The Lincoln Portrait at the Lee Library
1860 Lincoln Photograph
The Lee Library Association is proud to participate in the Lincoln Trail in the Berkshires, a project celebrating the Lincoln bicentennial organized by Chesterwood. The trail is a collaboration of 14 historic sites and museums in the Berkshires.
A platinum print of a photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken in 1860 is on permanent display by the front desk in the Lee Library. This photograph was one of two taken of Lincoln about a month after his election by photographer Alexander Hesler of Chicago.
The photograph is framed with oak taken from the dining room floor of the Lincoln homestead in Springfield, Illinois. An original signature by Lincoln is inserted within the framing.
This rare print was donated to the Lee Library in 1899 by George N. Black, a native of Lee who lived on the same block in Springfield as the Lincoln family, from 1850 to 1861.
For a detailed article describing the photograph, Lincoln's comments on the portrait, and the letter by George N. Black donating the framed photograph to the Lee Library, see The Berkshire Gleaner, Wednesday, November 8, 1899.
There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.
- Lee Library ca. 1910