Abraham Lincoln wasn’t the person we imagine. In public, he might have been a famous orator who could stand in front of crowds and stir the spirits of thousands. But in private, he was a dark and troubled man.

For all the political troubles Lincoln shouldered without a word of complaint, he struggled to stand up to the weight of his personal problems. He battled suicidal thoughts, a deep depression, and a life full of tragedy and unhappiness. And it made him a very different man than the one suggested by his stoic face.

10 He Was Afraid To Carry Knives Because He Might Kill Himself

On the surface, Lincoln seemed like a fun-loving joker. He would go out with the mask of a smile on his face and crack filthy jokes, letting everyone think he was the cheeriest man alive. When he was alone, though, he struggled with crippling depression.

He told a friend that he “never dared carry a knife in his pocket”^[1] out of fear that he’d kill himself. It wasn’t an unwarranted fear—he very nearly did it more than once.

In winter 1840, Lincoln spiraled into a terrible depression. He was engaged to Mary Todd but had fallen in love with another woman named Matilda Edwards. He couldn’t bring himself to call off his wedding. But the emotional struggle was tearing him apart.

In the words of a colleague, “Lincoln went crazy as a loon.” Lincoln had a mental breakdown, becoming unable to work or do anything but sit and talk about how horribly miserable he was.

He may not have carried a knife in his own pocket on any day, but his friends couldn’t trust him to have a blade anywhere in his home during his dark moments. They went through his house, pulling out every kitchen knife and shaving razor, convinced that Lincoln would kill himself if he was left alone for a second.

9 He Jumped Out A Window

Lincoln still made it into the office a few times that winter, but his behavior wasn’t completely sane. One day in December 1840, in the middle of a legislative session, Abraham Lincoln jumped out the window.

It wasn’t exactly a suicide attempt. Lincoln and his party, the Whigs, were trying to keep the session from closing. They were about to lose a vote that would have forced the State Bank to make payments it couldn’t afford, and Lincoln knew the bank would go bankrupt if they didn’t stop the vote.

There was a loophole that could keep it from happening. If they had one less Whig in the building, Lincoln realized, the vote technically wouldn’t be valid. So he made sure there was one less Whig. He threw himself out the window.^[2]

Most people treated it as some political novelty act. Lincoln wasn’t hurt, and the Democrats joked it was because he was so tall that “his legs reached nearly from the window to the ground.”

Today, though, we know that Lincoln was suicidally depressed at this time in his life. He may have been helping his party, but there might be more than one reason why he jumped out that window.

8 He Stopped His First Political Speech To Fight Someone

Lincoln was a champion wrestler. He fought more than 300 matches and only lost one. For as much as he looked like a thin and lanky man, he was pure muscle up close. Nearly every description we have of him called him “sinewy” and “gifted with great strength.”

He put it to use. In 1832, when he was just 23 years old, Lincoln made his first political speech. He said only a few short words—because he wanted to fight someone.

Two people in the crowd had broken into a fight. Lincoln saw that a supporter who had egged him on to get on the stage was being attacked. The massive, 193-centimeter (6’4”) former wrestling champion and future president stopped talking, stepped down from the platform, and lifted up the troublemaker by the seat of his pants. Then Lincoln threw the man as hard as he could, making him go flying 4 meters (12 ft) according to one witness.^[3]

7 He Started A Riot

Lincoln liked to fight, and he would rise to any challenge. One farmer who lived near Lincoln’s home said that he once asked Lincoln if he could kill a hog with his bare hands. According to the farmer, the young Lincoln told him, “If you will risk the hog, I’ll risk myself.”

When a man named William Grigsby challenged him to a fight, though, Lincoln didn’t offer him as much respect as he gave hogs. Grigsby, he felt, wasn’t enough of a challenge to be worth his while. So Lincoln had Grigsby fight his stepbrother, John Johnson, to give Grigsby a chance.

