Abraham Lincoln, 1860
Abraham as a congressman arrived at Cooper Union. Furthermore, the speech he prepared had to be perfect and the importance of the image. The portraitist set the gangly rail-splitter in a statesmanlike pose, tightened his shirt collar to hide his long neck, and retouched the image to improve his looks. In a click of a shutter, Brady dispelled talk of what Lincoln.
By capturing Lincoln’s youthful life before the war-ravaged, it propelled Lincoln from the edge of greatness to the White House, where he preserved the Union and ended slavery. As Lincoln later admitted, “Brady and the Cooper Union speech made me President of the United States.”