Lincoln and Civic Engagement

I greatly admire the recent film about Lincoln and the push in the House of Representatives to pass the 13^th amendment abolishing involuntary servitude forever. Daniel Day Lewis’s portrayal of Lincoln is superb, but so are the performances by Sally Field as Mrs. Lincoln, David Strathairn as Seward, and Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens. Additionally, Tony Kushner’s script is eloquent, subtle, and deeply moving. There are some historical inaccuracies, as numerous commentators have pointed out. See especially Harold Holzer’s comments in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Sean Wilentz’s in the December 31 issue of the New Republic. But both of these historians, like quite a few others, put these relatively small errors aside to praise the film.

The larger and more interesting critique has to do with the absence of Black activists from this narrative. It can be easily argued that the unique focus of this story, the deliberations of the U.S. House of Representatives during the month of January in 1865, precludes the inclusion of Blacks, but craftsmen as skilled as Spielberg and Kushner could have easily inserted a flashback or two showing the influence of Frederick Douglass and other Black abolitionists on Lincoln’s evolving views toward emancipation. By the way, it probably doesn’t need to be mentioned, but Lincoln always hated slavery, so it wasn’t his views toward slavery that evolved. Rather, the big shift in his thinking had to do with the meaning of the Civil War. No longer simply about preserving the union; it was for him, as he makes plain in his 2^nd inaugural address, about the need to completely and unalterably eradicate slavery. On this point, Douglass and other abolitionists were transformationally persuasive.

So, in an already long film, what might Spielberg and Kushner have inserted as flashbacks, particularly with respect to the influence of Black abolitionists, to trace Lincoln’s path toward abolitionism?

For one thing, Lincoln was the first President to receive Black abolitionists at the White House.  The most famous of these was surely Frederick Douglass who spoke favorably of his meeting with Lincoln, despite their sharp disagreements about many issues involving emancipation and recruitment of Black soldiers. Douglass was somewhat surprised to learn that Lincoln seemed to follow closely his arguments against slavery in the various magazine articles that Douglass wrote. Lincoln also probably heard Douglass at the abolitionist Washington Lecture Association that he and Mrs. Lincoln attended fairly regularly. During their time together, Lincoln even hinted to Douglass that his strong words had not fallen on deaf ears. But Douglass was hardly the only Black activist he conferred with at the White House. Elizabeth Keckley, Mrs. Lincoln’s Black dressmaker, whose influence on both Lincolns was far greater than shown in the film, arranged to have Sojourner Truth, another noteworthy abolitionist orator and leader in the Underground Railroad, speak with the President. Their meeting was similarly positive and Truth went out of her way to comment on how cordially she had been received. Still another Black leader who met with Lincoln was Bishop Daniel Payne of the AME Church. Like the others, he attempted to persuade Lincoln that the time was ripe for emancipation, but he, too, left the meeting with renewed respect and appreciation for the President.

The point I want to make here is that Lincoln hardly existed in an ideological vacuum, which is sometimes the impression we receive. He didn’t just read his Shakespeare and his ever-handy Euclid, but was an avid follower of the news and opinion journals of the day. Black activists like Douglass, Truth, and Payne, as well as many others, whom Lincoln also greeted at the White House, were influencing him all the time. His decision by the end of 1864 to forcefully seek approval of the 13^th amendment was shaped by his contemporaries, who were constantly trying to change his mind in any way they could. In other words, these contemporaries were civically engaged and though discouraged at first by Lincoln’s lack of movement on emancipation, slowly began to see the fruits of their involvement and their commitment as his first term as President was coming to an end.  And although Spielberg and Kushner chose not to show the trajectory of that decision in their film, there is no question that the people, many of them African American, who wrote about the War and who spoke to Lincoln directly in the White House, left a mark on his thinking that helped to change the course of American history.