Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter, or All the Most Interesting About the President. Lincoln Abraham - biography, facts from life, photographs, background information Interesting facts from the life of Lincoln

With a more or less careful study of the biographical data of the 16th US President Abraham Lincoln, the far-fetchedness and inconsistency of his official biography becomes obvious. Some interesting facts will be given below. However, this does not diminish the merits of Lincoln, who abolished slavery and promoted reforms aimed at improving the lives of the poorest Americans.

Actually, political opponents (and there were a lot of them) failed to defeat “Uncle Abe” during his lifetime. And after the shooting of John Booth at Ford's Theater, which ended the life of Abraham Lincoln, the assassinated president was made into a completely false icon of a man who achieved everything on his own. The fact that Lincoln made his way from the bottom, contrary to the rules established by the bosses of big politics, always remains behind the scenes. Every ordinary American must believe that he is not a millionaire or a president just for the time being. The great American success is somewhere ahead, literally around the next intersection. And Lincoln's life supposedly proves this.

Abraham Lincoln was allegedly born here

1. According to the official version, Lincoln was born into the family of a poor farmer. The Museum of America's Best President displays the chicken coop-sized hut in which Abraham was supposedly born. But he was born in 1809, and his father, who owned hundreds of hectares of land, city real estate and large herds of cattle, went bankrupt only in 1816.

2. The reason for the ruin of Lincoln Sr. was some kind of legal error. It is unclear what kind of mistake could deprive a person of such diverse assets. But after her, Abraham firmly decided to become a lawyer.

3. Lincoln, by his own admission, went to school for only one year - then life circumstances got in the way. But later he read a lot and educated himself.

4. After trying his hand at blacksmithing and trading, Lincoln decided to become a congressman for the state of Illinois. Voters did not appreciate the zeal of the 23-year-old young man - Lincoln lost the election.

5. However, three years later he still made it to the Illinois State Congress, and a year later he passed the exam to become a lawyer.

Lincoln speaking to the Illinois Congress

6. Of the four children born from Lincoln’s marriage to Mary Todd, only one survived. Robert Lincoln also made a political career and at one time served as a minister.

7. During his time as a lawyer, Lincoln was involved in more than 5,000 cases.

8. Contrary to popular belief, Lincoln was never a fierce fighter against slavery. He, rather, considered slavery an inevitable evil, which must be eliminated gradually and very carefully.

9. Lincoln won the presidential election in 1860 thanks to a split in the Democratic camp and due to the votes of the North - some states in the South did not even include his name on the ballot. There were simply more people living in the North, so “Honest Abe” (Lincoln always scrupulously repaid his debts) moved into the White House.

President Lincoln's inauguration

10. The southern states seceded from the United States even before Lincoln took office - they did not expect anything good from the new president.

11. During all the years of the war, martial law was not declared in the Northern States: there was no censorship, elections were held, etc.

12. At Lincoln’s initiative, a law was passed according to which any participant in the war on the side of the North could receive 65 hectares of land for free.

13. Slavery in the United States was finally abolished by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Lincoln first banned slavery in the southern states, and only under pressure from his Republican Party colleagues did he take a more radical step.

14. Lincoln's margin of victory in his second presidential campaign was overwhelming - the incumbent president received more than 90% of the electoral votes.

15. John Wilkes Booth shot and killed Lincoln on Good Friday 1865. He managed to escape from the crime scene. Only two weeks later he was found and killed while trying to surrender.

LINCOLN (Lincoln) Abraham (February 12, 1809, near Hodgenville, Kentucky - April 15, 1865, Washington), American statesman, 16th President of the United States in 1861-1865, one of the organizers of the Republican Party (1854), which opposed slavery. During the American Civil War of 1861-1865, Lincoln's government carried out a number of democratic reforms, in particular, it adopted laws on homesteads, the abolition of slavery, and ensured the defeat of the southern troops.

