In 1864, an ambitious young painter named Francis Bicknell Carpenter approached Abraham Lincoln with a proposal: he wanted to paint a grand portrait of the President and his entire Cabinet to commemorate the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. What followed was a six-month project in the White House, where the artist had the opportunity to observe Lincoln in his day-to-day activities. Carpenter later wrote down his recollections from this period and published them as "The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln" in 1866. It went on to become one of the most popular books about Lincoln in the immediate aftermath of his assasination. The original book is republished here in its entirety, with a contextual Introduction from historian S. C. Straley.