Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.

Francis Bicknell Carpenter dreamed of greatness. Born in Homer, N.Y., in 1830, the portrait painter studied at the Cortland Academy and then moved to Manhattan to make his name. But he knew portraits would take him only so far. The most distinguished art critics ranked them, along with domestic scenes and still life, as a lesser genre. It was history painting that reigned pre-eminent — works like John Trumbull’s “Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill” (1786), and Emmanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (1851), which drew throngs when first exhibited and was hailed as “the best painting yet executed for an American subject.”

After Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, Carpenter knew he had found the subject for his masterpiece. He sought an audience with the president and asked Owen Lovejoy, an Illinois congressman and abolitionist, to arrange a meeting. “I wish to paint this picture now, while all the actors in the scene are living,” he told Lovejoy. “I wish to make it the standard authority for the portrait of . . . Mr. Lincoln as it is the great act of his life by which he will be remembered and honored through all generations.”

U.S. Senate Collection

Carpenter met the president on Feb. 6, 1864. As the artist remembered it, Lincoln said “we will turn you loose here and try to give you a good chance to work out your ideas.”

Shortly after their February interview, Carpenter moved into the White House, where he remained for six months. The artist had Lincoln and cabinet members pose for him again and again, he arranged for them to be photographed, he borrowed books and maps to portray them accurately on the canvas. Much to the dismay of Mrs. Lincoln, he took over the state dining room. Visitors would look at the artist engaged in his work and President Lincoln would explain, “Oh, you need not mind him; he is but a painter.”



An artist’s most important decision is what to paint, and Carpenter chose to commemorate the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation to the cabinet on July 22, 1862. It had taken Lincoln time to arrive at that moment, but he had become convinced of the necessity, according to one cabinet member at the meeting, of “proclaiming the emancipation of all slaves within States remaining in insurrection on the first of January, 1863.” Lincoln later told Carpenter, “I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics, or lose the game.”

Carpenter explained his artistic intentions:

I conceived of that band of men, upon whom the eyes of the world centered as never before upon ministers of state, gathered in council, depressed, perhaps disheartened at the vain efforts of many months to restore the supremacy of the government. I saw, in thought, the head of the nation, bowed down with the weight of care and responsibility, solemnly announcing, as he unfolds the prepared draft of the Proclamation, that the time for the inauguration of this policy had arrived; I endeavored to imagine the conflicting emotions of satisfaction, doubt, and distrust with which such an announcement would be received by men of the varied characteristics of the assembled councilors.

Whatever his vision, Carpenter had chosen an odd moment to commemorate. Even Lincoln didn’t recollect the exact date of the first reading, telling the painter it “was the last of July, or the first part of the month of August.” Salmon P. Chase later said that “not the slightest trace” of the meeting on July 22 “remains on my memory.” The artist might have picked any of a number of other occasions that were more memorable and could have proven more visually compelling and dramatic: Sept. 22, for example, when a resolute Lincoln read to the cabinet a story by Artemus Ward and spoke of God’s providence before issuing the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Or the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation itself on Jan. 1, when Lincoln struggled to still his hand which trembled from the exertion of greeting visitors all day.

But having chosen July 22, Carpenter stuck with it. On July 22, 1864, two years to the day after Lincoln’s announcement to the cabinet, he was ready to unveil for the president and his councilors the huge canvas, 9 feet by 14.5 feet, which was titled “First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln.”

Carpenter had indeed created a tableau of the cabinet meeting. Lincoln sits just left of center, proclamation and quill in hand. To the far left are Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles is seated, with his back to the wall, and standing beside him are Secretary of the Interior Caleb Smith and Postmaster General Montgomery Blair. To the far right of the canvas, arms crossed, sits Attorney General Edward Bates. Secretary of State William Seward, is in profile, speaking. There are two portraits in the room — the departed Secretary of War Simon Cameron on the left and Andrew Jackson, above the mantel. Read left to right, the painting depicts cabinet members in descending order of their enthusiasm for the Emancipation Proclamation.

