Historians Respond to Spielberg's Lincoln - Harvard University Press Blog
Historians Respond to Spielberg's Lincoln
Most interestingly, Holzer takes aim at the veracity of the films very first moments:
As for the Spielberg movies opening scene, in which a couple of Union soldiersone white, one blackrecite the words of the Gettysburg Address to the appreciative Lincoln, who is visiting the front toward the end of the warit is almost inconceivable that any uniformed soldier of the day (or civilians, for that matter) would have memorized a speech that, however ingrained in modern memory, did not achieve any semblance of a national reputation until the 20th century.
Elsewhere, historian Kate Masur joins many in taking issue with the films passive black characters, reminding us that those historiographic trends that Louis Masur sees the film as countering have actually taken hold for good reason:
[Its] disappointing that in a movie devoted to explaining the abolition of slavery in the United States, African-American characters do almost nothing but passively wait for white men to liberate them. For some 30 years, historians have been demonstrating that slaves were crucial agents in their emancipation; however imperfectly, Ken Burnss 1990 documentary The Civil War brought aspects of that interpretation to the American public. Yet Mr. Spielbergs Lincoln gives us only faithful servants, patiently waiting for the day of Jubilee.
This is not mere nit-picking. Mr. Spielbergs Lincoln helps perpetuate the notion that African Americans have offered little of substance to their own liberation. While the film largely avoids the noxious stereotypes of subservient African-Americans for which movies like Gone With the Wind have become notorious, it reinforces, even if inadvertently, the outdated assumption that white men are the primary movers of history and the main sources of social progress.
Eric Foner, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for history for his book on Lincoln and slavery, responded to a David Brooks column on Lincoln with a critique of the films severely truncated view:
Emancipationlike all far-reaching political changeresulted from events at all levels of society, including the efforts of social movements to change public sentiment and of slaves themselves to acquire freedom.
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The film grossly exaggerates the possibility that by January 1865 the war might have ended with slavery still intact. The Emancipation Proclamation had already declared more than three million of the four million slaves free, and Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia, exempted in whole or part from the proclamation, had decreed abolition on their own.
Even as the House debated, Shermans army was marching into South Carolina, and slaves were sacking plantation homes and seizing land. Slavery died on the ground, not just in the White House and the House of Representatives. That would be a dramatic story for Hollywood.
Some of these very debates were anticipated by American Historical Association Executive Director James Grossman in the November issue of Perspectives on History:
Historians will disagree over whether this was Lincoln indeed. My friend and colleague Lerone Bennett will wonder what happened to the evidence that Lincoln never believed in racial equality. David Blight will no doubt scratch his head over the absence of Frederick Douglass. Others will question the accuracy of this Lincolns approach to the presidency and presidential power, or the portrayal of family dynamics in the White House; or the implications of a film about emancipation that elides the agency of slaves and ex-slaves (except for the role of black soldiers). Others will note that Spielberg seems to get the importance of manhood, but doesnt really know how to use gender as a category of political analysis. This is what a film like this should do: stimulate discussion about history. I encourage colleagues to engage the film in the public realmin newspapers and blogs and on the radioin language that is accessible, and in a voice that speaks especially to people who might not readily accept concepts and perspectives taken for granted within the academy.
Yep, sound slike one giant pile of Hollyweird perspective cultivating, rather than a historical account of the facts. All too often, historians make the mistake of backseating historical fact, in order to create work that fits their own fantasy/perspective. It was done over and over again with Lincoln.
His goal was securing seceding states in the union and collecting "dues" of the states. Slavery was an issue that he tied to it, much like politicians tie social issues to the countries problems today to forward an agenda. If Lincoln had his way, he would have sent them all back to Africa.