Choosing a path

Born into a poor farmer's family. Due to frequent moves, he attended school intermittently, but regularly educated himself, becoming an avid book reader. From an early age he helped the family with housework and worked for hire. From 1831, Lincoln settled in New Salem (Illinois), where he worked as a clerk in a store and a surveyor, then joined the militia that opposed the Indians, but did not participate in battles. In 1833-36 he was a local postmaster, studied law and from 1836 was admitted to legal practice.

Becoming a politician

From 1834-42, Lincoln was elected to the Illinois Legislature four times as a Whig member. In 1837 he moved to the state capital of Springfield. In 1842 he married Mary Todd. In 1847-49 he represented Illinois in the lower house of the US Congress and opposed the war with Mexico and the slave trade. In subsequent years, he practiced law, became one of the leading lawyers in the state, and was a consultant for the Illinois Central railroad. In 1856 he joined the newly created Republican Party. During the elections of 1858, widespread attention was drawn to the debate between Lincoln and his rival in the fight for a seat in the US Senate, S. A. Douglas. Douglas won, but Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech, the leitmotif of which was the impossibility of the country’s continued existence in a state of “half-slavery and half-freedom,” became a textbook over time, and he himself became a national figure.

As President

In the presidential election of 1860, Lincoln managed to defeat three of his opponents, receiving an overwhelming majority of Electoral College votes. His tenure in the White House from March 4, 1861 to April 15, 1865 coincided with the most tragic period in US history - the American Civil War. The slaveholding states responded to the election of Lincoln with secession - secession from the Union and the proclamation of the Confederate States of America in February 1861. “We must not be enemies,” Lincoln proclaimed upon taking office, but the Southern armed uprising prompted him to retaliate. Lincoln considered slavery an evil, inevitable under the economic conditions that existed in the South. He attributed the issue of slavery to the competence of the states themselves and believed that the government had no constitutional right to interfere in this problem. At the same time, he firmly opposed the spread of slavery to new territories, which undermined the foundations of slavery, because its extensive nature inevitably required expansion into the undeveloped lands of the West. An important achievement of the Lincoln administration was the adoption in May 1862 of the Homestead Act, which provided for the endowment of every citizen of the country with a land plot of 160 acres (64 hectares). The law dealt a severe blow to slavery and led to a radical solution to the agrarian problem - the development of agriculture along the farming route.

Freeing the Slaves

As events unfolded, Lincoln's rather moderate, compromise position on the issue of slavery changed. The administration's main goal - the restoration of the Union - turned out to be unattainable without the abolition of slavery throughout the country. Lincoln did not come to the realization of this reality immediately. A purely civilian man, subjected to pressure from all sides, criticized for military defeats and economic difficulties, the president at the right time took decisive steps to suppress the insurrection, not even stopping at restricting civil liberties or spending funds not yet approved by Congress. Lincoln advocated the gradual emancipation of slaves on a compensatory basis, but the time came when he realized that “slavery must die that the nation may live.” On September 22, 1862, he announced that as of January 1 of the coming year, all slaves “will now and forever be free,” and on December 30 he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. 1863 brought the Union armies victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Speaking at the dedication of the Gettysburg military cemetery on November 19, 1863, Lincoln said that the soldiers buried here gave their lives so that the country would find “a new birth of freedom,” and “this government of the people, of the people, for the people will never perish from the face of the earth.” This short speech of just 10 phrases became a true manifesto of American democracy, and Lincoln strengthened his reputation as a brilliant orator.

