commemorative planting of a cherry tree at haines point on the tip of east potomac park. this was the first of 1800 such will embrace the scenic drive around the peninsula. much has been done, but this has really been only a beginning. activities of mrs. johnson and her committee were a jumping off point for washington and for the rest of the nation. they showed that in a time of complex "this, functional, attractive surroundings can exist, bringing joy and new opportunities to city dwellers. >> coming up next, smithsonian national portrait gallery senior historian david ward chronicles

abraham lincoln's life through 4s and portraits and discusses idiosyncrasies like what his close reveal about his health, or why he chose certain photographers. the university of st. mary hosted this 90 minute event. >> good evening. my name is brian lebeau. i would like to welcome you to the 18th annual university of st. mary lincoln event. featuring smithsonian national portrait gallery senior historian david seymour. how abraham lincoln used photography for politics. a special welcome to the crew from c-span. they will be covering this event broadcast on c-span

tv. as a reminder, when we open the floor to questions, be sure to use the microphones. will not be, you heard on television and you will miss your big media event. our speaker tonight david ward joined to the national portrait gallery in 1981. he oversees the sections devoted to the antebellum age as well as the gallery and the ongoing exhibit 20th century americans. david was co-curator of an award-winning exhibition hide and seek difference and desires in american portraiture. he is re-hanging the hall of presidents. the american origin's space. as well as curating a new exhibit on the photographer mario testino.

david has another civil war exhibit on display now. dark fields of the republic. alexander gardner photographs. it includes several lincoln photographs. i saw it last week and thoroughly enjoyed it. this exhibit was preceded by the portrait gallery exhibit on grant and lee, the mask of lincoln, walt whitman. this multitalented man is a poet and an editor and a literary critic. a selection of his poetry was published in 2011 called internal difference and a full collection call waiting was also published.

please welcome david ward. [applause] david: i am delighted to be here. i want to congratulate the portrait competition winners. i invite our competition winners to come and see how much better they are than most americans

contemporary portraiture. i've been fascinated with lincoln for a long time. the other reason i accepted his invitation is that whenever i've come here i've had a great time. i didn't realize i was going to be in leavenworth. you are taking your chances tonight. happy presidents' day. great to get together and celebrate the career of franklin pierce and william henry harrison and john tyler. i understand the point of a three-day weekend. there is a kind of a participatory medal now for the presidents. they all get lumped together. some of this is a justifiable suspicion of the great man

theory of history. that we had in the 19th century with thomas carlyle. popular biographies glorified lincoln and washington and teddy roosevelt. we now are more sensitive to democratic politics. diversity and the panoply of social history. i am not a devotee of the great man theory of history. i don't think individuals, with rare exceptions such as lincoln, determine everything in history. it doesn't really work for history which is much more multifaceted. i do think that we lose something as a nation if we are

not celebrating people who were great. not all the presidents have and not all presidents will. people like lincoln and washington and roosevelt have done so. we should pay some attention to that. it was short, i did my best. [laughter] the other thing is part of the interpretive theory as i'm getting older, historians are changing things as they need to come up with new ideas to keep their jobs. the frederick jackson turner frontier thesis is largely discredited.

as i thought about it again you can bring in the idea of america crossing the prairies and it does change the american character. i refer to the fact that i am on campus. carl sandburg's first biography of lincoln begins with the prairie years. the long travel between kentucky and illinois and the speech in leavenworth because in washington you are surrounded by the monumental lincoln. the lincoln memorial down at the end of the mall. lincoln was always an accessible figure. i'm fascinated as most people are with his face. this is a huge edifice with a

huge building of white marble. you can't do this anymore. e pluribus unum. after mussolini you can't use this any more. the monumental lincoln including this portrait that is the signature portrait in our gallery. of course we have all of the presidents. along with the white house we are the only place that has portraits of all the presidents. they made the mistake of putting me in charge of rehanging the presidents. i don't like this portrait and i would like it to replace it with something. this is typical 19th-century american portrait. it hides as much as it reveals. his face is been airbrushed. it is posthumous. lincoln being avuncular and

thoughtful and all the rest of it. the mystery of abraham lincoln. an extraordinary career. this western movement from kentucky to springfield, the family spends one entire winter in a lean-to, open-ended with a fire burning. the milk sickness takes his mother. we see lincoln as the president and we read back into these beginnings which are ultimately mysterious. i called my exhibition the mask of lincoln. talking to you in a professorial way.

