The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum received an original 1858 photograph of Lincoln made while he was campaigning for the U.S. Senate against Stephen A. Douglas.
Lincoln gifted the photo to a shopkeeper named Charles Lame, who had been severely injured while testing a canon to be fired during a campaign stop in Pittsfield.
The image, technically known as an ambrotype, had remained in the family for nearly 170 years when some of his descendants decided to donate it to the Presidential Library in Springfield.
“Original images of Abraham Lincoln are extraordinarily rare, and images with a fascinating back story like this are even more rare,” said Christina Shutt, executive director of the library and museum. “Lincoln fans everywhere should thank Charles Lame’s descendants for this generous donation.”
This photo provided by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum shows an ambrotype image of President Abraham Lincoln circa 1858. During his U.S. Senate campaign against Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln sat for a photograph after politicking in western Illinois and presented one of the copies to a man severely injured while testing a campaign-rally cannon whose life was spared by flesh-eating maggots. That is the unlikely, ghastly background of this original 1858 ambrotype of the future nation-saving Civil War president which the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has added to its collection, officials said Monday, Sept. 25, 2023. (Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum via AP)