Re-election and assassination

In the elections of 1864, despite the objections of a number of politicians and his own doubts, Lincoln defeated his rival from the Democratic Party, General J. B. McClellan. Lincoln believed that the emancipation of slaves should be legally enforceable. At his insistence, on January 31, 1865, Congress adopted the XIIIth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited slavery in the United States and came into force after its ratification by the states in December of the same year. At the beginning of 1865, the imminent victory of the northerners was no longer in doubt. On the agenda were the problems of Reconstruction - the restoration of 11 seceded states as full-fledged subjects of the federation. Lincoln, back in December 1863, promised amnesty to all rebels, except their immediate leaders, subject to taking an oath of allegiance to the United States and recognizing the abolition of slavery. He considered the acts of secession of the southern states to be legally invalid and was convinced that their repeal would automatically mean the restoration of these states to the Union. The President advocated for a speedy conclusion of peace and personally went on February 3 to a meeting with the leaders of the Confederacy, which failed due to the unconstructive position of the southerners. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln called for renunciation. "Hearing no malice toward any, full of mercy, firm in the truth," Americans must "bind up the country's wounds... do everything possible to win and maintain a just and lasting peace in our home and with all the peoples of the world." The President failed to realize his plans. On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, at a performance at Ford's Theater in Washington, the fanatical Southerner actor J. W. Booth entered the presidential box and shot Lincoln in the head. The next morning, without regaining consciousness, the president died. Millions of Americans, white and black, came to pay their last respects to their president during the two-and-a-half week funeral train journey from Washington to Springfield, where Lincoln was buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery. Lincoln's tragic death greatly contributed to the creation around his name of an aura of a martyr who died for the liberation of the slaves. The memory of Lincoln is immortalized in a memorial opened in the American capital in 1922. Inside this white marble structure, sculptor D. C. French placed a six-meter statue of the liberating president sitting in thought. On the interior walls of the memorial, under allegorical paintings, the texts of Lincoln's Gettysburg and Second Inaugural Addresses are reproduced.

There are many unusual facts about the sixteenth President of the United States that you probably didn't know.

But they are very entertaining. Study this information not just because it is interesting, but for the purpose of your own development, because many facts are related to history.

Was Abraham Lincoln a real vampire hunter?

Probably no. Or at least, if it was true, there is no historical record of it.

For example, few people know that he was the first president to fight for the right to grow beards for prominent political figures.

Many people know him for this act; in fact, he has not had any facial hair for a long time.

Bearded presidents are still an odd sight; there have only been four in the US: Garfield, Grant, Harrison and Hayes, although several others had mustaches.

Was Abraham Lincoln's mother killed by vampires?

In fact, Lincoln witnessed the death of his mother, but she did not die at the hands of vampires. She died from a very strange illness, they called it milk fever. It's all because of the cow's milk that they all consumed.

All patients and their attending physicians considered this disease incurable and fatal. At that time, milk fever killed many; local farmers were the most frightened, because an economic crisis began for them. Villages and farms had to be abandoned, all livestock had to be killed, many families died. Migration to areas considered safer became common, and then the disease almost disappeared without any special preventive action. The secret and rapid disappearance of the disease turned out to be, as they later learned, a consequence of the progress of civilization and success in agriculture.

According to the National Park Service, symptoms of this fever included loss of appetite, lethargy, weakness, muscle pain, vomiting, stomach or intestinal discomfort, constipation, bad breath, and coma. Basically, coma was the cause of many deaths. This is a state from which few people have been able to escape.

Truth be told, this sounds a lot worse than vampires. Lincoln soon had a stepmother as his father remarried.

Abraham Lincoln is much taller than the average vampire

Most people know that Abraham Lincoln was very tall indeed. But they don't understand how much. His height was 1.93 cm, he was the tallest president in history. So much so that even when he sat at the table, he looked as tall as a basketball player (or a vampire).

Psychic abilities, or did Abraham Lincoln foresee his own death?

Just a week before he was shot by John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln had a prophetic dream in which he walked through the White House and made everyone cry.

When he finally asked someone why everyone was crying, he was told it was because the President had been killed.

Was Abraham Lincoln the victim of a curse?

We know that Abraham Lincoln, due to his height, could handle several vampires, but the curse is another story.

