“It’s fun. It’s well written. . . . A valuable catalog of Lincoln information, very accessible, that is a good read from beginning to end.” —America’s Civil War“Did Lincoln Own Slaves? is a wonderful book, as witty as it is wise. . . . Every Lincoln student must own this book.” —David Herbert Donald, author of Lincoln“The surprises found on almost every page should delight anyone even remotely interested in our national history.” —Larry Cox, King Features“Here is everything one ever wanted to know about Abraham Lincoln-told authoritatively and entertainingly by a fine scholar and gifted writer.” —Harold Holzer, cochairman, U. S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission"A wonderful book, as witty as it is wise. Addressing every question that conceivable can be raised about Abraham Lincoln, Gerald Prokopowicz provides answers that are short, accurate, and in many instances highly amusing."—David Herbert Donald, author of Lincoln"From his birth to his death (not to mention the century and a half since), here is everything one ever wanted to know about Abraham Lincoln, told authoritatively and entertainingly by a fine scholar and gifted writer. Facts are reported, myths punctured, and controversies analyzed in a text that proves both an essential reference and a page-turning good read."—Harold Holzer, cochairman, Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission"Of the thousands of books about Lincoln (you can get the exact number, and many other facts, from this book), very few bring us as much information, and none is more pleasantly amusing. If you have any interest in Lincoln and start reading this book, you will have a hard time stopping."—William Lee Miller, author of Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography and President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman"Witty, intelligent, and informative, Did Lincoln Own Slaves? is a book that every level of Lincoln student—from grade school to scholar—will find useful. Prokopowicz has provided accurate answers to the essential questions about our sixteenth president; no more digging around in the Lincoln library is required."—Jean H. Baker, author of Mary Todd Lincoln
List of Illustrations
CHAPTER ONE: THE BOY LINCOLN
When and where was Lincoln born?
Is the cabin still there?
Haven’t I seen the cabin somewhere else?
About the original birthplace cabin–is it true that Lincoln helped his father build it with his own hands?
Who were Lincoln’s parents?
Were Thomas and Nancy married to each other when Abraham was born?
His mother was born out of wedlock?
Was Abraham’s last name really Lincoln?
No, I mean,was Thomas Lincoln really his father?
So Lincoln’s greatness was due to his environment, not his genes?
Where did Lincoln’s ancestors come from?
Was Lincoln’s father a good-for-nothing bum?
Why did Thomas and Nancy choose the name Abraham?
What was Lincoln’s middle name?
Did he have any brothers or sisters?
Lincoln once said “All I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” Did he mean his natural mother or his stepmother?
Lincoln didn’t go to his own father’s funeral?
Did Lincoln have a happy childhood?
If Lincoln was born in Kentucky, why do Illinois license plates say “Land of Lincoln”?
Did they really spend their first winter in Indiana living outdoors?
Why did the Lincolns move to Indiana?
What did slavery have to do with their move?
What did Abe do in Indiana?
How did his mother die?
Can people still get milk sickness?
Did Abraham show any signs of future greatness when he was a boy?
Did he hunt smaller animals?
How else was Abe different from other children?
Is it true that Lincoln was nearly killed when he was a boy?
Did this really happen three times?
What’s a paw paw?
How much schooling did he have?
Did he write his school lessons on the back of a shovel, using a piece of charcoal?
Who taught him?
What’s a “blab school”?
Did Lincoln ever go to college?
If his education was so limited, how did he get so smart?
Did he once accidentally ruin a book that he borrowed?
CHAPTER TWO: RAIL-SPLITTER
What’s a rail-splitter?
So Lincoln didn’t really split rails for a living. What did he do, before he became a lawyer and politician?
Was this the trip when Lincoln saw slave markets in New Orleans and decided he would dedicate himself to ending slavery?
What about his other jobs? Wasn’t he a storekeeper?
Did he really once walk two miles to return change to a customer?
What else did he do for a living?
If his partner drank up the store’s stock, are you saying that Lincoln kept a saloon?
When he got a job as a postmaster, did he really carry letters around in his hat?
What did Lincoln think about this? What was his religion?
Wasn’t he secretly baptized when he was older?
If Lincoln wasn’t a Christian, why are his speeches full of talk about God?
This religious conversion he went through–didn’t this happen at Gettysburg?
What did Lincoln do for fun as a young man? Did he play sports?
Could he dunk a basketball?
So, what sports did he play?
What else did he do for fun? Did he drink a lot when he was young?
Did he smoke or chew tobacco?
Did he gamble?
Did he swear or tell dirty jokes?
Was he lazy?
So did Lincoln have any bad habits?
How about good manners?
He probably didn’t need much in the way of manners for his first girlfriend, Ann Rutledge, did he?
Did he leave New Salem because of Ann Rutledge?