Enough of a challenge for Johnson, Grigsby started winning. But Lincoln didn’t play fair. When he saw his stepbrother was losing, Lincoln picked up Grigsby and threw him into the crowd. Then he stared down every person there and yelled, “I’m the big buck of this lick! If any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns!”^[4]

There were dozens of people there—and every one of them erupted into a massive fistfight. Some started swinging for Lincoln, and others swung in his defense. Soon, the whole street was in a riot, sparked by a man who would one day be on the back of the penny.

6 He Watched His First Love Die

Long before he’d met Mary Todd, Abraham Lincoln was in love with someone else: Ann Rutledge. He was still in law school when they met, and she was engaged to marry another man, John MacNamar. She and Lincoln fell in love, though, and Ann promised to break off her engagement with MacNamar.

At the time, MacNamar was in London and Ann insisted on telling him in person. While she and Lincoln waited for MacNamar to return, Ann caught typhoid fever and became deathly ill. Lincoln visited her every day.

“I can never forget how sad and brokenhearted Lincoln looked when he came out of the room from the last interview with Annie,” Ann’s sister, Nancy Rutledge, would later recall. “No one knows what was said at that meeting, for they were alone together.”^[5]

Ann died, and Lincoln had no choice but to move on. This, though, was one of the first times that Lincoln’s friends would truly worry about his suicidal thoughts. It was said that he was “insane for a year after Annie’s death, with grief.”

5 He Was Considered Hideous

When you picture the Gettysburg Address, you might want to picture Lincoln’s voice a couple of octaves higher. According to every description we have, Lincoln’s voice was “high” and “shrill.”

Lincoln’s voice grated on people, and his face wasn’t much better. He was considered hideous, and even Lincoln accepted it. Once, when accused of being “two-faced,” Lincoln famously snapped back, “If I had two faces, would I be wearing this one?”

It all must have worn on him. One story reveals that Lincoln had a little vanity about how he looked. In 1860, while he was running for president, Lincoln received a letter from an 11-year-old girl named Grace Bedell. “Let your whiskers grow,” Bedell told him. “All the ladies like whiskers, and they would tease their husbands to vote for you.”^[6]

Lincoln must have been excited by the idea of finally being seen as handsome. He started growing his beard that day. By Inauguration Day, he had the full beard he’s known for today. If Bedell questioned whether she’d convinced him to grow it out, she didn’t have to wonder for long. Shortly after getting into office, Lincoln asked to meet her.

“Gracie, look at my whiskers,” the president told the young girl. “I have been growing them for you.”

4 There Were Rumors That He’d Impregnated Three Women

Despite modern rumors that Lincoln was gay, he was seen as a ladies’ man in his own time. He was known for having a “strong passion for women” and described as a man who “could scarcely keep his hands off them.”

Rumors about Lincoln’s sex-crazed mind went around the town. One farmer claimed that Lincoln had asked him to let Lincoln know whenever a mare came in so that he could watch the horses breed.

That was only the start of it, though. There were also rumors that he was secretly the father of Mrs. Abell’s daughter—and Mrs. Duncan’s and Mrs. Armstrong’s children, too. At least three babies in town, if the rumors are to be believed, were Lincoln’s secret love children.

Later, when he became president, he invited Mrs. Armstrong—the alleged mother of his secret bastard child—to see him in the White House. Rumors perked up again, with the people in town spreading gossip that she was off to have an affair with Honest Abe.

Mrs. Armstrong, though, laughed them off by saying, “It was not every woman who had the fortune and honor of sleeping with a president.”^[7]

3 He Almost Cheated On Mary Todd With A Prostitute

During Lincoln’s year of depression in 1840, he visited a prostitute. His friend Joshua Speed hooked him up after Lincoln asked, “Speed, do you know where I can get some?” Speed, who had been a frequent visitor to one girl in town, wrote Lincoln a note, told him where to go, and promised he would get in.

