“Well, that was quite a speech, I can tell you. He gave full measure—two and a half hours—and when he finally came to his grand peroration, the applause was like thunder. Then there was a psalm sung. Then Lincoln rose, and we could see him well enough.

“Now we knew he wouldn’t be speaking for long—we’d had the big speech—so we got ourselves prepared, myself and the other photographers, pretty quick. But I dare say you know how that is done.”

It had been no easy business getting a picture in the Civil War. The photographs were always taken in 3-D, which meant that two plates had to be inserted simultaneously into a double camera, one to the left, one to the right. The glass plates had to be quickly cleaned, coated with collodion, then, while still wet, dipped in silver nitrate before being put into the camera. The exposure time might only be a few seconds, but then one had to rush the plates, still wet, into the mobile darkroom. Quite apart from the difficulties of having people in motion during the seconds of exposure, the whole process was so cumbersome that taking pictures of battlefield action was almost impossible.

“Well, dammit, I’d heard the first words of his speech—‘Fourscore and seven years ago’—and I was on it, preparing my wet plates. And I’d finished ahead of the other fellows, and slipped them into the camera, and was ready to go, when I heard him say, ‘… that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ Then just as I was getting him in my sights, he stopped. And there was silence. Then he looked down at one of the organizers and said something. Seemed as if he was apologizing—he looked kind of discouraged. And then he sat down. Everyone was so surprised that they hardly even got round to clapping. ‘Was that it?’ said the fellow next to me, who was still trying to get the plates into his camera. ‘Guess so,’ I said. ‘Jeezus,’ he said, ‘that was fast.’ Of course, that speech is pretty famous now, but the audience didn’t think anything of it at the time, I can tell you.”

“So you got no picture of the Gettysburg address?” said Horace Slim.

“Not a damn thing. Nor did anyone, so far as I know. Did you ever see a photograph of that famous day?”

“That’s a good story,” said the journalist.

“Let me show you the West,” said Theodore.

It had been an excellent opportunity. A government commission, to go into the western wilderness with the surveyors and bring back photographs that would attract settlers to take up land there. He’d done a good job. Big, rich-looking landscapes; pictures of friendly Indians. The government men had been delighted. One charming picture of a little Indian girl had caught Frank Master’s attention, and he’d paid Theodore a good price for a print of it.