Strength is among the most admired qualities in America. We are wowed by feats of physical strength in athletic competition, but are enamored with the sort of mental and emotional toughness that serve as the hallmarks of the greatest American leaders.
This is the Forgotten History of the Backwoods Wrestler.
He was a rough and tumble lad, tall and muscular and always ready for a fight. He didn’t go looking for them, but they always seemed to find him. The local toughs were always trying to prove their strength by taking down the biggest man in the area.
He was a store clerk by trade, studying to become a lawyer, but his boss couldn’t stop boasting about the young man’s athleticism.
“He can outrun, outlift, outwrestle and throw down any man in Sangamon County," he was fond of saying. And the other men of Sangamon County were fond of testing that.
One by one they challenged the young man to wrestling matches, betting that they could throw him to the ground. And one by one, they failed. He beat them all. Every last one of them. Dozens of them. Hundreds even.
“I’m the big buck of this lick!” he screamed at a crowd that had gathered to see one particularly hard-fought match. “If any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns!”
One local tough did. Jack Armstrong was the leader of the notorious Clary’s Grove Boys, who were fond of grabbing new arrivals in their frontier town, sticking them in a barrel, and rolling them down the hill. Armstrong wanted a piece of the man they called the toughest in the county, and he called him out.
A crowd gathered, hopeful of seeing their hero take down the gang leader. They placed their bets and the two men circled each other, looking for an opening. The young man struck quickly and Armstrong went on the defensive. To the jeers of the crowd, Armstrong desperately tried to illegally trip him.
The young wrestler was furious and shook Armstrong “like a rag,” as members of the crowd described it. Armstrong’s Clary’s Grove Boys started to move in, backing the man against the wall of the general store and looking as though they might all jump him.
The man screamed at them, saying he’d fight them all one-on-one. But Armstrong called them off, saying he’d lost fair and square and that the wrestler was “the best feller that ever broke into this settlement.”
The wrestler kept on fighting, and kept on winning, and his reputation for toughness followed him everywhere he went, including the Army, when he served during a Black Hawk Indian uprising.
He represented the Sangamon County Volunteers in his regiment’s wrestling championship and dispatched his first seven opponents with ease. But then he ran into Hank Thompson, a mountain of a man whose strength matched his own. When they locked up, the wrestler knew immediately that Thompson was “the most powerful man I ever had a hold of.”
For the first time ever, it looked as though he would lose. And then he did, Thompson threw him to the ground. But the wrestler’s fellow Sangamon County Volunteers cried foul. It wasn’t a throw, they claimed, Thompson tripped him! No, Thompson’s supporters countered, it was a fair win. The two sides got in each other’s faces, but just as it looked like an all-out brawl might break out, the wrestler remembered the sportsmanship Jack Armstrong had shown him years earlier.
"Boys, give up your bets," he said. "If this man hasn't thrown me fairly, he could."
The wrestler conceded his first documented loss in an estimated 300 matches. He kept wrestling for a few more years, but he was growing up, and no longer the same rough and tumble lad he was in his early 20s.
His unprecedented physical strength gave way to a quieter strength that he displayed in his unwavering commitment to sportsmanship and fairness. It took him to a successful law career and even to the United States House of Representatives.
And a few years later, the world was introduced to the tough but fair wrestler when he was inaugurated as President Abraham Lincoln.