Did you watch "Lincoln" on the History Channel last Monday night? It was a 3-hour psychological biography, an extravaganza of speculation with a paucity of documentable fact. Still, it did have some good points. The most notable of these was Gore Vidal pointing out that Lincoln's abrogation of civil liberties during the Civil War was valid and genuine (after all, the Union's capital city was surrounded by if not "officially" enemy territory, "enemy sympathizer" territory). Most unlike Dubya's so-called War on Terror, making the point that citing Lincoln's behavior in support of Dubya's illegal wiretaps and other present excesses is both improper and invalid.
(Are you listening, Dick Cheney? Probably not, but that's OK. Jay Leno noted last night that having a bad boss increases one's risk of heart attack by about 33%. Cheney is certainly in trouble now.)
Anyway, back to the History Channel. I found a lot of things NOT to like about the program, the least of which was the use of wrong pictures to illustrate battlefield horrors. An oft-published picture of dead Confederates at Gettysburg was used during talk of the battle of Cold Harbor, for instance. There also was entirely too much MTV-type camerawork, hand-held and shaky, ostensibly giving us what Lincoln himself saw on the last day of his life. Trying to outdo Ken Burns, are we? This is not the way to do it.
My most serious complaint, however, is the amount of time wasted on speculating whether Lincoln was gay. The world was a very, very different place in the 19th century; the fact that two males shared a bed for years--and were open about it--most emphatically proves they were NOT gay. All things sexual were taboo in the Victorian Age. The very fact that we know Lincoln and Joshua Speed shared intimate quarters establishes that there was nothing at all sexual in their relationship. Besides, many practical reasons existed for sharing sleeping quarters in those days: heating systems were not so good as they usually are now, for one thing. And in hotels and rooming houses and the like, it was much more affordable to share a bed than to rent two. Heck, we have copious examples of Victorian Age men and women sharing beds without the benefit of clergy, and we know there was absolutely nothing sexual about it in those cases, either. Why should this be any different? To interpret this one case differently because a venerated American was involved smacks more of the interpreter's political agenda that it does of valid historical exegesis.
As for the admitted sentimentality and emotionally open nature of their personal correspondence? Well, again, the 19th century was a different age. Sentimentality was a prized Victorian Age virtue. The fact that men could express their emotional attachment for one another does NOT indicate that they had some deep sexual relationship. It means they were best friends during the middle of the 19th century.
Our rush to put a Freudian interpretation on everything does not serve us well. It speaks volumes about our own collective hang-ups and enlightens not at all when applied to history. We need to remember that Groucho Marx was right: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
I must admit that the History Channel did include one historian who noted that all this business was speculative and in the eyes of most traditional historians not worth much, as it has little (if any) support in traditionally-used documentation/evidence. This opinion was, however, insufficiently emphasized given the overall perspective of the program.
One final complaint. The program glossed over much too glibly about how Lincoln had to struggle to get ahead of the curve of public opinion on the issue of slavery and the rights of American blacks. It suggested that Lincoln was always opposed to slavery per se, which is not true. He began his political career opposing not slavery, but the expansion of slavery into what were then US territories. He most emphatically hated Stephen A. Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened the slavery can of worms in territories North of the Mason-Dixon line, undoing the infamous Missouri Compromise of 1820 and ultimately precipitating the Civil War, which actually if not officially started in "Bleeding Kansas" in 1857.
Lincoln's own pre-1860 speeches and writings establish that he did not consider blacks either the social or civil equals of whites. That Lincoln moved so far ahead of popular opinion in such a short time, and in fact by the end of his life supported voting rights for blacks, was not given enough attention. The program implied he was there from the beginning, and that just isn't correct.
Still, I can't complain entirely. The History Channel did note that it was Lincoln's final public speech, from the balcony of the White House shortly before he was killed, advocating giving voting rights to blacks (OK, black men), that got Lincoln killed in the first place. John Wilkes Booth was there; he heard that speech; he was an avowed racist; he thereupon said that that was the last thing Lincoln would ever say on the subject; he then carried out his heinous plot to assassinate the president.
I must also note that the (mostly black) historians who castigate Lincoln for not being totally against slavery from Day One are just as wrong as are those who omit the evolution of Lincoln's opinions on the matter and who call him the Great Emancipator from Day One. Lincoln was a product of his age, after all. He was born in a slave state (Kentucky); he had his prejudices and misconceptions, as do we all.
Nevertheless, he learned. He grew. He changed his mind as he realized the greater significance of events. Furthermore, he was willing to say so unambiguously and in public. This is what sets Lincoln apart, and this is why I for one admire him so much. He was not perfect. No one is. [As my mother is fond of saying as she stretches her arms from side to side like a cross, "Remember what they did to the last perfect person."--Ed.] But he embodies that striving for "a more perfect Union" that is the very underpinning of the American Experiment.
So the History Channel program was worth watching, and I do recommend it to you when it re-airs, but please: watch it with a sufficiently skeptical eye and your mind engaged.
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