Lincoln, "it's only a film"- revised 6/29/13

Our local library begins it's showings with a brief presentation, and then we have a discussion afterwards.  The several hundred in the full house for the film and the fifty or so who remained, provided a microcosm of the America a century and a half after the events depicted on the screen--the passage of the constitutional amendment to emancipate the slaves.

The presenter started by a litany of  such as the sound of Lincoln's pocket watch being from the actual preserved watch in the Smithsonian Museum and Sally Fields having to put on twenty five pounds for the role of Mary Lincoln.  While my first reaction was criticism of the moderator and the audience for focusing on these trivialities, now after more research I realize they were responding to the marketing of the film, with the sound of the watch presenting the message of absolute accuracy of historical events.

After the film was released the liberties that were taken were disclosed, specifically that the actual state count of the pivotal congressional vote was changed.  This was the occasion of an outburst by the writer, Tony Kushner (see letter at bottom of this article) where he pointed out that certain liberties should be expected in historical drama.  Of course most historical dramas do not have a professional historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, as a co-writer, and are not about the central conflict of the country being represented.

For most viewers, this film will be the most vivid picture that they will ever have of not only the Civil war, but how this country is intertwined with slavery, whether viewed as chattel, investments or human beings.  From the reactions to the audience and the moderator, the most interesting aspect of the films was not what the single month of the film disclosed and, more importantly, what it left unsaid, but the production values of the film, it's international gross, and awards.   I finally had had enough and pointed out that what was shown, the early carnage of battle, was not Spielberg manipulating the audience, but actual events, the slaughter of black soldiers by the rebels and retribution against them for this carnage.

The passage of the Reconstruction Constitutional Amendments followed directly from the creation of our country as mutual accommodation between two different cultures and economies of the North and the South, with the later dependent on the use of chattel human slavery.  From the South's view, this had been the deal, and if the North no longer could accept it, then at the least, the contract should be abrogated, with both parties going their own ways.  It had never been clear whether this was allowed in the original constitution or not.

Our vaunted Constitution was a kicking of the can forward to future leaders, and the music happened to stop when this man Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office. Before Lincoln was elected by the new Republican party, he was willing to continue slavery if it would preserve the union. (not to be confused with the current party of the same name)  Ironically, as described in this book introduced by my review, Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession, in the four months before the war Lincoln vacillated and only responded to events, the firing on Fort Sumter, when war was the only option.

Rather than the producer-director, Steven Spielberg, and those at this showing focusing on the trivia of the film, it should have been a window on who we are to this very day.  Only a day before this library event,  the Supreme Court determined that the law to eliminate the last vestiges of resistance to Reconstruction was no longer needed, and thus unconstitutional.  This decision to effectively end Reconstruction, and special procedures that applied only to the confederate states to protect blacks from disenfranchisement of voting rights was decided by the vote of a single justice in a 5 to 4 decision.  Thus the consequences and the antecedents of this film continue forward in time-- as alive as the next election for Congress and the President.

Those who claimed that the first scene with three soldiers reciting the Gettysburg Address to Lincoln was too evocative, or not realistic,  don't understand that it was the key to the film......"that those who perished here shall not have died in vain..." Lincoln, the accommodating politician of his pre inauguration period, had become the leader of a cause that was bringing unprecedented slaughter and human tragedy --including beyond the battlefield.  The scenes with his wife collapsing in sorrow were not to be examined for theatrical technique, which becomes a travesty of the actual horror of this internecine war.  Mary Todd felt the loss as only a mother can feel, that her husband had been able to suppress.  Lincoln somehow came to believe that such suffering must now have meaning, and that was to end slavery, or all would have been in vain.

There was one scene of Lincoln contemplating what would come afterwards if emancipation is passed, what would happen to these slaves who are now free but facing a new reality of being hated by their current masters and also by those in the north who feared the influx of cheap labor to take their jobs.  His response, thoughtful yet hopeful, was that we will deal with it, do the best that we can as a country, improvise as we go along, citing that he did this by expansively defining his actions as a war leader.   This was the insight of the film.  Lincoln the man became great because he did what he had to do, and knew the limits of his choices.

The scene of the simple buggy ride with his wife, the amendment passed and the south having surrendered-- subtly showed the couple's hope for happiness.   Knowing of his impending doom, their simple anticipation of the worst being over, conveyed a  deeper message--that public life means perpetual struggle and greatness is accepting this and doing that best that can be done at the time.

I see civilization itself is a work in process, with no fixed rules to guide us to our nirvana.   How different would our view of Lincoln been had he lived and had to deal with a devastated south?  Reconstruction, was not to end after the appointed decade or two. A future President, Woodrow Wilson, who was a nine year old boy in Virginia when events of this film took place, premiered another historical film, Birth of a Nation, in the White House.  In this film, Thad Stevens, the hero of passage of the emancipation amendment, was depicted as a rabid hater who wanted to exact revenge on the South.  Wilson's heroes were the Klu Klux Klan, who were bringing forth a new nation to negate the liberation of the civil war.

We live in an era that celebrates fame and wealth.  So gross profit of the film, and the details of the actors lives are more publicized than the crucial events, the searing January of 1865 that is a central moment of our national history.  On the big screen at this public library, surrounding by the great history tomes, these real events seemed like just those of another world visited by the Star Ship Enterprise,  or the Pandora of "Avatar" or other film block busters.

This is tragedy in that, unlike those fictional films, we in the audience are those "people", for whom Lincoln described our country as being... "of, for and by" in that speech at Gettysburg that questions whether we shall long endure.  That was more than an actor on that big screen, it was Abraham Lincoln speaking to us, reminding us of our responsibilities to face the challenges that is our national heritage.

It remains an open question whether we are up to the task.