Abraham Lincoln
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM (1809–1865), inducted by 1920
The portrait of this American president was lost in the 1934 fire and was, presumably, not repainted.
Although some of the US Presidents and Founding Fathers whose portraits were originally hung in Chicago’s Saddle & Sirloin Club have little connection to agricultural achievement or policy, Abraham Lincoln is an exception. The sixteenth president of the United States may be best known for leading the nation through its most difficult period—the Civil War—and for preserving the Union; but Lincoln’s administration also established many of the policy foundations that continue to shape agriculture today. President Lincoln signed four key laws to advance agriculture in 1862, most significantly, the legislative acts creating the Department of Agriculture and establishing colleges of agriculture on public lands across the nation. The Homestead Act and the act to create a transcontinental railroad also contributed much to Lincoln’s visions of expanded western settlement and increased agricultural production and distribution. Abraham Lincoln is one of only three US Presidents (along with Washington and Jefferson) inducted into the National Agricultural Hall of Fame, and the only one of the three who was not an agriculturalist.
Source: Saddle & Sirloin Guidebook 2026, p. 128