Abraham Lincoln has appeared so extraordinarily present in the cultural and political imagination of the United States during the almost 150 years since his assassination that it has become impossible to imagine how anyone could have celebrated his sudden death at the close of the Civil War. As an image of American political life, Lincoln's face seems ubiquitous. That face also circulates in currency, appearing not only on pennies but also on five-dollar bills, the only president other than George Washington to be minted more than once. The association with George Washington is significant because during the nineteenth century they were understood to be joined in a kind of national genealogy, a linked parentage for a country torn apart by Civil War.

There are now more books, articles, Web sites, and conversations than any person could take on at once concerning Abraham Lincoln. Public interest seems inexhaustible. The political ideas that his speeches generated have been succeeded by inevitable attention to his sexuality (especially given his intimate relationship with Joshua Speed), his marriage (especially given the involuntary commitment of his widow, Mary Todd, by his oldest son Robert), his attitudes toward race (in a countermove to the celebrations still associated with the Emancipation Proclamation), and his attention to the tactics of the Civil War (especially in a country where physical reenactments of battles are more popular than ever). Books on his photographed image sit next to books on his life.