At the time, Lincoln would have been dating Mary Todd. The date isn’t certain, but the two may already have been engaged. Lincoln, though, went through the darkest year of his life in 1840, and it seems that he tried to take a night’s refuge in a brothel.

However, he was still a poor man. When Lincoln made it in and found out that the night would cost him $5, he had to admit that he only had $3. “I’ll trust you, Mr. Lincoln, for $2,” the prostitute tried to reassure him. But Lincoln wouldn’t do it.

“I do not wish to go on credit,” Lincoln said, buttoning up his pants. “I’m poor, and I don’t know where my next dollar will come from, and I cannot afford to cheat you.”

Not wanting to waste the prostitute’s time, Lincoln tried to give her the $3 he had. But she wouldn’t take it. He left, refusing to accept her services if he couldn’t pay an honest rate. As he walked out, the prostitute said, “You are the most conscientious man I ever saw.”^[8]

2 He Nearly Fought A Duel With Broadswords

In 1842, Abraham Lincoln picked up a broadsword and nearly fought another man, 36-year-old James Shields, to the death.

Lincoln, who had fancied himself something of a writer, penciled up a short story that was mostly just two characters making fun of Shields. At one point, he had a character say, “Shields is a fool as well as a liar.” At another, he had Shields show up and apologize for not being able to marry every woman in Springfield by saying, “It is not my fault that I am so handsome and so interesting.”

The real-world Shields demanded an apology, and Lincoln refused. So Shields challenged Lincoln to a duel. Duel rules, though, meant that Lincoln got to pick the weapon and the place. So the massively tall Lincoln chose broadswords “of the largest size.” They would fight, he declared, with a 30-centimeter (12 in) plank between them, making it impossible for Shields to reach Lincoln.^[9]

He thought Shields would just give up, but the ever-prideful Shields went out to the field anyway to fight an unwinnable battle. Lincoln was ready to kill Shields if he had to. Lincoln only avoided cutting his career short with a homicide when one of Mary Todd’s relatives managed to convince the men to calm down.

1 He Nearly Left Mary Todd At The Altar

We mentioned earlier that Lincoln nearly left Mary Todd for Matilda Edwards. But he wasn’t the only one with his doubts.

Mary Todd was out flirting with other men as well—and likely doing more than just batting her eyes. She would later admit, “For two years before my marriage, that I doubtless trespassed many times.” Most of those trespasses were with a man named Stephen Douglas, and there’s every reason to believe that Lincoln knew exactly what his fiancee was up to.

Lincoln and Mary ended up getting married, though. At least one historian believes that happened because Mary got pregnant.^[10] Mary and Lincoln would meet up in private at a friend’s home. While we don’t know for sure what they did there, we know that one day Lincoln went from wanting to call it off to deciding he was going to marry her the very next day.

In a letter to a friend, Lincoln wrote that he “shall have to” marry Mary Todd. Given how quickly they got married, this strongly suggests that a baby was behind the decision.

Either way, Lincoln definitely wasn’t too happy on his wedding day. A witness said that Lincoln “looked as if he was going to the slaughter.” When someone asked Lincoln where he was going, he replied, “To hell, I suppose.”

The states that formed the Confederate States of America began seceding months before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration. At his death in April 1865, Richmond had fallen and Lee had surrendered, but Confederate resistance continued. The 49 months of Lincoln’s Presidency has been measured by the conduct of the Civil War, and his effectiveness as a war leader. But several other issues occupied Lincoln as President. They have long been pushed aside in the public mind by those focused on the long and bloody war which dominated his administration.

But his accomplishments outside of the combat between the Confederacy and the United States were considerable. Union victory remained Lincoln’s highest priority throughout his administration, but the business of the United States also occupied his attention. The US economy grew throughout his administration. Two new states were added, West Virginia and Nevada. Transportation, infrastructure, education, finance, and national expansion all required the President’s attention. Here are some of the less well-known accomplishments of the Lincoln Administration not directly linked to the combat between North and South.

