The Editors of LIFE - LIFE Lincoln: An Intimate Portrait

My earliest recollection... is of the Knob Creek place in Kentucky, Lincoln wrote in 1860 of his childhood home, seen here in a faithful reconstruction that was photographed for LIFE by Ralph Crane in 1952. The rail fence in the foreground is of the kind young Abe often worked on. Photograph by Ralph Crane/LIFE

Lincoln

AN INTIMATE PORTRAIT

The Lincoln section of the mountainside monument in the Black Hills of South Dakota is seen on a sunny day. Mount Rushmore signals his legacyalong with those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Rooseveltand will continue to forevermore. Photograph by Ed Nugent/FogStock/Aurora

LIFE Books

Managing Editor Robert Sullivan

Director of Photography Barbara Baker Burrows

Creative Director Mimi Park

Deputy Picture Editor Christina Lieberman

Copy Editors Don Armstrong, Barbara Gogan, Parlan McGaw, Joel Van Liew

Writer-Reporters Marilyn Fu, Amy Lennard Goehner, Mary Hart, Daniel S. Levy, Mary Alice Shaughnessy

Associate Picture Editor Sarah Cates Art Directors Anke Stohlmann, Steve Walkowiak

Editorial Associate Jehan Jillani

Special Contributing Editor Andrea Barbalich

Special thanks: Keya Morgan of the Keya Morgan Collection, Lincolnimages.com

Carla Knorowski , Chief Executive Officer, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation

James M.Cornelius , Curator of the Lincoln Collection , Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

Jennifer Ericson , Library Associate, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

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Richard K. Prue (Director), Richard Shaffer (Production), Dios Astro, Keith Aurelio, Jen Brown, Charlotte Coco, Liz Grover, Kevin Hart, Mert Kerimoglu, Rosalie Khan, Patricia Koh, Marco Lau, Brian Mai, Po Fung Ng, Rudi Papiri, Robert Pizaro, Barry Pribula, Clara Renauro, Vaune Trachtman

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Senior Editor Roe DAngelo, Alyssa Smith

Managing Editor Matt DeMazza

Copy Chief Rina Bander

Design Manager Anne-Michelle Gallero

Assistant Managing Editor Gina Scauzillo

Editorial Assistant Courtney Mifsud

Photo Assistant Caitlin Powers

Special thanks: Allyson Angle, Katherine Barnet, Brad Beatson, Jeremy Biloon, John Champlin, Ian Chin, Rose Cirrincione, Assu Etsubneh, Mariana Evans, Alison Foster, Kristina Jutzi, David Kahn, Jean Kennedy, Hillary Leary, Samantha Long, Amy Mangus, Kimberly Marshall, Robert Martells, Nina Mistry, Melissa Presti, Danielle Prielipp, Kate Roncinske, Babette Ross, Dave Rozzelle, Matthew Ryan, Ricardo Santiago, Divyam Shrivastava

eISBN : 978-1-61893-230-3

Copyright 2015 Time Home Entertainment Inc.

Published by LIFE BOOKS, an imprint of Time Home Entertainment Inc., 1271 Avenue of the Americas, 6th floor
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Vol. 15, No. 2 March 6, 2015

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Front Cover: Photograph by Alexander Gardner/Getty

A Final Note: Says James M. Cornelius, of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield: We have this little note. The original was tri-folded, as if for his hat-storage, and we own what is likely the same hat, too. The note appears in no known letter or speech and is presumed to date from the debates season of 1858 against Douglas, though possibly it is from earlier. It is generally referred to as the Definition of Democracy note. Photograph from Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

INTRODUCTION
Lincoln Lives

ALFRED EISENSTAEDT/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY

Two Brownies look up at the marble statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in a picture made for LIFE in 1945 by Alfred Eisenstaedt, one of the magazines four original photographers.

A QUESTION THAT WILL be asked more than once in these pages: When you look at Abraham Lincoln, what do you see?

Sometimes the answer is, Its not what I see, its what I hear. The immaculate, short phrases ring in the ear, and they uplift. We aspire to answer toor be our better angels.

Sometimes: I dont see him. I see a thing, or an idea, I see...

Freedom? America? Democracy?

He was killed 150 years ago. Our nation was one thing before he was born and quite another after he died. It is a general assumption that we could not have gotten from therebeforeto here, today, without him. That general assumption is certainly true.

As the sometimes complex but, we hope, lucidly presented narratives in the pages that follow try to explain, Lincoln was both an accident and not. His heritage, education and early political career could never have given rise to a great Presidentor leader. Not a chance, not even in America.

Yet his heritage, education, experience, ambition, luck and occasionally blessed political career did give rise to one great leader. Just one essential one. Abraham Lincoln arrived at his place by dint of his personal strength and self-assurance, and, saints be praised, he arrived at the place where the United States needed him to be.

It is natural that LIFE Books looks at Lincoln 150 years on. Our magazine was founded more than 75 years ago with the mission to tell strong narrative stories in words and photographs. Lincoln arrived on the American and world scenes concurrent with the advent of photography. There are probably more than 130 known pictures of Lincoln today, but certainly there are a couple in an anonymous American attic somewhere, waiting to be discovered. A great many of the 130 are in this book, prompting each of us to ask: When I look at Lincoln, what do I see?