One of the first things I noticed in watching the newly released trailer for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is the voice Daniel Day-Lewis gives to the sixteenth president. As discussed in a previous post about The Gettysburg Address, actors often portray Abraham Lincoln with a booming deep voice, and we seem to imagine him that way because of his legendary status in American history. But contemporary reports of his voice discuss a higher-pitched nasally sound coming from The Great Emancipator.
As you can see from the trailer, Spielberg and Lewis are aiming for something close to reality, even in Lincoln’s voice.
The movie that examines the life of Lincoln in his final months before his assassination. I cannot wait to see this film, which is based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. By contrast, Slate gives the trailer a B-.
What do you think of the trailer for Lincoln? Leave your two cents in the comments.
If you cannot quite place the tune, it is “The William Tell Overture” by Gioacchino Rossini. Who is your favorite president? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Today we look back at a campaign song that used new lyrics set to an old tune to support Abraham Lincoln’s run for president in 1860. Jesse Hutchinson Jr., part of a group of family singers, wrote the lyrics to the 1860 campaign song “Lincoln and Liberty.” I like the lines reminding the listeners that the candidate from Illinois also grew up in Kentucky and Indiana: “We’ll go for the son of Kentucky,/ The hero of Hoosierdom through.” Hoosierdom?
The music to “Lincoln and Liberty” comes from an old English drinking song going back at least to the 17th Century, “Rosin the Beau.” The tune had already been used in campaign songs for William Henry Harrison in 1840 and for Henry Clay in 1844. Before Lincoln’s campaign, the tune also had been used in an abolitionist song (“Come aid in the slave’s liberation / And roll on the Liberty Ball!”). So listeners’ familiarity with the tune might have helped the Lincoln version of the song become so popular.
In this video, singer Ronnie Gilbert explains some of the background of the song, “Lincoln and Liberty” before singing the tune:
On November 6, 1860, Lincoln won 40 percent of the popular vote, which was enough to easily beat the three other candidates, John C. Breckinridge (Southern Democrat), John Bell (Constitutional Union), and Stephen Douglas (Northern Democrat). The election was not the end for the music to “Lincoln and Liberty.” The tune continued to be used after Lincoln’s presidency, including a song for Ulysses S. Grant’s reelection in 1872.
I doubt we will hear the tune during elections in the near future, but you never know. The use of an old song might help avoid the problems of presidential candidates angering rock stars. Still, I suspect that most of today’s musicians would be proud to have their music used to celebrate the former president born in February 1809.
On April 17 in 1865, Mary Surratt was arrested for conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. In 2011 on that date, the American Film Company released its first film, The Conspirator. The movie is about Mary Surratt and directed by Robert Redford and starring Robin Wright, James McAvoy, Evan Rachel Wood, Kevin Kline, Danny Huston, and Tom Wilkinson.
From a young age, we learn the name of John Wilkes Booth. We know he is the man who shot Abraham Lincoln. His chase and capture are recounted in the recent book, Manhunt (2006), by James L. Swanson.
But the names of the others who allegedly conspired with Booth are less heard: Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold, John Surratt, and Mary Surratt. A number of additional people were also arrested and convicted of crimes, including Dr. Samuel Mudd.
Mary Surratt: “The Conspirator”
The Conspirator centers exclusively on one of the more interesting accused conspirators, Mary Surratt. In doing so, Redford maintains focus in what might otherwise be an unwieldy long story.
We may be curious to know more about the other conspirators and to spend a few minutes with Lincoln before he is killed. But Redford keeps the story tight and aimed on the stoic Surratt (Wright) and her passionate lawyer Frederick Aiken (McAvoy), following Aiken as he struggles with his responsibility to defend Surratt.
Currently on the Rotten Tomatoes website, the critics rating for The Conspirator is 56% and the audience rating is a much-higher 71%, which makes sense. The movie is not an exciting historical romp like The King’s Speech (2010), and the story is told somewhat conventionally. But it is an interesting story that audience members may appreciate more than critics, who might want a film that is more daring.
Still, the fine acting and look of the film make it well above a History Channel special. All of the principal actors do a very good job (although Justin Long seems out of his time period even with the goofy mustache). And, as in Redford’s A River Runs Through It (1992), the lighting effects seem like another character, making for numerous scenes bathed in beautiful clean natural sunlight.
Overall, the movie is engaging and addresses a lesser known aspect of the Lincoln assassination. I will not reveal how everything comes out, but during the prosecution of Mary Surratt and even until today, there are still questions about whether or not she had any involvement in the conspiracy of which she was accused.
Parallels With Modern Issues
Others have noticed that the movie has some parallels to the modern debate about military tribunals. Kevin Kline’s Secretary of War Edwin Stanton spouts concerns that echo in our Age of Terrorism. Anthony Lane at The New Yorker believes that Redford belabored the parallels with today’s debates about military trials for accused terrorists a little too much.
By contrast, I did not think the parallels were overdone. Instead, the movie would have been much more topical and challenging for viewers had it been released several years ago instead of in 2011. Just as more people spoke up on Mary Surratt’s behalf years after her trial, this aspect of the movie seems a little late too. Yet, the issue is still topical.
Another contemporary issue underlying The Conspirator is how innocent persons accused of outrageous crimes may be convicted or almost convicted of crimes they did not do. The Death Penalty Information Center website notes that since 1973, there have been more than one hundred people released from death row because of evidence of their innocence.
