{"id":798,"date":"2023-01-18T14:07:20","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T14:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/?page_id=798"},"modified":"2023-01-18T14:12:21","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T14:12:21","slug":"mr-spielberg-goes-to-washington","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/essays\/mr-spielberg-goes-to-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Spielberg Goes to Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

This essay appeared in Lincoln, Congress, and Emancipation, ed. Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon (Ohio University Press, 2016), pp. 236-58<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Mr. Spielberg Goes to Washington[1]<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Matthew Pinsker<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Frank Nugent, the film critic for the New York Times<\/u>, offered his glowing review of Frank Capra\u2019s \u201cMr. Smith Goes to Washington\u201d (1939), he observed tartly that the director had gone after \u201cthe greatest game of all, the Senate,\u201d in a fashion which subjected \u201cthe Capitol’s bill-collectors to a deal of quizzing and to a scrutiny which is not always tender.\u201d Nugent was wise enough, however, to see through Capra\u2019s faux cynicism about the institution, commenting that the great director was \u201ca believer in democracy\u201d who had created an American cinematic masterpiece that was \u201ca stirring and even inspiring testament to liberty and freedom.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If such a judgment seems almost trite today, it was not so back then.\u00a0 In the wake of the movie\u2019s release in late 1939, many politicos balked angrily at they considered to be over-the-top depictions of senatorial corruption.\u00a0 Future vice president Alben W. Barkley (D, Kentucky) was shocked that a major Hollywood movie could show \u201cthe Senate as the biggest aggregation of nincompoops on record!\u201d\u00a0 Future Supreme Court justice and secretary of state James F. Byrnes (D, South Carolina) coolly informed the Christian Science Monitor<\/u> that the film portrayed \u201cexactly the kind of picture that dictators of totalitarian governments would like to have their subjects believe exists in a democracy.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 The controversy even injected an element of drama into a stalled anti-trust bill \u2013the Neely anti-block booking bill– which aimed to break up studio-owned movie theater chains.\u00a0 Proponents of the measure started arguing in public soon after the movie\u2019s October release that such legislation would make it possible to limit the distribution of an anti-American film like \u201cMr. Smith.\u201d\u00a0 Capra was appalled.\u00a0 \u201cCan you imagine that?\u201d he exclaimed to a journalist, \u201cWith all those things they\u2019ve got to do down there, with the neutrality bill, and social legislation, with war breaking loose in Europe \u2026 the whole majesty of the United States Senate has to move against one moving picture.\u00a0 It\u2019s amazing!\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When Steven Spielberg released his \u201cLincoln\u201d movie following the 2012 midterm elections, there were a few such dust-ups, but nothing like the kind of fierce resistance that Capra had experienced.[5]<\/a>\u00a0 This was true despite the fact that Spielberg was going after what might be called the second \u201cgreatest game of all\u201d \u2013the US House of Representatives\u2014with his gritty account of the behind-the-scenes efforts to secure passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. To most critical observers, Spielberg appeared as Nugent had described Capra, an ardent \u201cbeliever in democracy,\u201d despite taking plenty of sharp jabs at Capitol Hill and the American political process.\u00a0 Spielberg\u2019s somewhat misnamed movie is really about the moral complexity of the legislative process with Abraham Lincoln as a not-so-innocent protagonist (Mr. Smith as Great Emancipator) who overcomes a contentious House chamber full of very Capra-esque characters. Yet \u201cLincoln\u201d is an even darker movie than \u201cMr. Smith,\u201d because President Lincoln engages in no gallant, Hollywood-style filibuster to save the day.\u00a0 Instead, according to the film, he manages one of the noblest achievements in American legislative history through implicit bribery and explicit deception.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is remarkable that more critics have not focused on that darkness at the center of the \u201cLincoln\u201d movie, especially since it is a film that seems almost designed for classroom use.\u00a0 Teachers at the secondary and undergraduate level will be showing clips from \u201cLincoln\u201d for years to come.\u00a0 For that reason alone, it deserves our toughest scrutiny, especially since almost all of the scenes involving political intrigue and corruption have been thoroughly fictionalized.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A film like Spielberg\u2019s \u201cLincoln\u201d must be considered a work of fiction even though it is inspired by historical events and adapted from Doris Kearns Goodwin\u2019s\u00a0Team of Rivals<\/u>, a real work of history.[6]<\/strong><\/a> \u00a0<\/em>The reason that the movie itself cannot be filed under \u201cnon-fiction\u201d is because the figures involved in the production take significant artistic license in order to create an engaging drama. \u00a0They invent characters, dialogue, and scenes. \u00a0They rearrange chronology. \u00a0They borrow from various types of sources without documenting any of them. \u00a0They also take big interpretive leaps of faith based more on instinct than evidence. \u00a0Yet artists such as scriptwriter Tony Kushner, filmmaker Steven Spielberg or actors such as Daniel Day-Lewis, can appear almost as historians because they go to such great lengths to try to \u201cget it right\u201d by recreating period details. \u00a0The result, however, is confusing for many audiences \u2013especially for students\u2013 who want to know exactly what is real and what is invented. \u00a0Although this essay does not claim to establish what really happened with regard to the Thirteenth Amendment, it does highlight the most revealing examples of artistic license within the \u201cLincoln\u201d film, especially the ones concerning Lincoln\u2019s role in the lobbying effort.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is no denying that the film opens in the most artistic way possible \u2013a cinematic version of the Lincoln Memorial with Daniel Day-Lewis as President Lincoln seated, not in a marble temple, but rather on a dark wooden platform in the cold, wet Washington Naval Yard.\u00a0 \u00a0We then overhear the president in conversation with a kind of Greek chorus of fictional soldiers (two black and two white) who gather around him and in the course of their politically charged conversations end up reciting portions of the Gettysburg Address. \u00a0That ten-sentence speech has long been a sacred national text, but it was not one that Americans were reciting to each other in January 1865. \u00a0There was not even yet an established single text for the address \u2013the version quoted by the soldiers (the so-called \u201cBliss Copy\u201d which appears on the wall of the Memorial) was not the one Lincoln actually delivered at Gettysburg.[7]<\/a> The scene is almost totally implausible from a strictly historical perspective, but it does create a memorable and dramatic framework for the movie \u2013especially when you realize that the film does not end with Lincoln\u2019s assassination, but rather with a flashback to his Second Inaugural Address, the other text which graces the interior walls of the Lincoln Memorial.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The movie then launches into its main narrative with a dream sequence.\u00a0 In this case, the filmmakers have Abraham Lincoln describe an ominous-looking vision to Mary Lincoln, one that involves him standing alone on the deck of a ship. Yet this eerie dream derives from an account that appeared in the diary of Gideon Welles, who served as Lincoln\u2019s secretary of navy. \u00a0Welles\u2019s entry, dated April 14, 1865 (but written a few days afterward) described the president as telling his cabinet officers on the very day that he was assassinated about a recurring dream where \u201che seemed to be in some singular, indescribable vessel, and that he was moving with great rapidity [towards an indefinite shore].\u201d \u00a0The president claimed to have had this dream before \u201cnearly every great and important event of the War.\u201d[8]<\/a> \u00a0Tony Kushner\u2019s script alters the language of this account somewhat and puts it into an exchange between husband and wife preceding a \u201crevelation\u201d about his intention to fight for passage of an amendment to abolish slavery during the January 1865 lame duck session of Congress.[9]<\/a> \u00a0In this plot-setting scene, Mary Lincoln (Sally Fields) appears shocked by such news and argues vociferously against it, saying to her husband:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No one\u2019s loved as much as you, no one\u2019s ever been loved so much, by\u00a0the people, you might do anything now. Don\u2019t, don\u2019t waste that power\u00a0on an amendment bill that\u2019s sure of defeat.[10]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

In reality, however, Lincoln had already announced plans to push for a January vote on the abolition amendment \u2013a measure that almost everyone expected to eventually. \u00a0 Following his party\u2019s landslide November election victories, the president\u2019s annual message to Congress in\u00a0early December 1864\u00a0had predicted in public and with great confidence that \u201cthe next Congress will pass the measure [abolishing slavery] if this does not.\u201d Lincoln then bluntly suggested that since there was \u201conly a question of time as to when the proposed amendment will go to the States\u201d why \u201cmay we not agree that the sooner the better?\u201d[11]<\/a> \u00a0The tone of this passage is already triumphant. \u00a0 Regardless, the president\u2019s plan to push one more time for an abolition amendment in the outgoing 38th<\/sup> Congress was certainly not secret.\u00a0 Yet the movie pretends that his wife and nearly everyone else in the capital was somehow unaware of all this and that many were opposed to it. \u00a0Here is how artistic license works in Hollywood movies. \u00a0Filmmakers strive to establish compelling conflicts at the outset of their work so that they can proceed to resolve them with a suspenseful plot that also reveals essential traits of the main characters along the way.\u00a0 That\u2019s just scriptwriting 101. History, of course, is messier.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even though the movie runs quite long at 150 minutes, time constraints require numerous simplifications of this sort.\u00a0 Consider the sweeping conflations regarding Civil War-era partisanship. There were deep divisions within the Republican Party during the 1860s that have traditionally been identified as a split between Radicals and Conservatives, but those factions were not arguing over abolition in January 1865 as the script repeatedly tries to maintain.\u00a0 Key figures such as Secretary of State William Henry Seward, Republican Party elder statesman Francis Preston Blair, Sr., and Radical congressmen including James Ashley and Thaddeus Stevens may have despised each other (as the movie demonstrates), but by that point in the war they were all more or less in agreement that the Constitution had to be amended in order to eradicate the final underpinnings of the peculiar institution. This in itself was a pretty remarkable shift for some of these Republican politicians (Lincoln included) and was not at all apparent at the beginning of the conflict \u2013but it was self-evident by 1865.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet the film leaves a much different impression.\u00a0 There\u2019s no mention whatsoever about the president\u2019s aggressive December 1864 message. \u00a0Instead, a determined Lincoln has to endure a series of mini-lectures and complaints from his stunned Republican colleagues during the first third of the film, once he starts \u201crevealing\u201d to them his plans for the abolition amendment. A skeptical Secretary Seward (David Strathairn) asks Lincoln pointedly, \u201csince when has our party unanimously supported anything?\u201d \u00a0Yet the correct answer to that question would have been the last time the abolition amendment had appeared in the House (June 1864) when the only Republican to vote against it was Rep. James Ashley, the sponsor, who did so on technical grounds so that he could bring it back later for reconsideration.[13]<\/a> \u00a0 The cabinet did once argue over the timing and merits of presidential emancipation, as the movie suggests in one very teachable scene, but that was in the summer of 1862, not in early 1865. And Montgomery Blair may well have been pushed out of the president\u2019s cabinet in September 1864 as part of a deal with radicals, but Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook) surely never told Lincoln, as he does in the film: \u201cOur Republicans ain\u2019t abolitionist.\u201d \u00a0By that point in the war, almost everybody in the Republican Party was an abolitionist.\u00a0 Both Maryland and Missouri (Border States and key Blair strongholds) had already abolished slavery on their own initiative by early 1865. Yet Tony Kushner, the scriptwriter, has Blair sound almost like a Copperhead as he admonishes a beleaguered Lincoln: \u201cWe can\u2019t tell our people they can vote yes on abolishing slavery unless at the same time we can tell \u2018em that you\u2019re seeking a negotiated peace.\u201d[14]<\/a>\u00a0 That\u2019s not only a false note coming from someone like Blair, but also it\u2019s not even entirely clear that the elderly and perpetually controversial figure had any \u201cpeople\u201d left in the House now that his other son Frank (Francis Preston Blair, Jr.), a former congressman, was back in the Union army.\u00a0 All of the so-called \u201cConservative Republicans\u201d with speaking parts in this film and identified as being under Blair\u2019s sway are fictional characters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The conservative element of the Republican Party was not an obstacle to passage of the amendment. \u00a0Rather, the challenge for the amendment\u2019s backers was to win over Democratic votes, presumably lame duck ones from the Lower North, as well as a few stray Border State Unionists who had never really identified as Republicans.\u00a0 This was the great concern in January 1865 and one that fully engaged Lincoln.\u00a0 He personally lobbied Border State congressmen such as James Rollins from Missouri, who had originally come to Washington in 1861 as a Constitutional Unionist.\u00a0 Rollins had been reelected in 1862 by defeating a Radical Republican, but then had declined to run for reelection in 1864. The Missouri Unionist did not call himself a Republican during the war and had typically voted against Republican anti-slavery measures, including the abolition amendment in June 1864, but now, under these changing political circumstances, he appeared open to casting his ballot with the forces of history.[15]<\/a> The story of Lincoln\u2019s subsequent lobbying effort with Rollins is well known to historians, but strangely omitted from this movie. \u00a0Instead, the filmmakers create a fictional congressman from Missouri named Josiah \u201cBeanpole\u201d Burton, whom they explicitly label in the script as an \u201cundecided\u201d Republican.[16]<\/a>\u00a0 They then have some of his fictional constituents, a memorable couple named Mr. and Mrs. Jolly, visit the White House just as Lincoln and Seward are arguing about whether passage of the amendment was even possible during the lame duck session.\u00a0 Skeptical of what he considers to be Lincoln\u2019s unrealistic plans, the Seward character then artfully guides the Jolly\u2019s through a conversation that exposes their latent racism, leaving viewers to appreciate just how daunting the prospect of black equality really was in 1865.\u00a0 It\u2019s a compelling scene, perhaps necessary to help educate a modern movie-going audience about the grim reality of nineteenth-century racial views, but it is the kind of fiction that does some real damage to the complexity of the historical record.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Still, by far the worst damage to the historical record comes from the film\u2019s humorous but deeply cynical depiction of the lobbying effort orchestrated in the movie by an amusing trio of corrupt political hired guns. \u00a0 Robert Latham (John Hawkes), Richard Schell (Tim Blake Nelson), and William N. Bilbo (James Spader) were real nineteenth-century political figures authorized by Secretary of State Seward in the winter of 1864-65 to help promote passage of what ultimately became the Thirteenth Amendment. \u00a0Historians typically describe these men (and sometimes a few others) as the \u201cSeward Lobby\u201d but disagree over exactly how they lobbied for the amendment and to what degree President Lincoln was aware of their activities. \u00a0Still, there\u2019s no doubt that Latham and Schell were leading financiers and old friends of Seward\u2019s and that Bilbo was a prominent southern attorney and businessman who had switched sides during the war.\u00a0 Bilbo was mysterious but memorable, \u201cknown,\u201d according to historians John and LaWanda Cox, \u201cfor his elaborate waistcoats, his long sideburns, and his elegant manners.