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The Importance Of Lincoln's Hidden Face

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A little more than a month had passed since his inauguration. The differences of North and South could no longer be settled by peaceful means. Fort Sumter had been fired on. The President had already asked for 75,000 volunteers, and now, in May, he was asking for 500,000 more men to fight for the preservation of the Union. Lincoln’s cheeks had grown more cavernous, his brow and eyes more deeply furrowed. A man who saw him at this time, Gustave Koerner, commented: “Something about the man, the face, is unfathomable”. But it was his secretary, John G. Nicolay, who explained most eloquently why Lincoln’s hidden face could never be caught: “Graphic art was powerless before a face that moved a thousand delicate gradations of line and contour, light

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