When President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, his wallet had no US currency. However, it contained $5 Confederate banknote. He probably would not have been killed that night if he had not been assigned the Washington Metropolitan Police’s worst officer as a bodyguard. A bad cop in more ways than one, he abandoned his post at Ford’s Theater to go drink at a nearby bar. Following are thirty things about those and other lesser-known American presidential facts.
0. The Most Burdened President in American History
No American president before or since has ever faced challenges as varied and as difficult as did Abraham Lincoln. Chief among them was the Civil War, which killed about 700,000 to 900,000 people. Prorated to current US population, that would be the equivalent of about nine to ten million dead Americans today. He had to handle that bloodbath without the vast support staff and civil bureaucracy available to modern presidents to ease and streamline their workload. He had to handle ineptness and incompetence by sundry generals, who dealt the Union cause setback back after setback, and piled up defeat after defeat.
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