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  In the 1864 presidential election Lincoln faced his former general George McClellan. This cartoonist managed to mock both candidates in the same image.
  
  Famously indecisive as commanding officer of the army of the Potomac, McClellan is portrayed as Hamlet -- whose fatal flaw inaction cost him his life -- and Lincoln as Yorick, an old jester.

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  The museum's award-winning permanent exhibit, Abraham Lincoln and the American Experiment, includes 4 theaters and 11 exhibit galleries, and features hundreds of artifacts and images from Lincoln's era.
  

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  No president before his time was more widely photographed than Abraham Lincoln. His likeness was familiar and available all over the country in the form of carte de visite photographs, engravings, and newspaper illustrations. This is a particularly stern likeness, but nevertheless, it is an example of the photographs that would have been available.

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  This public service message, encouraging children to read, chose Lincoln and Washington -- America's least formally educated presidents -- as model readers. Although Lincoln only had the equivalent of a year's formal teaching in his lifetime, he was famed for reading everything he could get his hands on as a boy and a young man.

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  Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln married on November 4, 1842. Though the two loved each other very much, Mary Todd had an explosive temper, and they often were quite quarrelsome. After losing two sons and her husband, her instability worsened and her hallucinations and extreme anxiety about plots to murder her eventually led her son Robert Todd Lincoln to put her in a mental institution.

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  This painting portrays Lincoln with his son, Tad. Of his four boys only one made it to manhood. Robert Todd Lincoln, the sole survivor, grew up to become a successful lawyer and business man, and served as a cabinet officer and ambassador under three presidents.

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  Although it was adopted by the Confederate Army, Dixie was one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite songs. It was even played at his inauguration.
  
  In 1865 Lincoln was quoted saying "I have always thought 'Dixie' one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it. I presented the question to the Attorney General, and he gave it as his legal opinion that it is our lawful prize."

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  This is a rare photograph of a "Wide Awake" party organized by Lincoln's political lieutenants to support his candidacy for the presidency. The "Wide Awakes" led torch-light parades through the streets, playing music and carrying fence rails supposed to have been made by Lincoln, their "rail-splitting" candidate, during his boyhood.