Check my urine! I’m clean!

Recent evidence brought to light suggests that Abraham Lincoln was addicted to steroids and other performance enhancing drugs.

“Think about it” says Professor of history Robert Klein, author of the new book, “Behind the Shadows:  Lincoln and the Steroid Cheats of the Civil War”.  “This was a one-term congressman from some backwater district in rural Illinois and suddenly he was writing the Gettysburg Address.”

By searching through diaries and looking at pictures of  Lincoln, Klein has been able to construct a timeline.

“In 1858 while he was debating Stephen A. Douglas Lincoln wrote to his law parter:  ‘Douglas is a formidable opponent.  I need an edge.’ ”  Soon after pills were shipped to him on the campaign trail.  Lincoln claimed these pills were for “indigestion” but he was seen bench pressing almost 200 pounds.

After winning the Presidential Election in 1860 Lincoln grew a beard, he said, at the suggestion of a young girl who had written to him.  No evidence of this letter exists.  But there is a letter from his first Secretary of War Simon Cameron to his wife which reads, “Went to the Executive Mansion today.  Old Abe thinks he’s fooling everbody but I know he hides his pills in his beard.  I think he should take a urine test…..wait those tests won’t exist for another 100 years…….oh god…..white light…..aliens….don’t probe me again!”   Soon after this letter was written, Cameron was fired. Lincoln claimed it was because he was corrupt but most people now think it was because Cameron knew of Lincoln’s steroid use.

After the battle of Antietam Lincoln visited McClellan.  McClellan noted that “The President has changed.  I can’t put my finger on it but he’s 3 inches taller, his hat and shoe size are larger and he’s very irritable.  Today he bit the head off  of one of my staff.  Literally.  War is Hell I guess.  Oh god…white light…aliens.”

After the election of 1864 Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles wrote, “Visited old Abe today.  He’s very buff and can bench press almost 300 pounds.  He claims it is just his workout regimen but I have my doubts…….I keep being followed by a yellow submarine and some guy with an english accent who says he is ‘old fred’.  He wants me to save Pepperland.  Very strange.  Still….could be worse.  At least I’m not being probed by aliens.”

Shortly before his assassination, Lincoln received a letter from John Wilkes Boothe:  “I have given you  pills for years and want payment.  If I am not paid there will be a day of reckoning – J.W.B.  

Years later Mary Lincoln told a friend, “If it weren’t for those damn pills my husband would be alive today.”

While his work is controversial, Professor Klein defends himself and intends to follow up his book with another about James Knox Polk that will  reveal  he was “a cross dressing transsexual with Presbyterian tendencies.”

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