Like many public figures of the 1860s, Robert Mallory, Representative from Kentucky, had his carte-de-visite made. Mallory was a prominent opponent of Southern cessation from the United States and represented a border state during the Civil War. These pocket-sized photos functioned as business cards and promotional materials for elected officials of the time. The photographer, Henry Ulke, had recently set up shop in Washington, D.C., when this carte was made in the early 1860s. Ulke was also known as a portrait painter and an expert on beetles, as a member of an association of naturalists at the Smithsonian Institution.
