Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln: A Story of a Picture

Francis Bicknell Carpenter wrote Six Months at the White House after the unexpected popularity of a series of articles published in the New York Independent relating to Abraham Lincoln following his assassination. Carpenter, a Civil War portrait painter, was originally hired to capture President Lincoln in the picture, “First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation before the Cabinet.” During the six months occupied in painting this picture, Carpenter enjoyed constant interaction with the President, as well as the various members of his Cabinet. Lincoln was enthusiastic in helping Carpenter, even letting him use the state dining room as his studio.

The incidents given were not in any sense isolated exceptions to the daily routine of Mr. Lincoln’s life. The aim of the author was to portray the man as he was revealed to him, without any attempt at idealization. Carpenter has woven into the book personal reminiscences from various individuals, published and unpublished, which bear intrinsic evidence of the genuineness of the great man, Abraham Lincoln.

Written in a spirit of enthusiasm and affection, Six Months at the White House is a simple, matter-of-fact record of daily experience and observation, fragmentary but true, in all essential particulars of life in the White House as observed by Carpenter from February to August 1864. This edition is a facsimile reprint, “As Published in 1866”. A great gift for any Lincoln History buff.