Fashion: Facial Hair
Facial hair styles in the early 19th century are determined either by a man’s delicate skill at using a straight razor or by his regular access to a barber with that know-how. Shaving is thus a daily hassle, with a frequent default being a traditional beard such as worn by Jefferson Davis:
Of course the most famous example of a switch from clean shaven to a typical beard belongs to Abraham Lincoln, during the presidential campaign of 1860. The photo below on the left shows him on February 27 of that year about to deliver his Cooper Union speech in New York City.
Then eight months later, on October 15, he receives a note from eleven year old Grace Bedell who announces:
I have yet got four brothers 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 husbands to vote
for you and then you would be President.
According to the lore, Lincoln takes the advice to heart, grows the beard and wins the White House!
At the same time, many other facial hair variations become commonplace.
Mustaches for example provide a rakish look against a clean shaven chin.
Some add a soul patch or combine the mustache with a goatee.
Others allow the mustache to grow all the way down to the chest.
For those totally abandoning the mustache but still seeking some facial hair, there is the plain, carefully trimmed, goatee.
Another striking option belongs to Union General Ambrose Burnside whose last name in reverse gives us “sideburns.” Here a crop of hair darts our from below each ear before linking up above the mouth.
Then come distinctive chin straps circling around the lower jaw.
Buy our facial hair journey ends all the way back at the most widespread alternative to the daily straight razor – full beards tamed or untamed.
