Warren Harding and Abraham Lincoln tied for the largest shoe size of any American president. Both wore a size 14.

An modern-day examination of the boots President Lincoln wore on the evening he died revealed his feet might have hurt that night.

The president had a history of foot problems.

The square-toed, size 14 dress boots he wore to Ford’s Theatre were a little tight, and the sole of the left one had a crease running along one side and straight into the toe box.

Mary Lincoln had an additional reason for wanting her husband to be reelected in 1863. Unbeknownst to him, she owed about $27,000 for dress materials and other shopping trophies.

She worried that, if he were not reelected, they would go bankrupt paying down her debt.

She had a generous clothing budget, but, convinced Washington’s society mavens looked down on her because she was from the frontier state of Illinois, she paid high prices for clothes she thought were fashionable.

She once bought 300 pairs of gloves in a four-month period.

Source: Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989 by Michael Beschloss

In  the 1860s, the White House wasn’t the regal residence it is today.

When the windows were open in warm weather, insects buzzed around the rooms and divebombed into the window panes.

The first family and anyone who visited them could smell the stench of the Washington Canal, just south of the mansion. John Hay, one of the president’s secretaries, compared the odor to 20,000 drowned cats.

Actually, drowned cats, livestock and the occasional human body did float down the canal, along with much of the capital city’s garbage.

The canal was later filled in and paved over, section by section. Constitution Avenue and Washington Avenue now lead cars where boats once traveled.

The Lincolns were the first First Family to keep a cat as a pet in the White House.

Its name was Tabby.

The Lincoln family was on its way to Washington from Springfield, Ill., when news reached it that seven states had seceded from the Union and had chosen Jefferson Davis as president of their new Confederate States of America.

The Lincolns continued their journey until they reached Baltimore, where Pinkerton detectives surrounded them and convinced them to go undercover to the nation’s capitol. It was the only time a president sneaked into Washington for his own inauguration.

President Lincoln actually had to testify before a Congressional committee to state his wife’s allegiance to the United States.

Rumors that Mary Lincoln was a spy persisted throughout the early part of the Civil War because the first lady came from a old Kentucky family and several of her family members fought for the Confederacy.

Mrs. Lincoln’s three half-brothers died in service to the Confederacy. Sam Todd died at Shiloh. Alexander Todd died at Baton Rogue.  David Todd died after he was wounded at Vicksburg.

Her half-sister Emilie Helm was married to Benjamin Hardin Helm, a Confederate general and West Point graduate who died at Chickamauga. The Lincolns loved Benjamin Helm but they could not show their sadness at his death in public nor in government telegrams.

The first presidential items given to the Smithsonian Institution were both Lincoln-related.

The top hat President Lincoln wore to the theater on the night he died is still on display at the Smithsonian. The red silk-upholstered rocking chair he was sitting in when he was shot originally went to the Smithsonia, but it eventually was returned to the theater owners’ family. It is now in the collection of the Chicago History Museum.

Just as President Barack Obama served less than one term in the U.S. Senate representing Illinois before he ran for the presidency, Abraham Lincoln served only a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Illinois.

When word of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s spectacular and bloody victory at Chancellorsville arrived at the War Department in Washington on May 6, 1863, observers said President Lincoln couldn’t have been more overwhelmed if he had been struck by a thunderbolt and he couldn’t have looked more ghostlike if he had just risen from the dead.

The president clasped his hands behind his back and walked the room, saying, “My God! My God! What will the country say? What will the country say?”

The casualties began coming into Washington that night. Men lay helpless in the rain on the wharf and nearby streets, soaking on blankets, their wounds bound by bloody rags. There were few volunteers and few attendants.

“The wounded are getting to be common. People grow callous,” wrote Walt Whitman, who was volunteering as two boatloads of wounded came in.

Source: Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War by Ernest B. Furguson

President Lincoln had a $5 bill in his pocket when he died — a Confederate five.

Within five decades, Lincoln’s own image would grace the U.S. $5 bill.