Steven Spielberg's Lincoln | Page 3 | Golden Skate

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln

Joined
Aug 16, 2009
Glad to hear the review, Chris. I hope to see the movie at some point.

To continue your discussion about how the people of that time viewed race, Toni, we did some research on Prudence Crandall, a Quaker teacher who opened a school where she taught black girls in the early 1830s. She was arrested--in fact the local government made up a law just so that she would be in violation of it. Later she was released, and she vowed to continue teaching black girls, because they deserved an education just as much as anyone else. Then her school was firebombed, and she realized it was too dangerous to her students for her to continue. So she closed the school and eventually moved west.

This all happened in Connecticut.

Yes, many people in Connecticut were abolitionists. But in those days, many people who thought themselves enlightened wanted to free slaves and then repatriate them to Africa. (This is the motivation behind the founding of Liberia not long before--hence its name, and the name of its capital, Monrovia, after James Monroe.) Most people (with the exception of groups like the Quakers and the Unitarians) hadn't yet progressed to the idea of a multiracial society. Thank goodness people and cultures do evolve.

The people who were able to see things differently included the Alcotts--Louisa May Alcott wrote an astonishing short story called The Brothers--and, eventually, Lincoln himself. You're right, Toni, that he felt that his primary mission was preserving the Union. He said as much himself. But after meeting people like Frederick Douglass, his thoughts moved forward. In his extraordinary second inaugural address, Lincoln said this:

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

This is the generation that did all the hard thinking so that subsequent generations didn't have to deal with that root issue. Social justice still hadn't been achieved, but at least the baseline was higher. A lot of blood was spilled to achieve that, including Lincoln's.
 

CoyoteChris

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 4, 2004
what's your definition of young people? ;)
YOU! :laugh: Actually, I would say there was no one below 40 and most had grey hair....
The nice thing about being retired is you can go to a movie mid-week at 3 pm and there is hardly anyone there.
You can get the matinee discount or the old farts discount (which is the same) and still pay $8.
It will be interesting to see (if anyone will let us know) if this movie will be a financial success, all things considered, with no vampires, zombies, space aliens and machine guns.
 

Tonichelle

Idita-Rock-n-Roll
Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 27, 2003
Most movies like lincoln arent blockbusters, but it will make spielberg money for sure.

Btw, 40 is not old... And i am not retired but i have a job where my hours are insanely flexible.
 

CoyoteChris

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 4, 2004
During the movie, during the roll call scene, I was astonished at how many Northern state congressmen voted for slavery.
Makes me want to see a list of Nations with the dates they abolished literal slavery.
BTW, the wiki information on Robert L. is fasinating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Todd_Lincoln
He looks just like the actor that portrayed him! He was indeed at Appomatix and later became sec of War. I would love to visit his mansion as the picture of it in modern times looks great....

Glad to hear the review, Chris. I hope to see the movie at some point.

To continue your discussion about how the people of that time viewed race, Toni, we did some research on Prudence Crandall, a Quaker teacher who opened a school where she taught black girls in the early 1830s. She was arrested--in fact the local government made up a law just so that she would be in violation of it. Later she was released, and she vowed to continue teaching black girls, because they deserved an education just as much as anyone else. Then her school was firebombed, and she realized it was too dangerous to her students for her to continue. So she closed the school and eventually moved west.

This all happened in Connecticut.

Yes, many people in Connecticut were abolitionists. But in those days, many people who thought themselves enlightened wanted to free slaves and then repatriate them to Africa. (This is the motivation behind the founding of Liberia not long before--hence its name, and the name of its capital, Monrovia, after James Monroe.) Most people (with the exception of groups like the Quakers and the Unitarians) hadn't yet progressed to the idea of a multiracial society. Thank goodness people and cultures do evolve.

The people who were able to see things differently included the Alcotts--Louisa May Alcott wrote an astonishing short story called The Brothers--and, eventually, Lincoln himself. You're right, Toni, that he felt that his primary mission was preserving the Union. He said as much himself. But after meeting people like Frederick Douglass, his thoughts moved forward. In his extraordinary second inaugural address, Lincoln said this:

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

This is the generation that did all the hard thinking so that subsequent generations didn't have to deal with that root issue. Social justice still hadn't been achieved, but at least the baseline was higher. A lot of blood was spilled to achieve that, including Lincoln's.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
Yes, Robert Lincoln did rather well for a President's son. Many of them carried a heavy burden and couldn't rise above the pressure of carrying on the family name. Robert eventually became the president of the Pullman Corporation, I believe. My favorite paragraph in the Wiki article is the one about how Edwin Booth, John Wilkes Booth's brother, once saved Robert from injury when a train he was standing on lurched and almost threw him off. Booth didn't recognize Lincoln, but Lincoln knew who Booth, America's greatest actor, was and sent word to him, thanking him. The article says that this knowledge brought Edwin some comfort when he felt such shame and despair that his brother had shot the President.