CHAPTER THREE: SPRINGFIELD
Why did he move to Springfield?
When a guy says to another guy, “It’s a good place to meet people,” he usually means “It’s a good place to meet girls.” Is that what really brought Lincoln to Springfield?
If he didn’t do so well with the ladies, is it possible–I mean, I once heard a story that he used to visit, you know, working girls . . . ?
Was Lincoln gay?
Why does anyone care?
What was it in his youth that made him great?
Lincoln never was much of a lawyer,was he?
Where did he go to law school?
How did Lincoln do on his bar exam?
What kind of law did he practice?
Runaway slaves? I assume he was helping them to get free . . .or did Lincoln represent slaveowners?
What’s his most famous case?
What was his most important case?
Did he make a lot of money as a lawyer?
Is it true that the real reason he spent so much time at the office and “riding the circuit”was to get away from Mary?
About Mary Todd Lincoln: Was she crazy?
How did Abe and Mary meet?
What did she see in him?
Who broke the engagement?
How did Abe and Mary get back together?
Lincoln fought a duel?
What did Lincoln write in those letters that was so bad it made Shields want to kill him?
Was Mary pregnant when she married him?
CHAPTER FOUR: POLITICIAN
It’s amazing how Lincoln failed at everything he tried but kept on trying, until one day he was elected president. I read about this in “Dear Abby.”How did he do it?
So he considered himself a failure before he became president?
Is that why he went into politics in the first place? For attention and fame?
Wasn’t Mary Lincoln the real source of Lincoln’s ambition?
What did Lincoln do in the Illinois legislature, if he was so ambitious?
Didn’t he once jump out of a window or a trap door or something when he was a legislator?
Wait a minute–I’ve been to the Old State Capitol in Springfield, and the House chamber windows are at least twenty feet from the ground. How could he have survived that fall?
When did he become a Republican?
Was he the founder of the Republican Party?
What happened to the Whigs?
If he were alive today, what party would Lincoln belong to?
If Lincoln were running for office today, could he get elected?
CHAPTER FIVE: SPEAKER
Are there any recordings of Lincoln’s voice?
If they didn’t have sound equipment, like microphones, how were big audiences able to hear Lincoln’s speeches?
Was Lincoln a good public speaker?
How did he learn to speak so well?
Did he write his own speeches?
Didn’t Lincoln once make a speech that was so good nobody wrote it down?
In which speech did he say, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all the time”?
Are there other famous things that Lincoln didn’t really say?
Was Lincoln a good extemporaneous speaker?
What about his farewell to Springfield?
Did he ever make bad speeches?
What was his greatest speech?
Isn’t it too bad we don’t have politicians today who can debate issues like Lincoln and Douglas did?
You seem to be saying the debates contained nothing new. What about the “Freeport interrogatories”?
Why would he have settled for just the Senate? Didn’t he always want to be president?
CHAPTER SIX: PRESIDENT
How old was Lincoln when he became president?
If Lincoln’s whole political experience was in the Illinois state legislature, plus one term in Congress, how did he ever get elected president?
How did he win the election?
Did he make a whistle-stop campaign?
Is it true that Stephen Douglas held Lincoln’s hat during the inaugural ceremony?
What about his cabinet? Did Lincoln really fill it with his rivals?
Did the rest of the cabinet support Lincoln?
What’s a chin-fly?
So did Chase ever come to acknowledge Lincoln’s superiority the way Seward did? 108
Who was Lincoln’s vice president?
But Andrew Johnson became president after Lincoln was killed.Why the change? 109
Why did Lincoln start the Civil War?
Did Lincoln’s presidential actions violate the Constitution?
Still, arresting 13,535 political prisoners is outrageous, isn’t it?
What happened to those who did get arrested for opposing the war?
Is it true that Lincoln had an arrest warrant made out for
the chief justice of the United States?
Was Lincoln responsible for the income tax?
Did Lincoln make Thanksgiving a national holiday?
Did Mary remodel the White House without telling him?
Did Lincoln appear before a Congressional committee to defend his wife’s loyalty to the Union?
Did the Lincolns have a secret summer home?
What was a typical day like for President Lincoln?
How big was his White House staff ?
How much mail did he get?
Did Lincoln answer his own mail?
Why didn’t Lincoln sign every letter himself ?
Did one of his secretaries write the Bixby letter?
What was the “Blind Memorandum” that Lincoln wrote?
What did it say?
Why not just postpone the election?
CHAPTER SEVEN: COMMANDER IN CHIEF
Before Lincoln became commander in chief, did he have any military experience?
Were Lincoln and his men sworn into service by Jefferson Davis?
Did he teach himself military strategy when he became president?
Was Lincoln a military genius?
You said Lincoln “eventually” found the right commanders–why did it take so long?