\u201d[17]<\/a> Bilbo was also important enough that he had met with President Lincoln just after the 1864 election and then corresponded with him later (when he got arrested, no less, for being an alleged spy). While visiting the nation\u2019s capital that winter, he roomed with a Democratic congressman.\u00a0 When in Manhattan, he stayed in the city\u2019s finest hotel. \u00a0Yet the movie introduces these characters as seedy outsiders, completely unknown to the president and forced to rent rooms in a \u201csquirrel-infested attic,\u201d as Bilbo (James Spader) puts it so memorably, because Seward was keeping them on such a tight retainer.[18]<\/a> \u00a0Nothing could have been further from the truth. \u00a0These were well-connected men of affairs who had volunteered their services in the final effort to secure a constitutional revolution. After passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, Latham waxed indignantly when the secretary of state tried to have the men reimbursed for some of their expenditures. \u00a0He wrote to Seward\u2019s son Frederick, \u201cA Gentleman called to have me give an acct of expenses. \u00a0Which amt to nothing<\/u> [emphasis added],\u201d before generously offering that, \u201cAt any time that I can be of service to the Hon Sec of State or yourself I will do all I can but at my own expence,\u201d[19]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The movie portrays the men in much different light \u2013as very rough figures (Bilbo \/ Spader even says directly to President Lincoln at one point, \u201cWell, I\u2019ll be fucked.\u201d) who spread bribes easily. \u00a0In fairness, however, this type of characterization does not just come out of thin air. Over the years, various historians have suggested that some kind of corruption was probably behind the amendment. Doris Kearns Goodwin did not write about the Seward Lobby in Team of Rivals<\/u>, but she did claim in her work that Lincoln had made it perfectly \u201cclear to his emissaries\u201d that they could offer a range of \u201cplum assignments, pardons, campaign contributions, and government jobs\u201d for any Democratic members who would switch their votes.[20]<\/a>\u00a0 The only specific example, however, that Goodwin identifies for this type of quid pro quo<\/u> corruption was Moses Odell, a New York Democrat, who became the naval officer for the port of New York soon after the war. Odell (not mentioned in the movie) did vote in favor of the amendment in January 1865, but it was surely not because of any last-minute patronage promise.\u00a0 He had also voted for the abolition measure back in June 1864.\u00a0 That is one reason why he was a lame duck.\u00a0 Local Democrats had dumped him for repeatedly breaking ranks, especially over the all-important slavery question. More important for his job seeking prospects, however, was the fact that he had been the only House Democrat who had served on the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War.\u00a0 In that position, he had proven to be quite an ardent reformer, often willing to criticize Democratic generals, as well as someone who had become \u201cwarm personal friends\u201d with then fellow committee member Senator Andrew Johnson (D, TN), the president who eventually appointed him in late 1865.[21]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The scholars who have focused most directly on corruption in the antislavery lobbying effort, such as the Coxes or Michael Vorenberg, have been far more cautious about drawing conclusions from the limited, mostly recollected evidence that remains.[22]<\/a>\u00a0 In truth, there are just a few second-hand and often decades old claims about shady patronage offers \u2013none of which can be corroborated with contemporary evidence.\u00a0 The only notable direct testimony for corruption comes from a letter in Seward\u2019s papers, written by Robert Latham.\u00a0 At one point, in early January, Latham wrote, \u201cMoney will certainly do it, if patriotism fails.\u201d[23]<\/a> \u00a0It\u2019s a great line \u2013one that really should have been in the movie\u2014but the context of the letter suggests that Latham was probably joking.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Every lobbying scene in the film involves fictional congressmen and purely invented interactions. \u00a0None of it is real, not even recollected reality.\u00a0 The best example of this imaginary corruption concerns Rep. Clay Hawkins of Ohio (Walton Goggins) who Bilbo (Spader) initially switches over to favor the amendment with the promise of a postmastership in Millersburg, Ohio following some memorably boozy hunting outings. \u00a0The movie has President Lincoln himself commenting on this news by remarking, \u201cHe\u2019s selling himself cheap, ain\u2019t he?\u201d[24]<\/a> \u00a0That line, in particular, seems unwarranted by the historical record. There was a single lame duck Democratic congressman from Ohio who switched his vote in favor of the antislavery amendment in January 1865 but his name was Wells A. Hutchins and he did not receive any post-war patronage appointment in the federal government. \u00a0Nor was he much recognizable in the character of Clay Hawkins. \u00a0In real life, Hutchins was a reasonably tough, independent-minded Democrat who had voted to support the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia in 1862 and who had backed the Lincoln Administration on several controversial issues during the war, including the suspension of habeas corpus<\/u>\u00a0or civil liberties \u2013an issue that was especially unpopular among Ohio Democrats.[25]<\/a> \u00a0 Understanding this background helps explain why he was a lame duck in 1865 and why he was such a natural target for supporting the amendment. It had nothing to do with hunting, drinking or patronage.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There\u2019s also no significant evidence connecting the Seward lobbyists to Hutchins or any Democrats outside of the Mid-Atlantic region. \u00a0According to LaWanda and John Cox, the lobbyists, especially Bilbo, spent most of their time in New York (not Washington) generally attempting to persuade influential Democratic newspapers (such as the\u00a0New York World<\/u>)\u00a0<\/em>and the state\u2019s Democratic governor (Horatio Seymour) to send signals that would allow wavering lame duck Democrats in the region to feel more confident about switching their votes.[26]<\/a>\u00a0 In his more recent work on this subject, historian Leonard Richards agrees that the \u201cmain task\u201d of the Seward Lobby \u201cwas to get support of the six New Yorkers\u201d on Congressman Ashley\u2019s list of persuadable Democratic lame ducks. Yet Richards is not even convinced they were pivotal in that limited effort.[27]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That is why perhaps the most telling example of artistic license in the whole film involves an amusing race between Bilbo (Spader) and White House aide John Hay (Joseph Cross) during the day of the final House vote on January 31, 1865. \u00a0The movie has the two figures running desperately to get Lincoln\u2019s response to some damning reports of impending peace talks \u2013a leak which the script claims would threaten to jeopardize the entire lobbying effort. \u00a0The younger Hay beats out the noticeably winded Bilbo, and then President Lincoln proceeds to draft an evasive reply that allows the final roll call to proceed and victory to be achieved. \u00a0It is a powerful climax with political machinations and social justice converging in ways that illustrate the film\u2019s major insight about Lincoln \u2013that he understood how to bend a flawed, messy democratic process toward moral consequences. \u00a0However, in real life, Bilbo was in New York at the time of the vote. \u00a0There was an evasive message from the president, but certainly no footrace from the Capitol and no significant presence in Washington at all by those Seward lobbyists during the final fight to win House passage of the amendment.\u00a0 It turns out this dramatic moment is just another one of those fabled Hollywood chase scenes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another type of film tradition seems to lurk behind much of the \u201cLincoln\u201d movie\u2019s approach to the Radical Republicans and their ostensible leader, Thaddeus Stevens (R, PA).