lincoln had that element of the public like most politicians do. but there was something mysterious where the mask blocks the accessibility of getting to lincoln. it becomes more and more difficult. i think of henry fonda as the young mr. lincoln. you see then he has become part of the natural landscape. lying on his back with his feet in the tree and he is reading. this drove thomas lincoln mad. abraham lincoln would read a book while plowing. he would get to the end of the row and forget to turn the horse around. his father would come out and get angry at him. beat him with a switch. i am not a freudian.

the idea of parental disapproval in terms of setting lincoln off, this dreamy young man. dreaming of what? he's out in the middle of nowhere. on a small farm. he has no mentor. no guidance. no college. there was no safety net. if you didn't succeed you would die. you disappeared. there was no record of your passing. lincoln himself in his famous autobiographical sketch cuts off the discussion of his youth where he refuses to talk about it. he does this repeatedly. he cites thomas gray, and says his early life was just the short and simple annals of the poor. blocking any real inquiry from the chicago newspaper about what he was like. lincoln's father thomas was on

his deathbed. young mr. lincoln's moved on. he is 80 miles away and he refuses to come to the deathbed. he doesn't go to the funeral. he cuts off the relations with the man that he has grown to loathe. i used the phrase from the bible, the sweat of their face for my show on american workers. lincoln's ideology of free labor. the beginning of lincoln's evolution to an advocate of free labor. to anti-slavery abolitionism.

lincoln's coming-of-age politically at just a moment where photography is coming in. the hierarchical element of oil painting is disappearing. lincoln is not the first visual president. other presidents like george washington and andrew jackson or even the lesser-known ones. they would have an oil painting done because that was customary. descended from the kings and queens of england. there would be lithographs of varying quality. there was this thirst to find imagery. which photography satisfied.

you have lincoln for the first time here, his first photograph in 1846. becoming visual. he has worked up to be a lawyer. establishing himself. he's gone through this process of auto-didactic self teaching. all the cliches are true. he does walk five miles to return a book. he learned to cipher by using wooden logs. the legend only answer to the mystery of the beginning of this modern country. lincoln is coming out of the west. starting in 1846, he starts to get photographed.

he is a classic figure of the jackson democratic party. and yet he becomes a whig, which is seen as the party of privilege. it was not a class conflict between the haves and the have-nots. there is demographically a difference. but what lincoln does, you see the plaster casts of his hands because i want to emphasize his origins. a working-class individual. he was a rail splitter. he did some farming unwillingly for his farmer. and then on the river scuffling for jobs. there was no real pattern you can follow.

outside of the priesthood of the ministry. the roughhewn nature of lincoln that became part of his political career. he was intensely human. the attribute of his physical strength. one of those whipsaw guys who was famous for his wrestling ability. he would hold a sledge parallel to the ground and he can hold it there longer than anyone else. a test of masculinity. he jokes about his service in the black hawk war. he is elected captain.

his military career is not a success. there is an element of that early charisma that is embodied literally in his physique and the way that he appeared. the way his body is portrayed in photographs. and these casts of his hands. posthumously in the oil painting. the thing that makes lincoln a symbol of whig progress is that he is the only president to receive a patent. the portrait gallery exists in the original patent office building. it was built in the 1830's under jackson. this majestic building, i will show you around. a symbol of american progress. the takeoff of the american economy. under the combined to drive of the jacksonians democracy and the extension of the franchise to working people and small

farmers and the whig plan of henry clay. he was a man on the make. he becomes a corporation lawyer. he works for the railroads. the patents that he gets his particular interesting. i don't think it worked. this is the model that we have in the collection. the mississippi river was famous for its sandbars. lincoln invented in this combined borage was a way of walking the boat over sandbars. you would lower these posts and lift the boat up.

