He stood there frozen for a few minutes, that’s how long the exposure time was before they discovered/invented materials that are more sensitive to light… and then of course, found ways to mass-produce them. Maybe he stood there five minutes?
Gotta wonder how his day was going before tidying up and being asked to stand there like a statue while staring straight at the box in front of him, and how it went after that. In that environment so familiar yet still utterly alien to our eyes. What did he have for dinner that evening. How were the restaurants and bars of the era?
It was a world of steam power but that predated electricity, except maybe for the telegraph, transmitting its’ mysteriously instantaneous messages in Morse code wherever the country-spanning wires were laid out, and no further. A world where horses were as abundant as cars are today. A world whose nighttime was lit by candlelight and oil-lamp.
Yes and he chose a particularly challenging pose to hold for a Daguerreotype! Many subjects back then preferred to sit in a very relaxed pose and they even used a small stand to hold the subject’s head still!
“I…am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done.”
- John Brown.
Yet our record bloodshed in the Civil War soon to come still wouldn’t be enough to completely remove it all. Sure slavery was abolished, but things were still horrible for so many reasons for the following 100 years, and somewhat still are today.
I blame Reconstruction ending too soon, honestly.
i blame reconstruction in the first place, it was co-opted by the people who made this shit an issue in the first place
That’s what happens when you kill it’s driving force and replace him with a sympathizer.
Let’s not pretend that Lincoln being there would have magically resolved it all. Let’s also not pretend he’d have cared to implement it to the level anyone might think.
We mythologize him, but he was ultimately a politician making calculated decisions for his career. That’s why he wasted effort seeking more electoral votes by getting Nevada made into a state. That’s why he chose Johnson to ensure he’d have some favorability with the south.
He did the right thing because it was politically convenient.
It’s pretty much a light switch though. Lincoln put this program in place and Johnson turned it off as soon as he could. Lincoln may not have won the peace but he would have at least tried.
