Lincoln grew a beard on the advice of an 11 year old girl named Grace Bedell.

His stovepipe hat was adoption of a popular style that also accentuated his height.

He was called ugly every which way he turned. The beard suggestion sounded good to a man who wanted to be known not for his looks. You know, like saying a guy is orange, or making fun of his hair.
He was considered backwoods, a puppet, and his military career was nothing to brag about.

Were tall tophats ubiquitous?

I saw one of Lincoln’s stovepipe hats last week. I had to get a tollway transponder and stopped at one of our oases. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum has an exhibit there including “the beaver-fur stovepipe hat he wore as a country lawyer”.

I was curious about the popularity, so I googled a little, and find them in America and England.

Lincoln’s first inauguration. Lots of top hats.

1854 – Sir Henry Cole and Richard Redgrave in the garden of the Gore House

1859 – Group photograph of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, Count of Flanders, Princess Alice, Duke of Oporto, and King Leopold I of the Belgians

Run on the Seamen’s Savings’ Bank during the Panic of 1857