they must've been like lincoln very strong. and shuffle the boat over the sandbars. it is metaphorical that the openness of lincoln. the river should be open. opportunities should exist. a rising tide would lift all boats. this fascinating mechanism would allow the man to be that rising tide, to carry it down the river. grant wins the battle at the siege of vicksburg. lincoln writes to him, the father of waters runs again unvexed to the sea. i wonder if he thought about his boat, his patent. the point of america was to have

this element of opportunity and openness and to the river should run free. i go back to the landscape. the notion that the south couldn't be allowed to leave the union. because it was part of the sacred ground of the union. lincoln's so-called homeliness. he was famously ugly. i've spent a lot of time with lincoln and perhaps it is the stockholm syndrome. he seems more and more attractive to me. the thing i was struck by is the tousled romantic hair. almost ironic. very 1840's and 50's. the sense of style. what i noticed was that hooded eyes. his sense of inward this. lincoln is kind of saturnine and inward looking.

your get people smiling a 19th-century photographs because they had to hold still. lincoln is picturing himself. he is still a bad dresser. he has this incredible tie. they are of course black and white photographs. black with a white shirt. the inwardness of the eyes. that boy reading by the river. the politician who was masking his intentions behind jokes and witticisms. an understanding of who he was however he came to that understanding. he would not reveal himself. he is famous for using jokes to distract people.

the leaders of the republican party, they think he is above phone. lincoln is using jokes and country folk tales first of all in national democratic politics. william seward might not like those jokes. but the people like them. it was a way of connecting with the public. the homeliness become something that lincoln was more than happy to use to his advantage. opinions differ. he did not have the smoothness of the eastern politicians. a famous occasion in the lincoln douglas debates where lincoln says my opponent accused me of

being two-faced. if i had another face, when i wear this one? that element where he is using it again and the humility that is not completely forced. not completely fictional. lincoln knew who he was. he knew what he looked like. the smoothness and urbanity that he can use to his advantage where he is this frontiersman coming east. whitman and lincoln share this curious connection. whitman comes to idolize lincoln. they never met. this amazing quote by whitman in one of his political tracts

called the 18th president. he misses lincoln by two. he welcomes a redeemer president. who would come out of the real west clearing the woods and the prairie on the hillsides. some heroic shrewd fully formed beard faced american blacksmith. come across the alleghenies and walk into the presidency. i go back to the sense of the west as the cradle of a democracy. he responded to lincoln's democracy but also with the sense that the union is bound up in the bodies of the individual american citizens. they would be exemplified by the bonds that existed between each of us.

here is lincoln early on, the photographic process. jumping little bit chronologically here. photography is just getting started. we don't have a complete record as you would today. you had this episodic process. some of the prints don't survive. lincoln again is developing an advertisement for himself. he is a one term congressman. he goes back home. as he puts it, i must admit that the taste is in my mouth. his ambition is there. his secretary john nicolay says the little engine of his ambition knew no rest.

the people that knew him best saw this burning ambition that he had. to escape his nonexistence and his non-personhood as the son of this ne'er-do-well father. getting his photograph taken as evidence of his existence. this is a wonderful photograph. a series of prints were done by the springfield mafia they were running lincoln's career. showing him as a charismatic figure who is working his way through the whig party. in those days the congressional

delegation elected senators. lincoln douglas debate was kind of a spurious show of democracy because the people couldn't directly vote on the senators. but lincoln is beginning to stake a claim and make his name. people like joshua speed start to bring in photographers. we are with a society in which people didn't know what other people looks like. zachary taylor wins the nomination for president and defeats henry clay. clay snubbed the president-elect because he didn't know what he looks like. clay was effusive in his apology. the size of the country and the distance between people. the lack of imagery. as photography is coming on not

until the 20th century. with google we can go look at ourselves. that was not the case in the 1850's. photography is a way that you can have images made and most poignantly ordinary americans, it wasn't cheap but it wasn't expensive either. photography begins its service for everything from high school yearbooks to wedding photos. lincoln went along with walt whitman. the two people who begin to realize that photography is a way of transmitting one's personality. whitman enjoys getting his photograph taken almost as much as lincoln.

