From Out of the Top Hat: A Blog from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum

Springfield eagerly anticipated the presidential visit by Herbert Hoover to rededicate the remodeled Lincoln Tomb on June 17, 1931.  In advance of the visit, Hoover received an unusual request from famed Lincoln collector Oliver R. Barrett proposing an offer that he hoped the president could not refuse.  Writing on June 2, 1931, Barrett declared:

“I have the door plate which, during Mr. Lincoln’s residence in Springfield, was on the front door of his home.  Enclosed you will find a photostat of the contemporaneous description of the door plate with the print of the Lincoln Home.  A similar description has appeared in one of the Bulletins of The Lincoln Centennial Association.

“I have been requested to permit a reproduction to be made and replaced upon the door.  I think, however, it would be more fitting to have the original plate restored to its old place upon the door of the Lincoln home by you on the occasion of your visit to Springfield.

In the 1930s, gentlemen traded around the door plate of this self-made gentleman.

“I have always made it a rule that nothing should go out of my Lincoln collection unless in exchange for some other desirable item which might be added to it.  If you would be willing to write your answer to this letter in longhand and send also an appreciation of Lincoln written and signed in longhand, I would be glad to give you the door plate in exchange and when restored by you, it would be unnecessary to make any reference to its former ownership.

“If you have a short appreciation of Lincoln already written, it will serve.  If not, I would prefer to have you write on one of the enclosed sheets (the other you may retain if you wish).  You will note the former ownership of these sheets by holding to the light to observe the water-mark.

“If you choose to write some thought or excerpt from your address which is to be delivered at the Lincoln Monument, it will not be necessary for you to send the appreciation to me until after the address has been delivered.

“I am sure that Mr. Logan Hay of The Lincoln Centennial Association, Springfield, Illinois, will be very glad to have the door prepared to receive the plate before your arrival.

“In the event of your answer to my letter, I would like to have you address it to my son, Roger Watson Barrett, who, although only fifteen years of age, is, in reality, the owner of the plate which I have brought together.”

Although Barrett’s offer was “very much appreciated,” Hoover, through his secretary Lawrence Richey, respectfully declined the offer.  What happened next to the door plate is murky.  The Illinois State Historical Library (now called the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum) received it from Jesse Jay Ricks, another Chicago collector, in 1938 but without fanfare.  Paul Angle, director of the Library, placed a note on the box indicating that the Library was not to admit owning the original unless the copy on the door of the Lincoln Home was stolen.  Ricks was a prominent collector in his own right and perhaps made a swap with Barrett that placed the door plate into his possession.

Barrett’s son, Roger, later went on to a prominent legal career of his own, first as one of the legal team at the Nuremberg Trials and later with the prominent Chicago law firm of Mayer Brown & Platt.

Although Abraham Lincoln predates Sigmund Freud, the Illinois lawyer did write to famed Cincinnati physician Dr. Daniel Drake for help during his emotional crisis of  “the hypo” in 1841.  If Drake replied to Lincoln’s letter, it has never surfaced.  Since then, both professionals and amateurs have tried to explain Lincoln’s personality.  One particular incident led a number of individuals to lobby President Herbert Hoover to intervene.  The incident is instructive because of both the prominent persons involved and Hoover’s response.

In life, Lincoln was deemed 'crazy' mainly by secessionists; in death, mainly by psychiatrists. This now-reupholstered couch was on his funeral train.

Dr. Abraham Arden Brill (1874-1948) announced that he planned to deliver a paper at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in Toronto, Canada, on June 5, 1931, in which he would characterize Abraham Lincoln as a “schizoid-manic personality.”  Brill was hardly a quack.  Rather, he provided the first English translations of Sigmund Freud’s work, introducing into the American lexicon such Freudian concepts as transference, repression, displacement, and unconscious.  Brill founded the New York Psychoanalytic Society and served for a time as head of the psychiatry clinic at Columbia University before going into private practice.  He is widely known for advising famous public relations guru Edward L. Bernays (1891-1995) on how to overcome the stigma that surrounded women smoking cigarettes.  Brill suggested that cigarettes be viewed as “torches of freedom.”  Bernays hired a number of young models to march in the 1929 New York City Easter Parade, and on his cue they each lit a Lucky Strike in front of a group of photographers he had assembled.  The women’s “torches of freedom” were lit as a protest against male domination, but also to help Bernays’s sponsor, the American Tobacco Company, promote its most popular cigarette brand to a new audience — women.

