What if....

[RJNorton]

(03-16-2013 08:29 PM)Hess1865 Wrote:  I contend that if Booth's gun didn't go off, Lincoln would jumped up and knocked Booth on his you-know-what!
Abe wasn't exactly some frail old man!

If this story be true, Mr. Hess, so right you are!

"Historians figure Abraham Lincoln was showing off on April 8, 1865, when, at the end of a long day, he spotted an ax at a Union Army field hospital in Virginia. He'd spent hours shaking hands with thousands of wounded soldiers. A doctor told him his arm was surely tired.

Holding his arm straight out, Lincoln picked up the ax by the butt, with the handle parallel to the ground, and held the 7-pound tool motionless. He was 56 years old and one week away from assassination.

Strong men who looked on, men accustomed to manual labor, could not hold the same ax in that position for a moment," wrote Francis Fisher Browne, a Union soldier who authored a biography called "The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln."