Lincoln: A Photobiography

In Lincoln: A Photobiography, author Russell Freedman chronicles the life and times of the sixteenth American president, who happened to be one of the most photographed men of his time. The comprehensive image collection included in this volume doesn't just complement the story; it is an integral part of the presentation that adds further color and perspective to the various episodes in Lincoln's life. The result is an in-depth introduction to one of the most celebrated and complicated figures in American history.

The opening chapter of this unique biography takes an unusual vantage point right from the start. Freedman explains that while Lincoln was indeed captured on film frequently throughout his life, there exists no photograph that could possibly do him justice. Photographers, artists, and writers have all tried to capture the "real" Abraham Lincoln, but the truth of the matter, from Freedman's perspective, is that Lincoln remains somewhat elusive today. The Lincoln the author has come to know through his research was a carefully guarded man who didn't like to reveal a lot about himself. So, while we have the facts of Lincoln's life, it may not be possible to ever fully know the man, no matter majestic he might be. Much of our modern understanding of who Lincoln was—beyond the basic details of the recorded history of his life—comes from conjecture, which has lent him an almost mythic quality in the popular imagination.

Abraham Lincoln is born in 1809 in a one-room log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky. He grows up on farms in Kentucky and Indiana and is mostly self-educated. At seventeen, he works as a flatboatman on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, giving young Abe his first experience of the world beyond the backwoods he has known up until that point. He returns home and moves with his family to Illinois, but he has glimpsed the possibilities that lay beyond his country life.



Lincoln, likely inspired by his new life experiences, devotes himself to his studies and focuses on learning the law. He becomes a country lawyer and marries Mary Todd, the daughter of a wealthy Kentucky slaveowner. Lincoln becomes a leader in the Whig Party, and from there, wins election to the state legislature and then Congress. At one point, he abandons politics and resumes his career as a modest country lawyer, but when Democrats start turning midwestern states onto the idea of slavery, he wades back into the political arena. In the newly-formed Republican party, Lincoln is a standout, but he runs an unsuccessful senate race against Democrat Stephen Douglas. Just two years later, on the heels of his Senate defeat, Lincoln runs for President of the United States. And wins.

Freedman focuses on the President's attempts to end slavery, culminating with the Civil War. Lincoln is a proactive Commander-in-Chief, supervising all major aspects of the war, selecting generals, and shutting down the South's trading routes. At the same time, he keeps focused on the ultimate goal of abolishing slavery, using his political wiles and intellect to win his adversaries over to his way of thinking; some come on board, many don't. But Lincoln is undeterred. In 1863, he issues the Emancipation Proclamation, changing the federal legal status of enslaved African Americans in parts of the South from slave to free. Lincoln orders the Army to protect fugitive slaves and advocates to political friend and foe alike to pass the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, which will ban slavery. After much discussion and machination, Lincoln pushes through a majority, the amendment passes, and slavery ends forever on American shores.

Freedman ends with a record of Lincoln's assassination. Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth while in the audience at Ford's Theatre. The next day, April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln dies. In either an eerie premonition or a testament to his own keen intellect, Lincoln seemed to long accept that he could well die by assassination. “If I wore a shirt of mail, and kept myself surrounded by a bodyguard, it would be all the same," he says at an earlier point in his life. "There are a thousand ways of getting at a man if it is desired that he should be killed." Shortly before his death, Lincoln tells of a dream he has, in which he is walking around the White House and comes upon a wake. "Who is dead in the White House?" he asks. "The President," comes the answer, "he was killed by an assassin.”



In addition to photographs, Lincoln: A Photobiography contains drawings, letters, and other assorted visual aids charting Lincoln's life and career. Freedman also includes a list of further books on Lincoln, his presidency, and his contributions to American life.

Lincoln: A Photobiography was first published by Clarion Books in 1987. The following year, it won the Newbery Medal—the first nonfiction book to take the top prize in three decades.