you didn't have to strike the same pose. henry wadsworth longfellow only had one pose. you see longfellow as the young poet and it is the same as when he is aged in gray. whitman is constantly experimenting with how he looks. wearing a hat, holding a butterfly. different shirts. he is constantly adapting his stance. lincoln will use this in a slightly different way to indicate his circumstances. as he moves into prominence in the white house and fights and leaves for the civil war. this is the light mask of abraham lincoln died just before he was inaugurated in 1861. portraits,you the

the one in the photograph. this is the older technology where in order to obtain an accurate depiction of someone, you have a life mask taken. house ord come to your you go to their studio and they would put a big lock of plaster of paris on your head and do a reverse mold. parenthetically, thomas jefferson retired when a man came to monticello and was chatting with jefferson and lost track of the time. jefferson nearly suffocated. he was too polite to get up and

rip the plaster off. jefferson was not in good health and they were going to sue brower. this is the older technology as opposed to get into this. i'm going back to another photograph. this is one that the springfield guys to together. this is alexander hustler. and you see the development of lines. it is well to remember how young lincoln was. he is 56 when he dies. again, he is growing into manhood before our very eyes and he is affected by the tremendous

circumstances of wanting a career that will move him into the law and politics and then into office. and this is the photograph that did it for him. you have a difficult time doing this with powerpoint. i probably should have managed -- mention this earlier. this is a very small photograph d. it is a carde -- it is a card de visit. a were the most common in the cheapest, as opposed to the big imperial place. in my garner show, they are glass plate negatives. technology is evolving in the have not invented film. in this process of chemical and visual simulation, you had a glass plate to take the negative

and then you take the print from it. if you wanted a little picture, you had a little plate. i was doing this for high school and they did not even know what film was. because anything is digital. this is the famous portrait that lincoln says -- this is the photograph that mr. brady took that made me president. the republican party rises. lincoln going back to the free soil free labor of his youth, that you should be rewarded for the work that you do, gravitates from the destroying of the whig party, which is collapsing.

he accepts in 1859 an invitation by henry ward beecher to come to beecher's big church in brooklyn and give a speech about whatever he wanted, but the session -- but the secession crisis is growing. what they really wanted to know what lincoln looked like. they wanted to hear him. so lincoln ghost of brooks brothers, buys this suit. the suit is getting better. and he goes to matthew brady studio on madison avenue and has his portrait taken. he then goes to the cooper union and delivers us incredible -- constitutional scholars can understand his speech. ordinary mortals do not unless you immerse yourself in legal culture. this is a well wrought speech

about why it is unconstitutional for the cell to secede. so job done, lincoln convinces everybody. they might not vote for them, but they have to taken seriously as a candidate. more importantly, because of the popular politics of all of this, brady takes his photograph, which david davis -- this is a society that is intense -- they hadn't invented professional sports yet. there is religion and politics. they were the two organizing devices that galvanize local communities in a credible ways that we can't understand now, from participation rates in voting and participation rates in church going to participation rates in political activity. they republican party in particular is rising, this whole

a sing of the whigs in the democrats led by lincoln creates modern campaigning. -- the coalition of the weeks and the democrats led by lincoln creates modern campaigning. they haven't quite invented photoshop, be considered on the fries and -- on the horizon. they hired some intern to cut little ovals and put them inside these really nice wooden painted gold ovals and created a political pin. if you demonstrate your allegiance in a way that did not

require the old fuddy-duddy way of more or less accurate illustration. there was the man. there was lincoln himself. it's an incredible little thing. this is the beginning of the modern media campaign with lincoln and the republican party adapting to all this. i'm throwing this and again because the older world of the caricature in an ace paper -- in the newspaper, you could not buy a paper with a photograph and it. i just like this. this is lincoln. he has gotten elected. and the sorts an assassination plot on the way to the capital. they send lincoln early in the

