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Abraham Lincoln


A day or two after President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington for his inauguration, March 4, 1861, he visited the photographic studio of Mathew Brady. This image was one of several taken by cameraman Alexander Gardner. In the midst of the secession crises, Lincoln appears deeply in thought and is wearing the new beard he had begun growing after receiving a letter from a young lady suggesting that he do so. This photographic session was apparently for the benefit of Harper’s Weekly, which published an engraved version of this image several weeks later.


Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–1883)
Collodion glass-plate negative, 1861
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

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