{"id":4098,"date":"2013-02-24T13:00:54","date_gmt":"2013-02-24T18:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/?p=4098"},"modified":"2013-02-24T13:00:55","modified_gmt":"2013-02-24T18:00:55","slug":"understanding-what-lincoln-movie-changed-about-1865-peace-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2013\/02\/24\/understanding-what-lincoln-movie-changed-about-1865-peace-talks\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding What “Lincoln” Movie Changed About 1865 Peace Talks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SceneOne of the several critical strands in the \u201cLincoln\u201d movie concerns the controversy surrounding the Hampton Roads peace talks (February 3, 1865), where President Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward met with Confederate envoys Alexander Stephens, John Campbell and Robert M.T. Hunter for secret discussions about how to end the war on board the\u00a0River Queen<\/em>\u00a0in Union-controlled Hampton Roads, Virginia (near Fortress Monroe).\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>No transcript exists for their conversations that day. \u00a0Lincoln and Seward died before leaving any recollection of the affair. \u00a0So historians have mostly relied upon on the dubious\u00a0reminiscences of former Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens<\/a>. \u00a0Partly for this reason, many Civil War historians consider the Hampton Roads talks as little more than a sideshow \u2013one of several improbable efforts undertaken in the last year of the war to end the conflict. \u00a0According to this view, Francis P. Blair, Sr. (Preston Blair \/ Hal Holbrook in the movie) was just one of several foolish old men (including the famous and eccentric Horace Greeley) attempting foolish things in the name of peace but having little effect. \u00a0Both Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln were implacable in their positions by the war\u2019s end. \u00a0Lincoln, for example, made his preconditions for peace clear from July 18, 1864 forward \u2013an end to the rebellion, the restoration of the union, and the abandonment of slavery. \u00a0Those three conditions never changed, making true \u201cpeace talks\u201d impossible. Yet other historians are more willing to take the Hampton Roads conference seriously, since it did result in a real meeting between Confederate envoys and President Lincoln. \u00a0Doris Kearns Goodwin takes the conference seriously in\u00a0Team of Rivals<\/em>\u00a0(2005), but one of the best accounts available online which considers them significant and details the events surrounding the peace talks comes from\u00a0an article by William C. Harris<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The article helps illustrate ways that the movie takes major liberties in presenting Hampton Roads. \u00a0The movie has Lincoln meeting with Preston Blair and his children at the Blair House in early January, reluctantly agreeing to secretly \u201cauthorize\u201d an unauthorized trip to Richmond for the elder Blair in exchange for their support with the antislavery amendment. \u00a0In reality, Blair and Lincoln met alone at the White House in December. \u00a0Lincoln authorized a pass for Blair to travel into enemy lines but not to make any peace overtures. \u00a0Blair began his journey on January 3, 1865, arriving in Richmond by January 12 and proceeded to outline a wild scheme to Jefferson Davis that included an end to the war followed by a joint expedition of former Confederate and Union troops to remove the French occupation in Mexico. \u00a0Davis rejected some of Blair\u2019s ideas but agreed to the possibility of talks for ending hostilities between the \u201ctwo countries.\u201d \u00a0 Blair returned to Washington on January 16 and met with Lincoln on January 18, 1865. \u00a0The president agreed that Blair could take back to Richmond a message that the president would receive envoys who would be willing to secure peace for \u201cour one common country.\u201d \u00a0Blair then presented this message to Jefferson Davis on January 21, 1865. \u00a0Davis subsequently met with Alexander Stephens on January 27. \u00a0Stephens was his Vice President but also one of his biggest critics. \u00a0Davis appointed Stephens and two other notable critics of his policies, John A. Campbell and Robert M.T. Hunter, as his envoys (a sign for some historians, by the way, that he wasn\u2019t serious himself about the talks, but wanted to show up his critics). \u00a0Regardless of the motives, the men traveled toward Union lines on January 29 and met with General Grant on January 30 before they eventually spent the morning of February 3 with Lincoln and Seward.<\/p>\n

The movie accelerates and rearranges this timeline pretty ruthlessly. \u00a0It ignores the fact that Blair took two trips to Richmond (and most of that month) and instead presents him reporting back to Lincoln on or about January 10, 1865 with news that Davis had already appointed his three peace commissioners. \u00a0Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) then agrees to proceed with the talks if Blair (Holbrook) lobbies for the antislavery amendment. \u00a0Blair objects to the \u201chorsetrading\u201d but accepts the condition. \u00a0The next day, Seward (David Strathairn) reveals to Lincoln that he has found out about this deal with Blair and that he objects to it bitterly. \u00a0\u201dIt\u2019s either the amendment or this Confederate peace,\u201d he says sternly. \u00a0\u201dYou cannot have both.\u201d \u00a0This is a central premise of the movie \u2013one only made possible, however, by rearranging historical chronology and omitting contradictory details. \u00a0If the movie had accepted the actual timeline of events, then the connections between the peace talks and the amendment would not be so obvious, nor would the motivations of the key figures appear so starkly at odds. \u00a0In other words, there would be less conflict, less drama and eventually less satisfaction in the movie\u2019s resolution.<\/p>\n

The movie also ducks the biggest historical controversy over Stephens\u2019s account of Hampton Roads \u2013one which definitely undermines a key element of the Spielberg message. \u00a0According to the former Confederate vice president, Lincoln offered to allow southern states to reenter the union by ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment \u201cprospectively,\u201d suggesting that they could take up to five more years to put it into effect. \u00a0Stephens also claimed that Lincoln offered payments of up to $400 million for the South to abandon slavery. Historian William Harris also cites recollections from the other commissioners Campbell and Hunter indicating that Lincoln offered compensation. \u00a0There is no corroboration for Stephens\u2019s outlandish claim about prospective ratification (which would be utterly unconstitutional) but there is contemporary evidence that Lincoln did consider paying southern states to end the war and abandon slavery. \u00a0He drafted such a proposal and presented it to his cabinet on\u00a0February 5, 1865<\/a>, which unanimously opposed it. \u00a0Lincoln then dropped the plan. \u00a0Whether or not he was serious remains an open question. \u00a0But it\u2019s revealing that this idea \u2013which certainly threatens to complicate views about Lincoln\u2019s support for abolition\u2013 does not appear in the \u201cLincoln\u201d movie at all. \u00a0Doris Kearns Goodwin addresses it in her book,\u00a0Team of Rivals<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>(2005) and William Harris analyzes the issue extensively in his article and in subsequent book,\u00a0Lincoln\u2019s Last Months\u00a0<\/em>(2004), but here perhaps is a good illustration of the difference between works of history and historical fiction.<\/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

Image courtesy of Dreamworks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the several critical strands in the \u201cLincoln\u201d movie concerns the controversy surrounding the Hampton Roads peace talks (February 3, 1865), where President Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward met with Confederate envoys Alexander Stephens, John Campbell and Robert M.T. Hunter for secret discussions about how to end the war on board the\u00a0River Queen\u00a0in […]<\/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-4098","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\/4098","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=4098"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4103,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098\/revisions\/4103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}