Abraham Lincoln Humor An author called at the White House and asked Lincoln to give a plug to his book. Lincoln thought hard and then wrote: "For the sort of people who like this book, it is the sort of book those people will like." When Lincoln was president and a ranking man in the post office died, a job applicant waylaid President Lincoln as he left the White House. "Mr. Lincoln, you know the Chief Postal Inspector just died. Can I take his place?" "Well," replied Lincoln, "it's all right with me if it's all right with the undertaker." For a long while during the Civil War, General McClellan did not fight any battles. Finally, President Lincoln sent him a note: "My dear McClellan, If you don't want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for awhile. Yours respectfully, A. Lincoln" When someone saw Abraham Lincoln shining his own shoes in his White House office, the onlooker asked, "Mr. President, why are you blacking your own shoes?" Lincoln responded, "Whose shoes would you have me black?" During the Civil War, Edmund Stanton, the Secretary of War, told Lincoln of reports from the field that General Grant was boozing in his tent. "Find out what kind of whiskey he is drinking." "Why is that, Mr. President?" "Because I want to send a case of it to my other generals." When Abraham Lincoln was captain of the "Bucktail Rangers in 1832, he was as ignorant of military matters as his company was of drill and tactics. On one occasion his troop, marching in platoon formation, was confronted by a fence. Captain Lincoln had no idea of the proper order, but his quick wit did not desert him. "Company dismissed for two minutes," he commanded. "At the end of that time, fall in on the other side of the fence." In one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, Lincoln said that one of Senator Douglas' arguments was "as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death." The president, after an evening at the White House, was asked "How does it feel to be President of the United States?" "You have heard," said Lincoln, "about the man tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail? A man in the crowd asked him how he liked it, and his reply was, 'If it wasn't for the honor of the thing, I would rather walk.'" At one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Senator Douglas was introduced with a fulsome tribute to his distinguished forebears and the eminence of his family. When he finished, Lincoln rose without an introduction and began: "I only know this about my ancestry: I come from a long line of married folks." Once accused during a debate with Stephen A. Douglas of being two-faced, Lincoln is said to have replied, "If I had another face, do you think I'd wear this one?" [source unknown] Home / Humor and Whimsy