On Feb. 12, 1932, President Herbert Hoover (right) summed up his adoration for Abraham Lincoln (left) during a national radio address. He said, “Abraham Lincoln more than any other man gave expression to the heart and the character and the faith of our race. Washington was indeed the father of our country. Lincoln was its greatest son.” Photos courtesy of the Library of Congress
March/April 2026 (Volume 18, Issue 2)
By Timothy Walch
Herbert Hoover had been able to hold his own against the economic crisis of the Great Depression throughout 1930 by convincing industry leaders to keep their workers on the job, but 1931 was another matter. As the bad times became worse in the winter of 1931, Hoover turned for solace wherever he could find it, and frequently that peace came from sitting in Abraham Lincoln’s White House study.
“This is the room in which Lincoln spent most of his waking hours and some of his sleeping ones during the four years of his Presidency,” wrote Mildred Adams in “That Shrine That is Lincoln’s Study” for New York Times Magazine on Feb. 8, 1931. “Nowadays it is a pleasant leisurely place which President Hoover has furnished and set aside for his personal use.” Hoover could not help but to take comfort in Lincoln’s spiritual presence.
Hoover also used the room to broadcast his now traditional Lincoln Day address. “It is appropriate that I should speak in this room in the White House where Lincoln strived and accomplished his great service to our country,” Hoover told the radio audience on Feb. 12, 1931. “His invisible presence dominates these halls, ever recalling that infinite patience that that indomitable will which fought and won the fight for those firmer foundations and greater strength to government by the people.”
Hoover went on to link his own policies to the Great Emancipator.
“While many of the issues of [Lincoln’s] time are dead and gone,” Hoover said, “our present problems were equally vivid in his own day.” At this point in the address, Hoover stresses that Lincoln was in favor of a protective tariff, a strong advocate of federal harbors and waterways and an ardent champion of the constitutional processes of government. Just like Hoover.
On June 17, 1931, Hoover traveled to Springfield, Ill., to address a joint session of the Illinois State Legislature and rededicate the tomb of the 16th president of the United States. He reminded the legislators that they played a special role in the history of our nation from Lincoln’s time to the present.
“Legislatures,” Hoover said, “are the laboratories in which new ideas are developed and in which they are tried out.” Hoover implied that like Lincoln, he also supported strong state governments.
At Lincoln’s tomb that same day, Hoover almost became eloquent.
“Time sifts out the essentials of men’s character and deeds, and in Lincoln’s character there stands out his patience, his indomitable will, his sense of humanity of a breadth which comes to but few men,” he said. Indeed! Hoover frequently reminded the American people of Lincoln’s patience and his willpower. These were two qualities that Hoover saw in himself and that he believed were being ignored by an increasingly impatient nation.
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