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Facing up to the President

The Source

Trivia time! In most photographs showing President Lincoln seated, his left foot is blurred. Why is that? More on that later. In 1857 a reporter noted that the young Lincoln had “Wild Republican hair.” Peeking at the photographs of the young campaigner from Illinois, you can understand why the early Lincoln seldom depended upon photography to get elected. He often said that his proudest victory was in winning the rank of Captain by a vote of his soldiers in the Blackhawk War. He claimed that this group men knew actually knew what he looked like and still voted for him. And of course everyone knows the story of 11-year-old Grace Bedell writing the beardless President-elect a letter urging him to grow some facial hair saying, “You would look a great deal better for your face is so thin.” Less known is her next sentence: “All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.” Later in Lincoln’s life he visited the little girl and said, “Gracie, look at my whiskers. I have been growing them for you.” While many politicians of his day still looked upon this new art of photography as a bit of alchemy and voodoo, Lincoln realized that no matter what he looked like he needed to get his photograph passed around if he wanted to be elected. He knew that what he called his “phiz” would be easily recognizable, homely as it may have been. The famous photographer, Matthew Brady, had his studio just down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House and Lincoln credited him for helping make him president. Abe had been accused of being a savage from the wilds of Illinois and sometimes even a “baboon,” but Brady retouched many of Lincoln’s portraits by enlarging his collar to make the President’s neck less scrawny. Photoshop ala Civil War. Under Brady’s guidance, Lincoln’s wild hair became tamer, and Lincoln brought a special chair from the House of Representatives to lend the portrait a more presidential aura. It’s a shame that color photography was still a few years distant, for many who met our 16th President remarked on his piercing blue eyes. John Hay said that he could overwhelm a visitor. “He looked through the man to the buttons on the back of his coat,” said Hay. Lincoln’s secretary, John Nicolay, said that no photographs did Lincoln justice as he spoke of “a face that moved through a thousand delicate gradations of line and contour, sparkle of the eye and curve of the lip….from grave to gay, and back again from the rollicking jollity of laugher to that serious, far-away look that beheld the awful panorama of war.” Walt Whitman described the disappointment of Lincoln photography in a similar fashion saying, “the current portraits are all failures- -- most of them caricatures.” When I take my students for long rides to theatre events or performances, we often play “The Game.” The rules are simple: I ask a question and you can either answer it honestly or jump out of the moving car. Most prefer to answer. One question that always gets an interesting response is when I ask if they held a dinner party for three other people, living or deceased, whom would they invite? God is often a popular choice. I suppose there’d be no question then as to who should return thanks before the meal, but then would He have to thank Himself? But nearly every carload of young people produces at least one Lincoln invitation. And more often than not the young people say they’d simply like to look at him in person. There’s something about that face that draws you in. I highly recommend the film on Lincoln’s eyes that plays several times a day at Springfield’s magnificent Lincoln Museum. Perhaps the most poignant series of Lincoln photographs are those lining one of the final hallways at the Museum as each frame traces his presidency, year by painful year, his features becoming more weary and markedly older as the Civil War progressed. Similar montages have been made of other U.S. Presidents during their terms of office, but surely none showed the strains of conflict like Mr. Lincoln’s portraits. By the way, Lincoln’s left foot is often blurred because of the lapsed time it took to obtain a good photograph with the early equipment. You can’t see it but there’s a rod behind Lincoln’s neck in most of his photographs to hold it still. Lincoln didn’t have palsy; this was common practice. But it’s nearly impossible to keep the pulse in your leg still when you cross one over the other. I’ve tried it. Even President’s can’t do it.