He was the second in a long list of presidents elected in such a year, the last digit of which was "0", and died in office. Just think of William Henry Harrison (1840) and John F. Kennedy (1960).

Abraham Lincoln and the anger towards men with beards

Abraham Lincoln may have been famous for his beautiful beard (the first president), but there is another famous person who became famous for just that. His beard was 12.6 m long, the name of this hero is Valentine Tapley.

Tapley was a Democrat, and he hated the Republican Lincoln. And he once swore that he would never shave his beard if Lincoln was elected president.

This was a promise that the politician kept until his death, and he died in 1910.

10 Facts You May Not Know About Abraham Lincoln

1. Lincoln's name takes pride of place in the Professional Wrestling Federation (WWE) Hall of Fame

Although the Great Liberator did not have the build of a fighter, but with his tall stature and tenacious hands, in his youth he was quite an experienced fighter. He participated in more than 300 fights, winning many of them. According to Carl Sandburg's biography of Lincoln, Honest Abe often challenged entire crowds to fight anyone. It was for feats like these that he was awarded a place of honor in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

2. Lincoln created the Secret Service hours before the assassination attempt.

On April 14, 1865, Lincoln signed legislation creating the US Secret Service. That same evening he was shot at Ford's Theater. But even if the Secret Service had been created earlier, it was unlikely to have saved the president, since the original mission of this body was to fight counterfeiters. It was only in 1901, after the assassination of two presidents, that the Secret Service was officially charged with protecting the commander in chief, who is the President of the United States.

3. Robbers tried to steal Lincoln's corpse

Still, the Secret Service came to Lincoln's defense, but only after his death. In 1876, a gang of counterfeiters from Chicago attempted to dig up Lincoln's body and steal it. The President was buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois.

The robbers' plan was to obtain a ransom of $200,000 for the body of the late president and release one of the gang members who was in custody at the time.

Secret Service agents infiltrated the gang, and as a result of the operation, the president's body was saved. Lincoln was eventually reburied, with the coffin enclosed in a metal cage and buried under 10 feet of concrete.

4. The Brother of Lincoln's Assassin Saved the Life of the President's Son

Edwin Booth as Hamlet, 1870

A few months before John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln, the president's eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, stood on a railroad platform in Jersey City, New Jersey. At some point, a crowd of passengers pushed the young man, and he fell from the platform into the space between the platform and the moving train. Suddenly a saving hand reached out to Robert Lincoln from above and pulled him up by the collar of his coat. The president's son immediately recognized his savior. It turned out to be the famous actor Edwin Booth.

Another eerie coincidence is the fact that on the day of Edwin Booth's funeral, June 9, 1893, Ford's Theater, where the president was assassinated, collapsed. 22 people died under the rubble.

5. Lincoln is the only president to receive a patent.

Benjamin Franklin was not the only statesman with an inventive mind. After the ship ran aground, Lincoln, who was on this ship, being a supporter of scientific and technological progress and invention, came up with a way to keep ships afloat while passing through shallow water using hollow metal chambers on the sides of the ship. This invention was patented under No. 6469 in 1849.

6. Lincoln personally tested small arms and artillery weapons

As Commander-in-Chief and President, Lincoln had a great passion for various types of weapons and was interested in using the latest artillery developments and quickly transferring them to the Union army at war.

Lincoln not only met with inventors and inspected the prototypes they presented, but personally took part in testing the latest weapons right on the lawn near the White House.

7 Lincoln Came Under Fire on a Civil War Battlefield

As Confederate troops approached Washington in July 1864, Lincoln visited the front lines at Fort Stevens, where he observed the battles that ultimately ended in victory for the Union army.

At some point, shells began to explode in close proximity to the president. Legend has it that Colonel Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a future U.S. Supreme Court justice, barked, “Get down, you fool!” Lincoln ducked and left the battlefield unharmed.

