Hundreds of Historic Manuscripts. Thousands More Being Digitized.

Photo signed as Samuel Clemens, taken in 1867 in Constantinople by Abdullah Frères. Clemens was in the midst of his trip on "The Quaker City," which also took him to the Holy Land.

Lincoln sat for his portrait more than forty times, but he said that if he had to pick an image that looked most like him, it would be this one.

One of five photographs of Abraham Lincoln taken by Mathew Brady in Washington on January 8, 1864, it is sometimes called "The Solitary Pine" pose, from the comment by Francis Grierson, who saw Lincoln debate Douglas. Lincoln, he said, "rose from his seat, stretched his long, bony limbs upwards as if to get them in working order and stood like some solitary pine on a lonely summit."

This photograph was taken in Baltimore, where the German rabbi had his first American congregation, and where he eventually had to flee for his life due to his outspoken opposition to slavery. He would never return.

Selah Merrill, known primarily as the longtime U.S. Consul to Jerusalem, famous for his antipathy for the Jewish people there, as well as anyone outside of mainstream Protestantism, was also, ironically, a chaplain with the 49th Colored Infantry during the Civil War. This rare carte-de-visite photo dates from his year's service in that capacity.