Abraham Lincoln was the first president to have a beard while in office. He grew his beard out of the suggestion of a letter from 11 year old Grace Bedell from Westfield, New York in the fall of 1860.
Her letter urged him to grow a beard and read in part: “if you let your whiskers grow . . . you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.”
It is interesting the child mentioned ‘ladies’ would urge their husbands to vote for Lincoln, but didn’t say “ladies’ would vote for him. That’s because it would be some 60 years later before women were granted that right with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
However, Abraham Lincoln was ahead of his time. In 1836, 24-years before he became president, Abraham Lincoln was the first elected official in our history to favor extending the vote to women. Illinois state legislator Lincoln gave an area newspaper a statement endorsing “female suffrage.”
Abraham Lincoln was the first president to receive a transcontinental telegraph message. Western Union had completed the transcontinental telegraph line in October, 1861.
During the Civil War the Union army took advantage of existing telegraph wires to send dispatches back to Washington. The also had mobile wire wagons to string new wire where none existed and replace wires the Confederates had cut down. They established Mobile Telegraph Stations to relay from such far-flung stations back to Washington so the War Department could follow the action on the battlefield even from scattered military units.
Since there was no telegraph office in the White House, the president went across the street to the War Department every day to get the news from the front.
More Abraham Lincoln firsts and superlatives:
Lincoln’s brother, half-brothers, and brothers-in-law fought in the Confederate Army.
Lincoln was the tallest president, at 6 feet and 4 inches.
Lincoln is the U.S. president most frequently portrayed in films.
He was the first president ever depicted on a circulating U.S. coin, the 1909 Lincoln Head Cent.
Abraham Lincoln was the first president born outside of the original thirteen colonies. He was born in Hardin County, Kentucky on Feb. 12, 1809:
Abraham Lincoln was named after his grandfather.
Lincoln loved the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
Lincoln had a cat named “Bob,” a turkey named “Jack,” and a dog named “Jib.
Abraham Lincoln’s favorite sport was wrestling.
Lincoln had a wart on his right cheek, a scar on his thumb from an ax accident, and a scar over his right eye from a
fight with a gang of thieves.
His mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died when the family dairy cow ate poisonous mushrooms and she drank the milk.
John Wilkes Booth’s brother once saved Abraham Lincoln’s son’s life during a subway mishap in New York City.
Lincoln had a substitute fight for him during the Civil War. Not a paid substitute as some might think. When J. Summerfield Staples, the son of an army chaplain, heard that Lincoln felt that the president should be fighting in the war (but couldn’t because of all his duties), Staples volunteered to fight as a substitute. Both he and his father survived the war.
He was the first president to be photographed at his inauguration. His assassin, John Wilkes Booth, can be seen standing among the crowd in the picture.
In addition to being the first president to be assassinated, Abraham Lincoln had the unusual distinction of being the first president to endure an attempted grave robbing. In 1876, thieves tried to steal his body from its tomb, in the hopes of holding it for ransom. However, they failed to get him out of his casket. To prevent future plots to steal Lincoln’s body a secret society was formed to guard his tomb.
Lincoln was the only President to ever obtain a patent. In 1849 he invented a complicated device for lifting ships over dangerous shoals by means of “buoyant air chambers.” Much to Lincoln’s disappointment, U.S. Patent No. 6,469 was never put into practical use.
Abraham Lincoln was shot while watching a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The same play had been running at the McVerick Theatre in Chicago on May 16, 1860, the day he received the nomination for president in that city.
His son, Robert Todd Lincoln arrived too late to stop three separate presidential assassinations.
He arrived at the theatre after John Wilkes Booth had fired the shot.
He went to a Washington train station to meet President Garfield, arriving minutes after he was shot.
And, he traveled to Buffalo, New York to meet President McKinley, but got there after the fatal shot.
In the 1860 election there were 4 candidates from four political parties. Lincoln won the electoral college majority but not a popular majority. He had less than 40% of the popular vote. The Candidates were: Lincoln running as a Republican; John Cabell Breckinridge, he Southern Democratic candidate 9, (the incumbent vice president); Stephen Douglas of the Northern Democratic Party; and John Bell of the Constitutional Wig Party.
Despite the three-way split of the non-Republican candidates, Lincoln would have won an outright majority in the electoral vote even if the 60% of voters who supported other candidates united behind a single candidate. The electoral vote would have been 169-134.
This was the only presidential election in U.S. history to be won by a third-party candidate. The election, and the war, propelled the Republicans to prominence, while the Whigs faded away.
The voter turnout rate in 1860 was the second-highest on record (81.2%, second only to 1876, with 81.8%).
The election of 1864 saw the reelection of Abraham Lincoln. a Republican, Lincoln ran on a coalition ticket with the “War Democrats.” The coalition ticket was known as the “National Union Party’.
Reference:
- Copyright (c) 2008 by Timothy B. Benford
