M.E. Synon

Abraham Lincoln, the ‘specious humbug’

This post by M.E. Synon is the first in a series about Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln. A counter-argument will be published tomorrow, followed by a comparison of screen and literary adaptations of the last months of Abraham Lincoln’s life.

Last week in Dublin there was the European premiere of Spielberg’s film on Lincoln. Why Dublin? Because the star Daniel Day-Lewis lives in Ireland and he wanted the premiere as a fundraiser for an Irish charity. All of which meant I’ve been writing on Lincoln for the Irish press, trying – and I know it’s fruitless, but still I go on – trying again to explain to the Irish that Lincoln was a racist, a corporate crony of Northern industrial interests, and an imperialist war-monger, and they ought to stop the hero worship.

They never listen, of course. Somebody once told them that a lot of Irish fought for the Union, so they think that must have been the Right Side. I could point out that a lot of Irish also lynched a lot of blacks in the New York Draft Riots of 1863, but they don’t want to listen to that.

Now the film is opening in Britain, and a wise English friend has suggested I keep quiet about it: ‘Say the war wasn’t about slavery and they will misunderstand.’ Perhaps. But in the 1860s, the British did not misunderstand. They saw what was really at stake in the War Between the States. They showed the South great decency. I know there are people in Dixie to this day who remember.

For example, just this past weekend Prof Donald Livingston of Emory University in Georgia sent copies to me of correspondence between Lord Acton and Gen Robert E Lee: ‘I saw in State Rights,’ wrote Acton to Lee soon after the end of the war, ‘the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy…Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilisation; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.

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