10. The Legal Tender Act of 1862

On February 25, 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Legal Tender Act of 1862 after its passage by Congress. For the first time the United States government printed paper money, not backed by reserves of gold and silver in the Treasury’s vaults. The notes were printed in several denominations, and earned the name “greenbacks” for the color of ink on the reverse side of the notes. The notes were deemed “legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private”. The government was initially allowed to print $150 million in notes backed only by the faith and credit of the federal government.

Despite the misgivings of many bankers and financial experts of the time, who believed the issuance of paper money would destroy the American economy, the issue actually did the opposite. The infusion of cash stimulated industry and the financial system. During the Civil War the US economy boomed. Additional acts passed by Congress, and signed by Lincoln, eventually allowed the government to print $500 million in greenbacks during Lincoln’s Presidency.

The federal bank notes became the standard currency in the United States, replacing privately issued bank notes. The cash infusion threatened to create inflation in the economy, and Congress responded with additional measures to keep inflationary pressures under control. The word “greenback” became a slang term for the dollar, and remained so over the ensuing decades.

9. The Revenue Act of 1861

Prior to the Lincoln Administration the chief source of revenue for the federal government came from tariffs and excise taxes on certain products, such as alcoholic beverages. During the first year of Lincoln’s Presidency it was evident the government needed another source of funds in order to pay its bills and finance the war. After consultation with his Cabinet, Lincoln and members from both chambers of Congress hammered out an agreement which eventually passed as the Revenue Act of 1861. Lincoln signed the act into law on August 5, 1861.

The law imposed taxes on imports and on land ownership. It also, for the first time in American history, imposed a tax on personal incomes. All incomes over $800 (about $22,500 today) per year were subjected to a flat tax of 3%. Unfortunately for the government, only about 3% of all Americans had incomes above that level. As a result, the new income tax only affected a small minority of Americans, and of course it had no impact on the seceded states at all.

Besides only affecting a few Americans, the new law did not have an enforcement mechanism. Most Americans who were required to pay the tax simply ignored the law. Those who did try to pay it found the government had not created an agency to receive the funds. The first income tax was thus of little value to the government. Congress had to revisit the issue several times during Lincoln’s Administration.

8. The Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862

The Morrill Land-Grant Act first passed in Congress in 1859. President James Buchanan vetoed the act, and the measure lacked sufficient support in the Southern states to override the veto. In 1862 it passed through Congress again and Lincoln, who supported the act, signed it into law on July 2, 1862. It was later expanded in 1890. The Act as passed in 1862 awarded 30,000 acres of federal territory to a state for every representative that state had in Congress, as well as its two Senators. The lands thus granted to the states were to be used to create colleges and universities dedicated to education in industry and agriculture, but not excluding “other scientific and classical studies…”

The first state to take advantage of the Land-Grant Act was Iowa, in September, 1862. It used the grants to expand an already extant institution, which is today Iowa State University. New York accepted some of its endowment in the form of notes, which it used to purchase timberland in Wisconsin. The sale of the valuable timber was then used to found Cornell University. Many of America’s most famed institutions of higher learning owe their existence to the Land-Grant Acts, among them Purdue, the entire University of California system, Nebraska, Ohio State, and Rutgers.

After Reconstruction the Land-Grant Act was expanded to include the Southern states excluded from its benefits during the Civil War. Louisiana State University, Tuskegee University, Auburn, University of Florida, and many others were born out of the act. Possibly no other measure signed by any American President has had a more far-reaching impact on American culture and history than the Morrill Land-Grant Act.

7. Creation of the Department of Agriculture in 1862

Though the states which remained loyal to the Constitution during the Lincoln Administration held a larger industrial base than the Confederacy, the North was nonetheless largely agricultural. More than half of the population either worked on farms, or in agricultural related trades and industries. Lincoln called for a new agency of the federal government which he called “The People’s Department”.

