If you’re any kind of geek when it comes to presidents, you probably already know that Abraham Lincoln wasn’t the most polished looking fellow. In fact, it seems from firsthand accounts that the man was downright awkward in a multitude of ways, from his gangly limbs to his troubles with public speaking.
A North Carolina newspaper, The Newbern Weekly Progress, wrote that the future president was “coarse, vulgar and uneducated.”
The Houston Telegraph claimed he was “the leanest, lankiest, most ungainly mass of legs, arms, and hatchet face ever strung upon a single frame. He has most unwarrantably abused the privilege which all politicians have of being ugly.”
A woman named Mary Boykin said Lincoln was “grotesque in appearance, the kind who are always at the corner of stories, sitting on boxes, whittling sticks, and telling stories as funny as they are vulgar.”
All of these are quite harsh, even by modern day standards, right?
Democrats took to begging the newspapers not to show his picture – a jeering, anti-Republican rallying cry that seemed to catch fire.
Now, being awkward is no crime, and it certainly has no bearing on one’s ability to govern, but it turns out that a public image was as important to a political career back then as it is today. In order to gain and then retain the confidence of the people, Lincoln resorted to what amounts to some old school Photoshopping.
He visited well-known Pennsylvania photographer Mathew Brady – a man who, according to The New York Times,…
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