The most well - researched , intimately studied and wide written - about president in America ’s account is , without a doubt , Abraham Lincoln . He ’s belike the most well - known mortal in America ’s history . Everybody knows Honest Abe .
The Great Emancipator freed the hard worker and execute the state through a devastatingCivil War . The ol' track - splitter gave a famous speech ( " Four grade and seven years ago " ) at Gettysburg . He weary a stovepipe lid . He had a beard . And then there was that tragic terminate at Ford ’s Theatre .
Amonghistoriansandpolitical scientist , No . 16 ( Lincoln , as most everyone know , was the sixteenth U.S. president ) isconsistentlyNo . 1 .
" The Civil War is such a powerful turning degree in our history ; it ’s really , in a sense , the 2nd origination of the country . His successful leaders in that enterprisingness … entitles him to a circumstances of respect , " says Michael Burlingame , the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois Springfield and the author of several books on Lincoln . " But more than that , it ’s his part . People look up to him not just for what he achieved , which was monumental — literally and figuratively in this case — but for who he was , and how he conducted himself , and what he stood for and how he vocalise the nonesuch of the country . "
As well - worn as the subject of Lincoln is , though , much still eludes us about this complicated , anguished humans .
Here are nine lesser - known nugget about America ’s most - beloved President of the United States .
1. His Marriage Was Rocky
Lincoln ’s wife , Mary Todd Lincoln , was an maltreater . It ’s punishing to reckon that the 6 - foot-4 Lincoln , a ok wrestler in his day , could be knock around by his 5 - foot-2 married woman ( though she was , evidently , much ugly ) . But before the dyad made it to the White House , things often got nasty . " She would hit him in the fount and draw roue , dog him out of the house with a knife , " state Burlingame , the author of " The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln " and " Abraham Lincoln : A aliveness , " a two - volume biography publish in 2008 . " And yet he submitted to her ill-usage patiently . He was jazz in Springfield as hen - pecked and woman - rack up . "
The abuse did n’t terminate once the Lincolns get to Washington , Burlingame says .
" She would regularly — we have testimonial from more than one seed — she would insult him . She would chew up him in front of other people , and say , ' That ’s the worst words I ’ve ever heard anybody give . I do n’t see how a adult male could get up in front of the public and speak such venal things , " says Burlingame , who ’s fix a monograph on the Lincoln marriage . " And if she does that in front of other mass , what does she do in the secrecy of her own home ? Or in this case , the White House ? "
2. So Was the Relationship With His Father
Lincoln and his father never got along . His Padre snatch up book forth from his eager - to - get a line son and pull the nipper out of school with regularity . As a fry , Lincoln ’s Padre forced his Logos to work in the fields for neighbors , and took all the money youthful Abraham earned for himself . " One of the origin of Lincoln ’s hatred ofslaveryis the way his father treated him , " Burlingame says , " which was like a slave . "
3. He Was a Civil Rights Martyr
Some point to Lincoln ’s one - time public support forcolonization , and his former lack of support for social and political equation between blacks and White ( in adebate with Stephen Douglasin 1858 ) as example that he was a racist .
" What some people give way to understand is that Lincoln was really the first martyr for Black civic right , as much asMartin Luther Kingor Medgar Evers or any of those the great unwashed back in the 1960s who were murdered as they champion the civic rights rotation of that meter period , " Burlingame says . " Lincoln was murder not because he bring out theEmancipation Proclamation . He was n’t dispatch because he supported the13th Amendment . He was polish off because on April 11 , 1865 , two twenty-four hour period after Robert E. Lee ’s surrender , Lincoln give a public oral communication in which he called publically , openly , for opprobrious vote rights . "
In the crowd for the words that night on the Union side of the White House : an player namedJohn Wilkes Booth , who would assassinate Lincoln three days later at Ford ’s Theatre .
4. Lincoln’s Son Was Almost Killed, Too
Sometime in the early 1860s , Lincoln ’s grownup son , Robert Todd Lincoln , was angle against a train car on a political program in Jersey City , New Jersey . When the string moved , his foot slip between the railway car and the platform . He was chop-chop grabbed by the catch and pulled to safety , ashe recounted in a letter year afterwards .
His hero was instantly recognizable : the celebrated Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth , the older brother of the presidential assassin . The elder Booth — take by some the greatest American worker of the 19th century — did n’t experience at once the identity element of the human he saved but he , unlike his younger brother , was a Unionist who vote for Lincoln .
5. Honest Abe Had a Temper
As Burlingame drop a line in " The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln , " the view that Lincoln was subdued and fill up with an " infinite forbearance " is not entirely exact . As a tyke , Lincoln had an " ugly inclination to diminish and wind others . " Running for office in Illinois in 1840 , he mimic an opposite so mercilessly that hedrove the poor man from the stage in weeping .
Lincoln check his go - for - the - pharynx impulsion later in spirit , but never completely moderate his capacity for anger . " What is most impressive about the mature Lincoln is not how often he expressed his anger , " Burlingame write , " but how seldom he did so , see the provocations he last . "
6. He Struggled With Depression
" On two occasions , he was so depressed that his friends feared that he would commit suicide ; one episode in his late 20s , and one episode in his other 30s , " Burlingame enunciate . Lincoln was just 9 when his female parent conk out , and by the time he was 18 , both his siblings and his grandparents had passed on . That natural depression carried into the White House . " … When the Union Army would hurt reverses … , " Burlingame say , " he would be glide by into the deep gloom . He would talk about how he felt as though he were suicidal . "
7. Lincoln Championed Women’s Rights
" He was very uneasy around char . He was knightly , and sure as shooting civilised , but he never felt comfortable around women . He seemed to have learned — and this is a guess — from the former end of his mother that , ' women are untrusty and they will abandon you , ' " allege Burlingame , who describes his early work on Lincoln as " psychobiography . "
Though Lincoln was uncomfortable with charwoman , he supported women ’s suffrage as far back as 1836 ( the19th Amendmentwasn’t passed until 1919 ) . As a young man in Illinois , Burlingame says , Lincoln led a pack of vigilantes against abusive piece , urging one woman to use a knock against her married man .
8. The Gettysburg Address Wasn’t the Day’s Main Attraction
Lincoln ’s famousGettysburg Addresswas second in crinkle that sidereal day to the rhetorician Edward Everett , who spent two by - all - accountsspellbinding hoursrelating the battle to the crowd , finishing with this line : " Wheresoever throughout the genteel Earth the accounts of this great warfare are interpret , and down to the latest period of recorded clock time , in the glorious annals of our coarse rural area there will be no brighter page than that which relates the Battles of Gettysburg . "
Lincoln postdate with histwo - minute , three - paragraph gem . The two statesmen exchanged congratulations later . Lincoln write to Everett , " In our respective function yesterday , you could not have been excused to make a unretentive address , nor I a long one . I am proud of to experience that , in your judgment , the minuscule I did say was not entirely a failure . "
9. Lincoln Liked to Tell Dirty Jokes
Lincoln ’s detractors often point to his homespun humor as by all odds un - presidential . " One of the striking thing was how often he was criticize for telling off - coloration stories . And it ’s true , Lincoln get it on to tell dirty jokes , " Burlingame says .
These critic , too , would knock him for other behaviour that they deemed unworthy of his office ; putting his fundament on the desk , for good example , or undo his standoff . None of the criticism landed particularly hard on Lincoln , who first gain the White House in 1860 and was re - elected in a practical landslide in 1864 . He continued to secern his dirty jokes . " They were really speculative , some of them , " Burlingame says .
