From Out of the Top Hat: A Blog from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum

What fits into your shirt pocket, is a little bendable but basically sturdy, and shows the photographic portraits of nearly 500 people? No, not your iPhone.

The answer is the carte de visite (cdv) pictured here. It is backmarked for Ashford, Brothers & Co., of 76 Newgate Street, London, and was probably created in 1863 or 1864. Its caption reads,

“Upwards of five hundred photographic portraits of the most celebrated personalities of the age. With a hand-magnifying glass, every portrait will be seen perfect.”

Bring your magnifying glass, or your microscope

This recent arrival in the Lincoln Collection caught our eye because Abraham and Mary appear in the second row from the bottom, in the center. Both photos were taken in mid-1861, but the carte’s centerpiece — a floral circle traced within the montage — shows the British royal family. Just below Victoria and Albert (he died in Dec. 1861) are the Prince and Princess of Wales, Albert Edward and Alexandra, who were married in March 1863. Lord Palmerston, British prime minister (1859-1865), looms just over that floral family.

Americans fill the bottom two rows, plus George Washington above Lincoln, and politically this card may be judged ‘neutral’ (except, perhaps, for its placing of the prime minister above the royal family). To the right of Lincoln are Jefferson Davis and some his cabinet and generals; to the left of Mary are an equal number of Union men, including editor Horace Greeley at bottom left near Edwin Stanton and Simon Cameron, both of them a secretary of war and another clue that this was certainly made no earlier than January 1862. But we can detect no Ulysses Grant or George G. Meade, so this may pre-date August 1863, when full news of their major July victories reached Europe.

As for those other 400-odd faces, mainly British but evidently some Europeans and a few Asians, we welcome any facial-recognition experts among our readers to send us their ideas. Shakespeare, Dickens, Thackeray, Florence Nightingale, Isambard Brunel are likely. Much of the left column depicts women, with a few more here and there.

Our collection’s previous record “tiny faces” cdv, made in New York, depicts 109 Union commanders of the army and navy, with each name printed on the back. This almost-500 cdv suggests not just that the British were technically a little ahead of the Americans in their skilled use of lenses and artful collage, but that the entire science of photography, a quarter-century old when this card appeared, had made leaps not unlike what the laptop and microchip underwent between, say, 1985 and 2010.

Knowing what we do now of photography’s tricks, colors, shadings, and overall development since 1864, just imagine what the next 150 years could bring in the power of computing. And Lincoln would have liked that: he grasped the importance of rail, riflery, and cameras to his own career, and surely would have appreciated the chance to let the people get new information as thunderously as the rains fall. Yet he also might have preferred that 500 names could be printed on the back of a cdv as readily as their faces were. He was a man of the word, not of the image.

Episode 26, Abraham Lincoln’s Stovepipe Hat: Abraham Lincoln’s Hat is possibly the most recognizable piece of Presidential clothing ever. This month, Dr. James Cornelius sits down with us to discuss this fantastic piece of American History.

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Part of the power of Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln comes from screenwriter Tony Kushner’s skill at navigating the line between history and fiction.  He followed the example of James Agee, the novelist and film critic who wrote five half-hour teleplays on Lincoln for the CBS program “Omnibus” in 1952-1953.  Agee laid down the principle of “reasonable conjecture” to guide the dramatist in creating a gripping story that brought Lincoln alive on the screen.

Agee defined “reasonable conjecture” as speculation based on facts, but not fenced in by them.  Getting at the deepest truths about Lincoln required both dramatic license and dramatic discipline: familiarizing yourself with the available facts before rearranging them and supplementing them to make the story work.  Invented scenes and dialogue were justified if they contravened no known facts and tried to capture the life of Lincoln as he’d lived it.

In 1955, “Omnibus” aired “Mr. Lincoln,” a one-hour abridgement of Agee’s five films. (The hour is available on DVD from The Archive of American Television.)  The first scene shows the principle of “reasonable conjecture” in action.  It’s April 10, 1865, and we find ourselves inside the sun-drenched Washington, D.C., studio of photographer Alexander Gardner.  The film camera is focused on its ancestor, Gardner’s studio camera perched atop its tripod.

We see actor Royal Dano from the back as Gardner prepares his shot, joking about how the Appomattox surrender has made Lincoln do something for the first time: smile for a photographer.  Gradually the “Omnibus” camera zooms in on the studio camera, passing by Lincoln’s shoulder as Gardner instructs him to turn his head slightly to the right.  Gardner removes the lens cap, and we see what he sees: the ever so slight grin of contentment that the real Lincoln did allow Gardner to capture in the “cracked plate” photo of February 5, 1865.

This dialogue between Lincoln and Gardner is a fiction, but a fiction designed to expose a truth: the scores of photos we have of Lincoln miscommunicate his character.  They make him severe and solemn.  Long exposure times ruled out capturing his affability, not to speak of his hilarity.

By lingering on Gardner’s camera, and first showing Lincoln’s face as seen through the lens, Agee’s film addresses a second truth.  Photographs have decisively shaped our awareness of him.  Those of us born in Agee’s era (he died in 1955) almost certainly encountered Lincoln first through iconic images of wisdom, resilience, and patience, not through stories about his everyday human experiences.

It still takes a lot of convincing for many of us to believe that he ever missed the boat, gave up, lost his temper, or behaved as anything less than a perspicacious saint.  (Could he possibly have slapped his son Robert across the face, as Kushner’s script has it?  Never!  Could he have sunk into a depression so deep that he thought he had caused Ann Rutledge’s death, as Agee’s film has it?  Impossible!)

