Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. If he were alive today, he would be exactly 200 years old.
To commemorate the life of the former US President, I was reading up on the Kaplan Daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln, a spectacular documentation of forensic evidence that points to the fact that this is the earliest known photograph we have of Lincoln. It may not look like him, but once you read the authentication process and evidence, I think you’ll be persuaded to believe otherwise.
This daguerreotype, referred to as the Kaplan (Figure 1a), dates from the early 1840s {1,2,3,4}. Born in 1809, Lincoln would have been in his early 30s. Hitherto, the earliest known photographic portrait of Abraham Lincoln, known as Meserve #1, was made in 1848 when Lincoln was 39 years old (Figure 1b) {5}.
Numerous accounts have revealed that Lincoln underwent a noticeable change in his physical appearance beginning in January 1841 as a result of a grave emotional crisis {6}. This coincides with his reported failure to go through with his scheduled marriage to Mary Todd, leaving her literally waiting for him at the altar. (They were married the following year.) This emotional crisis, just one of a series of such episodes to plague him throughout his life, was the cause of Lincoln losing a considerable amount of weight {7}.
Young Lincoln was known to be muscular and extremely powerful {8}. The older Lincoln was much thinner, and also prematurely aged by personal problems and the responsibility and anguish of the office he held during perhaps the greatest crisis the United States has ever undergone{9}.
I think this is wildly fascinating because most people think of Lincoln as a tall, lanky and thin man. But contrary to this, the evidence presented in this photograph, along with written historical accounts, suggest that he was actually not so thin and quite muscular to the eye.
Claude N. Frechette, M.D. goes into very exact details about why this photograph is in fact Lincoln despite not having any sort of resemblance to better known portraits of Lincoln. I encourage you to read it and take a look at the photographic evidence and illustrations that are presented. Maybe it’ll make you think differently about the man in the black coat and top hat.