Carpenter has also included a selection of books, newspapers and maps. The New York Tribune rests on the floor beside Stanton; on the table is a parchment copy of the Constitution and, before Bates, a map of the seat of war in Virginia; another map, showing the distribution of slave population, is propped up on the right-hand side, and on the floor nearby are William Whiting’s “War Powers of the President” and Joseph Story’s “Commentaries on the Constitution,” two works that influenced Lincoln’s decision; beneath the table are volumes of the Congressional Globe.

Despite the artist’s heroic efforts, the painting was not a success. Lincoln diplomatically said, “It is as good as it can be made.” Noah Brooks, correspondent for The Sacramento Daily Union, was less tactful. The problem, Brooks thought, was that the scene did not lend itself to history painting: “a group of men, wearing the somber-hued garments of American gentlemen, assembled in a plainly furnished apartment, though earnestly discussing a matter which is now historic, does not furnish a tempting subject for the tricks and bewildering cheats of art.” William O. Stoddard, one of Lincoln’s secretaries, thought the painting uninspiring and joked that the title should have been “Table, surrounded with gentlemen waiting to have their picture taken.”

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The review in The New York Times was more kind, stating that “the picture will be viewed with satisfaction by succeeding generations for its special merits of portraiture.” But the reference to portraiture must have irritated an artist who aspired to being feted as a history painter. The Times review concluded, “when slavery has become a surprise and a horror to everyone in the land; when the Proclamation of President Lincoln has passed into history as a splendid trophy of a sanguinary war; when the gratitude of a people that no longer knows a bondman reverts to the heroes that made them glorious, then will such a canvas be gazed upon with respectful admiration.”

Carpenter took the canvas on tour to several cities (special hinges in the frame allowed him to fold the work, thus making it easy to transport), and then brought it to his studio and continued to tinker with the portraits. In 1877, a philanthropist purchased the painting and donated it to Congress, where a dedication ceremony was held the following year on Lincoln’s birthday. On that day, of the eight men depicted, only Montgomery Blair survived. The painting now hangs far from the spotlight, near the west staircase in the Senate. A print, engraved by Alexander Hay Ritchie, achieved greater success. It “will be prized in every liberty-loving household,” declared Noah Brooks. Lincoln was the first to subscribe for a copy; when it appeared in 1866, it went to his widow.

Although Carpenter may not have satisfied his ambitions as a painter, he succeeded as a writer. In 1866, he published “Six Months at the White House With Abraham Lincoln.” The book was a sensation, and it remains an essential volume in any Lincoln library. A review in The Times praised the work for facts and anecdotes as “pointedly illustrative of Mr. Lincoln’s character and inner life as any that have yet found that way into print.” Another publication declared “this is a book that will live when many of the heavy biographies of its central figure shall have been forgotten.” Carpenter had created an unforgettable historical portrait after all — only he had done so not with brush but with pen.

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Sources: Francis Carpenter, “Anecdotes and Reminiscences,” in Henry J. Raymond, “The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln” (1865) and “Six Months at the White House With Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Picture” (1866); Frederic B. Perkins, “The Picture and the Men” (1867); Harold Holzer, Gabor S. Boritt, Mark E. Neely, Jr., “Francis Bicknell Carpenter (1830-1900): Painter of Abraham Lincoln and His Circle,” American Art Journal 16 (Spring 1984), pp. 66-89; P.J. Staudenraus, “Mr. Lincoln’s Washington: Selections From the Writings of Noah Brooks” (1967); Michael Burlingame, editor, “Inside the White House in War Times: Memoirs and Reports of Lincoln’s Secretary” (2000); New York Times, October 21, 1864 and September 17, 1866. On history painting see William Ayres, editor, “Picturing History: American Painting, 1770-1930” (1993).

Louis P. Masur, professor of American studies and history at Rutgers University, is author of “Lincoln’s Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union” (forthcoming, Harvard University Press).

