Abraham Lincoln was not just the Great Emancipator, he was also a great wrestler. With his craggy features, lanky frame, and stovepipe hat, Abraham Lincoln is perhaps America’s most recognizable historic president, well known for many things. He successfully navigated the country through the Civil War, freed the slaves, and authored the Gettysburg Address, recited by schoolchildren to this day. Less known is that in when he was a young man, Lincoln was a lean, mean, wrestling machine, who performed feats of strength that entered local legend and frontier lore.

Abraham Lincoln Kicked Ass and Took Names

The American frontier of Lincoln’s youth was a rough and rugged place, and out there in those days, wrestling was more along the lines of unarmed combat than sport. Lincoln, who towered above contemporaries with 6 foot 4 inches of shredded lean muscle, was a natural. His skills often came in handy. At age nineteen, for example, he saved his stepbrother’s river barge from river pirates by overpowering and throwing them overboard.

The sixteenth president’s most famous fight took place shortly after Lincoln, at the time in his early twenties, moved to Salem, Illinois. There, the tall and lanky new arrival was challenged by a local bully named Jack Armstrong. Lincoln accepted the challenge, and the two went at it. The bout was inconclusive for some time. Then Armstrong resorted to dirty tricks. It was a bad decision on his part.

An enraged Lincoln grabbed Armstrong by the neck, and extending his arms, “shook him like a rag doll”, then tossed him to the ground. Standing over his rival, Lincoln then challenged Armstrong’s followers to see if any of them wanted to try and take him on. As he told them: “I’m the big buck of this lick. If any of you want to try it, come and whet your horns!”

The defeated Armstrong admitted he’d been fairly beaten, and proclaimed that Lincoln was “the best feller that ever broke into this settlement”. The duo shook hands, and became friends. Lincoln reportedly wrestled more than 300 times in his youth, and lost only once. In 1992, he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

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Some Sources & Further Reading

History Halls – After the Fame: George Murphy, From Hollywood to the Halls of the US Senate

National Wrestling Hall of Fame – Abraham Lincoln

Sandburg, Carl – Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1929)

ThoughtCo. – Was Abraham Lincoln Really a Wrestler?