When I was in AP US History during my sophomore year of high school, my teacher had a poster on her wall at the back of the classroom that listed “astonishing” similarities between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Similar claims about the alleged similarities between the two presidents are widely circulated on the internet, where they are often presented as evidence of some kind of mystical connection.
At the time when I first read that poster, I was astonished and a bit creeped out by the similarities. Now, though, I realize that many of the alleged similarities between Lincoln and Kennedy are entirely fabricated and that even the genuine similarities between them are extremely superficial.
Here is a thorough debunking of the supposed Lincoln-Kennedy connection. Popular claims associated with the urban legend are written in blockquotes and are followed by in-depth replies. Claims are organized loosely in chronological order of the events they pertain to.
The names
“The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.”
This statement is true. But it’s worth pointing out that there are more aspects of their names that don’t match up than there are that do:
- Their first names have different numbers of letters. (Abraham is seven letters; whereas John is only four letters.)
- Their full names have different numbers of letters too. (Abraham Lincoln is only fourteen letters; whereas John Fitzgerald Kennedy is twenty-one letters.
- John F. Kennedy had a middle name (Fitzgerald); whereas Abraham Lincoln had no middle name whatsoever.
- Neither president had any name that starts with the same letter as one of the other president’s names.
- The names Lincoln and Kennedy have different numbers of syllables.
- The accent in the name Lincoln is on the penult; whereas the accent in the name Kennedy is on the antepenult. (In both cases, this happens to be the first syllable.)
We could go on all day talking about how their names are different, but I don’t think it would be worthwhile.
ABOVE: Signature of Abraham Lincoln (upper) and signature of John F. Kennedy (lower)
The elections
“Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.”
These statements are both true, but the coincidence is somewhat less impressive when you consider the fact that they were elected in completely different congressional districts for completely different states under completely different historical circumstances.
Abraham Lincoln was elected to the House of Representatives in 1846 as the representative for Illinois’s seventh congressional district; whereas John F. Kennedy was elected to the House in 1946 as the representative for Massachusetts’s eleventh congressional district.
Furthermore, the circumstances of their respective elections could hardly be more different. Lincoln came from a middle class Midwestern family and attained political power through intelligence, determination, and hard work. When he assumed office in the House of Representatives, Lincoln was thirty-eight years old, not very attractive, and a member of the Whig Party.
Kennedy, on the other hand, was born into one of the wealthiest and most politically influential families in Massachusetts. He faced far fewer obstacles in his rise to politics than Lincoln did. At the time when he assumed office, he was a twenty-nine years old, dashingly handsome, and a member of the Democratic Party.
ABOVE: Portrait of Abraham Lincoln from c. 1846 (left) and portrait of John F. Kennedy from 1947 (right)
“Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.”
Both of these statements are true, but essentially insignificant. Presidential elections are held every four years. One hundred is a multiple of four. Consequently, every president who has been elected since William McKinley has been elected one hundred years after some other president was elected or reelected. For instance:
- John Adams was elected president in 1796; William McKinley was elected president in 1896.
- Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828; Herbert Hoover was elected president in 1928.
- Andrew Jackson was reelected president in 1832; Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president in 1932.
- Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901 following the assassination of William McKinley; George W. Bush was elected in 2000 and assumed office in 2001.
- William Howard Taft was elected president in 1908; Barack Obama was elected president in 2008.
Furthermore, once again, proponents of a mystical connection between Lincoln and Kennedy are also ignoring the different circumstances under which the two presidents were elected; Lincoln was elected as a fifty-one-year-old Republican from Illinois, while Kennedy was elected as a forty-three-year-old Democrat from Massachusetts.
ABOVE: Electoral maps showing the results of the 1860 and 1960 elections
The children
“Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.”
This statement is true, but it leaves out a lot of information that seriously undermines the supposed connection. Abraham Lincoln had four children—all of them sons:
- Robert Todd Lincoln was born on August 1, 1843. He was Lincoln’s oldest son and the only one to survive to adulthood. He died on July 26, 1926.
- Edward Baker Lincoln was born on March 10, 1846 and died on February 1, 1850 at the age of three, long before his father was elected president.
- William Wallace “Willie” Lincoln was born on December 21, 1850 and died of typhoid fever on February 20, 1862, a few months after his eleventh birthday.
- Thomas “Tad” Lincoln was born on April 4, 1853. He outlived his father, but did not live to adulthood, since he died on July 15, 1871 at the age of eighteen.
John F. Kennedy had four children—a stillborn daughter, one daughter who survived to adulthood, one son who survived to adulthood, and one son who died almost as soon as he was born:
- Jacqueline Kennedy had a miscarriage in 1955 and a stillbirth in 1956. The stillborn daughter was informally named “Arabella.”
- Caroline Kennedy was born on November 27, 1957. She is still alive today.
