The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has added nearly 500 images to its online collection of high-resolution Lincoln pictures, including photos of Lincoln’s assassin, the nation grieving Lincoln’s death and the places he lived throughout his life.
The ALPLM’s “Picturing Lincoln” collection now offers 1,485 photos, illustrations and cartoons related to America’s 16th president. The collection is hosted by the Secretary of State’s Illinois Digital Archives.
Source: ALPLM
Highlights of the newly posted images include:
Photos of assassin John Wilkes Booth and illustrations portraying him with the devil or showing him as a ghostly fugitive.
Images of the many places Lincoln lived, from log cabins to the White House.
Scenes related to Lincoln’s death, including photos of mourning crowds and illustrations of him in heaven with George Washington.
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“Picturing Lincoln” was made possible by a $100,000 grant funded through the Illinois State Library. Several thousand other Lincoln images have already been scanned and will be added to the website over the coming months.
If there’s a thread running through the newly available images, it is the nation’s reaction to the assassination of the president. Viewers will find illustrations of Lincoln on his deathbed, ascending to heaven to take his place alongside Washington and being crowned with laurels by Liberty. Other images heap scorn on Booth. One shows him as a literal empty space defined by snakes, alligators and a grasping claw. In another, the fleeing assassin is haunted by a ghostly image of Lincoln.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
