TL;DR - Lincoln was a tyrant and a piece of crap.
Necro'ing this thread, but I finally watched it myself. I know that we shy away from politics and all things political on these forums, but since this is a hugely popular movie concerning a political figure, I'm thinking that this is okay to discuss. I apologize if a Moderator finds this inappropriate.
I watched the movie. Day Lewis is a truly amazing actor. Spielberg is a great director. But this movie was nothing but pure propaganda.
It never fails to amaze me how we have these fake memories of who, and what, Abraham Lincoln was. He was a bad man and an even worse American president. The movie did try to touch ever-so-briefly on Lincoln's considerable mental illness (which we would diagnose today as Clinical Depression [of which I am myself a sufferer] or Bi-Polar Disorder), but for the most part it ignored the less savory aspects of "America's First Cry-Baby President".
Freed the slaves? Nope. He didn't even have the power to do so; freeing the slaves took a Constitutional Amendment. Emancipation Proclamation? Give me a break. That was a threat to "free slaves in rebel states" and nothing more. Notice that it did NOT say that slaves would be freed in slave-holding states that remained in the Union during the war; it only threatened slave states within the Confederacy. It also stated "IF" [Confederate States did not return to the Union] then their slaves would be declared free {paraphrased}. Had the Confederacy dissolved and returned to the Union, they would have been PERMITTED to keep their slaves and slaves in the Northern states would have remained slaves.
To be fair, Lincoln was a product of his times, but we would not excuse his behavior and beliefs nowadays. It's true that he did not believe in slavery, but he was also a pretty damn racist man, even stating in one of his debate speeches that Black people were "inferior" to Whites and should not be permitted to vote, be citizens, hold political office, or intermarry with Whites. I will not repeat the language he used about Black people here; feel free to read it for yourself. [Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858]
Lincoln had his most outspoken critic, Democratic Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, forcefully taken from his Dayton, Ohio home in the middle of the night by 67 armed federal soldiers, thrown into a military prison without due process, convicted by a military tribunal, and deported. You read that right - he had a United States Congressman ARRESTED AND DEPORTED.
He suspended our right of Habeas Corpus and had thousands of suspected "Southern Sympathizers" in the North arrested and held without trial. He crapped all over our right to free speech and free press, shutting down hundreds and hundreds of newspapers and printing presses in America.
He declared war against American citizens in the Confederacy without authorization from Congress. True, Congress was a wee bit fractured with so many leaving for the Confederacy, but he didn't even seek the authorization of what Congress that remained. So, according to the United States Constitution, Lincoln waged an illegal war and murdered American citizens.
His wife was a corrupt crook and thief who used his office as a Senator and as United States President to accept bribes and kick-backs.
He was a tyrant and the first American dictator. People gloss over and ignore his "extra-Constitutional powers" (read: illegal acts not granted to the President by the United States Constitution), and our children are taught in schools that he was the shining example of what an American President should be.
It's one thing to enjoy a movie for being a good, or even great movie, and I am NOT saying that anyone here should not enjoy the movie for itself or that enjoying the movie somehow makes you ignorant of history, so please don't think that I am attacking anyone; well, at least no one other than Mr. Spielberg and Abraham Lincoln. I still love Mel Gibson's Braveheart in spite of it being almost completely historically inaccurate. But it chafes my ass that someone as horrible as Lincoln is held up as the bright, shining example of an American President.
I challenge anyone who is unaware of who and what Lincoln was to read the truth about the man. He was an example of what a President should never be, and this is coming from a die-hard Republican. Sadly, we've elected men to lead us who have been as bad, if not worse, in their own ways since then. Almost every serious Presidential historian lists Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln as the worst Presidents in American history.
I'm not a "Lost Cause" proponent who claims that slavery had nothing to do with the war because it clearly did; however, it was one of many causes and not THE cause that our children are taught today in school. I understand the argument that Lincoln did what he had to do to preserve the Union, but I reject that on the point that he did not preserve the Union, he destroyed it. Our Founding Fathers set us up to be a Constitutional Republic and a loose confederation of sovereign states that supported one another in need. After Shay's Rebellion, we became a Federal Constitutional Republic with a federal President of the United States, but States were still sovereign. That all ended after the Civil War. We were no longer the nation that our Founders wanted us to be, but moved more and more to the idea of a "Democracy", of which I will not discuss here since that would certainly violate the forum rules concerning politics. But Lincoln was the first Big Government man, and there's no doubt about that.
Again, I apologize if this is inappropriate, and I assure you that it was not my intention to offend anyone here on the forums. I also know that I sure as crap don't know everything, and I realize that I was not around to be a first-hand observer when Lincoln was President; however, I believe deeply that Lincoln was a tyrant and I believe that every American citizen should learn the truth of what Lincoln was.
Thanks for reading my rant.
