"The Lincoln Movie"

I call it “The Lincoln Movie” because some might confuse the title of this article if I just call it by its real name, “Lincoln.” I mean, it is very possible that my blog changed from one of history to automobiles, overnight, right? Yes, you are at hankeringforhistory.com–not hankeringforcars.com–and this post is about the new Steven Spielberg movie.

While I am sure that there are those that went to the Lincoln movie with hopes of claiming that the movie was conjured up by Hollywood executives, bastardizing the real events of Abraham Lincoln, I was not one of those. First off, I am no self-proclaimed expert on President Abraham Lincoln or the Civil War. Second, I understand that the cinema is intended for entertainment and may not be completely accurate. Lastly, I am sure that there are plenty of others attending with the sole purpose of nitpicking, or as historian Harold Holzer, one of the country’s leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln, classified them:

…scholars, nitpickers, trivial pursuit pursuers, and history buffs have all been crowding their local movie theaters this week, many armed with legal pads, in a massive competition to unearth and report every factual error that has crept into the film.

I am not one of those people, and I am sure that there were enough in attendance…they needed no support from me. Unfortunately, if you were hoping that I would call “Lincoln” a travesty, this is not the post you’re looking for.

As far as entertainment goes, I thought the Lincoln movie was an excellent film. Kicking curiosity to the curb, I attempted to abstain from reading reviews of the movie. I wanted to go into the movie knowing as little as possible. I didn’t want to go in with the mindset that Hollywood had ‘botched history.’

Now I did have some of the annoying aforementioned “nitpickers, trivial pursuit pursuers, and history buffs” sitting behind me. I intentionally left them out of the scholars classification, because they were idiots. Let me give you an example of one of their issues.

There is a scene where Abraham Lincoln is riding through a battlefield. You cannot see it in this picture (right), but in shots before and after this picture, there are bodies–everywhere. Hundreds of dead bodies that laid waste to previous day’s battle.

And what was the problem with this scene?

There is no way that they could have stood the stench of the dead bodies. There faces would have been covered with masks.

I kid you not, THAT was the issue that the woman behind me had with the scene. Now, there were some real historical discrepancies that she commented on, but most of them were ridiculous.

I have to say that having such a large interest in history not only made the experience more enjoyable, but I was able to fill in gaps on my own, and recall little tidbits during the movie. In the movie, it was January, 1865, and Robert Todd, son of Abraham Lincoln, was coming home to visit. Because of personal knowledge, I knew that Robert Todd Lincoln almost wasn’t in this part of the movie. It is true. Right before this time, the life of Robert Todd was almost lost. If you aren’t aware of this story, it is worth reading about how the brother of John Wilkes Booth saved the life of Robert Todd Lincoln.

As I was watching this scene, where father and son are reunited (because Robert Todd has been at Harvard), I sit and think. I ponder, “I wonder how the death of another son would have affected Lincoln? Would he have had the strength to carry on and push through the 13th Amendment?” Of course, if you read my blog…you might have thought the same way I was.

Was the movie worth seeing?…yes! The plot of the Lincoln movie flowed well, had an excellent cast, and everyone applauded at the end.

Was it historically accurate?…I am not qualified to make that assessment; however, I can point you in the right direction. Here are some sites that give reviews on the historical accuracy of the movie.

Mount Virtus - Despite Minor Flaws, Spielberg’s Lincoln Worthwhile Viewing for History Geeks

The Daily Beast - What’s True and False in “Lincoln” Movie

The Abraham Lincoln Blog - Film Review: Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln”

http://hankeringforhistory.com/2012/11/26/the-lincoln-movie/

Today in history, Nov 17th!

Some of the great historical events that happened today in history, on November 17th!

375	Enraged by the insolence of barbarian envoys, Valentinian, the Emperor of the West, dies of apoplexy in Pannonia in Central Europe.
1558	Queen Elizabeth ascends to the throne of England, and the Church of England is re-established.
1842	A grim abolitionist meeting is held in Marlboro Chapel, Boston, after the imprisonment of a mulatto named George Latimer, one of the first fugitive slaves to be apprehended in Massachusetts.
1862	Union General Ambrose Burnside marches north out of Washington, D.C., to begin the Fredericksburg campaign.
1869	The Suez Canal opened in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and the Red seas.
1877	Russia launches a surprise night attack that overruns Turkish forces at Kars, Armenia.
1885	The Serbian Army, with Russian support, invades Bulgaria.
1903	Vladimir Lenin’s efforts to impose his own radical views on the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party splits the party into two factions, the Bolsheviks, who support Lenin, and the Mensheviks.
1913	The first ship sails through the Panama Canal, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
1918	Influenza deaths reported in the United States have far exceeded World War I casualties.
1918	German troops evacuate Brussels.
1931	Charles Lindbergh inaugurates Pan Am service from Cuba to South America in the Sikorsky flying boat American Clipper.
1934	Lyndon B. Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor, better known as “Lady Bird.”
1941	German Luftwaffe general and World War I fighter-ace Ernst Udet commits suicide. The Nazi government tells the public that he died in a flying accident.
1951	Britain reports development of the world’s first nuclear-powered heating system.
1965	The NVA ambushes American troops of the 7th Cavalry at Landing Zone Albany in the Ia Drang Valley, almost wiping them out.
1967	The American Surveyor 6 makes a six-second flight on the moon, the first liftoff on the lunar surface.
1968	NBC outraged football fans by cutting away from the final minutes of a game to air a TV special, “Heidi,” on schedule.
1970	Soviet unmanned Luna 17 touches down on the moon.
1970	The Soviet Union landed an unmanned, remote-controlled vehicle on the moon.
1973	President Richard M. Nixon told an Associated Press managing editors meeting in Orlando, Fla., “I’m not a crook.”
1980	WHHM Television in Washington, D.C., becomes the first African-American public-broadcasting television station.
1986	Renault President Georges Besse is shot to death by leftists of the Direct Action Group in Paris.
1997	Six militants opened fire at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, Egypt, killing 62 people, most of them foreign tourists. The attackers were killed by police.
2003	Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in as governor of California.
2008	The vampire romance movie “Twilight” premiered in Los Angeles.
2010	A hand-count of votes affirmed the re-election of U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, the first Senate candidate in over 50 years to win a write-in campaign.
2010	The first Guantanamo detainee to face civilian trial, Ahmed Ghailani, was convicted by federal jury in New York on one charge of conspiracy related to 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Ghailani’s native Tanzania.

Today’s historical facts are from various sites including, but not limited too: the History Channel, The New York Times, WHG Historynet.com, HistoryOrb.com, and On This Day blogs from my blogroll.

http://hankeringforhistory.com/2012/11/17/today-in-history-nov-17th/