"Lincoln" legal mistake

[Liz Rosenthal]

I did feel somewhat uncomfortable about the voice that Daniel Day-Lewis settled on. I had always imagined Lincoln's voice to be somewhat high-pitched, but a lot clearer, and more similar to Conan O'Brien's voice than, say, Jimmy Stewart's. One reason I figured that Lincoln would have had a clear voice is the fact of his gift of mimicry. He was terrific at not only accents, but also tones of voice, from what I've read. However, we'll never know for sure how Lincoln really sounded if all we have to go on are "earwitness" accounts by diverse people whose sensibilities likely varied greatly. But I'm thankful that Daniel Day-Lewis avoided the old, hackneyed stentorian representation of Lincoln's speech (and even Andrew Johnson's speech!) that has occurred in the past. We can be sure that he didn't sound like he'd been educated at Harvard nor that he resided on Mount Olympus.