and I can't wait for the prequels.

The mess you're talking about should be covered in "Johnson: A Man From Tennessee."

from an actual historical concept. The mess was too big for one man to clean up at that time in our history, I would think? Carpetbaggers and Reconstruction were not popular and created more problems than they were ready to handle. Northern troops could not police the South. And simply changing the laws did not change people's attitudes. I don't know that an accurate history has ever been written. Many folks at that time thought Lincoln was a tyrant.

He was the wrong man for the wrong time. On the one hand he dealt with the south in some ways as Lincoln might well have; but because he was a southerner, the Congress completely distrusted and tried to impeach him. He couldn't win.

That said, he wasn't a champion for black voting rights by any definition. He was more concerned with protecting southern whites than blacks. SO it's not like he was a saint.

Bryant

Not one mention of his vampire-hunting activities

Actually, I haven't seen the movie, but I recently finished the book Team of Rivals, authored by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which served as a foundation for the movie. What amazed me was the amount of resistance to overturning slavery outright - even within the Republican party of that time. In retrospect, it's a minor miracle that the 13th Amendment obtained ratification. With a lesser human at the helm of the ship of state, it's within the realm of possibility that a shooting war may not have occurred and that slavery may have survived intact in the slave states.

The best movie I have seen in years.

Black and white troops reciting the Gettysburg Address fresh off the battle field... OK hollywood license.

Lincoln refused for a year and a half to give black soldiers equal pay with whites, presumably so as not to offend the whites with the suggestion that blacks were their equals. Blacks got only half the pay that went to the lowest ranks of white soldiers. Only after blacks threatened mutiny (and after several were hanged for protesting the unequal pay) did blacks in uniform get their due.



Fredrick Douglas was hardly noted.

I watched Lincoln then Ken Burns Civil War within two days.


That being said I would suggest both movies as companions.


Both are worth your time.

the moral decision he faced and how he approached it. He could have ended the bloodshed and preserved the Union once the CSA was willing to negotiate an end to the hostilities, and many of his own advisors and party members were urgently pressing him to do so. But he knew the 13th Amendment would never get passed without the leverage the continuing war placed on all the parties. So he had to choose continued fighting and death, which is pretty awful, over the achievement of this fundamental issue. And he had to lie to Congress and buy off legislators to get it done. But the idea that the war would have been for nothing had it not been preserved in law (as opposed to his "Emancipation Proclamation&quot prevailed.

It was thought-provoking that this was not about idealism, particularly, but about legal and legislative questions.

It was thought-provoking that this was not the usual Spielberg schmaltz and bombast. I give a lot of credit for that to Tony Kushner, for the subtlety and complexity of the screenplay.

I agree The after effects of the war lasted for generations and still today. History is written by the victors, as we know.

And showed that for all his compassion he was a pretty cold person in a lot of ways (particularly towards his son). I think that it has a narrow focus which some people have criticized (in particular his shifting positions on Slavery and Black Equality are not really dealt with, which lead some to accuse the film of white-washing him).

Bryant