A former Disney animator turned historian believes he has found a rare picture of President Abraham Lincoln from his visit to Gettysburg. On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln delivered his most famous speech honoring those who died at the battle of Gettysburg and during the Civil War. There is one photograph that is undoubtedly of the president on that day. There have been other unauthenticated photos claiming to depict the president at Gettysburg. Now Christopher Oakley, a new media professor at the University of North Carolina says he has discovered a never before seen photo of Lincoln.
The discovery of the photograph has been published in the October issue of Smithsonian Magazine. Oakley was working on a 3-D image of Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg address when he made the discovery. According to the Smithsonian article, Oakley is looking to clear away some of the confusion and controversy that surrounds Lincoln's speech at the Soldiers National Ceremony. Oakley is part of the Virtual Lincoln project. The group has spent hundreds of hours combing through documents, photographs and creating virtual models to recreate the President's visit to Gettysburg.
Oakley's discovery of the photo is only the second such discovery. Six years ago, amateur historian John Richter announced he had found a photo of Lincoln in Gettysburg on horseback giving a salute. There has been some debate as to who is actually in the Richter photograph. Oakley says he has discovered Lincoln in the same crowd as Richter but a few yards to the right. Former supporters of Richter are now saying that Oakley's discovery is Lincoln.
When Oakley was investigating a series of photographs that would eventually lead him to discover what he believes is an image of Lincoln -- he was actually looking for Lincoln's advisors and not the man himself. The scholar believes his has an image of Abraham Lincoln before the president gave his famous speech. It was the discovery of Lincoln's secretary of state Seward that led Oakley to find the president. Lincoln is said to be standing to the right of the podium, without wearing his iconic black hat.
Using a known image of the president, Oakley placed the two images on top of one another to see if the facial features matched. Oakley says everything has lined up and he is convinced that he has discovered the second confirmed photograph of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Oakley told Smithsonian Magazine that he basically leaped for joy when he found the image of Lincoln. When Oakley realized who he had discovered he could not believe it, until it finally sank in and he exclaimed "that's him!"
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