Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/153



HE known portraits of Abraham Lincoln cover a period of seventeen years, the earliest being a daguerreotype supposed to have been taken in 1848. No picture of him exists which can be said with certainty to have been produced in the first half of the fifties; but in the latter half of that decade many were taken, particularly after his debates with Douglas made him so prominent a figure. After Mr. Lincoln's election to the Presidency the number of his portraits multiplied rapidly, for he seems to have yielded with great good-nature to the applications for sittings made by photographers and artists. From the large number of