The previous record was also held by another Lincoln document, which sold for $3.4 million in 2008.

Where can you find Lincoln near you? Do you see Lincoln in a statue or a plaque? Is a business or school in your area named for Lincoln? Or does the spirit of Lincoln live on in the actions of people in your community?

Submit a photo, including a description of what it shows and how it relates to Lincoln. Once approved, your contribution will appear in the public gallery!

The five best Lincoln photos will win the grand prize.

Contest Deadline: March 20, 2009

HOW TO ENTER

To enter the contest, you’ll need a Flickr account. Then, follow these easy steps:

• Read all contest rules below before entering.
• Join the LOOKING FOR LINCOLN Flickr group.
• Upload your Lincoln photo to your Flickr account.
• Tag the photo with the tag “lincoln”.
• Add your photo to the LOOKING FOR LINCOLN Flickr group to complete your entry and share it with Lincoln fans everywhere. (How do I do this?) The photo must be added to our Flickr group in order to be considered. Limit: three photos per person.
• Important: Be sure to check the email account you used to sign up for Flickr! If we select your photo, we will contact you through Flickr.

Make sure you follow these steps carefully, or your photo may be disqualified.

PRIZES AND JUDGING

The producers of LOOKING FOR LINCOLN will judge the entries and select five winners. The five winning photos will receive a copy of the program’s companion book, Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon by Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. The book contains more than 900 images, many from the renowned Meserve-Kunhardt Collection. The five winning photos will be featured in a Contest Winners gallery on the LOOKING FOR LINCOLN Web site.

CONTEST RULES

Adding your photo to the LOOKING FOR LINCOLN Flickr group with the tag “lincoln” constitutes entry into the contest. By entering the contest you indicate your agreement to the following terms.

• You must be the creator of any image you submit, and you must not submit any image for which the copyright is held by another party.
• Contest entry is limited to three photos per person.
• Regardless of any license settings on your photo, you give permission to PBS and WNET.ORG to publish the submitted image, your first name, and your location on the LOOKING FOR LINCOLN Web site at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/lookingforlincoln/ in perpetuity.
• Employees of PBS and WNET.ORG, and their families, are not eligible to participate.
• In the event that your photo is selected for our slideshow, you agree to be contacted through Flickr mail. If you are contacted by the contest administrator, you agree to respond within 72 hours. If you fail to respond within 72 hours of being contacted, your photo will be disqualified.
• In addition to the above, you agree to abide by all Flickr site guidelines.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Public media provider WNET.ORG is playing a major role in the nationwide Lincoln Bicentennial celebration in 2009 with LOOKING FOR LINCOLN, an unprecedented two-hour broadcast, online, and outreach project that explores the life and legacy of the man widely considered one of our best and most enigmatic presidents. The documentary, presented and written by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (African American Lives, Oprah’s Roots), addresses many of the controversies surrounding Lincoln – race, equality, religion, politics, and depression – by carefully interpreting evidence from those who knew him and those who study him today. It premieres on the eve of Lincoln’s 200th birthday, Wednesday, February, 11, 2009 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings).

In the film, Gates shows how the Lincoln legend grew out of controversy, greed, love, clashing political perspectives, power struggles, and considerable disagreement over how our 16th president should be remembered. His quest to piece together Lincoln’s complex life takes him from Illinois to Gettysburg to Washington, D.C., and face-to-face with people who live with Lincoln every day – relic hunters, re-enactors, and others for whom the study of Lincoln is a passion.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Among those weighing in: Pulitzer Prize winners Doris Kearns Goodwin and Tony Kushner; presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush; and Lincoln scholars including Harold Holzer, vice chair of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission; Harvard University’s president Drew Faust and history professor David Hebert Donald; Yale University history professor David Blight; and Allen Guelzo of Gettysburg College. Former Ebony magazine editor Lerone Bennett challenges Lincoln’s record on race; writer Joshua Shenk talks about Lincoln’s depression; and New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik illuminates how Lincoln’s words changed the course of history.

A companion book, Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon, was written by Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. It contains more than 900 images, many from the renowned Meserve-Kunhardt Collection. Booklist recently wrote, “The Kunhardts’ work is sure to be one of the most popular books in the bicentennial effusion of Lincoln volumes.” It was published by Alfred A. Knopf on November 18.

Buy Lincoln on Race and Slavery, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

In addition, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has edited a book called Abraham Lincoln on Race and Slavery, a collection of everything Lincoln said or wrote about slavery and race, to be published by Princeton University Press. The volume was praised by Lincoln authority John Stauffer as an “invaluable and timely book, indispensable for anyone interested in race relations in the United States…beautifully written and penetrating in its insights.”

