Thaddeus Stevens lying in state in the U.S. Capitol rotunda in August 1868. Members of the Butler Zouaves, an African-American company of the District of Columbia, are serving as honor guards (supposedly 25 guards were on duty, commanded by a Captain Hawkins). The body was brought to the Capitol near mid-day on August 13, and remained on display the rest of the day and through the night. Harper's Weekly reported that five or six thousand people, both white and black, viewed the body. Funeral services were held the morning of August 14 at the Capitol.

The written caption on the negative claims the photo is of Lincoln lying in state, and the photo even made it into the first edition of Stefan Lorant's Lincoln: His Life in Photographs (page 121) in 1941 on those grounds, but that is a mistake. Lincoln scholars, following the publication of Lorant's book, determined the true event and the photo was omitted from later editions.

The plaster statue of Lincoln behind the casket was credited to "Henry J. Ellicott" on a plate on the pedestal, who was a young sculptor at the time (probably born 1847). It had been in the rotunda for more than a year, as scholars found another photograph of it dated June 1867, and there are other photographs of it dated 1866. The best guess is that Ellicott submitted it for the Lincoln Monument Association's contest for a marble statue, which had been opened not long after Lincoln's death. The contest was eventually won by Lot Flannery, and his finished statue was dedicated on April 15, 1868 (and is still there). Ellicott went on to sculpt several other works, including the Winfield Scott Hancock Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue, but apparently never did make a finished Lincoln statue.