The Lincoln episode blew chunks


Just watched the Lincoln episode and this was just horrible. Every one of the ten things he stated were either false or misleading.

For instance, they said that Lincoln liked to go to taverns and have a drink. Uh, no. Lincoln was a teetotaler. They were interviewing Allen Guelzo on the show. I wish they had shown that bit of the script to Guelzo. He would have been able to correct him.

And while Lincoln was willing to assert himself physically on occasion, he did not like to get into fist fights. In fact, he at times avoided them. When he first went to New Salem he initially avoided wrestling the leader of a local gang, though he eventually did. He would be physical on occasions to be sure, like when someone was trying to give a political speech and hecklers were threatening to charge the stage. Lincoln grabbed a water pitcher and threatened to crown anyone who interfered.

As far as racism goes, let me give some dates. 1830, 1835, 1840, 1845, 1850, 1855, 1858, 1860, 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, 1865. What do that dates have in common? Lincoln held a slightly different view about slavery and blacks at each stage. While the host was correct that Lincoln always opposed slavery, his views on race were in a stage of constant evolution throughout his adult life, driven by a number of things. Seeing slaves sold in New Orleans, with mothers being separated from husbands or from their children. Observing the attempt to spread slavery into new territories. Failed compromises over where slavery was to be legal. His work as a lawyer either trying to get escaped slaves back or trying to keep them from being returned (Lincoln as a lawyer felt that each side in a dispute deserved legal counsel). The Dred Scott decision. Meeting Frederick Douglas. Knowing Elizabeth Keckley, his wife's dressmaker, who was a freed slave. And then his complete rethinking of the meaning of race during 1863 to 1865. In terms of his day, Lincoln really held no racist views. Even leading abolitionists like Garrison and Sumner did not believe that whites and blacks were equal, so you can't use the criteria of today against someone then. Truth is, Lincoln did more to help African Americans than any single person ever.

Every Lincoln biographer I know, and more importantly all the people who commented on it in the major source of our knowledge of Lincoln as a young man, the interviews undertaking by Herndon and which were partially utilized in his biography of Lincoln. But the interviews are collected in their entirety in Douglas Wilson and Rodney Davis's HERNDON'S INFORMANTS, quite probably the single most important text to get details on Lincoln's early life. There is never, ever an indication that Lincoln was anything but acutely shy with women. The show tries to imply that there was some ambiguity about Lincoln's sexuality. There wasn't. Gay men usually have no trouble talking with women. Lincoln did. He found it almost impossible to talk to any women, regardless of age. He was attracted to women, but didn't know how to talk to them. The only reason he ended up getting married was because Mary Todd pursued him.

As far as sleeping with me, it was completely common for men to share a bed together and equally common for women to sleep together. There was during the bearly and mid 19th century a phenomenon known as "romantic friendship" in which two members of the same sex might share a bed, hold hands, and be more affectionate than was the case later in the century. Walt Whitman, for instance, was insistent late in life that he was not gay, but that earlier friendships with men were "romantic friendships" that were platonic. By the 1870s the phenomenon of romantic yet platonic friendships began dying out as a fad. Now, here is the thing. No Lincoln scholars, with one exception, believe that Lincoln ever had a physical relationship with a man. There is a guy who is not a Lincoln scholar who has written a book claiming that Lincoln was gay, but only one actual Lincoln scholar believes that he ever had a sexual encounter with a male. And here is the big thing: even that scholar says that there is no real evidence that he had been physically intimate with a man.

Oh, and there really is truth to the fact that there was a shortage of beds in the Midwest and West in the mid-19th century. When you stayed at a hotel, you could expect to share a bed with another dude, and perhaps three other dudes depending on the side of the bed.

Another inaccuracy was about Lincoln being "lazy" as a kid. First off, the info we have for Lincoln as a very small kid is sketchy, but we do know that he claimed to have had less than a year old formal education. He did like to read, but he also worked hard. He didn't like to work for his father so much as he would hire himself out to other farmers. This whole segment was typical of the episode as a whole: they just left so much out. And it killed me because they had this major Lincoln scholar, Allen Guelzo, who could have straightened out so many things, but they just pasted his very reasonable statements into the episode to make it sound like he agreed with them. But if you listen carefully, he isn't saying the same thing the narrator was. I'm sure Guelzo exploded when he saw this show. To see what Guelzo really thinks, read one of his many Lincoln books. ABRAHAM LINCOLN: REDEEMER PRESIDENT is a modern classic, while his book on the Emancipation Proclamation was the first of two modern books on the subject that filled a huge hole in the Lincoln. scholarship (the second book was Eric Foner's THE FIERY TRIAL). Guelzo also wrote a nice book in the Oxford Very Short Introduction series on Lincoln, and has a nice book on the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

The one part that really was pretty much true was his being a lover of technology. He drove his generals crazy by ordering thousands of repeating rifles that the generals didn't want to use. They actually wanted slow loading rifles because they thought that by making firing slow, it would make them take more careful aim. Lincoln grasped something that the U. S. Army didn't for another 80 years: the army that can throw the largest amount of lead at the other army holds a huge advantage. Even going into WW II American military leaders preferred rifles that held a smaller number of bullets. They remained concerned about wasting bullets.

And Lincoln was the one who got the transcontinental railroad going. This was after spending enormous amounts of money in Illinois building roads and bridges and canals. Lincoln was a passionate believer in the government building infrastructure.

Most people who study Lincoln about Booth being in the photo of the Second Inaugural. One of the more popular illustrated biographies (not one of the great biographies, but the photos are spectacular) is the Kunhardts' LINCOLN: AN ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHY. It not only shows the Booth bit of the photo, but blows it up.

But all in all, it was a dreadful episode. First off, I can honestly say I didn't learn a single thing about Lincoln I didn't already know and many of the thing they said were misleading or incorrect.

If you want to learn about Lincoln, read a good biography. I mentioned Guelzo's ABRAHAM LINCOLN: REDEEMER PRESIDENT. David Herbert Donald's has for almost 20 years been considered one of the best single volume biographies. Ronald White's A. LINCOLN is as good in my opinion. The best short biography by far is ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND CIVIL WAR AMERICA by William A. Gienapp. The best modern biography is Michael Burlingame's massive ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A LIFE, in two absolutely gargantuan volumes. Most people won't be able to afford the Burlingame (unless some publisher decides to bring out an affordable edition). But this thing was just a travesty. Infotainment at its worse.

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Yes, and due to the power of television, the errors told in this episode will be absorbed and believed by more Americans than the number of readers of the biographies you list. I wouldn't be surprised if tour guides at many historic sites daily encounter people who believe all sorts of the myths reported on this show.

"Truth is its own evidence." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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As far as sleeping with me, it was completely common for men to share a bed together and equally common for women to sleep together. There was during the bearly and mid 19th century a phenomenon known as "romantic friendship" in which two members of the same sex might share a bed,


Thank you! You really do have some sense. Even if you only know Lincon from a high School and Gore Vidal's novel "Lincon" you know this episode was awful.

Every time they said, "and he slept with men..." I kept thinking, Yes, but not sexually. I'm gay. Not that it matters. I jut hate that so many of these people are labeled as gay simply because they were eccentric.

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