Abraham Lincoln: A Life is a 2000 page, two volume, ten pound biography of America's sixteenth president. The original manuscript was edited for length and the only documentation included was for direct quotes (again, due to length considerations). If you still want more after reading it, the full-length manuscript and all the accompanying footnotes for Volume 1 are available online. Volume 2 to follow. The book is a culmination of author Michael Burlingame's career, much of it spent editing volumes of primary documents by Lincoln's contemporaries.
posted by marxchivist on Jul 6, 2009 - 17 comments

Breaking Lincoln news: possible last photo of the 16th President surfaces on same day a hidden message is discovered secreted in his pocket watch.
posted by CunningLinguist on Mar 10, 2009 - 44 comments

Over 2000 classic tales and fables including Aesop's Fables, Bulfinch's Mythology, Indian "Why" Stories, tales by Oscar Wilde, Beatrix Potter, Rudyard Kipling, Louisa May Alcott, L. Frank Baum and Harriet Beecher Stowe and stories about Abraham Lincoln, Robin Hood and Baron Munchausen. And more! The folk and fairytale collection is particularly rich, with hundreds of stories from all over the world.
posted by Kattullus on Apr 1, 2008 - 15 comments

Buoying Vessels Over Shoals. In 1849, Abraham Lincoln was awarded Patent No. 6469 (drawing and large TIFF files of pages 1, 2, and 3 of the actual patent) for a device for raising stuck riverboats off sand bars. The model he submitted with the patent application is at the National Museum of American History; who made the model is a bit of a mystery. Lincoln is the only United States President to hold a patent. (Other Lincoln-related patents, including the patent for Lincoln Logs.)
[via History Now's timeline of 19th-century inventions.]
posted by kirkaracha on Jan 5, 2007 - 7 comments

Images of the American Civil War
posted by matteo on May 20, 2005 - 23 comments

Lincoln/Net Lincoln's political career in antebellum Illinois. View by "historical themes" or search for images, text, and audio.
posted by thomas j wise on Jul 27, 2004 - 2 comments

the death of lincoln. Originally from June 1865. "The murder of President Lincoln aroused a feeling of regret deeper than was ever before known in our history. Men and papers who had opposed his policy and vilified him personally, now vied with his adherents and friends in lauding the rare wisdom and goodness which marked his conduct and character." Hmmmm... sounds familiar.
posted by sunexplodes on Jun 9, 2004 - 36 comments

The Association Of Lincoln Presenters. Santarchy be damned, I want to go bar-hopping with these guys.
posted by Ogre Lawless on Apr 27, 2004 - 4 comments

In the War Between The States, no finer words were ever spoken than those by Abraham Lincoln on 19 November 1863 at the consecration of a cemetery in rural Pennsylvania for the over 50,000 who died in the three worst days of battle in a wretched civil war. The speech is often included in US history books and collections of influential American speeches as one of the strongest examples of presidential oratory ever given. Is it any wonder, then, that it should inspire modern art?
posted by Ogre Lawless on Dec 18, 2003 - 6 comments

Giuseppe Garibaldi, who united Italy in the 1860s, was asked by Lincoln to lead the army during the US Civil War. Garibaldi said he would if Lincoln officially declared that the aim of the war was to end slavery. Lincoln replied that he couldn't at that time, and so Garibaldi moved on to other things. But what if Giuseppe had gotten involved? The Papacy would clearly have denounced the North (indeed, the pope was the only world leader to recognize the Confederacy). The French hated him; the English loved him. Had he led the Federal troops, would France have jumped in on the side of the South? Would England have then jumped in on the Union side to counter? A whole different world history, perhaps, hanging on a yes/no question.
posted by ewagoner on Aug 12, 2003 - 12 comments

"If the Sons of Confederate Veterans can't oppose a statue of President Lincoln, we can't do anything," said Bragdon Bowling, Virginia division commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He then added, "You don't build monuments to conquerors."

Ah, life in the modern South... it is so nice to see how far we've come, eh?
posted by grabbingsand on Apr 6, 2003 - 68 comments

What do Abraham Lincoln and Friedrich Nietzsche have in common? Independent scholar Deborah Hayden has the answer.
posted by jonp72 on Jan 17, 2003 - 9 comments

What would Abraham Lincoln Want to Say To Us Today? is an amusing exercise over at HyperX.
posted by mathowie on Dec 18, 2001 - 18 comments

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation The best illustration ever of why friends don't let friends use Powerpoint. Some blame a decline in oratory and rhetoric on the television. I blame the temptation to lean on decorative visual crutches.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen on Dec 7, 2001 - 25 comments

President Lincoln narrowly avoids insanity. Had he not changed his medication early in his presidency, Lincoln might have conducted the war very differently.
posted by ljromanoff on Jul 17, 2001 - 6 comments

A Murder Mystery by Abraham Lincoln "In the neighborhood of William's residence, there was, and had been for several years, a man by the name Fisher, who was somewhat above the age of fifty; had no family, and no settled home ......His habits were remarkably economical, so that in impression got about that he had accumulated a considerable amount of money." In 1846, Lincoln, a fan of Poe, wrote about a case that he had defended in Illinois.
posted by riley370 on Apr 12, 2001 - 0 comments

Lincoln a dysfunctional, racist, manic-depressive? This is the latest proposed Hollywood revision of history. So what's been the most egregious example of movie distorting or ignoring historical fact? JFK? Amistad? Gladiator?
posted by darren on Mar 19, 2001 - 37 comments

Got a problem that needs solving? Need sound advice on one of those important life matters? Why not ask The Hideous Jabbering Head Of Abraham Lincoln? (via benicetobears)
posted by lagado on Nov 16, 2000 - 5 comments