Abraham Lincoln at 200

The marking of President Lincoln's 200th birthday brings to mind the iconic portraits of his uniquely-shaped face, careworn and expressive of the public and private burdens he carried during our country's greatest national crisis and struggle for freedom and equality.

This bicentennial also causes me to recall the faces of the citizen soldiers who went to war in the armies of "Father Abraham," for it was them who set aside their personal pursuits and laid down their lives for an American idea much larger than themselves, their generation, and the founders that envisioned a democratic society.

I have had the pleasure and honor to write about these volunteers for almost a decade; more than two hundred profiles as of today. For all the identified photographs I have researched, there are many, many more unidentified images whose stories are yet to be told as their names are lost to history.

To help put a name to these forgotten faces, I produced Unidentified Veterans, a Flickr photostream. Please take a look. Perhaps you can help bring to life one of the men who built the legacy of "Father Abraham."