Lincoln

Well, I did two things this week I very rarely do.  One, I bought petrol at a station that charges higher prices for credit purchases than for cash purchases.  I didn't notice until I had started pumping, but once I did I immediately stopped at $15.  The station, as a matter of principle, can charge whatever it wants.  But, also as a matter of principle, I can take my business elsewhere, which is just what I usually do--unless I don't notice.

Two, I went to a movie at a theater.  I was trying to remember the last time I went and I keep coming back to Brother Bear, to which I took Bopper about 9 or 10 years ago.  I can't recall any other movie since.  Much, much more often than not I feel like I've wasted two hours or more of my life afterward.  That's not to mention the wasted money.  Oh, I forgot, the Hollywood-types aren't greedy; they actually deserve what they are paid, even if movie tickets are now about $10 apiece.

The movie was, as noted in the post title, Lincoln.  My plan had been to wait until the DVD or pay-per-view on the boob tube.  I had heard many good things about the movie from colleagues and students and had read a number of very flattering reviews, even my historians.  But I went into Lincoln with some caution.  First, it was a Hollywood movie, the likes of which most frequently disappoint me greatly.  Second, I know what Hollywood does to history, either for the sake of entertainment or for a political agenda.  Third, and this was my greatest trepidation, I am an admittedly Lincoln superfan.  I can't say that I have many heroes in history, but if I have only one, it's Lincoln.  I fully admit I buy into the Lincoln mythology.  Any biography of Lincoln I wrote would undoubtedly be a hagiography.  Oh, I know the myths (I even had a student write on a final exam that Lincoln owned slaves.  Where do they hear that crap?  It's not remotely true.  Come to think of it, one of my son's high school history teachers repeated that garbage.) and I know Lincoln had faults.  Hey, he was human! 

So, what about Lincoln?  I thought it was great.  I suppose the acting was very, very good.  No doubt a lot of Oscar nominations, if not awards, are going to come out of this movie.  And the history was pretty darn good, too.  Oh, there were some errors and quite a few speeches or exchanges were pure fiction, as far as I know.  But the tenor was right!  What enthralled me wasn't the movie or the scenes or cinematography (or whatever it's called).  It wasn't the acting, good as it was.  It was the persona of Lincoln that hung over the movie. 

Here's an example.  Thaddeus Stevens, by most accounts hardly a likable guy, but rapier-sharp with his tongue, admitted after the passage of the 13th Amendment:  “[It] was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.”  I have never seen that comment in any of the histories I've read.  And, knowing him a bit, it doesn't seem like anything Stevens would even think.  But such a comment was stark and striking, capturing the esssence of Lincoln--at least to a Lincoln-lover like me.

There was this theme throughout the movie of a sort of Civil War bi-partisanship.  I think such a 20th and 21st Century notion would have been foreign to Lincoln.  Oh, he dropped the Republican Hannibal Hamlin of Maine (isn't that a great name!?!?!?) as VP to choose the very mediocre (and I'm being generous here) Democrat from Tennesse Andrew Johnson.  It would prove to be a horrible choice, but it was an attempt for Lincoln to put into action the words he would later utter in his Second Inaugural.  But this getting Democrats to vote for the 13th Amendment to show some sort of bi-partisan agreement on ending slavery is ridiculous.  Maybe that's Spielberg's present  political view showing through; I don't know.

But the movie clearly showed what many people forget or don't know.  Lincoln was a great politician.  A guy I used to work with told students that Lincoln never won an election until he became President.  That's another falsehood and a big one.  First off, he was "elected" captain of his militia squad during the Black Hawk War--that's how things were done then.  He, of course, was elected to Congress, the House of Representatives where he was a bitter and outspoken critic of "Mr. Polk's War," the Mexican War.  And, in Illinois, he was elected to the state legislature for several terms.  All this running as a Whig in a largely Democratic state, Illinois.  And, some historian tallied up the populations of the counties of Illinois in 1858, the year Stephan A. Douglas was re-appointed to the US Senate (that's how it was done then) after the famous Lincoln/Douglas Debates.  Had it been a state-wide, at-large election of the people, Lincoln likely would have defeated his Democratic opponent, too.  Clearly, Lincoln was a savvy, hard-nosed, brilliant politician, as even Douglas noted.  "He is the strong man of the [Republican] party."

Throughout, not at all far from my mind while watching, were these words from W.E.B. Dubois about Lincoln:  "I love him not because he was perfect but because he was not and yet triumphed. The world is full of illegitimate children. The world is full of folk whose taste was educated in the gutter. The world is full of people born hating and despising their fellows. To these I love to say: See this man. He was one of you and yet he became Abraham Lincoln."