So why did he put up with McClellan?
How did he finally get rid of McClellan?
Did McClellan and Lincoln know each other before the war?
How about Confederate General George Pickett, of Pickett’s Charge fame–wasn’t he an old friend of Lincoln?
Didn’t he once ask General McClellan if he could borrow the army, since McClellan was not using it?
Was he serious?
Why not? Didn’t he understand military strategy at least as well as people like McClellan?
Did he ever see a battle?
For real? Lincoln was involved in a dangerous military operation?
Did Lincoln hire a substitute to fight for him?
Didn’t one of his generals plan to replace him and take over the government as a dictator?
Didn’t Lincoln offer to send a barrel of Grant’s whiskey to his other generals?
Did he pardon a soldier who was about to be executed for sleeping on duty?
Did Lincoln try to have Jeff Davis killed?
Did Lincoln have something to do with machine guns?
What did the soldiers think of Lincoln?
CHAPTER EIGHT: GETTYSBURG
Did Lincoln really think the world would not remember what he said at Gettysburg?
Did Lincoln write the Gettysburg Address on the back on an envelope, on the train to Gettysburg?
So the train ride was too bumpy to write with a pen.
Could he have done it if he had a laptop computer? 147
Didn’t the Gettysburg dedication committee almost forget
to invite Lincoln?
If everyone there knew that Lincoln’s presence was not just an afterthought but an appropriate part of the ceremony, how did this myth get started?
So Lincoln didn’t think the speech was a failure?
What did others think of it?
My kid’s textbook has the Gettysburg Address in it, and they took out the phrase “under God.” Can’t these revisionists leave Lincoln’s words alone?
Where are the copies now?
When I heard the actor Sam Waterston recite the address, he emphasized “people” in the last line: “of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, for the PEOPLE,” instead of “OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people,” the way it’s usually done. Why did he do that? Does he know something the rest of us don’t know?
What was he trying to do?
CHAPTER NINE: EMANCIPATION
Washington owned slaves, right? Jefferson owned slaves, right? Did Lincoln own slaves?
Why doesn’t the question go away?
So consider it. What’s the reason for asking if Lincoln owned slaves?
But you already established that he didn’t. There must be some other justification for the question, no?
And what is the big question about Lincoln and slavery?
Which was he–the “Great Emancipator” or a clever, lying racist?
So, Lincoln was a racist. Everybody knows that now anyway. Why is he still called “the Great Emancipator”?
So Lincoln was not a racist?
Did Lincoln use the n–– word?
The Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t announced until September 1862. If Lincoln cared about the slaves, why didn’t he free them as soon as he became president?
What about the constitutional amendment Lincoln favored that would have protected slavery indefinitely?
Didn’t he once say that he wanted to win the war, whether or not he freed the slaves?
Isn’t it true that the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t really free any slaves at all?
Did Lincoln write the Thirteenth Amendment?
Did Lincoln bribe Congressmen to get them to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment?
Did Lincoln make Nevada a state just so it could ratify the Thirteenth Amendment?
Why didn’t Lincoln offer to pay the slaveholders for their slaves? That would have been easier than fighting a war.
What about paying slaveholders not in the Confederacy, like the ones in Kentucky or Missouri?
How did he come up with the value? Did slaves really cost four hundred dollars?
Did Lincoln want to send blacks back to Africa?
Was he serious?
Did he know any African Americans personally?
What did Lincoln think about women’s rights?
Was Lincoln black?
What do you think Lincoln would have said about the idea of reparations for slavery?
CHAPTER TEN: LINCOLN THE MAN
How tall was he?
What was his shoe size?
Did people think he was ugly?
Why don’t any photographs of Lincoln show him smiling?
What’s the worst photograph of him?
What’s the first one?
What’s the last photograph of Lincoln?
What’s the best Lincoln photo?
Are there any photographs of Lincoln with his wife?
When did he decide to grow a beard?
How was Lincoln’s health?
Didn’t he have some kind of genetic disease that would have eventually killed him?
What about the one that makes people really tall?
Could his DNA be studied to find out if he had either of these conditions?
Was he manic-depressive?
If Lincoln went into a suicidal tailspin just because of bad weather in 1835, isn’t that pretty manic?
Was he depressed when he was president?
Did he take anything to treat his depression, like after Willie’s death?
Is it true that he once took mercury pills? Aren’t they dangerous?
Other than from mercury poisoning, did Lincoln ever lose his temper?
Did Lincoln hate anyone?
So Lincoln got along with everyone he met?
I heard that he wrote some poetry. Is it any good?
What about the “suicide poem”? Did he really write it?
What was his favorite poem?
Was this Knox his favorite poet?
Was Walt Whitman his favorite poet?
Then who was his favorite poet?
Was the Confederate anthem “Dixie” really his favorite song?