8. Lincoln had never been to Illinois before he was 21.

Although Illinois is known as the Land of Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States spent his formative years in Indiana. He was born in Kentucky in 1809, and in 1816 his father Thomas moved the family to Indiana, which Abraham Lincoln did not leave until 1830.

9 Lincoln's Mother Died After Drinking Poisoned Milk

When Abraham was 9 years old, his mother, Nancy, died of a mysterious "milk sickness" that swept across southern Indiana. It later became known that the strange disease was caused by the poisonous plant Snakeroot being eaten by local cows.

10. Lincoln never slept in the Lincoln Bedroom.

After settling into his White House residence, the 16th President of the United States used what is now called the Lincoln Bedroom as his personal office. It was there that he met with members of the government and signed documents, including the emancipation of slaves. But it never served as Lincoln's bedroom.

According to conventional wisdom and social polls, Lincoln remains one of America's best and most beloved presidents.

The liberator of American slaves, the national hero of the American people, Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky on February 12, 1809.

Increased Lincoln in the family of a poor farmer - he was engaged in physical labor from a very early age. Due to the difficult financial situation of his family, he attended school for no more than a year, but managed to learn to read and write and fell in love with books. When he grew up, he worked at many jobs: at the post office, as a lumberjack, as a hunter, etc. He did not have time for education and, as many sources say: at that time he only read the “Bible” and “Robinson Crusoe”.

Having become an adult, he began an independent life, educated himself, passed exams and received permission to practice law. During the Indian uprising in Illinois, he joined the militia and was elected captain, but did not take part in the fighting. He was also a member of the Illinois Legislative Assembly, the House of Representatives of the US Congress, in which he opposed the Mexican-American War. In 1858 he became a candidate for US senator, but lost the election.

As an opponent of the expansion of slavery into new territories, he was one of the initiators of the creation Republican Party, was chosen as her presidential candidate and won the 1860 election. His election signaled the secession of the southern states and the emergence of the Confederacy. In his inaugural speech he called for the reunification of the country, but was unable to prevent conflict.

Lincoln personally directed the military efforts that led to victory over the Confederacy during Civil War 1861-1865. His presidency led to the strengthening of executive power and the abolition of slavery in the United States. Lincoln included his opponents in the government and was able to bring them to work towards a common goal.

The President kept Great Britain and other European countries from intervention throughout the war. During his presidency, the transcontinental railroad was built, the Homestead Act was adopted, which resolved the agrarian question. Lincoln was an outstanding orator, his speeches inspired northerners and remain a shining legacy to this day.

At the end of the war, he proposed a plan for moderate Reconstruction, associated with national harmony and renunciation of revenge. On April 14, 1865, Lincoln was mortally wounded in a theater, becoming the first US president to be assassinated. According to conventional wisdom and social polls, he remains one of America's best and most beloved presidents, although he was subject to severe criticism during his presidency.

We bring to your attention a selection of interesting facts from the biography of the legendary politician.

1. Before becoming President of the United States, Lincoln lost in 18 elections. His life serves as the clearest illustration of the phenomenal success built with his own hands:

1831 – went bankrupt in business, declared bankrupt;

1832 - defeated in elections to the legislative chamber of his state;

1834 – again burned out in business and again declared bankrupt:

1835 -1836 – personal failures and, as a result, a severe nervous breakdown, was treated for a long time;

1838 – defeated in the next elections;

1843, 1846, 1848 - defeated in elections to the US Congress;

1855 - defeated in elections to the Senate;

1856 - defeated as a candidate for the post of Vice President of the United States;

1858 - defeated in elections to the Senate;

1860 – elected President of the United States.

2. Lincoln was an incredibly tall man(193 cm), and his long hat added a few more inches to his height. He used the hat not only as a fashion item, but also as a storage place for money, letters and important notes. It was called “chimney” because it resembled a pipe.

