Abraham Lincoln - At Gettysburg

Until 1952, no one realized that the National Archives held an unidentified treasure:  The only known photograph of President Lincoln, at Gettysburg, on the day he delivered his famous Gettysburg Address.

The Library of Congress, which has digitized a close-up of the photo, provides more background:

These modern prints showing the crowd around the platform at Gettysburg and a detail from that picture of President Lincoln on the platform [look at the center of the photo] were made from the original glass plate negative at the National Archives.

The plate lay unidentified in the Archives for some fifty-five years until in 1952, Josephine Cobb, Chief of the Still Pictures Branch, recognized Lincoln in the center of the detail, head bared and probably seated. To the immediate left (Lincoln's right) is Lincoln's bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, and to the far right (beyond the limits of the detail) is Governor Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania.

Cobb estimated that the photograph was taken about noontime, just after Lincoln arrived at the site and before Edward Everett's arrival, and some three hours before Lincoln gave his now famous address.

Click here to see the entire photograph, from which this detail is enlarged.

Credits

Image online, courtesy Library of Congress.