1865: Cartes de Visite, the Lincoln Conspiracy, and the Evolution of Transnational Imagination

Abstract: Alexander Gardner's photographs of the conspirators involved in the Lincoln assassination have generally been understood in both modern scholarship and popular retellings of the conspiracy as mugshots in a rogues' gallery. However, they also point toward the kind of celebrity culture with which modern readers would be more familiar. This essay focuses on cartes de visite of the relatively unknown Lewis Powell (Payne)—a co-conspirator of presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth—and how they came to feature in carte albums in both Northern and Southern United States. Using archival resources from London to Charleston, South Carolina, the essay frames this imaginative process as at once social, notable, and martial, depending on the local and national context. It discusses Gardner's influences, both artistic and historical, especially the influence of the legendary English rogue Jack Sheppard, on his conspirator portraits.