham Lincoln on February 9, 1864. (Library of Congress; public domain via Wikimedia Commons.) |
It’s common knowledge that Lincoln was a lawyer but, prior to that, he had a number of other jobs. In April 1832, at age twenty-three, he signed up for a 30-day enlistment in the Illinois Militia. The men in his company elected him captain and he ended up re-enlisting. He served a total of 51 days.
After this, he returned to New Salem, Illinois and resumed his first campaign for the elected office of representative in the Illinois State Legislature. Although he did well in New Salem, he was defeated in the rest of the district and lost the election.
 |
| Image via Pinterest |
He entered into a partnership with his
friend William F. Berry in January 1833 to purchase a small saloon which they
called Berry and Lincoln. Berry was an
alcoholic, and the enterprise did not go well. Lincoln sold his share to Berry
in April 1833. Lincoln was left deep in debt and didn’t get that debt paid off
until he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
But May 1833, Lincoln received an
appointment as Postmaster of New Salem and continued in this position until the
post office was relocated to a different city three years later. During his
tenure, he supplemented his income with a variety of jobs including helping farmers
with their harvests, splitting rails, clerking in a store, and surveying land
for the county. It was also during this period that he began seriously studying
the law. He earned his law license in September 1836 and was admitted to the
Illinois bar in March 1837 at age twenty-eight. Practicing law became Lincoln’s
lifelong career, but his early experiences helped him relate to people from all
walks of life. The New Salem State Historic Site preserves the village where he
lived before moving to Springfield, Illinois.
While in New Salem, Lincoln earned a
reputation for being an elite wrestler eventually winning the county wrestling
championship. According to Carl Sandburg’s biography of Lincoln, the future
president once challenged an entire crowd of onlookers after dispatching an
opponent in a match. There were no takers. Lincoln was defeated only once in approximately
300 matches. His record earned him recognition in the National Wrestling Hall
of Fame.
 |
Lincoln's Patent Sketches, Wikimedia
Commons |
Lincoln was also a tinkerer and inventor. As a young man, he was aboard a steamboat that ran aground on low shoals. He had to help unload the cargo to free it. Subsequently, he developed a design to keep vessels afloat in shallow waters by attaching empty metal air chambers to their sides and later modified it to use four balloons, collapsed accordion-like, attached to the four “corners” of the craft. If the boat encountered shallow waters, the balloons would be filled with enough air to raise the hull higher than the shoals or sandbar and keep the vessel afloat. For his invention, Lincoln was granted Patent No. 6,469 in 1849. He is the only president to hold a patent.
According to accounts of his wife, Mary
Todd Lincoln, and many other contemporaries, Lincoln was an
avid cat-lover. He had two cats while he was in the White House, Tabby and
Dixie, and he would also bring in strays. There are some reports that he
fed Tabby and Dixie on the dining table, a practice his wife did not approve
of.
 |
Lincoln family: From left to right: Mary Todd Lincoln, Robert Lincoln, Tad Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln By Currier & Ives [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
Lincoln
and his wife had a great interest in psychic phenomena. During his first term,
their son, Willie, died of a typhoid-like disease and the Lincolns were overcome
with grief. Mrs. Lincoln convinced her husband to hold séances at the White
House to communicate with Willie and another son who had died prior to his
presidency. It is believed that Abraham attended at least two of the séances,
but didn’t find them gratifying.
As a
theatre-lover, Lincoln was a fan of actor John Wilkes Booth. Before going to
Ford’s Theatre in the evening to see Our
American Cousin on April 14, 1865, Lincoln signed legislation creating the
U.S. Secret Service. The original mission of the law enforcement agency was to
combat widespread currency counterfeiting.
The
president was guarded around-the-clock by one member of a four-man security
unit. A new bodyguard, John Parker, was assigned to protect the president at
the theatre but he went missing. No one knows for sure where Parker was, but he
had a reputation for being unreliable, including drinking and frequenting a
“house of ill repute” while on duty, according to the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.
 |
Shooting of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln .Library of
Congress / Reuters |
That
evening, John Wilkes Booth assassinated the president. Lincoln died the next
day. According to the report of Ward Hill Lamon, one of the
president’s friends, Lincoln had dreamt of his assassination.
It was
not until 1901, after Garfield and McKinley were killed, that the Secret
Service was assigned to protect the president.
