Hollywoodinization of Honest Abe

Fire of Liberty

William Bryk has a wonderful review in the New York Sun on "Lincoln," which is The History Channel's latest take on our 16th president. While I don't plan to see its premier tonight(I prefer the conclusion of the season premier of "24") I'm glad the Bryk cleared or pieced together some of broken facts and misnomers of Abraham Lincoln that the producers seemed to have failed to addressed when they put the series together. He's got a pretty good take on the History Channel's presentation look at Lincoln as some tragic, mentally-ill recluse who achieved greatness instead of as a great man of the 19th Century who fought tooth and nail to prevent the destruction of the United States and the eventual freedom of millions who had endured bondage for hundreds of years. Take a look:

Like nearly everything else the program bills as a major revelation, this is simply long known fact. But the program seems to celebrate Lincoln's depression, even to argue that his greatness stemmed from it, as if pandering to an audience of overmedicated West Siders addicted to psychoanalysis. Common sense tells us his genius had nothing to do with his depression. Illness might have tested his character. It did not make him a great man.

The talking heads tell us again and again that Lincoln was depressed, as though someone off camera had cautioned them to be sure and mention it in every sound bite.This emphasis is flawed, as is the prurient focus on Lincoln's sexual life. That Lincoln may have gone whoring as a young man - he would be neither the first nor last president to have paid for sex in the heat of youth, or even middle age - would shock only a dirty minded fundamentalist.The suggestion that Lincoln was "sexually confused" stems from a few things, most already well known.

Lincoln had a gift for emotional intimacy with men: He made friends and kept them. He lived with his best friend, Joshua Speed, for several years, and their letters candidly express deep affection and enjoyment of each other's company. But little in them bears a sexual interpretation. More laughable, perhaps, is the way the film dwells on Lincoln's frequently sharing beds with other men, a custom shared by most 19th-century American men who had to travel.

Nearly any visiting European journalist wrote articles or memoirs reciting the appalling discomforts of the practice,which had everything to do with having a place to sleep and nothing to do with sex. One of the film's commentators dwells at some length on second-hand hearsay that Lincoln had been seen in bed with a Pennsylvania militia captain stationed at the Washington Soldiers' Home, which the president frequently visited to escape the heat of a Washington summer.None of this is shocking or even particularly interesting, save as it reflects on 21stcentury audiences. As one commentator suggests, where we think of sex first, Lincoln's contemporaries thought of it last.

Maybe instead of watching the History Channel's presentation of "Lincoln," folks would get some better insight on Abraham Lincoln if they just picked up Benjamin Thomas's Abraham Lincoln: A Biography, David Herbert Donald's Lincoln, Allen C. Guelzo's Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, Harold Holzer's Lincoln at Cooper Union or even Harry V. Jaffa's Crisis of the House Divided or A New Birth of Freedom. I'll take these sources over the History Channel any day.