{"id":4089,"date":"2013-02-23T10:31:42","date_gmt":"2013-02-23T15:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/?p=4089"},"modified":"2013-02-23T10:31:42","modified_gmt":"2013-02-23T15:31:42","slug":"did-abraham-lincoln-really-slap-his-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2013\/02\/23\/did-abraham-lincoln-really-slap-his-son\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Abraham Lincoln Really Slap His Son?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SceneNo single film could ever hope to capture the range of historical interpretations that have been offered to explain the complicated Lincoln family dynamics. \u00a0Some historians consider the marriage between Abraham and Mary Lincoln to have been \u201ca fountain of misery.\u201d \u00a0Others see longstanding affection and partnership. \u00a0Some find Lincoln to have been essentially an absentee father. \u00a0Others extol his sensitive parenting toward very different sons. And these debates have proven especially difficult to resolve because the evidence is so thin. \u00a0Hardly any of the family correspondence remains. \u00a0None of the family members kept diaries. \u00a0Almost all of our information about their relationship derives from second- or third-hand accounts, usually recollected after the war.<\/p>\n

Yet this deficit of evidence also provides “Lincoln” scriptwriter Tony Kushner, director Steven Spielberg and actors such as Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field with freedom to offer their own interpretations. \u00a0They can imagine private moments where historians are otherwise forced to remain silent or least circumspect. \u00a0Two good examples of this occur in the film during Scenes 29 and 30<\/a> where President Lincoln engages in loud, back-to-back arguments with his oldest son Robert<\/a> (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and then with his wife Mary. \u00a0In one episode outside a temporary wartime hospital, the president actually slaps his son in anger. \u00a0This is wholly invented. \u00a0There is no source for this scene, and it seems entirely implausible to most Lincoln historians, not only because both Lincolns were almost notorious as parents for\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>disciplining their children, but also because Robert had a reputation for being so outwardly respectful toward his parents. \u00a0It seems almost impossible to believe that eldest Lincoln son would have told his father, as he does in the movie, \u201cIt\u2019s mama you\u2019re scared of, not me getting killed\u201d and that his father would have then lost control and slapped him in public. \u00a0And yet \u2026 it could have happened. \u00a0There were tensions between father and son, and there was a quiet debate over whether or not Robert should join the Union army. \u00a0Nonetheless, this is a risky use of artistic license disconnected from any serious evidence.<\/p>\n

The second major argument depicted in the movie is more plausible, but also wholly invented. \u00a0The script has Mary Lincoln<\/a> telling her husband that \u201cyou\u2019ve always blamed Robert for being born, for trapping you in a marriage that\u2019s only ever given you grief and caused you regret!\u201d \u00a0The line implies that the Lincoln\u2019s had a shotgun wedding of some sort, but Robert was born almost exactly nine months after their wedding day in the early 1840s. \u00a0Nor is there any contemporary evidence that Mary Lincoln refused to console their youngest son Tad after his older brother Willie died, or that the president ever threatened her that \u201cfor everybody\u2019s goddamned sake, I should have clapped you in the madhouse!\u201d \u00a0Some of that information (about the \u201cmadhouse\u201d) derives from Elizabeth Keckley\u2019s recollected accounts about Mary\u2019s grief in 1862<\/a>, but most of the vitriol in this exchange is imagined \u2013again, possibly real but certainly not proven by any reliable record.<\/p>\n

\"SceneNor is there any basis in the historical record for intertwining the story of Robert Lincoln\u2019s late entry into the Union army with his father\u2019s increasingly determined efforts to secure passage of the antislavery amendment. \u00a0Yet in one of the movie\u2019s more audacious \u2013and improbable\u2013 plot twists, scriptwriter Tony Kushner follows the explosive back-to-back family arguments of Scenes 29 and 30 with a revealing trip to the opera that suddenly provides a personal motivation for Lincoln\u2019s new sense of urgency about the amendment\u2019s passage. \u00a0The script identifies the opera as Gounod\u2019s \u201cFaust\u201d at the Odd Fellows Hall with the president, his wife and Elizabeth Keckley in attendance. \u00a0In reality, the Lincolns had seen this popular opera with William Seward when it was showing at \u00a0Grover\u2019s Theater during the previous month, in early December 1864<\/a>. \u00a0There is no record of Elizabeth Keckley ever attending theater or opera with the Lincolns and it seems unlikely that she would have remained in the box with the presidential couple while they conversed. \u00a0Yet Scene 31<\/a> has Keckley overhearing how Mary Lincoln finally reconciled herself to the decision about her son\u2019s enlistment. \u00a0She informs her husband crisply, \u201cI believe you when you insist that amending the constitution and abolishing slavery will end this war. \u00a0And since you are sending my son into the war, woe unto you if you fail to pass the amendment.\u201d \u00a0Lincoln at first demurs, claiming, \u201cSeward doesn\u2019t want me leaving big muddy footprints all over town.\u201d \u00a0But Mary Lincoln is unyielding. \u00a0\u201dSeward can\u2019t do it,\u201d she claims. \u00a0\u201dYou must. \u00a0Because if you fail to secure the necessary votes, woe unto you, sir. \u00a0You will answer to me.\u201d<\/p>\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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No single film could ever hope to capture the range of historical interpretations that have been offered to explain the complicated Lincoln family dynamics. \u00a0Some historians consider the marriage between Abraham and Mary Lincoln to have been \u201ca fountain of misery.\u201d \u00a0Others see longstanding affection and partnership. \u00a0Some find Lincoln to have been essentially an […]<\/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":[80,83,81,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war-1861-1865","category-general-opinion","category-recent-news","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4089","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=4089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4092,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4089\/revisions\/4092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}