Posts tagged Abraham Lincoln

Abra­ham Lincoln

I saw Lin­coln last night. Loosely based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, and stun­ningly acted and directed, I highly rec­om­mend this movie to all of our Gen­tle Read­ers, and to any other his­tory or polit­i­cal junkie.

When I went into the the­ater, before I turned off my cell phone, the news sites I check said Repub­li­cans in the U.S. House were plan­ning to add amend­ments to the Sen­ate bill designed to avoid the “fis­cal cliff”. Then I watched a riv­et­ing movie about America’s first Repub­li­can Pres­i­dent, and his efforts to forge bipar­ti­san deals in the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to enact the Thir­teenth Amend­ment, the one that bans slav­ery. I came out of the the­ater, turned on my phone, and checked the news again. House Speaker John Boehner had agreed to hold a sim­ple and clean up-​​or-​​down vote on the Sen­ate bill.

In both the his­tor­i­cal event and the cur­rent event, a bill had already over­whelm­ingly passed the Sen­ate, and the drama cen­tered around get­ting a vote in the House. The dates are sig­nif­i­cant as well: we stand now almost 150 years to the day after Pres­i­dent Lincoln’s Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion. The tense votes depicted in the movie hap­pened two years later, in Jan­u­ary of 1865. The par­al­lels struck me as sig­nif­i­cant. (more…)