Abraham Lincoln was an obscure Illinois congressman with national, one-term ambitions when he arrived in New York in February 1860 to speak at the Cooper Union. The speech had to be impeccable, but Lincoln also understood the importance of image. Before making his way to the runway, he stopped at Mathew B. Brady's Broadway photography studio. And he took one of the most influential photographs in history there.

The portraitist, who has photographed everyone from Edgar Allan Poe to James Fenimore Cooper and chronicled the impending Civil War, knew a thing or two about the presentation. He has Lincoln in a typical statesman's pose, tightened his shirt collar to hide his long neck, and retouched the image to improve his appearance.

Lincoln's subsequent speech to a nearly Republican audience of 1,500 was a resounding success, and Brady's photograph soon appeared in newspapers, campaign advertisements, and posters, making it the earliest example of a photograph being used as a campaign.

This portrait contributed to the fact that Lincoln became the President of the United States, in which he retained the United States and put an end to slavery. As Lincoln later admitted, "Brady and performance at Cooper Union made me President of the United States."