morning instead of later in the day. he was ridiculed for this, but he was empowered. you'll notice the really nice touch of the scaredy-cat in the foreground. so there is linked in the coward sneaking into town as a unit breaks up. and here we are with the confluence of alexander gardner and abraham lincoln. gardner is in town working for brady. gardner would take many photographs of what -- of lincoln. again, there is the photograph burying witness, bears witness to his presence, to his moving to the job. legendarily, lincoln is sort of hiding his right hand because, supported -- supposedly, it was swollen from shaking thousands of hands. i think that's a myth. i think it is a nice story and i don't mind retelling it. lincoln did shake a lot of

hands, but this is a fairly conventional piece. now the other thing that it's addressing is that you notice that he has grown the beard. lincoln famously grows the beard between the election and the inauguration. it is the biggest alteration by any president. and as it today if a president were to dramatically change their look, growing a beard between the election -- what i think it meant for reagan, the way -- for lincoln, the way lincoln is cutting off from the past. what he is doing, he is putting oh others things. half the south is out of the union and there's an element that he is toughening up. i am a big sports fan. i like talking. and the way the hockey players grow a beard during the playoffs. there is a test roster on -- there is a testosterone level here.

returning to a slightly more primitive state here. what lincoln is really doing is this is the first break break -- big break for lincoln. the rising politician is getting harder. they have become accustomed to his face. and i you see a new face. he reinventing himself as a wartime president. and this is the great alexander gardner photograph as lincoln begins to deal with this crisis. it is march 1861. lincoln is inaugurated. gardner goes to the east front of the cap at all. he takes this great outdoor photograph of the integration. this is lincoln's food -- famous speech. and when he appeals to is the mystic poors of memory that ties us each. the foundation of american

democracy in the revolution, the declaration of independence. he is begging this outcome if you will, to remember that shared inheritance and find common ground. of course, it doesn't work. in fact, just the opposite. lincoln's words fall on deaf ears. the south takes is inauguration as a black republican, a high radical republican mr. pink power. -- high radical republican usurpingower. this double whammy, which leads league and him as he would say, that the war came. and the war proceeds. and i bring in this worker -- this is the beginning of battlefield journalism with alexander gardner who is

beginning, in the same way that photography widens the sphere of who can have a portrait made of ordinary americans, the gardner does come at the same time that he is specializing in portrait photography for the generals or ordinary americans in the studio in washington, the revolution that begins to occur here, which will have a political impact is that gardner takes his camera out to antietam. 5000 casualties. 25,000 killed and wounded in one day. and of battlefield is the smoking wreckage because there is no infrastructure to take care of the troops. there's no dog tag team. there is no great registration. and gardner takes a camera and brings back these her five scenes of american casualties.

and we are critically ambivalent about displaying casualties. what this does is nds romanticism once and for all. annie idea that the civil war would be chivalrous sore gentlemen only when out of the window of people started to understand the consequences of industrial death. and "the new york times" had a great inventory oh which it says these photographs have a terrible statements in the mr. gardner, if he has not brought the war into our very houses, our parlors and streets, he has said -- has done something like like it. it has changed all kinds of ways from the way that we mourn, the way we worship him a that we think about language and culture. this directness, this empiricism

leads to both through an entire emotional and cultural change. where practically, again, lincoln goes out to antietam to find out what mcclellan is doing. mcclellan does not pursue south. lincoln is desperate for a general who will pursue lee. lincoln, i think him i had to wear the stovepipe hat as a passive aggressive gesture, the fact that i'm really tall. instead of minimizing the height -- and in the great election with douglas, douglas was not called the littlejohn for nothing because he was only 541. here, -- 5'1". here, lincoln is towering over little mac. this, again, or mcclellan -- and mcclellan thought lincoln was a

fool and treated him terribly rudely. lincoln is incredibly patient and he says mildly to mcclellan in one of these meetings before he fires them, he says, general, if you are not using your army, may i borrow it? [laughter] and mcclellan being of two self-important, he didn't get it here in -- get it. this is not the meeting in which lincoln fires mcclellan. it is where he is strong to find a what mcclellan is doing. i'm showing this picture because it is the beginning again a photojournalism. that camera was big. it was cumbersome. there was the process of taking a plate and developing it. gardner cannot manipulate the camera easily, but he was manipulative himself. he was taking himself out in getting the beginnings of photojournalism, which lincoln is participating in.

