Mary Liked the Clean-Shaven Look
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| By Harold Holzer |
| Published Online: April 18, 2009 |
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In February 1861, longtime Illinois residents Abraham and Mary Lincoln moved their family to Washington, D.C., where the new president took up residence in the war-riven White House armed with a reassuring new image: that of a bearded statesman. Lincoln had begun growing his now-iconic whiskers only weeks after winning the 1860 election.
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By the time he arrived in the capital for his inauguration, he was all but unrecognizable to the admirers who had come to know him only through his ubiquitous, but beardless, campaign portraits. Lincoln must have liked what he saw in the mirror. He never shaved again except to trim his thick beard.
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This is the same photograph of her husband that Mary Lincoln took with her, along with her other precious family pictures, to Washington. The original was taken by Samuel M. Fassett in Chicago on October 4, 1859, when Lincoln was still seven months away from the presidential nomination.
Ten days after Abraham Lincoln's death, the photographer who took this picture confirmed its importance to the martyred president's widow. Reported Fassett: "Mrs. Lincoln pronounced [it] the best likeness she had ever seen of her husband."
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