THIRTY YEARS AGO, while plunging into the culture, society, and politics of Jacksonian America, searching for insights into those who lived those times, I encountered daguerreotypes, the first form of photography. The silvered, copperplate images stared into my eyes—a crusty John Quincy Adams, a trace of patrician superiority on his lips and eyes hungering for the next fight. Or an aged and battered Andrew Jackson, only a month or so before his death, his dimmed eyes swollen, the stiff mane of white hair and a toothless mouth signaling energy spent, but the determined line of his jaw kindling memories of January 8, 1815, as he peered over the barrier of mud and cotton bales toward the approaching British troops outside New Orleans.
Other portraits, often enclosed in metal or wood, velvet-lined cases, were equally affecting. “Regular” people—a druggist smiling as he sorted pills, an enslaved person whose face hints...