Brill’s characterization of Lincoln as a “schizoid-manic personality” immediately drew the ire of fellow psychiatrist Dr. Edward Everett Hicks, senior physician of the psychopathic department of Kings County (i.e., Brooklyn) Hospital, New York.  Hicks was an avid history buff and a member of both the Sons of the American Revolution and the Society of Mayflower Descendants.  He made a formal protest to the American Psychiatric Association regarding Brill’s intended paper and received the assistance of F. Walter Mueller, Eastern Division Sales Manager for the Continental Lithograph Corporation.  It was Mueller who took it upon himself to write to Lawrence Richey, Secretary to President Hoover, seeking to obtain a Presidential request to suppress Brill’s paper from being delivered in Canada.

The media enjoyed the brief controversy because it provided entertaining copy.  An unidentified instructor of psychology declared: “Some of our psychiatrists and psychologists seem to get so saturated with abnormal in their practice that they lost the normal point of view.  They then get a compulsion to pigeonhole all persons, and especially eminent men in the routine psychiatric categories.”  One less-kind reaction goaded Hicks: “I hope you hit the illustrious gentleman [Brill] in the solar plexus, and once for me too.”  Hicks offered the following assessment of Brill to the press:  “I understand Dr. Brill is an alien.  If he was not born here and was permitted to become a citizen, it seems very bad taste for him to criticize a man of the caliber of Lincoln.  If psychiatrists would modify some of their fantastic theories and apply more common sense, the American public would have greater respect for them.  Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts ought to be analyzed themselves and classified as to the types they belong to.”  Hicks was reminded by the reporter that “you’re a psychiatrist too.”  Hicks replied with a laconic “yes” — and smiled.

President Hoover idolized Abraham Lincoln but wanted no part in the controversy.  Lawrence Richey replied to F. Walter Mueller’s letter, indicating that “The matter of an address before a scientific association in another country is not, it seems to me, within the purview of the President’s duties.”  Brill delivered his paper on Lincoln, one which people have since little noted nor long remembered.

In the mid-19^th century the mass production of prints and images allowed average citizens to own scenes and portraits that might serve as sources of inspiration.  One such example is the Alexander H. Ritchie print of Francis Bicknell Carpenter’s painting of First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation Before the Cabinet.  The print was wildly popular.  Although sales figures are lacking for this period, the number of prints that can be found today online and at flea markets shows that it was widely disseminated.

One individual who purchased a copy was Herbert Hoover’s grandfather Eli.  The following narrative was written by the 31^st President (who served from 1929 to 1933) and attached to the back of the framed print that now hangs in the Herbert Hoover Presidential Museum in West Branch, Iowa.  The reader should note that duringHoover’s term as president, the print hung above the very fireplace depicted within the print.

Inspiration: from Lincoln to Carpenter to Ritchie to Hoover to …

“This print is from the Carpenter painting which hangs in the House of Representatives in Washington.  The painting was made from life.  The scene is Lincoln’s study in the White House.  The fireplace in the background is the same today and is easily identified.  The figures in the painting were sketched in by Carpenter in the study but he did the detailed portrait work in the East Room.  The prints were a part of every Midwest household for years after the Civil War.

“This copy was given to my father Jessie Hoover by his father Eli Hoover soon after my father was married and set up housekeeping in the little cottage at West Branch in about 1871.  Thereafter this picture was probably there when I was born.  After my mother’s death in 1879, the print was kept by an uncle Allan Hoover until his death in about 1922 when it went to his brother Davis Hoover.  Uncle Davis gave it to me with the above history in 1927.  It hung in my study at 2300 S Street, Washington, D.C., until 1929, when Mrs. Hoover removed it to the White House where it hung over the same mantel which appears in the picture.  It remained there for four years until 1933.  It was then removed to Palo Alto, and was brought back to my apartment in Waldorf Towers [on Park Avenue in New York] in 1945.  Thus its history seems clear for about 75 years!”

Long before Jackie Kennedy refurbished the White House in the early 1960s, First Lady Lou Henry Hoover extensively documented the White House rooms and furnishings in photographs.  She and President Hoover also converted the Lincoln Bedroom back into the original study and cabinet room as depicted in Ritchie’s print. Hoover used this as his private study and spent numerous hours in it conducting the affairs of state.  In a search for the original furnishings, a number of items turned up, only to be eliminated after careful research.  Four side chairs were the only items that could be reasonably ascertained as coming from the Lincoln presidency.  Undoubtedly, Abraham Lincoln remained Hoover’s inspiration for presidential leadership.