He's
right there when I enter the classroom first thing in the morning, his
gentle smile directly in my line of sight. That's just the way I wanted
it. The photograph is in the public domain, and so I could have gotten
it for free, but I was glad to pay an online poster company for an image
that's about 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide. It came shortly before his
hundred 199th birthday. Now I celebrate every day.
It's
a pretty famous picture. One of about a half-dozen we have engraved in
our collective memory, trotted out by retailers for Presidents’ Day
sales. It was taken by Alexander Gardner, former assistant of the famed
Matthew Brady, who got tired of Brady getting credit for his pictures
and struck out on his own. Gardner had been out in the field taking
pictures at the front, but came back to Washington and had secured an
appointment with the president. Though there's some dispute about the
dating, the consensus is that was taken on April 10, 1865, about four
days before he died. This was just after the fall of Richmond, one of
the few truly happy days of his presidency. Earlier that week, he'd gone
to the Confederate capital itself and swiveled in Jefferson Davis’s
desk chair (he had a rebel five dollar bill in his pocket that night at
Ford’s Theater). He had the good grace to be embarrassed when a group of
former slaves threw themselves at his feet on the street, thanking him
for their freedom. It was God, not I, who freed you, he said. Only one
day earlier, Lee had surrendered to Grant; for all practical purposes,
the war was over.
One
of the things I love so much about the picture is that smile on his
face, slight but unmistakable. That's very rare. People tend not to
smile in 19th-century photographs because exposure times were relatively
prolonged, and such expressions seem fake if you have to sustain them
for more than a moment. Of course, there was also the matter that he
didn't have a whole lot to smile about in those terrible days. The fact
that he was doing so here, just after his gargantuan task was
accomplished and just before he became another casualty in the struggle,
seems almost unbearably moving.
Indeed,
the smile, real as it is, does not hide the deep sense of sorrow etched
into his face. He fingers his glasses with a kind of absent-minded
gentleness. His bow tie is slightly off-center; to the last he never
lost his rumpled quality. He managed to retain a full head of jet black
hair and beard, only slightly touched with gray. Yet there's something
almost steely about them. Though his face seems about as soft as the
bark on a tree, I find myself wishing I could run my hand across it.
Walt Whitman had it right -- he's so ugly that he's beautiful.
But
it's the eyes that haunt me. His right eye is a socket; he looks like
he's half dead already. His left eye is cast downward slightly. It does
not seem focused on anything in the room, but seems instead to be gazing
within, saturated with a sadness that nothing will ever take away. They
say he had a great sense of humor and loved cracking jokes to the very
end, and I believe it. Surely there was no man on the face of the earth
who could have savored a good laugh more. A look into those eyes could
leave no doubt.
But
the strongest impression conveyed by the photograph is one of
compassion. Kindness as a form of wisdom. That's my aspiration. On
Monday morning, this room will be filled with hungry, well fed
adolescents. Some will be laughing, some will be content. But surely it
will do someone some good to have him there. He'll be gazing out for the
discussion of Little Big Horn, the Pullman Strike, the New Deal, the
request for an extension on the research essay, and lunch. Long after
I'm gone, he will remain.
Happy 204th, Mr. Lincoln.