\u00a0 The script describes the setting in Stevens\u2019 Capitol Hill office as \u201credolent of politics, ideology (a bust of Robespierre, a print of Tom Paine), long occupancy and hard work.\u201d[28]<\/a> \u00a0Such characterizations would strike most historians as heavy-handed and utterly out-of-date. \u00a0Older generations of scholars sometimes referred to the radicals as \u201cJacobins,\u2019 but in recent years, historians of the period have been more attentive to the complexities of wartime partisanship. \u00a0That scene in the office also establishes Thaddeus Stevens as the central radical figure organizing the amendment\u2019s passage, even more so than the measure\u2019s somewhat hapless sponsor, James Ashley. \u00a0This is not how most historians have characterized their respective roles.\u00a0 As chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, Stevens was undoubtedly an important figure, but probably not the central one in securing passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. \u00a0The chairman had only four index entries in Doris Kearns Goodwin\u2019s\u00a0Team of Rivals<\/u>\u00a0<\/em>(2005), a nearly 800-page book from which the screenplay was adapted. \u00a0Stevens plays a somewhat larger role in Michael Vorenberg\u2019s more compact\u00a0Final Freedom<\/u>\u00a0<\/em>(2001) with seven index entries but even there he is clearly superseded by other figures such as Ashley and Senator Lyman Trumbull (R, IL), who is not even mentioned in the film. \u00a0The latest and most comprehensive study of wartime abolition policies \u2013James Oakes\u2019s\u00a0Freedom National<\/u>\u00a0<\/em>(2012)\u2013 contains a mere six index entries for Stevens.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By contrast, Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) has about 45 speaking parts in the Spielberg film, second only to Abraham Lincoln. \u00a0He looms large as a counter-weight to the president \u00a0\u2013Lincoln\u2019s near opposite in both style and policy. \u00a0Their confrontation in the White House kitchen following a reception upstairs organized by Mary Lincoln \u2013and about exactly halfway through the script– proves to be one of the movie\u2019s most gripping scenes.\u00a0 Yet in that revealing encounter, Kushner seems to be investing many older and quite hostile ideas about Stevens into the film.\u00a0 The scriptwriter contrasts Lincoln\u2019s calculated, pragmatic approach with Stevens\u2019s far more rigid, ideological worldview. \u00a0Nor is he subtle about where his sympathies lie.\u00a0 He actually has Stevens (Jones) saying at one point, in defense of his sweeping plans for revolutionizing the South, \u00a0\u201cAh, shit on the people and what they want and what they are ready for! \u00a0I don\u2019t give a goddamn about the people and what they want! \u00a0This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the good of the people without caring much for any of \u2018em.\u201d[29]<\/a> \u00a0 Such lines (minus the cursing) would be perfectly at home within the captions of D.W. Griffith\u2019s groundbreaking and controversial silent film, \u201cBirth of A Nation\u201d (1915). \u00a0Griffith\u2019s film depicted Reconstruction as an utter failure in part because of the unyielding attitudes of radicals like Austin Stoneman (the character based upon Stevens). \u00a0In the kitchen debate between Lincoln and Stevens, Kushner essentially embraces this view. \u00a0He has Lincoln commenting drily on Stevens\u2019s outburst about the \u201cpeople\u201d by calling it, \u201cthe untempered version of Reconstruction,\u201d and \u201cnot exactly\u201d what he intends.\u00a0 Nor does that comment appear to have been an accident.\u00a0 Kushner pointedly informed one interviewer, after the movie\u2019s release, \u201cThe abuse of the South after they were defeated was a catastrophe, and helped lead to just unimaginable, untellable human suffering.\u201d[30]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Nonetheless, Spielberg\u2019s \u201cLincoln\u201d is no Lost Cause film.\u00a0 Instead, the few Reconstruction-inspired stereotypes that might lurk within the script come across in the actual film more as accommodations to time constraints than as a result of any concerted political agenda.\u00a0 Stevens is \u201cuntempered\u201d because such views are just easier to establish than more complicated realities.\u00a0 He is the boss of both radical congressman and senators, because it would be too difficult to flesh out characters like Benjamin \u201cBluff\u201d Wade, identified in the script as \u201cformidable Senator BLUFF WADE (R, MA), who\u2019s never smiled.\u201d[31]<\/a>\u00a0 Old Bluff provides some passing comic relief in the film, grousing with Stevens in the chairman\u2019s office and then grimacing at Mrs. Lincoln during the White House reception, but otherwise the powerful radical from Ohio (not Massachusetts, his native state) gets no serious attention for his ambitious alternative to the abolition amendment, the so-called Wade-Davis bill, which Lincoln had pocket-vetoed the previous summer.\u00a0 Curiously, there is no Congressman Henry Winter Davis in the film either.\u00a0 Instead, the filmmakers present a fictional character named Asa Vintner Litton (Stephen Spinella), described in the script as a lame duck radical Republican from Maryland.\u00a0 In the film, Litton appears as the embodiment of pure radicalism and believes more deeply in Ashley\u2019s amendment than anybody else \u2013even in some ways than Ashley himself\u2013 calling it \u201cabolition\u2019s best legal prayer.\u201d[32]<\/a>\u00a0 Yet Henry Winter Davis, a radical lame duck from Maryland, was much more ambivalent about the amendment. \u00a0He had missed the June 1864 vote (intentionally, according to historian Michael Vorenberg) because he considered his omnibus reconstruction plan preferable to the separate measures for abolition and reconstruction that had been introduced by Ashley at the end of the first session and were now being debated again in January 1865. \u00a0 Ultimately, Davis voted for the amendment in January, but the quirky and utterly fictional combination of Bluff Wade and Asa Linton offers none of these nuances of the historical record.[33]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There were more than time constraints, however, involved in the film\u2019s simplistic explanation for how Lincoln finally won Stevens over to the more tempered approach for abolition. According to the movie, about two weeks after the White House reception, Stevens (Jones) finally decided to restrain himself and ended up endorsing a limited approach to civil right, at least while the outcome of the amendment vote was in jeopardy. He says repeatedly through gritted teeth, in the face of fierce race baiting from Copperhead leader Fernando Wood, \u201cI don\u2019t hold with equality in all things only with equality before the law and\u00a0nothing more.\u201d \u00a0This concession to pragmatism prompts Mary Lincoln (Fields) in the House gallery to remark to her black dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckley (Gloria Reuben), \u201cWho\u2019d ever guessed that old nightmare capable of such control?\u201d \u00a0To this, Keckley excuses herself angrily and leaves with tears welling in her eyes.[34]<\/a> \u00a0It\u2019s a compelling scene, but one full of artistic license.\u00a0 The excerpts from the House debates are not real quotations from the\u00a0Congressional Globe<\/u>.\u00a0\u00a0 They appear instead to be a creative collage of materials pulled together by Tony Kushner from a variety of secondary sources. \u00a0Michael Vorenberg, for example, quotes Stevens earlier in that month claiming that he \u201cnever held to that doctrine of negro equality \u2026 not equality in all things -simply before the laws, nothing else.\u201d \u00a0Yet that remark was made on January 5, 1865 \u2013ten days before the kitchen scene. \u00a0And, in fact, Stevens and other radicals had made similar statements in the past.\u00a0 Nor is there any evidence that Mary Lincoln ever attended those House debates. \u00a0Instead, what the filmmakers have done by rearranging events and inventing selected details is to attribute what looks like Stevens\u2019s newfound pragmatism to Lincoln\u2019s timely intervention. \u00a0That\u2019s not historical fact, but it is critical to the plot.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