The only two countries I know about for sure in terms of slaves' being freed are England (about 1808) and Russia, where they had serfs (coincidentally, freed in 1861, by royal edict of the tsar, Alexander II). Ironic, isn't it? If the United States had not declared its independence from England, slavery would have been abolished here much earlier. Think about it: where did runaway slaves try to get to for safety? Canada, which at that point was a British possession.
 
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CoyoteChris

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 4, 2004
Olympia, yes...thanks! I do love Irony in history....as well as unintended consequences....there is a great scene at the end of the movie, "Charlie Wilson's War" after Wilson helps Osama Bin Laden defeat the Russians in Afganistan, which was, at the time, thought to be a good thing. An charactor questions the obvious. Was it a good thing or a bad thing? He tells a story where, during each segment of a son's life, he asked his father if this or that decision was a good thing or a bad thing, and the father tells his son, "We'll see".
The meaning of course is that one never knows at the time if anything is good or bad in the long run. It takes historical perspective but even that only takes one to the present. Was Pearl Harbor a good thing for the world or a bad thing? We'll see.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
Someday I'll be brave enough to watch Charlie Wilson's War. Yes, that whole Afghanistan episode is filled with heartbreaking irony. We were on their side, and much good it did us.
 

CoyoteChris

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 4, 2004
It is a very interesting book and movie for the history buff. And you are correct...we didnt get much credit for that from the countries of the middle east, just like we didnt get any credit for stopping the slaughter/deportation of Muslim Albanians in Yugo/Kosavo in 1999.
Someday I'll be brave enough to watch Charlie Wilson's War. Yes, that whole Afghanistan episode is filled with heartbreaking irony. We were on their side, and much good it did us.
 

dorispulaski

Wicked Yankee Girl
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Country
United-States
One of the earliest outlawing of slavery was done by the country/state of....Vermont.

http://www.slavenorth.com/vermont.htm

The newly formed state, which broke away from New York, abolished slavery outright in its constitution, dated July 8, 1777.

The relevant section is Chapter I, subtitled "A DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE STATE OF VERMONT"


I. THAT all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and unalienable rights, amongst which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. Therefore, no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one Years, nor female, in like manner, after she arrives to the age of eighteen years, unless they are bound by their own consent, after they arrive to such age, or bound by law, for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like.

After declaring its independence, Vermont existed as a free republic known as the Commonwealth of Vermont. It was admitted to the union in 1791, with a state constitution that also contained the slavery ban. The 1777 constitution entitles Vermont to claim to be the first U.S. state to have abolished slavery.

And because of its tenure as a free republic, in some lists, it is the first country to ban slavery.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
Delightful to realize, Doris! I've always loved Vermont, and now I have even more reason to.

A friend of mine is active in the Prudence Crandall Museum, a tiny enterprise that takes place I think out of a house she occupied. She's symbolic of the early people who somehow figured out what was right. One of her defenders was a minister named Samuel May, whose equally forward-thinking sister eventually married Bronson Alcott and gave birth to Louisa May Alcott. (I always thought Louisa's middle name was the girl's name May, but au contraire, it was her mother's surname.)

The whole Amistad affair, the defense of the Africans who mutinied on their way to being sold as slaves in Cuba, also took part in Connecticut. It points up a number of other folk who heroically went against the assumptions of the time. I take particular delight in the fact that one of the lawyers involved was another Presidential son, John Quincy Adams, whose long, active public life started in the Revolutionary War and ended with his being a staunch abolitionist. At least one of the Amistad Africans spent time in America: the young girl Margru returned to the States to be educated in Oberlin, the first American college that admitted black people and even--gasp--women.
 

miki88

Medalist
Joined
Dec 28, 2009
I watched Lincoln last weekend. The acting in this film is terrific. Daniel Day Lewis IS Lincoln.
 

CoyoteChris

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 4, 2004
I would suggest, if you like movies, to really see this one in the theatre. I dont think one can totally appreciate DDL's performance on the small screen. Everything about his facial expressions is important. I will predict it will get the Acadamy award for best actor, and at least nominations for best suporting actress, screenplay, director, and costumes.
 

CoyoteChris

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 4, 2004
After seeing the 60 min spot on Hugh Jackman, I am not so confindent about who is gonna win the acadamy award for best actor.......
 

iluvtodd

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 5, 2004
Country
United-States
Just saw it yesterday afternoon (we recorded the GPF coverage and watched it afterwards). Superb -a must see film. It didn't feel like 2 & 1/2 hours (ITA with sillylionlove).
 
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