Since his death in 1865, Abraham Lincoln has been an iconic American figure depicted, usually favorably or heroically, in many forms. Lincoln has often been portrayed by Hollywood, almost always in a flattering light.Steven Spielberg, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Tony Kushner, "Mr. Lincoln Goes to Hollywood", Smithsonian (2012) 43#7 pp. 46–53.Melvyn Stokes, "Abraham Lincoln and the Movies", American Nineteenth Century History 12 (June 2011), 203–31. He has been depicted in a wide range of forms including alternative timelines, animation, documentary, small cameos, and fictionalized interpretations.
Statues
Statues of Abraham Lincoln can be found in the United States and in other countries. In Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, is a 13-foot (4 m) high bronze statue, a gift from the United States, dedicated in 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The U.S. received a statue of Benito Juárez in exchange, which is in Washington, D.C. Juárez and Lincoln exchanged friendly letters during the American Civil War. Mexico remembers Lincoln's opposition to the Mexican–American War. (For his part, Juárez refused to aid the Confederacy and jailed those Confederates who sought his help.) There is also a statue in Tijuana, Mexico, showing Lincoln standing and destroying the chains of slavery. There are at least three statues of Lincoln in the United Kingdom—one in Parliament Square in London by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, one in Manchester by George Grey Barnard and another in Edinburgh by George Bissell. There is also a bust of the President at St Andrews Church in Hingham, Norfolk, where Lincoln's ancestors lived. In Havana, Cuba, there is a bust of Abraham Lincoln in the Museum of the Revolution, a small statue of him in front of the Abraham Lincoln School, and a bust of him near the Capitolio. In Quito, Ecuador, a statue of Lincoln can be found in the Plaza Abraham Lincoln. Avenida Abraham Lincoln, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic is one of the capital city's most important and trafficked streets. In the Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, there is a city named Lincoln.
Poetry
Shortly after Lincoln's death, hundreds of poems were written on the topic. The historian Stephen B. Oates noted that "never had the nation mourned so over a fallen leader" while the professor William Pannapacker argued "Perhaps no event in American history produced so great an outpouring of verse." Describing Lincoln as a martyr became a "popular sub-genre."
Walt Whitman was fascinated by Lincoln during the Civil War and wrote several poems about him after his death.David S. Reynolds, Lincoln and Whitman History Now (2013) online Whitman's Lincoln poems are: "O Captain! My Captain!", 1865 "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", 1865 "Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day", 1865 "This Dust Was Once the Man", 1871 Other poems on Lincoln include: "Let the Railsplitter Awake!", by Allen Ginsberg adapted from Pablo Neruda's "Que despierte el leñador" "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight", Vachel Lindsay, 1914 James Russell Lowell's "Commemoration Ode" (sixth stanza) Robert Lowell's "Abraham Lincoln" Herman Melville's "The Martyr", from Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War
Songs Over 1000 pieces of music spanning every generation since his presidency have been written about Lincoln. Abraham, Martin and John, written by Dick Holler, recorded by Dion (1968). This popular song first appeared under a sheet music cover picturing Mount Rushmore.Barry Schwartz, "Rereading the Gettysburg address: Social change and collective memory." Qualitative sociology 19#3 (1996): 395–422.
Classical music A Lincoln Portrait, by Aaron Copland, for narrator and orchestra. The subject is Lincoln's words. Contains excerpts from his 1862 annual address to Congress, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and the Gettysburg Address. The narrator is usually a distinguished person the orchestra wishes to honor; among them have been Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Barack Obama. Kurt Weill set "O Captain! My Captain!" to music in one of his Four Walt Whitman Songs.Four Walt Whitman Songs Paul Hindemith set "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" to music, as did Roger Sessions,Sessions, Roger/When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd Jennifer Higdon, in "Dooryard Bloom", and others.
Film, drama, and fiction Lincoln has been portrayed in many films and television shows since 1907.Mark S. Reinhart, Abraham Lincoln on Screen: Fictional and Documentary Portrayals on Film and Television (McFarland, 2009).
1846 Lincoln himself wrote poetryLincoln, Abraham (1991). The Poems of Abraham Lincoln. Bedford, Massachusetts: Applewood Books. and at least one piece of fiction loosely based upon one of the murder cases he defended as a young lawyer. In April 1846, The Quincy Whig published Lincoln's short story under the title "A Remarkable Case of Arrest for Murder". The story was republished in March 1952 by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and retitled "The Trailor Murder Mystery." Lincoln refers to his own unnamed character as "the defense" and "the writer of this".
Late 1800s In Jules Verne's 1870 novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, a fictitious steam frigate, the Abraham Lincoln, is sent to hunt down the "monster" that has been attacking ships at sea, and is attacked itself. Captain Nemo also has a portrait of Lincoln hanging in his study on board the Nautilus. In the sequel The Mysterious Island, the five shipwrecked Union prisoners name the island which they discover, "Lincoln Island". The German writer Karl May wrote two stories about Canada Bill Jones: Ein Self-man (1878) and Three carde monte (1879).Online texts of Ein Self-man and Three carde monte The narrator meets several times with the young Abraham Lincoln and together they oppose "Kanada-Bill". Both stories have in common the first meeting of the heroes: The narrator finds Lincoln in a forest training to orate.Ekkehard Koch: Der »Kanada-Bill«. Variationen eines Motivs bei Karl May. In: Jahrbuch der Karl-May-Gesellschaft 1976, pp. 29–46. In 1888, Edward Eggleston published The Graysons, a fictionalized account of a famous murder trial that Abraham Lincoln won in 1858 in central Illinois. The novel's action is moved to the 1830s, with Lincoln an up-and-coming young lawyer rather than a figure in national politics.
