Andrew Basiago’s 1863 Gettysburg Time Travel Photo
According to the Library of Congress, it was indeed taken at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, likely by photographer Mathew Brady.
By Rob Schwarz
April 26, 2024
Alleged chrononaut Andrew Basiago claims that in 1972 he was sent backwards in time to November 19, 1863. Where to? Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the very day Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address.
I’ve written about this before (see my article on Project Pegasus, but last week I received an email inquiring about Basiago’s photographic evidence and thought I’d do a little digging into its origin.
Here’s what I found.
Photographs In Time
Basiago claims he is the boy in the above photograph, and often shares it as proof of his time travel adventures.
In this case, he says, he had stepped into a plasma confinement chamber in 1972 New Jersey and hopped back to 1863 Gettysburg.
There, he visited the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery.
Basiago also claims that his original pair of shoes vanished during his voyage, like Dandelo in The Fly. That’s why they appear oversized in the photo.
He was given a new pair when he arrived and tried his best to avoid drawing attention to himself.
Ultimately, however, he failed, leaving behind a single piece of evidence of his temporal journey — the photograph we see here today.
Now, aside from Basiago’s story, here’s what we know about the picture itself.
According to the Library of Congress, it was indeed taken at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, likely by photographer Mathew Brady. It’s available in higher quality at the LoC website.
However, as you may notice, this version of the photograph is cleaned up and cropped. You can’t see as much of the man on the bottom right corner, and the other edges are cropped out, as well. Not to worry.
A scan of the original glass plate negative can be found at the National Archives. As you can see, it’s uncropped and about as worn as you’d expect from a photo taken in 1863.
What’s most interesting is that this photo is apparently the first ever discovered of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg.
Josephine Cobb noticed his face while viewing the glass plate negative at the National Archives in 1952. If you zoom in very closely, you can see who historians believe is Lincoln, standing with his hat off in the crowd.
Rare photo of Lincoln at Gettysburg
In 1952, the chief of the Still Photo section at the National Archives, Josephine Cobb, discovered a glass plate negative taken by Mathew Brady of the speaker’s stand at Gettysburg on the day of its dedication as a National Cemetery.
Edward Everett would speak from that stand later in the afternoon for two straight hours. Moments later, a tall, gaunt Abraham Lincoln would stand up and deliver a ten-sentence speech in two minutes. It was the Gettysburg Address.
Lincoln delivered his famous speech 147 years ago today.
His speech is revered as one of the greatest in American history, yet until Josephine Cobb looked closer at that Mathew Brady photo in 1952, it was thought that no photo existed of the Great Emancipator at Gettysburg on the day he delivered that address.
Based on the placement of people, the slight elevation of a few in the center-left field of the photograph, and where the crowd was looking, Cobb bet that Lincoln would be in the photo.
Photo enlargement later proved her theory true, making this the first–and possibly only–photograph of Lincoln at Gettysburg.*
Cobb estimated that the photo was taken around noontime before Edward Everett arrived, and about three hours before Lincoln delivered his famous address.
Below is the original, uncropped photo.
*It’s possible that three other photos all taken around the same time might also show Lincoln leaving Gettysburg on horseback.
Some impressive sleuth work by historians comparing the photos to written accounts of the activities at Gettysburg that day indicate that they are very likely photos of Lincoln (albeit a pretty blurry Lincoln).
You can view them at the Library of Congress website.
Of course, none of this proves or disproves Basiago’s strange tale, but I thought it’d be interesting to track down the original photo. It is, in a way, its own kind of time travel.