Posted on 02/11/2026 10:47:43 AM PST by T Ruth
Director Steven Spielberg, whom I introduced last week [in 2012] at Gettysburg at ceremonies marking the 149th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s greatest speech, said he was deeply humbled to be delivering an address on that history-making spot.
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… Daniel Day-Lewis gives the definitive portrayal of our time, perhaps ever, of Honest Abe.
For people like me, who have spent their lives studying Abraham Lincoln, the film is chilling — as if he’s really come to life.
Day-Lewis does it by avoiding the traps most Lincoln actors fall into, the stoic, “Hall of Presidents”-esque stereotype that probably most Americans imagine.
There are no moving pictures of Lincoln, no recordings of his voice. But after his death, everyone was Lincoln’s best friend, and there are descriptions of everything from his accent to his gait.
The most important thing is the voice. Far from having a stentorian, Gregory Peck-like bass, Lincoln’s was a high, piercing tenor. Those who attended his speeches even described it as shrill and unpleasant for the first 10 minutes, until he got warmed up (or his endless stories managed to cow them into submission).
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Few great people are appreciated in their time. And it’s good to remember that, no matter how right the decisions seem now, they were hard-fought then.
“I wanted — impossibly — to bring Lincoln back from his sleep of one-and-a-half centuries,” Steven Spielberg said at Gettysburg, “even if only for two-and-one-half hours, and even if only in a cinematic dream.”
***
Harold Holzer is one of the country’s leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln. ...
[At the end of the article Holzer gives thumbnail reviews of all prior Lincoln films, ranking them from worst to best, which Holzer considers to be Spielberg’s.]
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
LOL. You are letting your radical brain overwhelm whatever sense of logic you might have. There were 24 million people in the North including women and children. The federal budget was around $50 million. That’s works out to $2 per person if they took every red cent. No money for the Army and Navy. No money for embassies. No money for roads and harbors. No money for Federal employees. No pay for politicians. None of it.
Do you really want to stick with that line of nonsense? I mean you are also saying the entire United States was a mistake all because you want to defend a pack of asshole slave drivers. Do you think the United States is still a mistake?
Even if they are wrong?
As a collection of independent states who wanted independence from a government they viewed as oppressive and tyrannical, the United States was not a mistake.
But as the government evolved into the same thing the original 13 colonies fled, it became a mistake.
In 1861 we departed from being a coalition of the willing to become a coalition of the compelled. That's not what the founders created.
Really? What had the government done to them that made them want to leave. How had the Federal government of 1861 become like the British government of 1775?
In 1861 we departed from being a coalition of the willing to become a coalition of the compelled. That's not what the founders created.
So you think the Framers thought the Constitution was just a suggestion? What was theSouth being compelled to do?
Is it up to the 13 colonies to decide or not?
Clearly the Canadians and the Brits did not agree with their view that King George III had become oppressive. The 13 slave states chose to leave, and their reasons for doing so only needed to satisfy themselves, not the Canadians or Brits.
So you think the Framers thought the Constitution was just a suggestion?
It required a vote didn't it?
I think you would do well to study the American Revolution some. It’s pretty clear you have no frigging idea what the hell you are talking about.
Just as a point of fact, there were 15 slave states in 1860. Only 11 chose to secede.
The essential point that people need to understand can be read in the Declaration of Independence.
I was referring to the original 13 slave states that seceded from the British Union.
LOL. They didn’t “secede”. They Rebelled. They were never under any illusion that the British would just let them go their merry way.
Looks like you got burned by the Lamp! LOL
,He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
British law did not recognize a right to give up allegiance to your King. It was unthinkable.
But we did. We wrote the principle down in the Declaration of Independence.
They made noises about the last one.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us...
Referring of course to John Brown's raid.
But let me better acquaint you with the Declaration of Independence.
"... a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
What that means is it's a suggestion, not a requirement.
No they didn't. The union is voluntary and each state retained a unilateral right of secession. That is not in any way inconsistent with the constitution.
There was no single whole nation after the Southern states seceded. Why should they pay tariffs to a foreign country? Those states in the North that were still part of the US were subject to pay the tariffs of the US.
And as several Northern Newspapers and Sherman himself pointed out in his letter to his brother, the smuggling of goods subject to only a low tariff in the South would be rife. The remaining states in the US would then have to try to set up custom houses along the Mississippi river (good luck with that) but it would be futile. The North would lose out on the servicing of cash crops, would lose out on the tariff revenue overwhelmingly used to pay for corporate subsidies and infrastructure projects in the North, and their manufacturers would be undercut on price by goods brought into the South. They would have to radically slash their tariffs and to even try to compete on price for manufactured goods. The Southern states were a cash cow for them.....a captive market and large source of jobs and profits for them.
The Walker tariff lowered tariff rates to about 25%. Note that the Confederate Constitution only allowed a tariff for revenue - not a protective tariff. A tariff for revenue allows a maximum of just 10%. So even the "compromise" tariff rate was still orders of magnitude higher than would have been in the best interest of the Southern states.
But of course the Morrill tariff promised to greatly increase tariff rates. It passed the House in 1860 and was just one or two senators short of being able to pass the Senate in 1861. With the usual tactic of allowing a special carve out or some other lucrative benefit to appease the commercial interests in the district of one or two more Senators, it would pass. Of course, there would be pressure on each senator to agree lest somebody else take the deal on offer to him and his state be shut out completely. Lincoln himself was staunchly in favor of a high protectionist tariff. As it turns out, the Morrill Tariff passed and was signed into law before Lincoln took office.
Why would preservation of slavery have been a real concern when there was no real popular support to abolish it and considerable opposition to doing so everywhere as well as no power to do so?
The South was industrializing. It was just doing so at a slower pace. Producing cash crops for export was by far the most profitable economic activity in the Southern states. Therefore they did not invest resources in industries like Shipbuilding. The North, with its larger population and inability to produce lucrative cash crops, was naturally the place where labor intensive industrial development took place first.
You say the South's agrarian economy was "slavery dependent"....yet the vast majority of White Southerners owned no slaves at all. Obviously these people were earning a good living somehow....and without any dependency on slaves.
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