Ohio History Journal

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HAROLD HOLZER

HAROLD HOLZER

 

Lincoln and the Ohio Printmakers

 

 

Much has been written about the engraved and lithographed por-

traiture of Abraham Lincoln, a pictorial genre that did much to

benefit the nation's sixteenth president both politically and

historically.1 These crude and homely portrayals helped introduce

the little-known Lincoln to American voters following his unex-

pected nomination to the presidency in 1860. Later, engravings and

lithographs provided audiences with the first nationally-distributed

glimpses of the new president's new look after Lincoln arrived in

Washington to assume the presidency, sporting newly-grown

whiskers. Two years later, print portraits became useful propagan-

da instruments in popularizing the Emancipation Proclamation-

and its author-with an array of tributes commemorating the

writing and announcement of the document. And finally, after Lin-

coln's assassination the nation's printmakers played a major role in

defining the martyr's place in archive and folklore. The mythifica-

tion of Lincoln was not merely illustrated by the so-called "pictures

for the people"2 -it was given tangible form        and widespread

visibility by the infant medium. In all these ways, engravings and

lithographs helped Lincoln even as Lincoln (a popular subject whose

depiction usually meant profit) helped the engravers and

lithographers.

But while there is considerable scholarship on the subject of Lin-

coln prints as defined by category-campaign portraits, emancipa-

tion prints, family scenes, or assassination pictures, for example-

 

 

Harold Holzer, who has written on Lincoln portraiture for many magazines and

historical journals, won the 1980 Barondess/Lincoln Award of the Civil War Round

Table for his contributions to the field. He is public information director of

WNET/THIRTEEN, the public television station in New York.

 

 

1. Primary reference is Winfred Porter Truesdell, The Engraved and Litho-

graphed Portraits of Abraham Lincoln (Champlain, N.Y., 1933), vol. 2 (vol. 1 never

published).

2. Currier & Ives advertised their prints as "pictures for the people," and "the

cheapest and most popular pictures in the world." See Currier & Ives catalogue, Fall

1860; original in the Museum of the City of New York.