The Press: Is It Lincoln?

In U.S. newspapers last week appeared an 89-year-old photograph that was bound to start a historical argument. Is the tall man in the stovepipe hat (see cut) Abraham Lincoln? Historians have always supposed that Abraham Lincoln was not photographed in November 1863 during his address at Gettysburg, Pa. or on his way there. But the Western Maryland Railway, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary, dug out of the National Archives a picture which it believes shows Lincoln on his way to Gettysburg. The picture had gone unnoticed because it was labeled wrongly. Miss Josephine Cobb, photo chief of the National Archives, isn't sure that the whiskered man is Lincoln, but she has established that it was taken in late 1863 at Hanover Junction, Pa. (on the rail line to Gettysburg) by famed Photographer Mathew Brady.