Anti-Climacus

Abraham Lincoln, even more awesome than you might've suspected:

Abraham Lincoln became the war’s most notorious jester, known for his backcountry yarns and goofy, self-deprecating style. Washington socialites complained that he simply would not stop telling jokes at their dinner parties. His cabinet – stiff, bearded, capable men, whom Navy Secretary Gideon Welles called “destitute of wit” – met his enthusiastic joking with blank stares and awkward sneezes; William P. Fessenden, the secretary of the Treasury, objected that comedy was “hardly a proper subject.” Lincoln ignored them, introducing his plan for emancipation by reading aloud a routine by his favorite humorist. He often joked with citizens who sought his aid: when a businessman requested a pass through Union lines to Richmond, Lincoln chuckled that he had already sent 250,000 men in that direction, but “not one has got there yet.”