LOOKING FOR LINCOLN is a production of Kunhardt McGee Productions, Inkwell Films and THIRTEEN for WNET.ORG in association with Ark Media. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., William R. Grant, Peter Kunhardt, and Dyllan McGee are executive producers. Senior producer is Barak Goodman. Producers are John Maggio and Muriel Soenens. Sole corporate funding is provided by State Farm®. Major funding is provided by CPB and PBS. Additional funding for education outreach is provided by the Motorola Foundation.
……….…
About Kunhardt McGee Productions
For nearly 20 years, Kunhardt McGee Productions (formerly Kunhardt Productions) has been responsible for critically acclaimed historical programming with a reputation for high editorial standards. Most recently, Kunhardt McGee Productions co-produced Oprah’s Roots (2007) and African American Lives 1 and 2 (2006 & 2008) for PBS. Previously, the company produced Freedom: A History of US, an eight-hour PBS series based upon Joy Hakim’s award-winning books. Other notable works from Kunhardt McGee Productions include Lincoln, a four-hour series for ABC; In Memoriam, a one-hour co-production with HBO about Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; and The American President, a 10-hour PBS series profiling all forty-one presidents of the United States. Kunhardt McGee Productions is currently producing a multi-part series, Human Nature, for Vulcan Productions and WGBH’s Nova Science Unit to air on PBS in 2010. More information can be found at: www.kunhardtmcgeeproductions.com.

Bill Clinton

About Inkwell Productions
Inkwell Films was founded by Henry Louis Gates Jr. to produce sophisticated documentary films about the African-American experience for a broad audience. In addition to Oprah’s Roots, Inkwell Films co-produced African American Lives (2006) and African American Lives 2 (2008), and is currently developing The History of the African American People, an eight-part series tentatively slated for national broadcast premiere in 2009-2010.

About Ark Media
Ark Media is a documentary film company founded in 1997 by the producing team of Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin. Ark’s mission is to produce documentary films characterized by rigorous reporting, careful craft, and imaginative filmmaking. For the last decade, Ark has produced films primarily for the PBS series Frontline and American Experience, and for cable outlets such as The History Channel and American Movie Classics. During this time, our films have won nearly every major broadcast award: the Emmy, DuPont-Columbia, Robert F. Kennedy, Writers Guild and Peabody, as well as earning an Academy Award nomination and official selection to the Sundance Film Festival. For more information, please visit our website at www.ark-media.net.

George W. Bush

About WNET.ORG
New York public media company WNET.ORG is a pioneering provider of television and web content. The parent of Thirteen, WLIW21 and Creative News Group, WNET.ORG brings such acclaimed broadcast series and websites as Worldfocus, Nature, Great Performances, American Masters, Charlie Rose, Wide Angle, Secrets of the Dead, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, Visions, Consuelo Mack WealthTrack,Wild Chronicles, Miffy and Friends, and Cyberchase to national and international audiences. Through its wide range of channels and platforms, WNET.ORG serves the entire New York City metro area with unique local productions, broadcasts and innovative educational and cultural projects. In all that it does, WNET.ORG pursues a single, overarching goal – to create media experiences of lasting significance for New York, America and the world. For more information, visit www.wnet.org.

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
– President Abraham Lincoln

LOOKING FOR LINCOLN
Wed. February 11th, 9 p.m. on THIRTEEN and THIRTEEN HD. Thu. February 12th, 9 p.m. on WLIW21.
(Check your local listings)

THIRTEEN commemorates the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial with Looking for Lincoln, a landmark two-hour special dedicated to the life, legend and legacy of our nation’s 16th president. The program, which airs on the eve of Lincoln’s 200th birthday and features a comprehensive, content-rich Web site, reflects THIRTEEN’s ongoing commitment to producing groundbreaking public television programming and web content.

Presented and written by acclaimed Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. with commentary by Doris Kearns Goodwin, LOOKING FOR LINCOLN explores the controversies, paradoxes and contradictions surrounding our nation’s 16th president. Gates embarks on an ambitious, cross-country quest to understand Lincoln, which takes this accomplished scholar from Illinois to Gettysburg and Washington, D.C. Along the way, leading historians, former presidents and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors weigh in on Lincoln’s influence on our nation’s history.

Gates, who also hosted the popular African American Lives and Oprah’s Roots, recently spoke with THIRTEEN about Lincoln’s impressive legacy:

What made Lincoln such a unique president?

Lincoln had a tremendous capacity for personal growth – more than any other American President. He was essentially a man of his times, resolute in his belief in the inequality of the races. But within the cauldron of the Civil War, he began to see that there could not be a United States without freedom for the black man. He came to embrace blacks, particularly those that fought so valiantly for the Union, as fully deserving the basic human right of freedom. He was slow to the cause to be sure, but once he got there, he was unshakable. Now, we will never know how far he might have gone had he lived. That’s part of the mystique that still surrounds him: the question “what if?”

Why is Lincoln’s legacy so contested?

Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs. For my own people, it was important to imagine him as the Great Emancipator, the Moses who led us out of slavery. For others, it was Lincoln the humble man who rose to greatness, or Lincoln the great Commander, or Lincoln the martyr. Every generation since his death has conjured up their own Lincoln. There were many Lincolns — enough for people to love and hate.

