Abraham Lincoln died on this day a long long time ago (144 years). I have been thinking about Lincoln a lot lately as I’ve recently been reading a book about his life I downloaded from Google Books.
Anyhow, this is the book I read by the light of the nightlight when my wife is feeding the baby in the middle of the night. I find if I don’t read I wind up falling asleep, and that is no good because my snoring tends to wake up the baby!
I was doing some cruising at Wikipedia and came across the above photograph. I find these old photographs fascinating. This one is of President Lincoln and Gen. George B. McClellan in the general’s tent I believe at Antietam. We normally see Lincoln on our money, so it is very surreal to see him in an outdoor setting, sitting and talking with somebody. It’s surreal to me at least.
The Struggling Writer 
He’s got such striking features. He even looks stately lounging in a tent.
There are a lot of old photos like this available on the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Catalog including this one which has a 87 megabyte high resolution tiff file available for download. ( http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpb.04351 ) I’ve been using the catalog for several years for civil war related photos as well as images from the Great Depression.
THe is one of the most vivid pictures ive ever seen of him