{"id":4082,"date":"2013-02-22T08:28:46","date_gmt":"2013-02-22T13:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/?p=4082"},"modified":"2013-02-22T08:29:54","modified_gmt":"2013-02-22T13:29:54","slug":"how-the-lincoln-movie-reconstructed-thaddeus-stevens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2013\/02\/22\/how-the-lincoln-movie-reconstructed-thaddeus-stevens\/","title":{"rendered":"How the “Lincoln” Movie Reconstructed Thaddeus Stevens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SceneIn the scene in Spielberg’s “Lincoln” which introduces the audience to Rep. Thaddeus Stevens<\/a> (R, PA), the chairman of the House Committee of Ways and Means, the script<\/a> describes the setting in Stevens\u2019 Capitol Hill office as \u201credolent of politics, ideology (a bust of Robespierre, a print of Tom Paine), long occupancy and hard work\u201d (p. 30). \u00a0For historians, such characterizations seem heavy-handed and somewhat out-of-date. \u00a0Older generations of scholars sometimes referred to the radicals as \u201cJacobins\u201d (borrowing insulting language from the period) and fixated on the eminently quotable and always crusty Stevens, but in recent years, historians have tried to be more attentive to the complexities of wartime partisanship. \u00a0For example, the fictional character in the movie named Asa Vintner Litton (Stephen Spinella), described in the script as a lame duck radical Republican from Maryland, seems to be based on Rep. Henry Winter Davis<\/a>. \u00a0Yet Davis, despite his radical reputation, had a complicated view about the antislavery amendment. \u00a0He had missed the June 1864 vote on the amendment (intentionally, according to historian Michael Vorenberg in his book, Final Freedom<\/i><\/a>, p. 129) because he considered his omnibus reconstruction plan (the controversial Wade-Davis Bill, which Lincoln pocket-vetoed that summer) preferable to the separate measures for abolition and reconstruction that had been introduced by Rep. James Ashley<\/a> (R, Ohio) and were being debated again in January 1865. \u00a0In the film, however, Rep. Litton is the embodiment of pure radicalism and believes more deeply in Ashley\u2019s amendment than anybody else \u2013even in some ways Ashley himself\u2013 calling it \u201cabolition\u2019s best legal prayer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film plays fast-and-loose in such minor ways with radical figures, mainly for the sake of simplicity but also sometimes it appears just out of error. \u00a0\u201dBluff\u201d Wade is a character in the script identified as a Republican senator from Massachusetts who somewhat implausibly attends the House Republican strategy sessions in Stevens\u2019s office. \u00a0Presumably, the intention was to make this figure Benjamin \u201cBluff\u201d Wade<\/a>, the Republican radical \u00a0(and Davis\u2019s partner in his failed Reconstruction bill), who was born in Massachusetts but served as a Republican senator from Ohio.<\/p>\n

