They’re names we know from history books, famous faces frozen in official portraits and iconic images. But behind those carefully posed pictures were real people with everyday moments the world rarely got to see.
Some of these photos capture legends long before they became famous. Others reveal surprising, candid sides of figures we thought we already knew.
Here are historical figures like you’ve never seen them before.
#1: US President Abraham Lincoln With His Personal Bodyguard and Others at the Battle of Antietam, 1862
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, led the country through the Civil War. Alexander Gardner took this photograph on October 3, 1862, weeks after Antietam’s bloody battle. Lincoln stands with Allan Pinkerton, who guarded him, and Union General John A. McClernand.
Lincoln met soldiers at Antietam after the battle, where twenty thousand men became casualties. He later issued the Emancipation Proclamation, won reelection, and led the Union to victory. John Wilkes Booth shot him at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. Lincoln died the next morning.