The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has obtained an original 1858 photograph of the future president with an interesting backstory. Abraham Lincoln gave the image as a memento to a severely injured man. Lincoln stopped for a campaign rally in a western Illinois town during his campaign for the U.S. Senate against Stephen A. Douglas. Afterward, he sat for ambrotypes in a local gallery. He promised one copy to a shopkeeper who had been severely injured a day earlier while testing a cannon to be fired during the rally. It exploded accidentally and nearly severed the man’s arm. The man survived and his descendants held onto the image until they donated it to the museum.

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