This is a portrait of Henry Laurens Dawes (1816-1903), a politician from Massachusetts. He was a state senator and U.S. district attorney before becoming a United States senator 1875-93. He was involved with anti-slavery issues and Indian Affairs. At the time this photograph was taken (ca 1865) he was still United States district attorney for the western district of Massachusetts.

This public domain image is attributed to the Brady National Photographic Art Gallery, rather than an individual photographer, since there is no way to tell which of the several ‘operators’ that worked there actually took the photograph. Mathew Brady opened the studio at at 350-352 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC in 1858, and hired Alexander Gardner to run it, although a couple years later Gardner was off to photograph the Civil War, and by 1862 had ended his association with Brady. In 1868 the studio was seized for debt and sold at auction, but Brady manged to buy it back. The address changed that year to 625-627 Pennsylvania Avenue, so we know photographs such as this that bear the old address were made before then.