According to the movie\u2019s narrative, Friday, January 27, 1865 was an action-packed and pivotal day. \u00a0It was the day of Thaddeus Stevens\u2019s surprisingly controlled performance in the House. It was a day marked by Abraham Lincoln\u2019s bitter argument with his oldest son and then his subsequent clash with his wife Mary after he revealed that he had finally decided to allow their eldest son Robert to join the Union army. \u00a0That decision then leads Mary Lincoln, after her bitter outburst, to suddenly change her mind about the abolition amendment.\u00a0 She informs her husband while they are attending theatre that night that if the amendment will truly help end the war, then she wants him to do whatever it takes to make it happen.\u00a0 Upon returning to the White House from that very theatre outing, Lincoln also has a timely encounter with one of the few black characters in the film, dressmaker Keckley, who also urges the president to provide greater leadership in the fight for the antislavery amendment. \u00a0All of those \u201cevents\u201d are fictional, but they prove essential for explaining the film\u2019s point-of-view \u2013namely, that Lincoln interjected himself at the end of the battle for the constitutional amendment in a way that proved decisive.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The next several scenes subsequently show Lincoln in urgent action.\u00a0 He meets for the first time with the Seward lobbyists and helps plot their final, hardball strategy.\u00a0 He cajoles support for the amendment by himself and with Secretary Seward.\u00a0 Then finally on the night of Sunday, January 29, 1865, he presides over an intense strategy session in the White House with Rep. James Ashley, Preston and Montgomery Blair, Secretary of State Seward and aides John Nicolay and John Hay. \u00a0This is one of the key scenes featured in the movie\u2019s trailer, showing an angry, forceful Lincoln demanding action by shouting, \u201cNow, now, now!\u201d and memorably declaring, \u201cI am the President of the United States,\u00a0clothed in immense power<\/u>!\u201d[35]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ironically, this un-Lincolnian sounding statement is one of the few quotations in the movie that has roots in a real primary source. \u00a0Rep. John B. Alley (R, MA) claimed more than twenty years after the fact that he had heard from some unnamed person that during the battle for the amendment the\u00a0president had called into his office a pair of unidentified congressmen in order to tell them that only two more votes were needed for passage and that they \u201cmust be procured.\u201d \u00a0Then\u00a0Alley\u2019s recollection\u00a0provided a lengthy verbatim quotation of 86 words, which he attributed to Lincoln, and which culminated with the ringing phrase, \u201cI am President of the United States, clothed with immense power\u201d (note that the script silently changes \u201cclothed with\u201d to \u201cclothed in\u201d \u2013a more fitting usage). \u00a0Yet this quotation cannot be taken seriously.\u00a0 Alley was recalling events from two decades past that he had apparently heard about second- or even third-hand. \u00a0There are no names, no dates, and the only specific detail \u2013two votes short of the required two-thirds majority\u2013 seems suspiciously like the final vote tally.[36]<\/a> \u00a0Regardless, nobody can be trusted to remember verbatim quotations of such length. \u00a0Yet Doris Kearns Goodwin quotes the entire passage in her book,\u00a0Team of Rivals<\/u> and it appears it was from this account that Kushner got the raw material for his script, which he then embroidered by placing it at the very end of the lobbying effort and in a meeting with several of the movie\u2019s principal characters, not simply two unnamed congressmen.[37]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The vote for what ultimately became the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution did occur on January 31, 1865 and the \u201cLincoln\u201d filmmakers work diligently to recreate that moment in its full historical grandeur. \u00a0But they also employ here, as elsewhere, various types of artistic license. \u00a0None of the floor exchanges from the movie actually match with the official accounts in the\u00a0Congressional Globe<\/u>. \u00a0<\/em>Instead, the movie takes as its dramatic centerpiece the behind-the-scenes story of President Lincoln\u2019s evasive reply about impending peace talks\u00a0 –a minor deception or \u201clawyer\u2019s dodge\u201d as the script labels it\u2014but one that helps smooth the way toward final passage. \u00a0This was a real story, but one that comes mostly from a recollection made shortly after the war by Rep. Ashley.[38]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0According to Ashley, prior to the final vote, he had sent Lincoln a dire warning that rumors of peace talks were interfering with the likelihood of their success.\u00a0 He wrote:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Sir, The report is in circulation in the House that Peace Commissioners are on their way or are in the city, and is being used against us. \u00a0If it is true, I fear we shall loose [sic] the bill. \u00a0Please authorize me to contradict it, if not true. \u00a0Respectfully, J.M. Ashley.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

