1863: Lincoln's Pivotal Year

7. Picturing the War

102 7 Picturing the War Bob Zeller Posing for the camera was no routine thing in 1863. The latest technology back then—the wet-plate negative—was an improvement on earlier methods but still required the sitter to remain rigid during an exposure that would take from three to twenty or more seconds. “To prevent a tremulous motion of your head, which the bewildered state of your feelings renders only too probable, [the photographer] wedges it into a horrible instrument called a ‘head-rest,’ which gives you exactly the appearance as if somebody was holding onto your hair behind,” wrote the American Journal of Photography that year in an essay “Having Your Photograph Taken.”1 Being forced to use such a device seemed only slightly more daunting than trying to decide what expression to give to the camera: “You have a vague expression that to look smiling is ridiculous, and to look solemn is still more so. You desire to look intelligent, but you are hampered by a fear of looking sly. You wish to look as if you were not sitting for your picture; but the effort to do so fills your mind more completely with the melancholy consciousness that you are.”2 If anyone was used to it, though, it was Abraham Lincoln, who by then was one of the most frequently photographed human beings on the face of the earth, having already been captured by the camera almost a hundred times in sittings for several dozen photographers (see fig. 7.1).3 One of those images, a full-length portrait of Lincoln that Mathew B. Brady took in New York City on the morning of Lincoln’s address at the Cooper Union Institute on February 20, 1860, was reproduced thousands of times and sold to eager customers. It provided a face to the name of the Fig. 7.1. Abraham Lincoln had become one of the most photographed men on the planet by the time this majestic portrait was taken by Washington photographer Alexander Gardner on Sunday, November 8, 1863. (Library of Congress) 104 Bob Zeller western politician everyone had heard so much about and helped popularize Lincoln during his presidential campaign. Years later, Brady would recall Lincoln saying, “Brady and the Cooper Institute made me president.”4 So it was no surprise that President Lincoln would agree to a visit on Sunday, August 9, 1863, to photographer Alexander Gardner’s new gallery at Seventh and D Streets NW (see fig. 7.2). The president “was in good spirits,” wrote secretary John Hay in his diary, as Lincoln sat for four carte de visite photos (CDV) and three larger images. And as would any typical customer at Gardner’s Gallery, Lincoln offered his critique when the prints arrived at the White House nine days later. “I think they are generally very successful,” Lincoln wrote in a note of thanks. “The Imperial [camera] photograph in which the head leans upon the hand I regard as the best that I have yet seen.”5 That year, millions of Americans would go through the same routine at the thousands of photo galleries in cities and small towns across the nation. Other photographers flocked to the army camps to ply the lucrative trade of photographing soldiers, who would sometimes argue among themselves whether or not to pose with their muskets. Common soldiers would most often have their photograph taken as a ferrotype or tintype—an inexpensive , one-of-a-kind image on a thin sheet of metal usually housed Fig. 7.2. Some of the best-known photographs of Abraham Lincoln were taken in Alexander Gardner’s sign-festooned Washington gallery, which opened around May 1863 at the corner of Seventh and D Streets NW. (Library of Congress) 105 Picturing the War in a small, wooden case. Officers and commanders were more likely to have their photographs taken as glass-plate negatives so, as with Lincoln, multiple copies of card photographs could be reproduced and handed out to their men or others. A soldier might discard many personal items on a hard march, but he would always keep close to him his photographs of loved ones at home. Likewise, on the home front, the photograph of a family’s man in arms was one of the most cherished keepsakes in the house. Nearly every soldier had his photograph taken during the war, and millions were produced. The soldier portrait...