Erstellt am: 2. 2. 2013 - 13:29 Uhr

Lincoln, the movie.

But are we getting a sanitised version of history. Reality Check sits down with historians and film-makers.

If you go to Washington DC, you may want to wander over to the Lincoln Memorial. It’s right by the National Mall with the Congress building not so far away. Inside the central hall of the Lincoln Memorial is a towering statue of the man himself, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, sitting in a chair and looking down at mostly day-tripping tourists in quiet contemplation. It is a kind of sacred temple to the man credited with keeping the union of the United States together and for forcing through the 13th Amendment to the Constitution which made slavery illegal.

If you watch the Stephen Spielberg movie about Lincoln which is doing the rounds at Austrian Cinemas you could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that Lincoln single-handedly, against the wishes of most of his fellow contemporaries, abolished slavery. Historians will tell us that it was a lot more complicated than that. But for the sake of cinematic effect and a somewhat easier narrative, Spielberg has channeled the abolishing of slavery through the character of one man – that being Lincoln.

So how did Lincoln really feel about slavery? That, in itself, is complex. The evidence indicates that he was sort of ambivalent on the issue in his earlier political years, but he grew warmer to the idea as he campaigned to be president. Once in office he made it a key theme although his central goal was in preserving the union and if he could find a way to preserve the union that did not take into account the freeing of slaves in the southern states – well, he would live with that. But when the southern states started to cecede from the union, then the abolishing of slavery became centre-piece.

Abolishing slavery was such a complex matter for Abraham Lincoln that he even considered controversial solutions that sit rather uncomfortably alongside this iconic figure of Lincoln that we've become accustomed to. For example, he looked at the possibility of sending slaves to Haiti to “work“ on plantations there. Other territories as well outside of the Union were contacted to see if they would consider making homes for freed slaves including Cuba & even Greenland! This doesn’t sit too well with academics such as Dr Chester Fontenot who I spoke with this week at Mercer University in Georgia. He told me:-

By the time Lincoln came into office, black people in America were somewhat eleven to twelve generations removed from the cultures of Africa. All they knew was America. African–Americans had a stake in America, as well as participating in the building of this country. Most of the architecture as well as streets and even the Whitehouse was built, in part by immigrant communities working alongside mainly people of African descent. So Lincoln’s whole attempt at an expedient end to slavery by seeking if we can transport African-Americans somewhere else – that doesn’t sit too well with me, as an African-American.

Other historians too weigh-in on the discussion and this somewhat sanitised version of Lincoln by Spielberg. Mitchell Ash from the University of Vienna told me:

There are some things about America that are positive despite all the things that are genuinely negative and that get me genuinely upset and angry with my own country. And one of things that was positive is that American people found a way, or their representatives found a way, to at least begin to cleanse the stain on the Constitution of the United States which was put there by the agreement to accept the acceptance of slavery, thus watering down the doctrine of the equality of all men before the eyes of God and the law. That was in the Declaration of Independence. So the 13th Amendment is the beginning of a process of washing away that stain. That process continues.

Reality Check Special: The Real Lincoln

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