For the sake of simplicity, the film also makes Thaddeus Stevens the central radical figure organizing the amendment\u2019s passage, even more so than the measure\u2019s sponsor, Ashley. \u00a0This is not how many historians characterize Stevens\u2019s role. \u00a0He was an important figure, but probably not the central one in securing passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. \u00a0Stevens had only four index entries in Doris Kearns Goodwin\u2019s\u00a0Team of Rivals\u00a0<\/em>(2005), a nearly 800-page book from which the screenplay was adapted. \u00a0Stevens plays a somewhat larger role in Michael Vorenberg\u2019s more compact\u00a0Final Freedom\u00a0<\/em>(2001) with seven index entries but even there he is clearly superseded by other figures such as Ashley and Senator Lyman Trumbull (R, IL), who is not even mentioned in the film. \u00a0The latest and most comprehensive study of wartime abolition policies \u2013James Oakes\u2019s\u00a0Freedom National\u00a0<\/em>(2012)\u2013 contains a mere six index entries for Stevens.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) has about 45 speaking parts in the Spielberg film, apparently second only to Abraham Lincoln<\/a>(Scene 17)<\/a>. \u00a0He looms large as a counter-weight to the president \u00a0\u2013Lincoln\u2019s near opposite in both style and policy. \u00a0Their confrontation in the White House kitchen is one of the movie\u2019s most pivotal scenes and also arguably one of its most historically implausible. \u00a0Besides the unlikely setting, scriptwriter Tony Kushner seems to be investing many older \u2013and quite hostile\u2013 ideas about Stevens into this conversation which contrasts Lincoln\u2019s calculated, pragmatic approach to Stevens\u2019s rigid, ideological worldview. \u00a0He actually has Stevens \/ Jones saying at one point, in defense of his sweeping plans for revolutionizing the South, \u00a0\u201dAh, shit on the people and what they want and what they are ready for! \u00a0I don\u2019t give a goddamn about the people and what they want! \u00a0This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the good of the people without caring much for any of \u2018em.\u201d \u00a0 Such lines (minus the cursing) would be perfectly at home in the captions of D.W. Griffith\u2019s ground-breaking and controversial silent film, \u201cBirth of A Nation\u201d<\/a> (1915). \u00a0Griffith\u2019s film depicted Reconstruction as an utter failure in part because of the unyielding attitudes of radicals like Austin Stoneman (the character based upon Stevens). \u00a0In the kitchen debate between Lincoln and Stevens, scriptwriter Kushner seems to embrace elements of this view. \u00a0He told\u00a0NPR<\/a>, for instance, \u201cThe abuse of the South after they were defeated was a catastrophe, and helped lead to just unimaginable, untellable human suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Kushner\u2019s \/ Spielberg\u2019s representation of Stevens contains important nuances that save Tommy Lee Jones\u2019s performance from being merely emblematic of the so-called \u201cLost Cause.\u201d \u00a0 The gripping scene during the House debates where Stevens \/ Jones restricts himself to endorsing \u201cequality before the law\u201d and nothing more underscores the pragmatic considerations that often motivated Radicals, especially during this moment in the Civil War. \u00a0However, the scene is also full of small-bore examples of artistic license. \u00a0The excerpts from the House debates are not real quotations from the\u00a0Congressional Globe<\/em>January 5, 1865 <\/a>\u00a0or even apparently from the sometimes more descriptive newspaper accounts. \u00a0Instead, they appear to be a creative collage of materials pulled together by Tony Kushner from a variety of secondary sources. \u00a0Michael Vorenberg, for example, quotes Stevens announcing during a different debate \u00a0\u2013as part of a concerted radical strategy during this period to avoid inflammatory questions about racial equality \u2014 that he \u201cnever held to that doctrine of negro equality \u2026 not equality in all things -simply before the laws, nothing else.\u201d \u00a0That was on \u2013ten days before the movie has Lincoln lecturing Stevens about pragmatism in the White House kitchen and three weeks before it has the congressman saying something similar on the floor of the House (Scene 28)<\/a>. \u00a0In the movie, Stevens \/ Jones supposedly states on January 27, 1865 that, \u201cI don\u2019t hold with equality in all things only with equality before the law and\u00a0nothing more.\u201d \u00a0This prompts Mary Lincoln in the House gallery to remark to her black dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckley, \u201cWho\u2019d ever guessed that old nightmare capable of such control?\u201d \u00a0To this, Keckley excuses herself angrily and leaves. \u00a0Yet there\u2019s no evidence from any contemporary report or from\u00a0Keckley\u2019s own recollection<\/a>\u00a0that she and Mary Lincoln ever attended the House debates. \u00a0Instead, what the filmmakers have done here by rearranging events and by inventing selected details is to increase the drama and ultimately to attribute Stevens\u2019s \u201cconversion\u201d to Lincoln\u2019s intervention. \u00a0Historical accounts give Lincoln no such credit, nor do they present a narrative pulsating with such drama.<\/p>\n

One final footnote to the presentation of Thaddeus Stevens concerns the filmmakers\u2019 curious decision to place him in bed with his mixed-race housekeeper, Lydia Hamilton \"LydiaSmith<\/a>, near the very end of the film. \u00a0This is a reference to widely held suspicion (among contemporaries and historians) that Stevens had a romantic relationship with Smith who stayed with him both in Lancaster and in Washington. \u00a0Stevens himself never publicly acknowledged this relationship \u2013nor did Smith. They were buried in separate graveyards (Stevens famously in an integrated cemetery in 1868; Smith, who often passed as white, revealingly, was buried in a segregated Catholic cemetery in Lancaster many years later). It may well have been true that they were lovers, but by injecting this issue into the movie, the filmmakers risk leaving the impression for some viewers that the \u201csecret\u201d reason for Stevens\u2019s egalitarianism was his desire to legitimate his romance across racial lines. \u00a0This type of simplistic connection would appall most historians, but the awkward nature of the revelation (Scene 43) <\/a>makes it plausible as an interpretation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

(This post has been excerpted from a longer essay, \u201cWarning: Artists at Work,\u201d that appears in \u201cThe Unofficial Guide to Spielberg\u2019s Lincoln<\/a>\u201d which is part of the House Divided Project\u2019s new\u00a0Emancipation Digital Classroom<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n

Images courtesy of Dreamworks and House Divided Project, Dickinson College<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the scene in Spielberg’s “Lincoln” which introduces the audience to Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R, PA), the chairman of the House Committee of Ways and Means, the script describes the setting in Stevens\u2019 Capitol Hill office as \u201credolent of politics, ideology (a bust of Robespierre, a print of Tom Paine), long occupancy and hard work\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,83,81,84,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war-1861-1865","category-general-opinion","category-recent-news","category-reconstruction-1865-1880","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4082"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4088,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4082\/revisions\/4088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}