1900–1909 The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905), a best-selling novel by Thomas Dixon Jr., which portrays Lincoln as sympathetic to the South. The book was adapted by D.W. Griffith into the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. (Text of The Clansman.) The first motion picture based on Lincoln was 1908 film The Reprieve: An Episode in the Life of Abraham Lincoln. Directed by Van Dyke Brooke, the film shows Lincoln pardoning a sentry who fell asleep on duty, a theme that would be depicted repeatedly in other silent era shorts. This era is also when the first Abraham Lincoln impersonators originated, and the modern idea of what he sounded like is derived from these.
1910–1919
Abraham Lincoln's Clemency (1910), played by Leopold Wharton The Southerner: A Romance of the Real Lincoln (1913), novel by Thomas Dixon Jr. When Lincoln Paid (1913), played by Francis Ford The Battle of Gettysburg (1913), played by Willard Mack The Sleeping Sentinel (1914), played by George Steele The Birth of a Nation (1915), played by Joseph Henabery. Lincoln's assassination is the central event of the movie, dividing it into two halves (with an intermission). The Heart of Lincoln was a film made in 1915 and remade in 1922, with the latter version lost until 2024. "The 65-minute film was directed by Francis Ford, who also played Lincoln.... [E]xperts say it's a valuable artifact of film history".Anderson, Sonja. "Intern Finds Only Known Surviving Copy of 'The Heart of Lincoln,' a Silent Film Thought to Be Lost to History" Smithsonian Magazine, February 14, 2025. The Crisis (1916), played by Sam D. Drane Abraham Lincoln (1918), a John Drinkwater play
1920–1929
The Copperhead (1920), played by Nicholas Schroell In the Days of Buffalo Bill (1922), played by Joel Day The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln (1924), played by George A. Billings Abaraham Lincoln (1924), played by Frank McGlynn Sr.; short film adaptation of the Drinkwater play The Iron Horse (1924), played by Charles Edward Bull Hands Up! (1926), played by George A. Billings
1930–1939
Abraham Lincoln (1930), played by Walter Huston The Phantom President (1932), played by Charles Middleton The Littlest Rebel (1935), played by Frank McGlynn Sr. The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), played again by Frank McGlynn Sr. Victoria the Great (1937), played by Percy Parsons Of Human Hearts (1938), played by John Carradine Abraham Lincoln (1938), played by Orson Welles; radio adaptation of the Drinkwater play, aired as the sixth episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air American Years (1938), novel by Harold Sinclair. Lincoln makes a speech. Lincoln in the White House (1939), played again by Frank McGlynn Sr. Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), played by Henry Fonda
1940–1949 Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), played by Raymond Massey based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Robert E Sherwood Virginia City (1940), played by Victor Kilian
1950–1959 The Tall Target (1951), played by Leslie Kimmell Abraham Lincoln (1952), played by Robert Pastene with James Dean playing the court-martialed William Scott; CBS adaptation of the Drinkwater play Southern Fried Rabbit (1953), voiced by Mel Blanc (as Bugs Bunny) scolding Yosemite Sam (also voiced by Blanc) for "whipping slaves" Prince of Players (1955), played by Stanley Hall Black Friday, a 1955 episode of Medic, played by Austin Green The Stepmother, a 1956 episode of Telephone Time, played by Ronnie Lee The Story of Mankind (1957), played again by Austin Green
1960–1969 The Passersby, a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone, played again by Austin Green How the West Was Won (1962), played again by Raymond Massey Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln (1964 World's Fair 1965 Disneyland Park), which featured an audio-animatronic voiced by Royal Dano The Chase, a 1965 episode of Doctor Who, played by Robert Marsden Death Trap, a 1966 episode of The Time Tunnel, played by Ford Rainey The Savage Curtain, a 1969 episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, a clone of Lincoln made in the year 2269, played by Lee Bergere We Can Build You, a Philip K. Dick novel first serialised as 'A. Lincoln, Simulacrum' in 1969, & a direct prequel to Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
1970–1979 The Hall of Presidents opens at Walt Disney World featuring all 36 presidents to date, including Lincoln (1971) George MacDonald Fraser's 1971 novel Flash for Freedom! features a young Abraham Lincoln at the time that he was a Congressman. Anti-hero narrator and self-confessed cad Harry Flashman describes him as having "the makings of as big a scoundrel as I am myself". In The Great Man's Whiskers (1972), Dennis Weaver portrays Lincoln. In Sandburg's Lincoln (1974–1976), Hal Holbrook plays the title character. In "Sex and Violence", a 1975 pilot for The Muppet Show, an Abraham Lincoln Muppet (performed by John Lovelady) appears as part of the Muppet version of Mount Rushmore. Guardian of the Wilderness (1976), played by Ford Rainey. The Adams Chronicles (1976), played by Stephen D. Newman. Lincoln is among the historical figures depicted in Our Nation's 200th Birthday, The Telephone's 100th Birthday by Stanley Meltzoff for Bell System."Stanley Meltzoff Archives: The 1976 Bell System Telephone Book Cover" JKL Museum of Telephony (December 19, 2015); retrieved March 16, 2021 The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977), played by John Anderson.