Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States during the American Civil War in the 1860s.
In 1863, the Third Doctor gave to President Lincoln a sketched map he had made of the Confederate lines at Gettysburg. Lincoln gave the map to General Grant, thus helping the Union Army to win the Battle of Gettysburg. (COMIC: Backtime)
On 19 November of that year, Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address. The First Doctor, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki watched the speech on the Time-Space Visualiser. (TV: The Chase)
The renegade Time Lady Iris Wildthyme once shared breakfast with Lincoln on the White House lawn after saving the United States from "Martian invaders" for the third time. She told George Strangeways that she and Lincoln had had "such a laugh." (AUDIO: The Panda Invasion)
On 9 April 1865, the Fifth Doctor saved Lincoln from an assassination attempt in Richmond, Virginia. The would-be assassin was Aaron Eddowes. (PROSE: Blood and Hope)
Only a few days later, on 14 April 1865, the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn Smythe would become embroiled in a plot to prevent Lincoln from being assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in Ford's Theatre in Washington DC. (AUDIO: Assassin in the Limelight) Conversely, the Eighth Doctor would later tell his companion Charley Pollard that he once attempted to convince Lincoln not to go to the theatre. (AUDIO: Minuet in Hell)
References
A waxwork replica of Lincoln appeared in Madame Tussauds when the Third Doctor and Liz Shaw visited to investigate the first Auton invasion of Earth. (TV: Spearhead from Space)
Behind the scenes
- Abraham Lincoln is one of only three real-world US Presidents to be portrayed on-screen in televised Doctor Who, not counting the wax dummies from Spearhead from Space. The others are Barack Obama, who appeared in The End of Time, and Richard Nixon, who appeared in The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon.
- Backtime has its history a bit wrong. In reality, Grant was actually in the west, running the Union forces at the Battle of Vicksburg at the time that Gettysburg was being fought.