- John F. Kennedy Jr. was born on November 25, 1960. He died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999 at the age of thirty-eight.
- Patrick Bouvier Kennedy was born prematurely on August 7, 1963 and died two days later on August 9 of hyaline membrane disease.
There is a big difference between an eleven-year-old boy dying of typhoid and a premature infant dying of hyaline membrane disease.
ABOVE: Photograph from c. 1855 of Willie Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s son who died in 1862, towards the beginning of his father’s presidency
The issues
“Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.”
While it’s true that Lincoln and Kennedy both dealt extensively with civil rights issues, they dealt with those issues mainly because they had no choice but to deal with them. Slavery was the biggest issue of Lincoln’s time and the Southern states attempted to secede from the Union almost as soon as he was elected. Likewise, the Civil Rights Movement was already in full swing by the time Kennedy was running for president.
Presidents rarely bring new issues to attention; instead, they most often respond to the issues that people are already paying attention to. You could argue that Lincoln and Kennedy both chose progressive stances on civil rights, but that’s not really very significant as far as mystical connections are concerned, since lots of presidents have taken progressive stances on civil rights, including Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy’s successor.
The assassins
“Both were assassinated by Southerners.”
Whether this statement is true depends on what you count as “Southern.” John Wilkes Booth was born in Maryland, where slavery was legal, but spent a large part of his life performing in the North. He is reported to have thought of himself not as a Southerner, but rather as a “Northerner who understood the South.”
Lee Harvey Oswald was born in Louisiana, but he moved around a lot throughout his life and even lived for brief periods in the Soviet Union and Mexico. If Oswald saw himself as a Southerner at all, his Southern identity doesn’t seem to have been especially important to him and it certainly doesn’t seem to have had anything to do with his motivation for killing JFK.
Furthermore, even if you accept the conclusion that Booth and Oswald were both Southerners because they were both born in the South, this is not a very compelling coincidence, since the South is a huge region of the country. According to the United States Census Bureau, roughly thirty-seven percent of all inhabitants of the United States live in the South, making it the most populous region of the whole country.
ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons, showing the Southern United States as defined by the United States Census Bureau
“Both assassins were known by their three names.”
While it is true that John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald are both known by three names today, it is not true that they were both known by three names before they committed their respective murders.
Lee Harvey Oswald only became known by three names after he assassinated President Kennedy. Prior to the assassination, Oswald had gone by a variety of pseudonyms, including ones based on parts of his real name. As a result of this, investigators began calling him by his full legal name in order to avoid confusion.
“Both [assassins’] names are comprised of fifteen letters.”
This is true, but not particularly significant, for the same reason why it’s not significant that the names Lincoln and Kennedy have the same numbers of letters.
“John Wilkes Booth was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald was born in 1939.”
This purported coincidence is based on false information. Lee Harvey Oswald was born on October 18, 1939, so it’s true that he was born in 1939. John Wilkes Booth, however, was actually born on May 10, 1838.
ABOVE: Portrait of John Wilkes Booth (left) and photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald (right)
The warnings
“Lincoln’s secretary, Kennedy, warned him not to go to the theatre.
Kennedy’s secretary, Lincoln, warned him not to go to Dallas.”
These assertions are unfounded. President Kennedy did have a secretary named Evelyn Lincoln, who may nor may not have warned him not to go to Dallas, but there is no evidence that Lincoln ever had a secretary named Kennedy. Lincoln’s two secretaries during his time in office were John G. Nicolay and John Hay.
The Monroes
“A month before Lincoln was assassinated he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A month before Kennedy was assassinated he was in Marilyn Monroe.”
This claim is completely false. First of all, there is no town in Maryland called “Monroe.” Since the town does not exist, there is no way Lincoln could have been there a month before he was assassinated.
Furthermore, John F. Kennedy couldn’t have possibly been with Marilyn Monroe a month before his assassination because Marilyn Monroe died of a barbiturate overdose on August 4, 1962—over a year before Kennedy was assassinated. In order for Kennedy to have been with her one month before his assassination, he would have had to have been some kind of necromancer.
(Now I’m imagining a sequel to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter called John F. Kennedy: Necromancer.)
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Marilyn Monroe from May 1953. Monroe had been dead for over a year by the time Kennedy was assassinated.
The assassinations
“Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.”
This is true, but hardly surprising, since there are, after all, only seven days in a week. That means the odds of any two killings happening on the same day of the week are one in seven.
Furthermore, the dates on which Lincoln and Kennedy were shot have nothing else in common aside from being the same day of the week. Lincoln was shot at 10:15 p.m. on Friday, April 15, 1865 when he was fifty-six years old and had already started serving his second term in office. Kennedy, on the other hand, was shot at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, November 22, 1963 when he was only forty-six years old and had only just started campaigning for reelection.
“Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theatre and Kennedy was shot while in a Ford Lincoln.”
As odd as it may sound, this statement is completely true. The car President Kennedy was riding in when he was shot was a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. The car was given the Secret Service code name “SS-100-X.” It was originally navy blue, but it was painted black after Kennedy’s assassination. It has since been retired from presidential use and is now on display in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of SS-100-X, the Lincoln Continental President Kennedy was riding in when he was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, on display in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan
“Both were shot in the head.”
This statement is true, but unsurprising, since there are only two places an assassin can shoot someone with a reasonable guarantee of killing them: the torso and the head.
Furthermore, this statement leaves out a lot of details about the two assassinations that differ. John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln point-blank one time in the back of the head while he was sitting in a balcony at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. watching a production of the play Our American Cousin.
Lee Harvey Oswald, on the other hand, shot John F. Kennedy twice, once in the neck and a second time in the head, with a sniper rifle from a great distance while he was riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.
ABOVE: Illustration of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (left) and photograph of John F. Kennedy riding in the presidential motorcade in Dallas minutes before his assassination (right)
The escapes
“Booth ran from the theater and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.”
This one is technically true, but it’s really stretching the truth. John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. and was shot by state troopers in Richard Garrett’s tobacco barn in Virginia. Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy from a window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas, and was arrested in the Texas Theatre.
While a tobacco barn and a book depository may both technically qualify as “warehouses,” they are very different kinds of warehouses.
ABOVE: Photograph of the Garrett farmhouse in Virginia where John Wilkes Booth was killed (left) and the Texas School Book Depository from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy (right)
“Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.”
This statement is partly true. While it is true that both John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald were killed before they could be tried, the circumstances under which they were killed greatly differ.
John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln on the night of April 14. With assistance from multiple co-conspirators and Confederate sympathizers, he was able to flee from the law for nearly a week and a half. On April 24, he was hiding out in a tobacco barn on Richard Garrett’s farm in Virginia when the barn was surrounded by the 16th Regiment of the New York Volunteer Army. The army ordered Booth to surrender. David Herold, who was with Booth, surrendered, but Booth shouted, “I will not be taken alive!”
The army set fire to the barn, hoping to force Booth out of the barn. Boston Corbett, one of the soldiers surrounding the barn, thought he saw Booth aiming his gun through a crack in the barn, so he shot Booth through the crack, hitting him in the back of the head. Booth died a slow, excruciating death on the ground outside the barn, lasting roughly three hours.
Lee Harvey Oswald, on the other hand, was apprehended by the police alive within hours of assassinating President Kennedy. He was interrogated multiple times, but, on November 24, two days after his capture, when he was being escorted by police to an armored car, the Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, who had a history of violent and erratic behavior, walked up and shot him in the abdomen at point-blank range. Oswald died a little over an hour and half later.
ABOVE: Engraving of soldiers dragging the dying John Wilkes Booth from the burning tobacco barn (left) and photograph of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald in the abdomen (right)
The successors
“Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.”
This one is actually true. Andrew Johnson was born on December 29, 1808 and Lyndon B. Johnson was born on August 27, 1908. The fact that Andrew Johnson and Lyndon B. Johnson were born almost exactly one hundred years apart doesn’t mean anything, though, since literally none of the other figures involved in the assassinations were born a hundred years apart:
- Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809; whereas John F. Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917.
- Mary Todd Lincoln was born on December 13, 1818; whereas Jacqueline Kennedy was born July 28, 1929.
- As already mentioned, John Wilkes Booth was born on May 10, 1838; whereas Lee Harvey Oswald was born on October 18, 1939.
- Boston Corbett was born on January 29, 1832; whereas Jack Ruby was born on April 25, 1911.
Johnson and Johnson are literally the only figures involved in the two assassinations who were born a hundred years apart and, even then, they weren’t born on the same day.
“Both successors were named Johnson.”
This is true, but not that surprising, since Johnson is one of the most common last names in the United States.
“Both were succeeded by Southerners.”
Andrew Johnson was from North Carolina, while Lyndon B. Johnson was from Texas. It’s true that they were both Southerners, but, as I pointed out earlier, the South is the most populous region of the country.
ABOVE: Portrait of Andrew Johnson (left) and portrait of Lyndon B. Johnson (right)
Conclusion
There are definitely some very real similarities between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, but none of these similarities provide even the slightest evidence to support the conclusion that there is any kind of mystical connection between the two presidents or that Kennedy is somehow Lincoln reincarnated.
The popular belief that there is some kind of mystical connection between them, though, speaks volumes about how Americans deal with calamities; when a terrible event happens that shocks the whole nation, we have tendency to look back into our history to desperately search for patterns or clues. I imagine that the next time a president is assassinated or some other unspeakable disaster befalls the nation, people will do the same thing.