and what lincoln is doing here, again, lincoln doesn't talk as much as we think he did. his speeches, probably because a quality is really high. is famous on occasions where there was a surname where he tells the crowd, i appreciated, but i am not going to speak. but what if is doing and using photography, and this is the obverse of what whitman was doing. what when -- whitman was constantly posing. linkedin is indexing himself to the american people. he is using photography is a measure. as so many americans were fighting and dying, as the call was suffering more and more as mothers and fathers were mourning the lives and unworthy of the constitutional question. lincoln is getting photographed by gardner and the other

photographers in washington. it was a way of showing that he was on duty. all the photographs were for sale. you could get to gardner's studio and see them. lincoln is having his photograph taken because, what you begin to see, and this is where we begin to transition to the posthumous lincoln, because we know it is coming. you see the wear on terror on lincoln's body. -- wear and tear on his body. an art critic who reviewed the gardner said, by 1863 comedic and see the way the clothes are hanging off him. he's got the nights -- the nice suits still, but look at the way -- he is very well groomed in this picture. in 1863, there is something that is haunting. the eyes and a lot quite as dreamy. they are beginning to stare. there is that famous vietnam phrase, the-mile stare. and what he is staring at his this. an industrialized warfare is continuing.

if you didn't need that casually -- casualty list in the newspaper, these were the photographs the dead. you'll notice there don't have any shoes on. they were stripped of their shoes. again, lincoln is distressed because the need will not pursue lee as vigorously as he wants. there is something in this picture where there is again is

heartening element, which gardner captures perfectly. gardner was a great photographer for the great documentarian of the age. this is not dangle that lincoln usually posed in. there is a fierceness to it. he is looking right in the eyes. this is an interesting moment in american political culture. again, it is november 8. lincoln was invited to gettysburg to give what would become the gettysburg address. famously, lincoln is not the main speaker at the dedication of the cemetery. it is edward everett, the star order of the north. -- the star orator of the north. he had preprinted his remarks. and his remarks were really not remarks. they are two hours long. it is in a credibly long address. this is the thing that historians love, when these facts -- you get this level of serendipity.

lincoln goes down to gardner him studio. we know he was reading everett's address. he was chewing the fat with gardner his secretaries and he was reading it. i think lincoln was a political genius in the way he mastered campaigning and invented the campaign can. -- campaign pin. and also in terms of what was expected and breaking the mold. lincoln did not write the gettysburg address on the trainer to gettysburg. he was thinking about it a lot in the contest of slavery and abolitionism. and i'm convinced he sat there and said to himself, being a sly dog, you are going to give them two hours? i'm getting give them two minutes. no one is going to stop the president for speaking if you us to speak for 45 minutes. and i'm been a take these two minutes and him going to use them, because the other thing that he does -- and we know this from the diary entry in the ward

or mcclurkin -- all the gettysburg pictures robyn gardner's studio. while lincoln is sitting there, he is surrounded by the photographs that we just saw. it is a visual recapitulation of the battlefield in a graphic form. i believe this is when lincoln begins to construct the great preordination of the gettysburg address. he says nothing we do or say here can consecrate this crowd anymore than those that have fought and died here. it is for us, the living, to create the new birth of freedom. this is where he cuts the cord with the past. this is when he asked for the new birth of freedom. this is when he cuts american democracy loose and issues about the union and secession in the slavery and the tired

