Who Is Lincoln?
I delighted in seeing the photograph of President Lincoln at Gettysburg in
the recent Kennedy School Bulletin, autumn 2004, pages 34 and 35, but am concerned that the person wearing the top hat is not President Lincoln as the red-circled emphasis would have its viewers believe. Would you please check other authorities on the matter?

My own enlarged copy of this photograph from the Library of Congress leads me to think that the gentleman to the left of the one circled, sans top hat and standing to the lower left, is President Lincoln. He has taken off his hat respectfully and is standing with the people on hallowed ground, off the platform where other dignitaries are seated on couches, etc., as he makes his two-minute address. I have studied this picture for several years, know something of its provenance, and even have corresponded with Lincoln biographer Professor David Herbert Donald about it. The picture reproduced from a glass plate was first identified in 1953 by then-curator at the National Archives, Josephine Cobb. You will notice on the photograph, upper right, a gentleman and a boy, who happens to be seated on his father’s lap. This gentleman has been identified as the governor of Pennsylvania. I have not had the occasion at this writing to contact that family’s descendants and establish what the family traditions hold for that day with such significance in all of American history, but it is something worth
pursuing.

Roger Sharpe MPA 1980
Harmony, NC

Another Opinion
You asked for comment on the very fine looking autumn 2004 issue of the Kennedy School Bulletin. Here is mine.

…I could have done without the sanctimonious, narrow-minded, even blind, comment in response to the article “Naked in Baghdad” by Ibrahim Afsah (autumn 2004, letters). Whatever bad deeds some U.S. soldiers may have committed in Iraq, I believe they are cleansed away many, many times over by ridding the world of Saddam Hussein’s regime. He and all Iraqis ought to be blessing the U.S.

…While there are nice things about the Bulletin, [that letter] is certainly not one of them.

David Basch MCP 1966
West Hartford, CT

Let us hear from you!
Read something in the Bulletin that made you angry? Learn something new? Want to see more or less of something? We want to hear what you think. Send comments and questions to publish@ksg.harvard.edu.