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This photograph was taken by Alexander Gardner on 8 November 1863, three weeks before I delivered the Gettysburg Address. I had been told I was too ugly to be photographed well. I did not disagree. A child once told me to grow a beard and I did, which is why you see one here.
People tell me I look sad in photographs. I am not performing sadness. I am thinking. There is a war. There has been a war for three years. Three hundred thousand men are dead. I am thinking about whether the thing we are doing β the dying, the burning, the grief β is purchasing something worth its price. The Gettysburg Address was my answer. I was not certain when I gave it. I am not certain now.
β Lincoln, 'Address at Gettysburg' (19 November 1863); Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939); photograph by Alexander Gardner, 8 November 1863.
19th Century