3. The President was not only a wonderful politician, but also had a great sense of humor. One day a diplomat asked him: “Mr. Lincoln, do you shine your own shoes?” “Yes, whose shoes are you cleaning?” the president asked him in response.

4. When Lincoln was still a simple lawyer, an incident occurred that went down in US history: one of the court clerks was fined for insulting the court. Here is how it was. Lincoln entered the courtroom when the court hearing was already underway, approached one of the secretaries and told him such a funny story that he could not stand it and laughed out loud. The angry judge said: “I demand an end to this outrage, so you can fine yourself five dollars.” It was pretty decent money back then. The secretary apologized to the judge and everyone present, paid the fine, but said that the anecdote he heard was worth that amount. After the end of the meeting, the judge called this secretary and asked him to tell an anecdote from Lincoln. After listening to it, he also could not help laughing and said with difficulty: “You can take your fine back”. Unfortunately, the anecdote remained unknown.

5. Lincoln was incredibly smart, thoughtful, and skilled with words. The proof of this fact is his speeches that he wrote and delivered as an inspirational speaker. There are many records of his addresses except one, which he gave in 1856 in Illinois. Many say this was his best speech.

6. During the American Civil War, one of the leaders of the northern army, General McClellan, who was a supporter of wait-and-see tactics in warfare, received a letter from Lincoln with the following content: “My dear general! If you don't need your army right now, I'd like to borrow it for a while. Sincerely, Lincoln."

7. Abraham Lincoln was the only US president who had saloon license. He was co-owner of the Berry and Lincoln establishment in Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln's favorite sport is cockfighting.

8. In 2004, employees of a company that scanned old texts discovered an emoticon that looked like 😉 in the summary of Abraham Lincoln's 1862 speech after the word laughter (translated as “laughter”). Whether this was a typo or an example of outdated punctuation, experts disagreed.

9. Surprisingly, Lincoln was keenly interested in and adored the latest inventions of his time. He was interested in how they worked and always tried to understand the workings of the mechanisms. He himself tried to make several devices, and he managed to create one device in 1849. It was a floating dry dock. He even managed to patent the device, but, despite his expectations, the machine was not finished.

10. With Lincoln's son, Robert Lincoln, some kind of misfortune constantly happened. Robert Todd Lincoln was present when three presidents were assassinated: his father, President Garfield, and President McKinley. After the last incident, he refused to attend state events. Another interesting fact about Robert is that he was saved from a terrible train wreck by none other than Edwin Booth. Edwin Booth was the brother of his father's murderer, John Booth.

11. Lincoln believed in spirituality, but not in religion itself. Although he claimed to be a true Christian, he never specified his religion. Representatives of various movements claim that he adhered to their religion, but in fact this is not accurate, since he never went to church or prayed at all. He once stated that he really wanted him and his people to be on the side of God himself, and not the church.

12. They said that Lincoln believed in dark forces. But even if he didn’t really believe, he certainly didn’t reject them. He and his wife conducted séances to contact their dead children. It is not known whether they managed to establish contact.

13. Many people believe that Lincoln actually had mystical abilities. They began to manifest themselves especially towards the end of his life. He knew the date of his death and how he would die. He said that he saw his double reflection in the mirror, and the second one was blurry. It was rumored that a week before his death, Lincoln announced that he had a dream in which he heard loud crying from a room in the White House. He started looking for the room and when he finally found it, he saw a coffin standing in the center. When he asked people who died, they replied that it was the president. Looking into the coffin, Lincoln saw himself.

14. The President was assassinated in the theater John Wilkes Booth in 1865. Ironically, he died in the same bed in which his killer slept. As the funeral procession passed Ford's Theater, where Lincoln was shot, one of the building's cornices fell off.

15. Lincoln's body was reburied 17 times. This was either due to reconstruction of the tomb or for security reasons. At the same time, his coffin was opened six times. Only in 1901, 36 years after his death, did the president find final peace. There is a belief that Lincoln's ghost haunts the White House.