This was a reference to confederate envoys who were at that moment on their way to Hampton Roads, Virginia, where in a few days, they would have an unprecedented meeting with President Lincoln. On the reverse side of Ashley\u2019s note, Lincoln decided to acknowledge none of this, but instead wrote:<\/p>\n

So far as I know, there are no peace Commissioners in the City, or likely to be in it.<\/p>\n

Jan. 31, 1865. \u00a0A. Lincoln<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

The filmmakers present this exchange in the most dramatic fashion possible, having Democratic leader George Pendleton (D, Ohio) disrupt the morning\u2019s proceedings, allegedly waving \u201caffidavits from loyal citizens\u201d confirming the existence of secret peace talks. \u00a0This creates some considerable chaos on the floor of the House that leads fictional \u201cconservative\u201d Republican Aaron Haddam to indicate (after receiving a critical nod from Preston Blair, perched conveniently in the gallery) that the \u201cconservative faction of border and western Republicans\u201d could not support an amendment \u201cif a peace offer is being held hostage to its success.\u201d[39]<\/a> \u00a0What follows is that mad footrace from the Capitol to the White House described earlier, the one that involved Lincoln\u2019s aides and the Seward lobbyists, who have now somehow magically appeared from their hotel rooms in New York City.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the White House, the drama only intensifies as John Hay, the president\u2019s young assistant private secretary, heatedly warns him against \u201cmaking false representation\u201d to Congress. Lincoln, however, crafts his deceptive answer and hands the note to Bilbo (Spader), the seasoned lobbyist, ignoring the warnings from Hay about this \u201cimpeachable\u201d action. \u00a0Bilbo subsequently delivers the message to Rep. Ashley who reads it with a flourish to the entire House. \u00a0 There is no record of any of this in the official proceedings, nor does it match with Ashley\u2019s post-war description of how he shared the note with colleagues. \u00a0Bilbo was not even in Washington at the time, and there was almost certainly no footrace. \u00a0Nor does any contemporary account have Preston Blair in the gallery giving directions to conservative congressmen. \u00a0Aaron Haddam is a fictional character, listed as a Republican from Kentucky, with no obvious historical counterpart. \u00a0All of these details are included in the film merely for dramatic effect.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet these details matter, because the film asserts throughout that peace and abolition were two aspirations that appeared to be in utter collision to almost everybody at that time except Lincoln.\u00a0 At one point, Seward (Strathairn) actually tells the president, \u201cIt\u2019s either the amendment or this Confederate peace, you cannot have both.\u201d[40]<\/a>\u00a0 That is arguably the central premise of the movie, and helps explain why the now-obscure February 3, 1865 encounter with Confederate envoys Alexander Stephens, John A. Campbell and Robert M.T. Hunter at Hampton Roads plays such an unexpectedly large role in the narrative.\u00a0 That encounter was a real event; the only time in the war that Lincoln and Secretary Seward met with Confederate politicians to discuss the possibility of ending the conflict. The five men sat together for a couple of hours on board the steamboat River Queen<\/u> in Union-controlled waters near Fortress Monroe.\u00a0 Nothing came of their meeting, however, and the war itself ended in a matter of weeks anyway, following Confederate army surrenders in the field.\u00a0 Moreover, no transcript exists for the Hampton Roads conversations, but former Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens famously wrote about the episode in his post-war reminiscences. \u00a0Stephens made some pretty wild claims about Lincoln\u2019s alleged concessions that seem totally out of character for the president. Partly for this reason, many Civil War historians dismiss the Hampton Roads talks as little more than a sideshow \u2013one of several improbable and failed efforts undertaken in the last year of the war to end the conflict. \u00a0These varied efforts appear so improbable in retrospect because both Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln had become implacable in their positions by that point. \u00a0Lincoln had clearly established his preconditions for peace from July 18, 1864 forward \u2013an end to the rebellion, the restoration of the union, and the abandonment of slavery. \u00a0Those three conditions never changed in the final year of the conflict, making true peace talks impossible. Yet other historians have been more willing to take the Hampton Roads conference seriously. \u00a0Doris Kearns Goodwin takes the conference quite seriously in\u00a0Team of Rivals<\/u> (2005), which probably helps explain its importance to the movie.\u00a0 The film, however, takes liberties with the narrative of this final peace effort that Goodwin does not.[41]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The movie has Lincoln meeting with Preston Blair and his children at the Blair House in early January, reluctantly agreeing to authorize the elder Blair to undertake a secret trip to Richmond in exchange for the family\u2019s support for the antislavery amendment. \u00a0This January deal is what essentially results in the February meeting at Hampton Roads. In reality, Blair and Lincoln had met alone at the White House in December to discuss the proposed journey. \u00a0At that time, Lincoln authorized a pass for Blair to travel into enemy lines, yet it\u2019s not at all clear what the two men agreed upon in terms of peace talks. \u00a0What we do know is that the elder statesman began his journey on January 3, 1865, arriving in Richmond by January 12, and that once in front of Davis, he proceeded to outline a wild scheme to end hostilities by initiating a joint expedition of former Confederate and Union troops into Mexico in order to remove the French occupation and restore the Monroe Doctrine. \u00a0This was not any kind of plan ever endorsed by President Lincoln. Davis also rejected most of Blair\u2019s ideas outright, but he did agree to try to open talks for ending hostilities between what he termed the \u201ctwo countries.\u201d \u00a0 Blair returned to Washington on January 16 and met with Lincoln on January 18, 1865. \u00a0The president agreed merely that the administration would receive envoys willing to secure peace for \u201cour one common country.\u201d \u00a0Three days later, Blair then brought this message back to Richmond. \u00a0Davis subsequently met with Alexander Stephens on January 27 and appointed him and former Supreme Court justice Campbell and Senator Hunter, as his personal envoys.\u00a0 Some historians consider this a pretty good sign that Davis wasn\u2019t serious himself about these potential talks, since all three men had become highly critical of his leadership.\u00a0 It appeared instead that he was trying to show up his critics by demonstrating once and for all that they would come back with nothing from the unyielding Union leader. \u00a0Regardless of the motives of the respective presidents, however, the Confederate envoys traveled toward Union lines on January 29 and met with General Grant on January 30 before they eventually spent the morning of February 3 with Lincoln and Seward.[42]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The movie accelerates and rearranges this timeline pretty ruthlessly. \u00a0It ignores the fact that Blair took two trips to Richmond that occupied most of the month of January, and instead depicts him reporting back to Lincoln on or about January 10, 1865 with news that Davis had already appointed his three peace commissioners. \u00a0Lincoln then agrees to proceed with the talks if Blair (Holbrook) lobbies for his antislavery amendment. \u00a0Blair objects to the \u201chorsetrading,\u201d but accepts the condition. \u00a0The next day, Seward (Strathairn) reveals to Lincoln that he has found out about this deal with Blair and that he resents it bitterly. \u00a0That\u2019s when he confronts Lincoln with the stark choice:\u00a0 abolition or peace.[43]<\/a> Yet once again, this type of simplistic contrast is only made evident to the movie audience by the rearranging and omitting of a host of details.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The movie also ducks the biggest historical controversy over Stephens\u2019s post-war account of Hampton Roads \u2013one that definitely undermines a key element of the Spielberg message. \u00a0According to the former Confederate vice president, Lincoln offered to allow southern states to reenter the union by ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment \u201cprospectively,\u201d suggesting that they could take up to five more years to put it into effect.[44]<\/a> \u00a0Stephens also claimed that Lincoln proposed Union payments of up to $400 million for the South to abandon slavery. Campbell and Hunter also asserted after the war that Lincoln had offered at least some kind of compensation in their talks on February 3d. \u00a0There is no corroboration for Stephens\u2019s outlandish claim about prospective ratification (which would be utterly unconstitutional), but there is contemporary evidence that Lincoln did consider in effect paying southern states to end the war and abandon slavery. \u00a0He actually drafted such a proposal and presented it to his cabinet on February 5, 1865, which unanimously opposed it. \u00a0Lincoln then dropped the plan. \u00a0Whether or not he was serious remains an open question. \u00a0But it is revealing that this idea does not appear in the \u201cLincoln\u201d movie at all. \u00a0Doris Kearns Goodwin addresses it in Team of Rivals\u00a0<\/u>(2005), but here is a good illustration of the difference between works of history and historical fiction.\u00a0 The former are almost always more complicated, and, in some ways, less satisfying.[45]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This insight also helps explain the matter of the final roll call vote on January 31, 1865. \u00a0It was an unusual affair by any account. \u00a0The House galleries were crowded, anticipation was high and the celebration afterward was unprecedented. \u00a0Newspapers and magazines all took note of the revolutionary nature of the moment. \u00a0Even the\u00a0Congressional Globe\u00a0<\/u>invested this particular roll call with special drama, recording as it rarely did, outbursts of \u201cconsiderable applause\u201d when certain lame duck Democratic members, such as Rep. James English (D, CT), voted \u201cay\u201d for the amendment.[46]<\/a> Yet \u201cLincoln\u201d movie ignores this fact.\u00a0 Instead, two fictional congressmen from Connecticut cast the very first movie votes on the amendment \u2013both nays. \u00a0This was a mistake on multiple levels. Nineteenth-century House roll call votes proceeded in alphabetical order by congressman (not by state) and the entire four-man Connecticut delegation voted in favor of abolition.