Nice try, Guelzo. The 13th amendment had nothing to do with anything. Lincoln´s single goal was to take the sovereignty from all the pre-war states and concentrate it in Washington, no matter how many people had to die and no matter if the slaves got freed or not. He was dead-set on establishing a Hamiltonian single government to dominate the then states....and he did it! The price he was will to pay? a half-million dead, successfully defying the Constitution, three amendments and freed slaves (none of whom he gave a hoot about.) Other results: FRDs New Deal, LBJs Great Society, Mr Peanut, the Blue Dress Kid, and Hope and Change. Lincoln: The man who began the land-slide destruction of the United States.

Read ´A First-Rate Madness.....´
Lincoln and his family were suicidal.
Perfect guy for a Presidency and a bloody, catastrophic Civil War.

Sadly, as good a movie as this is, #1´s analysis is spot on.


Girl´s Hubby

This being the case, perhaps we had better think twice before claiming credit for freeing the slaves.

Thank you #1. My thoughts exactly. But try to tell that to the ignorant people of this country.

Wow, I can´t believe how much vitriol and anger is being directed at our first Republican President. I am sorry but I don´t believe it was all simply to concentrate power federally. I believe that is revisionist history. I know that slavery was not the main purpose of the war but Lincoln really did believe they should be freed. The main concern was to hold the union together. At any rate, I don´t like the idea that so many people seem to hate one of our greatest Presidents. Something seems really wrong here.

Wow. I just learned more about our 16th President in 5 replies than was taught in 12 years of school.

Do I dare read O´Reilly´s book, anyone?

Full title and author: ´A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness´ - by Nassir Ghaemi

The politics real and imagined aside, the personality of the Lincoln I get from the clips (not generally wanting to see any Spielberg movie any more than generally wanting a dose of the clap) is theatrical and in no way realistic or believable.

I´ve known all kinds of country wise guys, and urban ones, too. This movie version just seems eccentric, unexplainable. That leads to questions about his intentions and how well grounded they may be. In fact, knowing Spielberg, it takes the focus off the character and onto the ideas, or history, or the director, anywhere but in real heroism.

Of course personality is hard to reconstruct from the records, but I think I´d know it when I saw it, and this ain´t it.

It wasn´t really a civil war so much as domestic abuse on a national level, like some angry husband beating the crap out of a wife who wanted to leave him. Lincoln wiped his butt on our constitution...

Want more? DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln.

Do you realize how many so-called "scholars" have re-written or reinterpreted history over the last 100 years? I wouldn´t believe anything written by someone looking to make a name for himself. Doesn´t make you wonder how all these "revelations" come out so many years later? We know Mary was nuts...that is long documented. But it just rankles me that people will read one or two books and then take what is written as gospel and throw every thing else out the window.

Let´s begin with the premise that it is the victor who writes the history.

Of course, the north being the victor wrote the history as a ´civil war´.

A ´civil war´ occurs when two separate factions are fighting for the control of a solitary country/government (much like in Egypt now).

The south/Confederacy was NOT fighting to control the United States, rather it was fighting for it´s own Independence.

Ergo, it was more of a war of independence as opposed to a ´civil war´.

If Lincoln cared so much about slaves why didn´t the 13th amendment make them citizens with the right to vote and other rights that citizens have. It didn´t because Lincoln made it clear that he did not believe that blacks and whites were anything close to being equal.
Blacks had to wait until after Lincoln´s death to become citizens.

I admire Mr. Lincoln and his defense of the Declaration of Independence, which states that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I also liked the movie. Sorry if that bothers anyone.

Nope. More liberal clap trap. And Daniel Day Lewis isn´t even American. Give it a rest.

Daniel Day Lewis saves this overly sentimental portrayal of Doris Kearns Goodwin´s plagurized work. I would love to see Lewis and Speilberg team up for a remake of Moby Dick

Like #9, I´ve only seen the clips. On that evidence, agree that Daniel Day Lewis´s portrayal is overly theatrical.

The best Lincoln portrayal for my money was Raymond Massey´s 1939 "Abe Lincoln in Illinois."

Massey´s Lincoln was quiet, understated, and a little geeky. With some flashes of countrified humor. That´s what I believe the man was really like.

He was, alas, yet another flawed man, among many flawed men and women.

and i just stated the obvious

#19 is right! Raymond Massey´s portrayal of Lincoln was the best ever! History revisionists be damned. We´ve had decades of liberal education that has done wonders to rot the minds of the young and decay our Nation from the inside out...the beat goes on.

#13, that is semantics...nothing more. Besides, not all southerners wanted to necessarily break away. But what these revisionist writers seem to not take into account that the country would have become more vulnerable to European manipulation or conquest had it broken up.

#14, Lincoln wanted to repatriate the slaves (if possible) back to their homeland (as naive or impossible as that may have been). But that had nothing to do with believing they were necessarily "inferior". I swear, people will believe anything--especially if said by a "libertarian" (regardless of whether or not it has basis in fact).


Dear friends...here is just one of several critiques of that revisionist author´s work and why his credibility is shaky at best:

http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.736/article_detail.asp

By the way, I am very much a free-market economist...in case, you wondered. And I love Walter E. Williams, but he isn´t always 100% correct about everything--nobody is.

I concur that Massey´s portrayal, although it ends with his departure to D.C. after the election, is the finest I know. I read that, being Canadian, Massey was a little reluctant to step into the role---which he created on Broadway and then played in the movie. It is certain that his performance was deeply felt, superbly crafted, and humbly given.

Agree with #1. Lincoln was a dictator. He went to War without even conferring with Congress. He had 30,000 northerners arrested for disagreeing with his policies, smashed printing presses, jailing publishers. He even issued an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. He had most of the duly elected legislators of Maryland arrested and replaced.

Let´s imagine what America would be like today without Lincoln: Slavery would have ended as it did in other countries -- with either compensated emancipation or made too expensive via mechanized farming. The Confederacy would have folded back into the Union after a time, though with a few new Constitutional amendments -- like no tariffs (free trade!), no government bank (goodbye Fed and fiat currency!) and no government funded internal improvements (goodbye crony capitalism!). We´d have a much smaller federal government, and wouldn´t have needed an income tax. Probably wouldn´t have gotten into WW I at all.

#14,

How do you know Lincoln didn´t intend to make the freed slaves citizens? He was assassinated at the beginning of his second term, and just a few days after the Battle of Appamatox Courthouse. There were many political battles to follow concerning reconstructing the South.