He Belongs To The Ages-Daniel-Day Lewis’ “Lincoln”-A Film Review (2012)

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Fields, David Strathairn, directed by Steven Spielberg, 2012    

A while back somebody asked me when we were talking about Presidential voting history not only our personal votes during our lifetimes but who we would have voted for had we been around at the time at various stages of American history. The caveat as well had been who we could have enthusiastically voted for as opposed to just pressing the lever like we had wound up doing too many times in our lives. (Yeah, the person who I was talking to and I are just the kind of people who find such speculation interesting over a couple of drinks on an off-night.) The other person stated that undoubtedly that had to be Lincoln, Lincoln of the 1860 race when the Republican Party first took power with the idea that they would both try to keep the frayed Union in tack and get rid of or keep slavery in check somehow, mostly the latter.

I hesitated on that vote but I agreed that it would be Lincoln, although I felt stronger about the vote in 1864 after the Civil War had been going on for several years which he waged relentlessly if with some sadness with the idea of bringing the Confederates back into the fold and after he had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. That brings us to the film under review, Daniel Day-Lewis’ portrayal of the man in Lincoln. I think based on the thrust of the film in closely looking at the last few months of Lincoln’s life after his re-election that my vote for him in 1864 would have been made with plenty of positive energy.  

There are many ways to look at the Lincoln legacy and probably most of them have had their time from hagiographic (despite the warts, and all) to more recent time when the politically correct if rather anachronistic have ridden him off as another racist cracker in the legions that have had that title bestowed on them. Looking specifically at the end of his presidency when many things were going on from the military wrap-up of the war which seemed no too far away to the fight to have the 13^th Amendment adopted to the Constitution forever banning slavery in areas under the control of the United States government.

That fight to have slavery abolished and codified into the Constitution is the central theme of this film showing the artful politician Lincoln to great effect. He firm belief that the amendment needed to be ratified before war’s end was unerring since the possibility that “reconstructed” slave states returning to the Union could have thwarted the efforts he had made to liberate as many slaves as came under Union jurisdiction as a military necessity by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1963. So everything is concentrated around this one great act in early 1865 in the “lame duck” period before his second term starts (in those days in March not January as now). Lincoln has to juggle about twelve different balls in order to get the House to pass the bill (the Senate had already done so earlier).

He had to keep his own conservative Republicans on board, had to satisfy leader of the conservative Republicans Preston Blair’s desire to go to Richmond and begin peace talks, have the South put together a delegation of peace commissioners to meet with Lincoln (which proved to be dicey except for his quick wit about denying the commissioners were IN Washington when asked by the House). Had to “bribe” some lame duck Democrats to vote yes for jobs or other favors. Had to keep peace within his own Cabinet (a subject covered by Doris Kearn Goodwin in her book Team of Rivals which a great deal of the film uses as context for what happened during that final period of Lincoln’s career), Had to keep one Mary Todd Lincoln, his wife, played by ex-flying nun Sally Field from going off the deep end and bringing him down there with her.                 

Yeah I would have voted for Lincoln with both hands in 1864. I wish I could say that about some of my later real votes. Enough said. No, War Secretary Staunton said it best and will get the last word, “now he belongs to the ages.”