The Many Faces of Abe

One of the many things that I find fascinating about Lincoln is how different he looked in most of his photographs.  All but one of the Lincoln photographs were taken during the last eleven years of his life, and they are an interesting study in contrasts.  This is especially intriguing since the subject of a photograph in Lincoln’s day had to sit absolutely still for at least 18 seconds, and I would think this would tend to flatten out any emotions that the subject was feeling at the time which might have altered his features.

I have studied Lincoln now for almost a half century and the complexity of the man is perhaps his most salient feature, and that shines through in his pictures.  A man known for his humble birth, but who hated the life of poverty and drudgery that he worked so hard to escape from.  Famous for reading before the embers of a fire place as a child, he read little as an adult beyond newspapers and a few choice books, but what he read he retained with a bear trap like grasp. A teller of humorous tales who was afflicted with deep melancholia.  No formal education to speak of, but the finest writer of prose ever to sit in the White House.  A deeply logical man who loved Euclid, he could understand the passions, the loves and the hates, that almost destroyed his nation.  A humane man who abhorred bloodshed, he presided over the bloodiest war in our history.  Viewed with suspicion by the abolitionists of his day, it was his fate to destroy slavery that had existed in what would be the United States for a quarter of a millennia.  Turn Lincoln over in your mind and new facets of the man spring up.

Stephen Vincent Benet in his epic poem on the Civil War, John Brown’s Body, captured some of the many Lincolns that appeared in the photographs:

Lincoln, six feet one in his stocking feet,

The lank man, knotty and tough as a hickory rail,

Whose hands were always too big for white-kid gloves,

Whose wit was a coonskin sack of dry, tall tales,

Whose weathered face was homely as a plowed field–

Abraham Lincoln, who padded up and down

The sacred White House in nightshirt and carpet-slippers,

And yet could strike young hero-worshipping Hay

As dignified past any neat, balanced, fine

Plutarchan sentences carved in a Latin bronze;

The low clown out of the prairies, the ape-buffoon,

The small-town lawyer, the crude small-time politician,

State-character but comparative failure at forty

In spite of ambition enough for twenty Caesars,

Honesty rare as a man without self-pity,

Kindness as large and plain as a prairie wind,

And a self-confidence like an iron bar:

This Lincoln, President now by the grace of luck,

Disunion, politics, Douglas and a few speeches

Which make the monumental booming of Webster

Sound empty as the belly of a burst drum.

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Donald R. McClarey



  1. Thanx for this, Donald. I notice that during Lincoln’s years as a young lawyer his suits look expensive yet ill-fitting, then they improve. I can’t help but wonder if that was when he got married.
    Mary Todd comes in for a lot of abuse but I’m sure she’s the one who made sure he was presentable when he left the house — or at least combed his hair for the photographer.

  2. I shudder to think what Lincoln would have looked like without Mary. Like many wives she picked out her husband’s wardrobe and made sure he was at least somewhat presentable to the world. Mary does not get nearly enough credit for her taking care of her husband as well as she did.

  3. Donald, I am not as thorough a student of history as you apparently are. Yet, I see a similar nobility in Davis and perhaps a little more so than both in Lee. Briefly in passing about myself, a positional Yankee but I am divided in sentiment.
    Most respectfully,
    The Walsh.

  4. Jefferson Davis had much that was great about him. A brave man as his command of the Mississippi Rifles at Buena Vista indicated, he came close to success several times in his against the odds struggle to win independence for the Confederacy. He never asked for pardon for himself after the War while encouraging Southern young people to forget the past and to be good citizens of the United States.

    As for Lee, the post linked below indicates how I feel about him:


  5. Donald: Thank you for your consideration of my humble opining. I, a weak and sinful man, sustained by unshaken faith alone, stand in awe of my betters, Lincoln, Lee and many others including perhaps you my unmet friend. ~The Walsh

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