Growing up in West Virginia, what was your early impression of President Lincoln?

Lincoln was the only white man’s photo hanging in people’s homes where I grew up, other than Jesus. We knew him as a great emancipator. He was the man!

What surprised you most about Lincoln as a person and as a president?

This project has been a tremendous learning experience for me. I had to really wrestle the fact that the Great Emancipator had a much more complicated relationship with race than I ever dreamed. He had strong white supremacists views, and favored the expatriation of freed slaves to colonies in Africa or Panama, even as he was writing the Emancipation Proclamation. This was deeply disappointing to me, but also led me to perhaps a deeper appreciation of the human foibles of the man.

What do you think Lincoln would think about Barack Obama — an African-American man — assuming the presidency?

He would be shocked. After he got over the shock, I think he would find it ironic that his most direct heir was a black man — and a mulatto. Lincoln would love the fact that Obama is such a great conciliator, trying to transcend ideology. People don’t realize what a brilliant politician Lincoln was. Looking back, we want to ascribe a level of providence to his every decision but he was a cunning and calculating politician; from the cultivation of his image as a hayseed from Illinois, to his ability to keep this country together under dire circumstances. Obama, I think, shares much of Lincoln’s political intelligence. I think Lincoln would admire that.

What served as a turning point for Lincoln, in terms of his understanding of race?

Getting to know Frederick Douglass really helped him to appreciate the potential for black people. Lincoln really didn’t know any black people, other than his barber. Frederick Douglass really impressed him with his intelligence and his insight. Perhaps even more important was Lincoln’s desperation over the war. It was in his search for a way out of the darkness – both of personal loss and military defeat – that he saw the moral and practical necessity of emancipation.

How did Lincoln become such a mythic figure in American history?

Keeping the Union together, freeing slaves and being assassinated all added up to creating “Lincoln the myth.” He overcame a lot of his own prejudices and became what many would consider the first black man’s president.

What impact did Lincoln’s assassination have on the nation?

His tragic death had an enormous impact on the American psyche. When Lincoln died, people were calling him the “American Christ” — his sacrifice analogized to Jesus’ crucifixion washing away the sins of a guilty nation — and to Moses dying on the verge of the Promised Land. It was a very religious society and these comparisons came freely. It was doubly ironic because, of course, he had been so widely detested during his Presidency.

What do you hope Thirteen viewers will learn about our nation’s 16th president from watching Looking for Lincoln?

That he was a great man because he wrestled honestly with his own fears, prejudices and limitations. He overcame them, by and large. And that’s the best any of us can hope for.

Lincoln was a three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood human being — and therein lies his appeal. The more human he was, the taller he stands in American history.

Sole corporate funding for Looking for Lincoln is provided by State Farm®. Major funding is provided by CPB and PBS. Additional funding for education outreach is provided by the Motorola Foundation.

Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace. This is the cabin where Abraham Lincoln may have been born. Some claim these are the original logs, taken down, refinished, and reassembled. Photo courtesy of PictureHistory

Lincoln’s Hat. After the shooting, this hat was found in Abraham Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theater, taken to police headquarters, and exhibited at the trial of the conspirators.

Grave of Ann Rutledge. This is the grave of Ann Rutledge which is located in Petersburg, Illinois. Lincoln supposedly had a love affair with Ann Rutledge while he was living in New Salem, Illinois.

Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882). Mary Todd Lincoln is shown here in a daguerreotype taken in Springfield, four years after she married Abraham Lincoln. Photo courtesy of PictureHistory

Lincoln Writes Grace Bedell about his Beard. Click photo to enlarge.

Hon A B Lincoln…

Dear Sir
My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin’s. I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brother’s and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husband’s to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try to get every one to vote for you that I can I think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty I have got a little baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter direct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chatauque County New York
I must not write any more answer this letter right off Good bye
Grace Bedell

My dear little Miss
Your very agreeable letter of the 15th is received - I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters - I have three sons - one seventeen, one nine, and one seven years of age - They, with their mother, constitute my whole family - As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin it now?
Your very sincere well wisher
A. Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln in His White House Office. This is one of the only photographs of Abraham Lincoln in his White House office. It was taken by Anthony Berger, a Brady operator, to assist the artist Francis B. Carpenter in his massive painting of Lincoln reading the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet.

Sarah Josepha Hale

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

This is the first page of handwritten text of Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address.

Lincoln Reads the Emancipation Proclamation. Francis Bicknell Carpenter lived in the White House for weeks in 1864 researching this painting. To help him, a camera operator from Mathew Brady’s studio (probably Anthony Berger) photographed Carpenter with his legs crossed as the pose for William Seward. A photograph of Lincoln taken that same day, February 9, 1864, was used for the portrayal of Lincoln, and portraits by Carpenter of each individual cabinet member were used for the group scene. The finished painting was unveiled on July 22, 1864.

Dear Madam,—I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

Political cartoon depicting Lincoln disguised, running through Baltimore.

Robert Todd Lincoln.