Everybody knows that Lincoln was a great joker. What’s the funniest Lincoln joke you know?
OK, then what’s the least funny Lincoln joke?
Why did he tell funny stories?
How many children did Lincoln have?
What kind of a father was he?
Did he have grandchildren?
Why isn’t Robert Todd Lincoln buried in the Lincoln family tomb?
Did the president’s children have pets?
Is that where the tradition of the president pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey comes from?
Speaking of signing pardons, did Lincoln have good handwriting?
What was his favorite food?
Was Lincoln a Mason?
Did Lincoln invent something?
Did he know that he would be considered by many people to be the greatest president ever?
You said that Lincoln wasn’t a Christian. Then why did he have “In God We Trust” put on our coins?
Didn’t he become more religious when he was president?
Did he believe in dreams?
What about Mary? Didn’t she hold a séance in the White House?
How did he stand it being married to her?
I read that she chased him with knives and broke his nose with a stick. Doesn’t that go beyond “emotional highs and lows”?
Everyone knows he was born poor, but didn’t Lincoln die rich?
CHAPTER ELEVEN: MARTYR
Did Lincoln know John Wilkes Booth?
Did Lincoln have premonitions of death?
How did the assassination happen? Why didn’t the Secret Service stop Booth?
So there was nobody guarding the president?
Is it true that Booth drilled a hole in the door to the presidential box, so that he could see if anyone was looking before he entered?
Why were Rathbone and Harris invited? Were they special friends of the Lincolns?
Did Major Rathbone try to stop Booth?
What does Sic semper tyrannis mean?
Didn’t Booth say something else?
How did Booth get a horse to wait for him?
What happened to Major Rathbone?
Could modern medical techniques have saved Lincoln’s life after he was shot?
Where is the bullet now?
Why did Booth shoot Lincoln?
Did Booth act alone?
What happened to the doctor who helped Booth? Didn’t he get sent to jail and then pardoned?
But weren’t there also some secret conspirators? Wasn’t the secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, really behind the plot?
Was the Confederate government involved in the plot to kill Lincoln?
Was Booth convicted of conspiring with anyone?
Where is he buried?
Are you sure?
What happened to the rest of the conspirators?
What about Mrs. Surratt’s son? Wasn’t he involved?
Did anyone else ever try to kill Lincoln?
CHAPTER TWELVE: LEGACY
Was Lincoln the greatest president?
Does anyone hate Lincoln?
What do you think would have happened if Lincoln had not been assassinated?
Would Lincoln have been able to prevent the Radical Republicans from inflicting Reconstruction on
the South after the war?
So what would Lincoln have done?
You think he would have supported black voting? Didn’t he once say he was opposed to political rights for blacks?
Are there any direct descendants of Abraham Lincoln alive today?
Isn’t there another descendant, but they paid him to keep it quiet?
“Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”
What was it that Stanton said at the moment Lincoln died?
Where was Lincoln’s funeral?
Where is he buried?
Was Lincoln’s corpse ever stolen?
Is there a secret message in the hands of the Lincoln Memorial statue?
What’s the biggest memorial to Lincoln?
Who is the best Lincoln impersonator?
What is the Abraham Lincoln Association? Can I join?
Are there any Lincoln groups not based in Springfield?
What would Lincoln think of all the writers, professors, impersonators, museum guides, souvenir vendors, bicentennial administrators, and others, who make their living from his memory?
Is it true that Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day? If so, what does this mean?
What’s the best book about Lincoln?
What about the worst Lincoln book?
Are there any good children’s books about Lincoln?
Is it true that there are more books about Lincoln than any other historical figure?
What’s the best place to get Lincoln books?
All right, enough reading–what about movies and TV?
What’s the best and worst?
Did scientists raise Lincoln from the dead?
Speaking of JFK, what about the amazing coincidences between the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations?
What do you make of them?
Are you concerned that by simply repeating stories such as this you will end up perpetuating them?
Let’s say that Lincoln really could be revived. What would he have to say about legalized abortion?
What museum has most of Lincoln’s things?
I have an artifact of the assassination. It’s a copy of the New York Herald from April 15, 1865. My grandfather passed it on to me, so I know it’s old.How much is it worth now?
What if I have an ordinary letter signed by Lincoln? What’s that worth?
How can you tell if a Lincoln document is authentic?
Which Lincoln museum is the best?
I know that Lincoln was born near Hodgenville, but why is there a Lincoln museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana? Did he ever live there?
So does that mean Lincoln Financial Field, where the Philadelphia Eagles play, is also named for Lincoln?
Is it true that Lincoln Logs are also named for Lincoln?
What about the Lincoln Town Car?
What was Lincoln’s greatest accomplishment as president, saving the Union or helping to end slavery?