On December 3, 1861, in his first annual message to Congress (today’s State of the Union Address) Lincoln said, “While I make no suggestions as to details, I venture the opinion that an agricultural and statistical bureau might profitably be organized.” Lincoln urged Congress to pass legislation which allowed him to create a below Cabinet level Department of Agriculture. Congress obliged, and Lincoln signed the legislation on May 15, 1862.

The President appointed Isaac Newton as the first Commissioner of Agriculture. Newton was a dairy farmer from Pennsylvania who advocated for daily weather reports being sent across the nation via telegraph. He also created an experimental farm in Washington, studying new crops and agricultural techniques, sited on what is today the National Mall, visible from Lincoln’s White House. The legislation prompted by Lincoln remains the authority under which the Department of Agriculture operates today. In 1889 it was elevated to full Cabinet status.

6. The Revenue Act of 1862

In 1862, having observed the futility of the Revenue Act of 1861 and its inability to collect taxes, Congress enacted the Revenue Act of 1862. President Lincoln signed the act into law on July 1, 1862. An important provision of the act was the creation of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. The new commission received the task of tax collection within the United States. Many of those taxes were from excise taxes on consumer goods and services, as well as on profits from business activities, interest on investments and savings, and business licenses.

The Act also did away with the 3% income tax on incomes over $800, replacing it with a progressive tax system. The tax threshold was lowered to $600, and incomes between that level and $10,000 were assessed a 3% tax. Above $10,000 a 5% rate was assessed. $10,000 in 1862 equates to roughly $260,000 today, making the tax rate relatively low compared to those assessed today. The Commissioner hired three detectives in 1863 to pursue tax evaders, especially those imposed on alcohol and tobacco.

The Revenue Act of 1862 introduced the concept of a progressive tax in American history. It was abandoned in 1872, but returned in 1913 with the ratification of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue evolved into the Internal Revenue Service, everyone’s favorite branch of the federal government, which today employs about 75,000 people, and operates under an annual budget exceeding $11 billion.

5. The Yosemite Grant led to the creation of National Parks in the United States

Today, the United States is blessed with 59 National Parks as well as over 6,000 State Parks, set aside for recreation rather than creation of profit. Their roots can be traced to the Yosemite Grant Act. The act, which originated as Senate Bill 203, was passed by Congress in 1864, and Lincoln signed the legislation into law on June 30, 1864. The act transferred federal lands to the State of California, though it mandated their use.

The Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Tree Grove were granted to the state, “upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation”. The act also mandated that areas within the grant could be leased by the state to other entities, and that all proceeds from any such leases be used for preservation of the properties, or improvements to roads and trails accessing the properties.

Lincoln’s action on Yosemite and Mariposa was the forerunner of what eventually became America’s National Parks. Eight years after Lincoln’s action on Yosemite, President Ulysses S. Grant signed legislation setting aside Yellowstone as the first National Park in the United States, the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act. Much of the language in that legislation was derived from the earlier Yosemite Grant Act.

4. The National Bank Act of 1863

Following President Andrew Jackson’s termination of the Second Bank of the United States there was no central banking system in America. Instead, a hodgepodge of state-chartered banks existed across the country, issuing their own bank notes. Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, and Senator John Sherman (brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman) worked together to create a centralized banking system, both to create a market in which to sell government bonds and to stabilize banknotes.

Their efforts led to the National Bank Act of 1863. The act provided for charters and federal supervision of banks, known as National Banks, secured by bonds deposited with the government. The amount and types of loans issued by National Banks was regulated by the government, and the banks issued the national currency through their branches. State chartered banks were allowed to continue to issue their own banknotes, though the 1863 Act imposed a tax of 10% on them, which rendered them too costly to use and led to their decline.

