"Our One Common Country" author talk in Stratford, CT

[LincolnToddFan]

[After seeing Spielberg's "Lincoln" movie, would your granddaugher know that portion of the film showing "AL entering fallen Richmond on horseback" was not true? Of course, you could correct for her the misinformation. But are you intending to make it your life's work with all of the other little girls and little boys in the South who see the free "Lincoln" DVD at school to correct this single misstatement of historical fact? Are there any other major historical blunders within the movie that you intend to correct only for your granddaughter]//quote

David Lockmiller,

You directed these questions/comments to me but I am neither a grandmother nor a Southerner. I am a proud Ohio born Yankee, transplanted to sunny Southern California. And for the record, no.. IF I did have a granddaughter I would not lose any sleep if she saw a movie with the 16th president entering Richmond on horseback, and I would not make it my "life's work" to run around correcting schoolchildren North OR South.

There are much more serious "historical blunders" that have made it to the big screen about the 16th president...like the ridiculous idea that he loathed his wife and cursed her out on election night 1860.

(See 1940's "Abe Lincoln in Illinois")

And if Lesley Stahl is as smart as you say she is, there is no way she would have accepted everything in the Spielberg movie as 100% accurate. I don't have half Ms. Stahl's brainpower but I sure knew fact from fiction...any attentive 5th grader would have!

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(08-22-2014 04:47 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Here is another person's opinion on Mary and emancipation.

Five days after Mary Lincoln's death Jane Grey Swisshelm wrote a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune. She wrote, "In statesmanship she was farther-sighted than he [Lincoln] — was more radically opposed to slavery, and urged him to Emancipation, as a matter of right, long before he saw it as a matter of necessity."

Roger-

I luv you for finding this for me(sshhh...don't tell Vicki!)

Jane Swisshelm was as hardcore an abolitionist as you would've found anywhere...she was sort of the Jane Fonda of the mid-1800's...and she came to the WH all prepared to hate MTL. But she actually met her in person and came to love her dearly. She was so devoted a friend that she wrote a very moving obituary for her in the New York Times, and even briefly considered writing a bio of the viciously maligned former First Lady.

Unfortunately she never got around to it.

If Mary Todd Lincoln had truly opposed emancipation, Swisshelm wouldn't have touched her with a ten foot pole and neither would former slave Harriet Tubman, who liked her and visited her at the WH ("Looking For Lincoln" Kunhardt, pgs#428-429)

Anyway, these were Mary's contemporaries who actually knew and spoke with her. I prefer to believe them, rather than any third-hand evidence produced by Burlingame and Guelzo.

Thanks again!