President Lincoln sometimes showed up at Washington’s market district, a basket on his arm and one of his sons at his side. He usually carried an old gray shawl, often rolled into a coil and worn around his neck like a rope.
In Ward Hill Lamon’s biography of Lincoln, he describes the president as walking a little pigeon-toed but with a strong and even thread. He said Mr. Lincoln tended to place his entire foot flat on the ground and lift it all at once.
If he met a friend, Lamon wrote, he would grasp the friend’s hand with one or both of his hands and say his usual greeting: “Howdy, howdy.”
Source: The Lincoln Reader by Paul M. Angle