\u00a0 Such discrepancies might seem trivial, but modern-day Connecticut congressman Joe Courtney (D, CT) was enraged enough to\u00a0demand a public apology from Steven Spielberg and to request a correction for the DVD edition of the movie. \u00a0New York Times<\/u> columnist Maureen Dowd\u00a0then sided with the congressman with a tough op-ed headlined, \u201cThe Oscar for Best Fabrication.\u201d[47]<\/a> \u00a0More important, this flap played out right in the middle of Academic Award season, and while it lacked the intensity of the original backlash against Capra\u2019s \u201cMr. Smith,\u201d it may well have impacted the relatively disappointing results for the film (only Daniel Day-Lewis received an Oscar).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When \u201cLincoln\u201d scriptwriter Tony Kushner responded in public to the criticism from Congressman Courtney, he used the occasion to outline his theory about how to distinguish history from historical drama.\u00a0 \u201cHere\u2019s my rule,\u201d he wrote, \u201cAsk yourself, \u2018Did this thing happen?\u2019 If the answer is yes, then it\u2019s historical. Then ask, \u2018Did this thing happen precisely this way?\u2019 If the answer is yes, then it\u2019s history; if the answer is no, not precisely this way, then it\u2019s historical drama.\u201d[48]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The problem with this line of defense is that it\u2019s so simple-minded in its description of history. \u00a0Historians are not really capable of deciding how things happened \u201cprecisely.\u201d \u00a0They argue over matters large and small, almost endlessly, because their method is totally dependent on evidence \u2013and evidence changes. Historians routinely find new evidence, even for topics as familiar as Lincoln and the Civil War. \u00a0Sometimes they discover new ways of looking at old evidence. \u00a0Once in awhile, sadly, they lose evidence. \u00a0But it\u2019s all about telling stories with the evidence \u2013at least for historians. \u00a0For dramatists, the story-telling is accomplished in other ways, usually with the artistry of plot and character. They are not bound, as historians, by the rules of evidence. \u00a0That is the fundamental difference between history and historical fiction and no amount of getting some things \u201cright\u201d can make up for inventing or rearranging other things. \u00a0But it\u2019s not clear that Kushner acknowledges this reality. \u00a0He seems to think that he was true to the historical evidence in the \u201cLincoln\u201d movie. In his response to Rep. Courtney, Kushner offered a sweeping defense of his script as historical in nature:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Thirteenth Amendment passed by a two-vote margin in the House in January 1865 because President Lincoln decided to push it through, using persuasion and patronage to switch the votes of lame-duck Democrats, all the while fending off a serious offer to negotiate peace from the South. None of the key moments of that story\u2014the overarching story our film tells\u2014are altered.[49]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet as this essay demonstrates, Kushner and Spielberg altered many \u201ckey moments\u201d in this profoundly important historical story. \u00a0Pointing them out does not condemn the movie, certainly not as drama, but it serves as a reminder to students (and perhaps future filmmakers) that when you read or invoke the phrase, \u201cBased on a true story,\u201d that means it\u2019s not a true story and should neither be judged \u2013nor defended\u2013 as one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is something that Steven Spielberg himself once seemed only too happy to acknowledge.\u00a0 In November 2012, he was invited to deliver the Dedication Day address at the Soldiers\u2019 National Cemetery in Gettysburg.\u00a0 Speaking on the 149th<\/sup> anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, Spielberg was eloquent and quite profound on the differences between history and historical fiction.\u00a0 \u201cOne of the jobs of art is to go to the impossible places that other disciplines like history must avoid,\u201d he said explicitly, calling films like his, \u201can illusion,\u201d \u201ca fantasy,\u201d and \u201ca dream,\u201d before adding, rightly, that nevertheless, \u201cdreams matter.\u201d\u00a0 He noted with some poignancy that \u201camong the reasons I wanted to make this film\u201d was because he had hoped almost \u201cimpossibly to bring Lincoln back from his sleep of one and a half centuries, even if only for two and a half hours, and even if only in a cinematic dream.\u201d[50]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The challenge for educators is that some of Spielberg\u2019s historical dreams have a nightmarish quality.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just that Bluff Wade was a senator from Ohio instead of Massachusetts, or that Thaddeus Stevens delivered some remarks on January 5 instead of January 27.\u00a0 It\u2019s not even about who know what when regarding Lincoln\u2019s intentions to push for an antislavery amendment. It\u2019s about integrity.\u00a0 Spielberg\u2019s cinematic tour of Civil War Washington is dramatic because it is so full of corruption, intrigue and deception.\u00a0 More important, it\u2019s a movie that describes how Abraham Lincoln navigated this ethical morass through a series of increasingly dark compromises.\u00a0 According to Spielberg\u2019s vision, Lincoln had to deceptive and condon forms of corruption in order to succeed. That may have been so, but the record doesn\u2019t really support it.\u00a0 When Daniel Day-Lewis comments acidly that, \u201cHe\u2019s selling himself cheap, ain\u2019t he?\u201d about the bribing of a fictional congressman, that particular dream really does matter if American students end up believing it was President Lincoln who said that.\u00a0 Great filmmakers like Capra and Spielberg should never have to be tender about whatever political games they go after, but in doing so they must realize they are teaching powerful \u2013and sometimes disturbing– lessons about democracy and leadership.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> A version of this essay was delivered as a talk at the 2014 US Capitol Historical Society Symposium and sections of this text have also appeared online at the \u201cUnofficial Teacher\u2019s Guide to Spielberg\u2019s Lincoln,\u201d http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/2013\/02\/14\/warning-artists-at-work\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Frank S. Nugent, \u201cThe Screen in Review,\u201d New York Times<\/u>, October 20, 1939.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Barkley and Byrnes both quoted in Richard L. Strout, \u201cCongress\u2019s Response to \u2018Mr. Smith Goes to Washington\u2019,\u201d Christian Science Monitor<\/u>, October 17, 1939, http:\/\/xroads.virginia.edu\/~ma97\/halnon\/capra\/smithrev.html<\/a>. The Neely bill never became law.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Quoted in Joseph McBridge, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success<\/u> (orig. pub. Simon & Schuster, 1992; Jackson Mississippi, 2011), 422.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> For a summary of the critical reaction to the movie, especially among historians, see \u201cHistorians React To the \u2018Lincoln\u2019 Movie,\u201d Unofficial Teacher\u2019s Guide to Spielberg\u2019s \u201cLincoln,\u201d http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/emancipation\/2013\/02\/07\/historians-react-to-the-lincoln-movie\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln<\/u> (New York, 2005).<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> See Matthew Pinsker, \u201cLincoln\u2019s Gettysburg Addresses,\u201d Google Cultural Institute, https:\/\/www.google.com\/culturalinstitute\/exhibit\/lincoln-s-gettysburg-addresses\/wReow-98<\/a><\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Diary entry, April 14, 1865, The Civil War Diary of Gideon Welles: Lincoln\u2019s Secretary of the Navy<\/u>, edited by William E. Gienapp and Erica L. Gienapp, (Urbana, 2014), 623.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Tony Kushner, \u201cLincoln,\u201d p. 8; the final script is available online via the Internet Archive, http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130120042546\/http:\/\/www.dreamworkspicturesawards.com\/SSPublicationScriptLincoln12.20.2011.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Kushner, \u201cLincoln,\u201d 9.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1864, Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln <\/u>(New Brunswick, NJ: 1953), 8: 149.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> The most sophisticated recent portrayal of Republican divisions over abolition and reconstruction comes from James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865<\/u> (New York, 2013).<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Kushner, 12.\u00a0 On this point, see Michael Vorenberg, Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment<\/u> (Cambridge, UK, 2001), 138-9.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Kushner, 22.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> On Rollins, see Leonard L. Richards, Who Freed the Slaves? The Fight Over the Thirteenth Amendment<\/u> (Chicago, 2015), 151.\u00a0 On the Rollins-Lincoln relationship, see David Herbert Donald, Lincoln<\/u> (New York, 1995), 554.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Kushner, 17.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> LaWanda and John H. Cox, Politics, Principle & Prejudice, 1865-66: Dilemma of Reconstruction America<\/u> (New York, 1963), 6.\u00a0 Bilbo\u2019s letter to Lincoln, thanking him for help after his arrest in New York, was not featured in the movie, but is available online:\u00a0 William N. Bilbo to Abraham Lincoln, January 26, 1865, Abraham Lincoln Papers at Library of Congress, http:\/\/memory.loc.gov\/mss\/mal\/mal1\/402\/4026800\/001.jpg<\/a><\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> Kushner, 33.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> Cox and Cox, 24.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> Goodwin, 687.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> Leonard L. Richards describes Odell\u2019s politics succinctly in Who Freed The Slaves?<\/u>, see pages180-2.\u00a0 For a good description of Odell\u2019s connections to Andrew Johnson, see New York Times<\/u>, \u201cOur Federal Relations; Changes in the Government Blue Book,\u201d September 1, 1865. Johnson named Odell as naval officer with a recess appointment in the summer of 1865, but the former congressman did not last long in the job.\u00a0 He suffered from throat cancer and died in June 1866.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a> Cox and Cox, 28.\u00a0 Vorenberg, 204.<\/p>\n

