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Dwight D. Eisenhower
34th President, 1953-1961
Arguably few presidents have shown a higher regard for Lincoln than Eisehower. As a military man, he admired Lincoln's generosity toward subordinates like George B. McClellan. As president, Eisenhower occupied the Lincoln Pew in the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. At the White House, he kept a complete set of Lincoln's Collected Works in the Oval Office and he even painted a portrait of the first Republican president and hung it in the Cabinet Room.
Eisenhower's Pennsylvania home bordered the battlefield immortalized by Lincoln's November 1863 Gettysburg Address. He liked nothing better than conducting world leaders over the landscape that inspired Lincoln's "new birth of freedom." In 1957, Eisenhower's administration spearheaded the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.
This cartoon shows Eisenhower as the "New Emancipator," smashing the chains that held the South. The 1952 presidential election, which Eisenhower won, was the first time in years that four Southern States (Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia) voted for the Republican candidate. |