A closer look
Abraham Lincoln operated a wildly successful saloon in New Salem, Illinois, making him the only licensed bartender in the history of the United States presidency. Long before he was giving the Gettysburg Address or freeing the slaves, Honest Abe was busy serving up shots of whiskey, brandy, and peach cider to drunken frontiersmen alongside his business partner William Berry. Berry unfortunately drank all of their profits and ran the business into the ground, saddling Lincoln with a massive debt that took him years to pay off. It perfectly tracks that the man who had to single-handedly hold a violently divided country together during a brutal civil war started his career by babysitting aggressive alcoholics and cleaning up someone else's catastrophic mess