Spielberg’s Lincoln follows the lead of Agee’s “Mr. Lincoln” by introducing the star of the show from behind, and then moving the camera slowly past his shoulder before cutting to a front view of Lincoln sitting before us.  Daniel Day-Lewis is oddly situated, alone on a platform (perhaps a reviewing stand) as a few dozen soldiers mingle nearby before pushing off.

Lincoln bigger than life, if only on the billboard. (Photo by Richard Wightman Fox)

We expect Lincoln, perched on his wooden pedestal, to be the main speaker in this scene, but Kushner makes him the listener, as two young white soldiers and one black soldier recite portions of his year-old Gettysburg Address to him.  This exchange never happened.  But Kushner does double duty with it.  Lincoln is rattled by hearing his exact words spoken by the white soldiers.  He tries to make them stop, embarrassed by the memorized adulation.

Like Agee with the photograph, Kushner seems to be telling us viewers to let Lincoln come down from the pedestal we’ve placed him on.  We’re so busy venerating his image and his words that we’ve forgotten about the man.  It’s time to examine the actual emancipator.  As the black soldier finishes the recitation, speaking of “a new birth of freedom,” Lincoln is moved by his own words.  He hears the judgment in them.  He’s being challenged, not routinely praised.

Kushner shows he’ll also examine the man in relation to his wife.  The second Lincoln scene in his script mirrors the second scene in Agee’s.  They both put Mary and Abraham in a small, warmly lit White House room on an evening in 1865.  They’re relaxing together until conversation turns to an alarming dream Abraham has had.  Agee’s Lincoln recounts his (apocryphal) dead-president-in-the-White-House dream.  Kushner’s Lincoln tells the (factual) fast-moving-ship dream.  (See my post on “Lincoln’s Dreams, Authentic and Inauthentic,” Jan. 10, 2011, for the content of the dreams.)

Both authors invent a fictional tête-à-tête to disclose a basic truth about Abraham and Mary.  Each of them took dreams very seriously as hints of what might happen.  Kushner goes beyond the facts in tying the ship dream to the 13^th amendment (at least in Mary’s mind), but in doing so he brings out the common sensibility of two people usually thought of as opposites: crazy, impatient Mary, and rational, long-suffering Abraham.

Dreams helped Mary and Abraham establish their intimacy.  As she does in Kushner’s scene, Mary appears in real life to have taken on some of Abraham’s anxiety about his dreams.  Her readiness to absorb some of his worries let them feel close.  And that closeness gave him much-needed support as he got back to the daily grind of saving the union and advancing freedom for all.

As we enter the season of calculating income tax, one of the prized deductions remains donations to charitable organizations.  Typically these non-for-profit organizations host auctions as a source for raising revenue.  It is common to see items with celebrity autographs as the main attractions.

The use of celebrity status to raise money for worthy causes has a long history.  During the Civil War era, the United States Sanitary Commission held frequent events called by various names — Sanitary Fairs, Soldiers’ Fairs, etc. — to raise money for blankets,  medical, and sundry supplies for the soldiers.  Led by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, who had designed New York City’s Central Park, the United States Sanitary Commission established regional networks across the northern states to raise money for the war effort.

A couple of celebrity signatures from the ’60s.

The town of Springfield, Massachusetts, held a Soldiers’ Fair in December 1864 as part of the fund-raising efforts.  As was common, a fair newspaper, The Springfield Musket, was issued throughout the fair to list daily events.  One of the noteworthy items for auction was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Springfield Arsenal.”  Of greater interest was a letter sent by First Lady Mary Lincoln (which does not appear in Justin and Linda Turner’s compilation of her writings).  The text appeared in a January 1, 1865 Washington Sunday Chronicle newspaper article reprinting an article that first appeared in the Springfield (Mass.) Republican on December 30, 1864.  That text is provided in full:

“Mrs. as well as Mr. Lincoln wrote a letter for the Soldiers’ Fair in this city but Mrs. Lincoln’s has only just arrived.  It is addressed to Miss Isabel Clary, and will be raffled for, so that it is not too late, after all, to add to the receipts of the fair.  Ten dollars have been offered for it already, but refused.  Below is the letter, and we will add, for the benefit of those who may not see the original, that it is written on fine initial note paper, unruled, and the writing consequently sloping gently to the right:

                                                EXECUTIVE MANSION,  December 24.

Your letter of the 12^th instant has been received, and as it always affords me much pleasure to forward so laudable an object as the one mentioned in your note, I hasten to comply with your flattering request.  I most sincerely hope that your highest anticipations may be realized, giving you all that may be necessary to carry out plans which present not only a noble purpose, in the cause of our beloved and struggling country, but also a generous, humane, and great good, in the comfort of the brave and noble hearts battling for our glorious Union.  With heartfelt hope, I pray God speed you, and crown your efforts with success. 

                                                                                    Very truly yours,     Mary Lincoln”

Her husband’s response on Dec. 19th was more pro-forma, indicating that matters of state required him to remain in Washington.  However, Lincoln attended the Philadelphia Sanitary Fair in June 1864.  Among the celebrity items offered in Philadelphia were printed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, and John G. Nicolay.  Shrewd visitors would have seen the bargain of purchasing one at the sale price of ten dollars apiece.  Unfortunately, most people declined to purchase a copy, and many remained unsold.  Today, one of these Leland-Boker autographed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation will fetch well more than one million dollars at auction.