abolitionists. everything that had gone from 17761861. lincoln says enough. the new birth of freedom will be the new birth of american politics. and he radically reorients the war. so it is no longer a war for union. it is a war for freedom. i think it is because of the dialogue he was constructing a his own head, between what he wanted to do and what he saw in this terrible pictures by alexander gardner. again, this level of indexing that he is doing, the beard looking a little haphazard here. this great anthony burger photograph of lincoln, profile, this is the picture, by the way, that is on the penny. again, lincoln and profile. this weirdo on, stereoscopes or slightly different two card de visit. it is a strange looking lincoln because his hair has been cut. and we're back to the hooded allies and the slightly downturned mouth. the supposition is that he had a slightly different hair because he had been posing for another one of the life masks where they

would greet your hair back. so that's why he looked strange. and this again is his official family, nikolai and hayes, the lincoln secretaries. again, lincoln ran the war with two secretaries and a telegraph at the war office. so i commend him with his evolution of the federal government is in the process of being invented. and nikolai and hay are the -- and nikolay and hay are the two closest observers. even the people who knew him

very well thought that he was mysterious and strange and unfathomable. they never could figure it out. they always talked about what is the guy up to now? they were chine to get a handle on him. so now we are reaching the end game -- they were always try to get a handle on him. so now we are reaching the end game. his son was developmentally challenged. he only lived to 18. this is 1865. lincoln endured the death of his son who dies in the ward. i had a poet in the gallery and i asked him why he was interested in lincoln. he said, as a young father, he was desperately afraid for his children. and he identified with lincoln losing his son. and here is this incredible image about lincoln running the war the same time that he is

running the war area -- at the same time that his son has died. it's like trying to perform brain surgery wally dog is attacking your leg. -- while a dog is attacking your leg. notice the shadows. notice the hair. this is a burger earlier. the lines on the face becoming greater. the hands gnarled. look at the suit, the way it falls off him. and we are up tonight -- staging 65 were a link in israel elected on the balustrade above him lincoln is now below with a paper in his hands, a distant portrait. on the bow can is john welch booth, who is beginning to stalk linconln. the two gentlemen in gray are

possibly lewis powell and one of the other lincoln conspirators. booth was stalking link in the he was after him. he originally had a plot to kidnap again. when he discovers that lincoln will give us to qualified african-americans, he said, that is it, i will run him through. in february 5, gardner was thinking this would be the last sitting. this is a paparazzi photograph. this photographer, henry warren, had finagled his way to the white house. he was playing around. when he went to deliver the photographs, he said, go get your dad and i will take his picture, too. an exasperated lincoln takes this photograph or he does look kind of peevish. but you will notice again the eyes disappear. his presence to the public and the suffering, the suffering we

are dealing with in this great photograph by gardner, the ruins of the south and ruins of the confederacy. the north wanted to see them beaten badly. and gardner was serving that appetite. and lincoln is faced with the prospect the second inaugural, of binding the nation's wounds with charity toward all. and here again, the last sitting with lincoln, with a very haggard face. and again, when lincoln went into sin, he had several photographs taken of the little carte de visit. at the same time, he had this life mess taken. went people see this in the

gallery, they think it is a death mask. related -- the cadaverous element suggests some but he who is dead. there is an anticipation. this is about the same time as this. this is the famous cracked plate. some point in the development process, probably when gardner heated the play to pull the image, you had to heat the chemical mixture before you apply the paper. it cracked. these are incredibly fragile items. there are late to surviving imperial plates. this is a large format. gardner looked at the sprint and said, well, that is not any good and threw away the late -- the plate as a reusable. so there is one cracked plate image. it is not a very good condition and we always show it rarely. and i'm happy to have it in the garden show.

but this is a single moment. what we are looking at is lincoln at -- in february 1865. he is thinking about the in duration. he is thinking about the speech. he is thinking very construction, the incredibly torturous process of reconstructing the south and dealing with the social problems of emancipation and freedom. he is looking forward to a second term. he is melancholic because he is very tired. and you can see that in this photograph. there are some dispute about this. people disagree with me about this. but if you notice, the shoulders are out of focus. the last i come as you look at it, doesn't have the usual christmas and clarity of gardner's documentary. the hair is result. -- is grizzled. you can read the crack as booth's bullet and you can read it as the union being bound up

in the body of lincoln.