[23]<\/a> Cox and Cox, 17.<\/p>\n

[24]<\/a> Kushner, \u201cLincoln,\u201d 47.<\/p>\n

[25]<\/a> For a good, short profile of Hutchins, a relatively obscure nineteenth-century congressman, see Nelson Wiley Evans and Emmons B. Stivers, A History of Adams County, Ohio<\/u> (West Union, OH, 1900), 314-6 (via Google Books).<\/p>\n

[26]<\/a> Cox and Cox, 19-25.<\/p>\n

[27]<\/a> Richards, 210.\u00a0 According to Richards, the Seward Lobby should really be identified as Bilbo, Emanuel B. Hart, Latham and George O. Jones.<\/p>\n

[28]<\/a> Kushner, 30.<\/p>\n

[29]<\/a> Kushner, 59.<\/p>\n

[30]<\/a> \u201cKushner\u2019s \u2018Lincoln\u2019 is Strange, But Also Savvy,\u201d NPR, November 15, 2012, http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2012\/11\/15\/165146361\/kushners-lincoln-is-strange-but-also-savvy<\/a><\/p>\n

[31]<\/a> Kushner, 30.<\/p>\n

[32]<\/a> Kushner, 31.<\/p>\n

[33]<\/a> For a careful analysis of Davis\u2019s complicated views on the abolition amendment, see Vorenberg, 129.<\/p>\n

[34]<\/a> Kushner, 78-9.<\/p>\n

[35]<\/a> Kushner, 99.<\/p>\n

[36]<\/a> John B. Alley in Allen Thordike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln By Distinguished Men of His Time<\/u> (New York, 1886), 586.\u00a0 Michael Vorenberg has a good dissection of this shaky recollection in Final Freedom<\/u>, 198.<\/p>\n

[37]<\/a> Goodwin, 687.\u00a0 Kushner, 97-9.<\/p>\n

[38]<\/a> Kushner, 104.\u00a0 James M. Ashley to William H. Herndon, November 23, 1866 in Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon\u2019s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln<\/u> (Urbana, IL, 1998), 413-4.\u00a0 Ashley included a copy of his correspondence with Lincoln in his message to Herndon, claiming John G. Nicolay had delivered it.\u00a0 However, Elizabeth Peabody, a noted educator from Massachusetts, visited the White House in early February 1865 and heard a slightly different version of the story from President Lincoln, who told her about the notes after she complimented him on the passage of the amendment.\u00a0 See Elizabeth Peabody to Horace Mann, Jr., [February 1865] in Arlin Turner, \u201cElizabeth Peabody Visits Lincoln, February 1865,\u201d \u00a0New England Quarterly<\/u> 48 (March 1975), 119-20.<\/p>\n

[39]<\/a> Kushner, 101.<\/p>\n

[40]<\/a> Kushner, 49.<\/p>\n

[41]<\/a> For a good representation of how most historians dismiss the Hampton Roads peace talks, see James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era<\/u> (New York, 1988), 812-4.\u00a0 Goodwin spends more space on Hampton Roads than on the actual fight for the amendment but neither gets more than a handful of pages; see Team of Rivals<\/u>, 690-6.\u00a0 A more thorough revisionist account of the failed peace talks, which argues for their importance, comes from William C. Harris, \u201cThe Hampton Roads Peace Conference: A Final Test of Lincoln\u2019s Presidential Leadership,\u201d Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association<\/u> 21 (Winter 2000), 30-61.\u00a0 See also James B. Conroy, Our One Common Country: Abraham Lincoln and the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 1865<\/u> (Guilford, CT, 2014).<\/p>\n

[42]<\/a> Harris provides the best chronology of the Blair role in his article, \u201cThe Hampton Roads Peace Conference.\u201d<\/p>\n

[43]<\/a> Kushner, 41-9.<\/p>\n

[44]<\/a> Alexander H. Stephens, A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States <\/u>\u00a0(2 vols., Philadelphia, 1870), 2: 614.<\/p>\n

[45]<\/a> For the possibility of compensation, see Stephens, 2; 617; Draft resolution, February 5, 1865 in Collected Works<\/u>, 8: 260-1; Goodwin, 694-6.\u00a0 In his article, Harris carefully analyzes the other lesser-known recollected accounts of the meeting from Campbell and Hunter.\u00a0 Neither Lincoln nor Seward produced an account of the conversations.<\/p>\n

[46]<\/a> Congressional Globe<\/u> 2d Session, January 31, 1865, p. 531<\/p>\n

[47]<\/a> Lyneka Little, \u201cCongressman Says \u2018Lincoln\u2019 Got Connecticut\u2019s Slavery Vote Wrong,\u201d Wall Street Journal<\/u>, February 7, 2013.\u00a0 Maureen Dowd, \u201cThe Oscar For Best Fabrication,\u201d New York Times<\/u>, February 16, 2013.\u00a0 It\u2019s worth noting, however, that Congressman Courtney appeared to be utterly unaware that James English had switched his vote between June 1864 and January 1865.\u00a0 In other words, the historical fiction of the movie captured something truthful about Connecticut\u2019s divisions over abolition that attempts to \u201ccorrect the record\u201d were distorting.<\/p>\n

[48]<\/a> Christopher John Farley, \u201cTony Kushner Fires Back at Congressman\u2019s \u2018Lincoln\u2019 Criticism,\u201d Wall Street Journal<\/u>, February 8, 2013.<\/p>\n

[49]<\/a> \u201cKusher Fires Back,\u201d Wall Street Journal<\/u>, February 8, 2013.<\/p>\n

[50]<\/a> Steven Spielberg, Dedication Day Address, November 19, 2012, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This essay appeared in Lincoln, Congress, and Emancipation, ed. Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon (Ohio University Press, 2016), pp. 236-58 Mr. Spielberg Goes to Washington[1] By Matthew Pinsker \u00a0 When Frank Nugent, the film critic for the New York…<\/p>\n

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