By Edward Epstein
Washington D.C.
August 31,2024
Walking down one of the endless concourses at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport the other day, guess who I came face to face with? Abraham Lincoln.
A Johnston & Murphy shoe store was showing off its collection of "presidential footwear."
The manufacturer says it has made shoes or boots for every president since the little-remembered Millard Fillmore in 1850. To mark that history and to get publicity in the 2024 election year, the company put on a small exhibit in Chicago in mid-August during the Democratic National Convention. It included replicas of footwear made for 13 presidents, including Lincoln.
It is also offering today's shoppers the same styles it made for presidents.
"Each one walked their own presidential path," the company says, "but they all had one thing in common: they did it in our shoes."
For Lincoln, the company says it made a style of short, 15-inch-high boots called a half-Wellington It says he wore size 14, the largest of any president. Lincoln was known to complain of foot problems, and it isn't known how he felt about the boots Johnston & Murphy made for him, if he ever wore them.
It is known that Lincoln wore boots almost exclusively, almost never regular shoes.
Like everything about Lincoln, his footwear has been the subject of much study. In 2012, the National Park Service allowed a California bootmaker, Michael Anthony Carnacchi, to analyze the boots the 16th president wore on the evening of April 14, 1865, when he was mortally wounded at Ford's Theater.
Carnacchi says the boots appeared to be closer to size 12.5, rather than 14, and that the uneven wear he observed showed that Lincoln may not have found them too comfortable.
Carnacchi told The Washington Post that there were six layers in the heel stack, which were reinforced with hobnails. When Lincoln walked on a wooden floor, people would have heard him coming from a distance.
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"You would have known when the president walked in the room," he told the Post.
For President Barack Obama, a Lincoln fan and a fellow Illinoisan, Johnston & Murphy recreated the boots it made for Lincoln. Men can buy that Lincoln-inspired style today, part of the bootmaker's "presidential collection."
Photo credits: Ed Epstein and Johnston & Murphy.
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