George P. A. Healy: The Civil War

"Portrait of Abraham Lincoln"
by George Healy

George Healy and his family had barely settled in a suburb of Chicago when the Civil War broke out. He wrote:

"I happened to be in Charleston at this time, engaged in painting a number of portraits, and I assisted in the wild excitement which ended in the bombarding of Fort Sumter. I had never mixed in politics, but I was a Northern man, with Northern feelings and antislavery principles. Like many others, I hoped that things might yet be peaceably arranged; and at any rate I was busy, and never thought of leaving my work on account of the threatening storm. 

But one of the Charleston papers informed the Yankee painter 'that if he had not left the city before the sun went down, he should be tarred and feathered.' My host read the article to me, and I burst out laughing; the things stuck me as merely ludicrous. But my Southern friend by no means laughed, but said: 'A carriage shall be at the door in an hour, and you must leave town. Otherwise they would prove as good as their world.'

The wartime was hard upon me; for when bare necessities of life are obtained with difficulty, such luxuries as portraits are not to be thought of. This was especially true during the first part of this terrible war. Later, if some were ruined, others made rapid fortunes, and speculations became as audacious as ever.

Among my sitters during these dreadful years, I counted many of our most celebrated generals - Grant, Sherman, McClellan, Admiral Porter, and many others. I also had sittings from Abraham Lincoln. These I particularly enjoyed. So much has been said about that great and good man that it seems almost presumptuous to add to the numberless anecdotes of his humor and congenial temper. During one of the sittings, as he was glancing at his letters, he burst into a hearty laugh, and exclaimed: 'As a painter, Mr. Healy, you shall be a judge between this unknown correspondent and me. She complains of my ugliness. It is allowed to be ugly in this world, but not as ugly as I am. She wishes me to put on false whiskers, to hide my horrible lantern jaws. Will you paint me with false whiskers? No? I thought not. I tell you what I shall do: give permission to this lover of the beautiful to set up a barber's shop at the White House!' And he laughed again with perfect delight."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter" by G. P. A. Healy.)