MR. S.S. MCCLURE, _New York City_.
_Dear Sir_: I have received the daguerreotype likeness you sent me on
the 19th inst., and which you understand to be the first ever taken of
Mr. Lincoln. I am delighted to have the opportunity to see and inspect
it. I think it a charming likeness; more attractive than any other I
have seen, principally perhaps because of the age at which it was
taken. The same characteristics are seen in it which are found in all
subsequent likenesses--the same pleasant and kindly eyes, through
which you feel, as you look into them, that you are looking into a
great heart. The same just purposes are also there; and, as I think,
the same unflinching determination to pursue to final success the
course once deliberately entered upon. And what particularly pleases
me is that there is nothing about the picture to indicate the low
vulgarity that some persons who knew Mr. Lincoln in his early career
would have us believe belonged to him at that time. The face is very
far from being a coarse or brutal or sensual face. It is as refined in
appearance as it is kindly. It seems almost impossible to conceive of
this as the face of a man to be at the head of affairs when one of the
greatest wars known to history was in progress, and who could push
unflinchingly the measures necessary to bring that war to a successful
end. Had it been merely a war of conquest, I think we can see in this
face qualities that would have been entirely inconsistent with such a
course, and that would have rendered it to this man wholly impossible.
It is not the face of a bloodthirsty man, or of a man ambitious to be
successful as a mere ruler of men; but if a war should come involving
issues of the very highest importance to our common humanity, and that
appealed from the oppression and degradation of the human race to the
higher instincts of our nature, we almost feel, as we look at this
youthful picture of the great leader, that we can see in it as plainly
as we saw in his administration of the government when it came to his
hands that here was likely to be neither flinching nor shadow of
turning until success should come.
Very respectfully yours,