[Life Mask] Leonard W. Volk took a plaster cast of Lincoln's face in Chicago in March 1860, only months before his November 6 election. Lincoln's victory--without a single Southern electoral vote--revealed the depths of the split between the North and the South.

Within a few weeks of the election, 7 Southern states seceded from the Union. After the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, 4 other states joined them to form the Confederate States of America.

Courtesy of the National Museum of American History, from the U. S. Government by thirty-three subscribers, including Bram Stoker, Augustus St. Gaudens, and the Boston Athenaeum.
Abraham Lincoln's Life Mask, 1886, cast by Augustus St. Gaudens (1848-1907) from an original plaster mask made in 1860 by Leonard W. Volk (1818-95), bronze

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