Abraham Lincoln, the athlete

[David Lockmiller]

Abraham Lincoln remained an athlete his entire life.

RJNorton made the following posting on April 3, 2014 on the thread: Books - over 15,000 to discuss / Kennedy and Lincoln - Medical & Ballistic Comparisons

"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."


Although the veracity of this story has been questioned by some, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has issued the following statement:

"The state of Illinois, it turns out, has owned the ax since 1955, when it was donated to the Lincoln Home, then the state's responsibility. It was accompanied by an affidavit from the director of the field hospital, plus a second statement signed in 1914, verifying the tool's authenticity."

The original affidavit made by the field hospital director reads: "I hereby certify that with this axe Abraham Lincoln, late President of the United States, did, on the Saturday before his assassination, chop a twenty inch white oak log in rear of my quarters at the Depot Field Hospital, Army of the Potomac City Point VA." It was signed "G.B. Parker MD, Late Surgeon USV, Chief Medical Officer." In addition, there was a written statement made to verify that the copy of Dr. Parker's affidavit now in the library's possession was legitimate -- that statement was dated Jan. 21, 1914.

Military surgeons who performed the autopsy on Lincoln all remarked how his body looked like that of someone half his 56 years of age."