Lincoln: An invented hero

Via Carl

 

In advance of Steven Spielberg's highly anticipated film about Abraham Lincoln, Kevin Gutzman punctures popular myths about America's most revered president.
The Abraham Lincoln of popular perception is a mythological figure. He
has little to do with the actual 16th president.

For example, a popular film depicts a fictionalized Lincoln as having
been opposed to slavery virtually from the cradle. His Confederate
enemies, on the other hand, were minions of Satan. The reality was not so.

The trailer for Steven Spielberg¹s Lincoln shows Sally Field
as Mary Lincoln lecturing her husband that no other American has ever
been so beloved as he. In reality, as that sister-in-law of a
Confederate general and sister of other Confederate soldiers had reason
to know, no American president has ever been as hated as Abraham
Lincoln. His election led seven states to secede from the Union, after
all, and four more withdrew after seeing his first few weeks¹ performance in office.

Hearing Spielberg¹s Mary Lincoln reminds one of H. L. Mencken¹s
appraisal of Lincoln¹s most famous speech, the "Gettysburg Address." In
that speech, on the occasion of a military cemetery's dedication,
Lincoln said: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in
vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and
that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not
perish from the earth." Mencken, who possessed skill surpassing that of
any other man in the art of the sardonic skewer, noted that the only
thing wrong with Lincoln's famous speech -- held up ever since as the
model of American oratory -- is that: "It is difficult to imagine
anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought
against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the
right of their people to govern themselves."

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