The first known photograph of Abraham Lincoln, this Daguerreotype is believed to have been taken in 1846, in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois.
At the time he sat for this portrait, Lincoln was a lawyer who had just been elected to Congress. Lincoln and his family moved to Washington, D.C. not long after this photograph was taken.
He would return to Springfield after a single two-year term in the House of Representatives. Returning to the practice of law, he assumed his political career was behind him.