The National Bank Act of 1863, which was amended the following year, thus introduced a stable national currency, eliminated much of the corruption inherent in the state-chartered banks, and created a modern national banking system. By the end of the American Civil War state bank issued notes had all but vanished, replaced by the paper currency produced by the US government. The modern banking system was another creation of the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln.

3. The Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864

On July 1, 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act of 1862. The Act provided rights of way to two competing railroad companies, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific and authorized them to complete a railroad connecting Sacramento, California and Omaha, Nebraska. The Union Pacific began in Omaha, laying track in the westward direction. The Central Pacific began in Sacramento heading east, where it soon encountered the disheartening obstacles of the Sierras.

Both railroads, under the provisions of the 1862 Railway Act, received land grants via public domain on both sides of the tracks they laid. Loan bonds were calculated per miles of tracks laid, and the degree of difficulty encountered during construction. Construction began in January, 1863 in Sacramento, and both companies raced to lay the greater amount of track. In 1864 Congress passed another Pacific Railway Act, effectively doubling the lands awarded to the two companies and giving the railroads the ability to raise their own funds through the sale of railway construction bonds.

It took six years, and Lincoln, long a champion of the Pacific Railway, had been dead for over four years before the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869. Yet it stood as a monument to his belief in national unity. Even while his administration was beset by Civil War, Lincoln strove to unite the East and West through the use of then cutting-edge technology. The Union Pacific Railroad still operates, one of the nation’s largest freight haulers. The Central Pacific was absorbed by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1959.

2. The Homestead Act of 1862

In 1860, eager to populate western lands owned by the federal government, Congress passed the Homestead Act of 1860. Opposed by Southern Democrats, who wanted western lands available for purchase by slave owners, President Buchanan, a Democrat, vetoed the bill. After the Southern states seceded and Lincoln endorsed the concept, Congress passed the Homestead Act of 1862. Lincoln signed the bill into law on May 20, 1862. It led to arguably the largest land giveaway in history. Roughly 10% of the land in the United States was given away for free to those who qualified under the act.

The qualifications were not particularly stringent. If one was over age 21, or was the head of a household, he qualified, as long as he had not borne arms against the United States. In return for a promise to settle on and improve the land, he received a patent for 160 acres, mostly in the west. Families with several members over 21 could claim several patents, contiguous with their siblings’ holdings. A filing fee was the only cost, other than those for transportation, construction, farm equipment, livestock, and so forth. After meeting the length of the homestead requirement, usually 20 years, the homesteader could obtain title and land ownership.

Over 270 million acres of land was transferred from the federal government to private ownership, through 1.6 million homesteads. The open lands of the west became the farmlands of today. Homesteading continued in the lower states until 1976, and in Alaska for a decade beyond that. The Homestead Act was later emulated in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and it was amended and adjusted many times over its long term in force.

1. Thanksgiving as a federal holiday

Abraham Lincoln is not usually associated with the Thanksgiving Holiday, dominated by Pilgrims, turkeys, Black Friday, and football. But it was President Lincoln who first made Thanksgiving a National Holiday, via Presidential proclamation in October, 1863. That year Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November to be a National Holiday, with the ordinary business of the day suspended, “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise”. Prior to Lincoln’s proclamation there had been no national observance of Thanksgiving.

November occasionally contains five Thursdays. In those events celebrating Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November impinged on the Christmas season. By the 1930s the Thanksgiving Holiday was seen as the beginning of the holiday season and shopping. In 1939, with the last Thursday in November falling on November 30, President Franklin Roosevelt moved the day of celebration to the fourth Thursday of the month.

He could do so because when Congress officially designated Thanksgiving as a permanent national holiday in 1870, it left to the President the discretion of specifying the date in his annual proclamation. After some Roosevelt-hating states ignored the President and celebrated the holiday on the last Thursday, Congress intervened in 1941. It passed legislation designating Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November, FDR signed it, and Thanksgiving, introduced nationally by Lincoln in 1863 and again in 1864, became a Congressionally mandated celebration.