Additionally, there are a number of people who have been executed with genuine questions remaining about whether they were innocent. One may debate the extent of the problem and the exact number of condemned innocent who spent years on death row, but the clear risk is certainly troubling. Even in civilian trials with our current constitutional protections, the innocent still may be convicted and condemned, and this realization has contributed to several states eliminating capital punishment in recent years.
Conclusion
Conclusion? Conspirator is a well-made straightforward drama about an important event in American history. Although it may not be one of the top few movies of the year, it is a period courtroom drama in a league with Amistad (1997) as less than awe-inspiring but nonetheless engaging, educational, entertaining, and worth your time.
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What did you think of The Conspirator? Leave a comment.
On April 12, 1861, the first shots of the American Civil War were fired. In the early morning hours at 4:30 a.m., Confederate soldiers opened fire on the Federal Government’s Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay, South Carolina.
The state of South Carolina had seceded from the United States in December 1860 soon after Abraham Lincoln was elected president. By the time he took office in March, the situation at Fort Sumter was nearing a crisis and seven states had seceded.
Once the bombardment of Fort Sumter began on the morning of this date, it continued for 34 hours. And, on April 13 U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort to Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard.
According to David Herbert Donald in the book Lincoln (1995), during the weeks between Pres. Lincoln’s inauguration and the first shots at Fort Sumter, the president was physically exhausted by stress. But there was some relief after this date. Because the first shots were fired by the Confederates, the rebels now had the burden of starting the war, not the North.
And after the first shots of the Civil War, Lincoln’s choices became clearer. Two days later, Pres. Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for volunteer soldiers. Within a week, Virginia voted to secede, and more states followed. The war would rage for the next four years.
Perhaps no song in recent history has attempted to encapsulate the Civil War era like “An American Trilogy,” a song that Elvis Presley performed regularly in concert toward the end of his life. The song was actually three popular American songs arranged by Mickey Newbury. It begins with the unofficial Confederate anthem “Dixie,” followed by the African-American spiritual, “All My Trials,” and closes with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the Yankee marching song.
What is the meaning of “An American Trilogy”? Paul Simpson’s The Rough Guide to Elvis notes that Mickey Newbury’s original intent is unclear, as the combination could have been about America’s lack of innocence or been intended ironically in reference to Pres. Nixon and the Viet Nam War.
For Elvis, “An American Trilogy” might have been about patriotism. But Charles Reagan Wilson wrote in Judgment and Faith in Dixie (1997) that Elvis’s “slow, reflective, melancholy” performances of the song in the 1970s “suggested an emotional awareness of the complex past of regional conflict and Southern trauma.”
In his excellent book Mystery Train (1975), critic Greil Marcus considered “An American Trilogy” to be Elvis’s attempt to combine all aspects of America and bring everyone together in a fantasy of freedom. But Marcus believed that Elvis’s song failed in that goal because the lack of complexity in the song creates “a throwaway America where nothing is at stake.” (p. 124.) For example, Marcus claimed, “There is no John Brown in his ‘Battle Hymn,’ no romance in his ‘Dixie,’ no blood in his slave song.”
Maybe Marcus wants too much out of a four-minute song. Yes, the song is gaudy in its performance, and Elvis’s jumpsuit is a long way from the soldiers and slaves. But as discussed in another Chimesfreedom post, John Brown is inherent in “Battle Hymn,” just as the romance is inherent in “Dixie,” and as blood is inherent in the dying in “All My Trials.”
There is another layer of confusion regarding the meaning of the song today because Elvis sings it. And Elvis, especially since his death, has become a complex American icon, as some consider him a revolutionary, some call him a thief, and some see him as a fat man steeped in excess. Yet perhaps the contradictions of Elvis, like the contradictions of the song, are the only way you can try to sum up the Civil War, in particular, and the complexity of America in general.
Finally, one additional complication is that what Newbury and Presley apparently thought was an African-American spiritual, was not. Many today believe that the center of the trilogy, “All My Trials,” which is also sometimes called “All My Sorrows,” has somewhat muddled origins. Many current scholars believe that the song was assembled from fragments of existing songs in the 1950s and set to the music of a lullaby from the Bahamas to make it sound like a traditional spiritual.
Newbury and Presley were not the only ones who thought it was an actual slave spiritual. In the 1950s, music critic Nat Hentoff wrote that it came from an African-American song, and in the 1960s, Joan Baez and others referred to the song as a slave spiritual.
So, there are more questions in “An American Trilogy” than answers. But on a day that started the deadliest war in our nation’s history, I prefer the people with questions over the armed generals who think they have the answers.
Bonus American Trilogy Version: For you Celebrity Apprentice fans, here is Meat Loaf singing “American Trilogy” at a 1987 tribute to Elvis Presley. What do you think is the meaning of “American Trilogy”? Leave a comment.
One of the first things I noticed in watching the newly released trailer for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is the voice Daniel Day-Lewis gives to the sixteenth president. As discussed in a previous post about The Gettysburg Address, actors often portray Abraham Lincoln with a booming deep voice, and we seem to imagine him that way because of his legendary status in American history. But contemporary reports of his voice discuss a higher-pitched nasally sound coming from The Great Emancipator.
(2006), by James L. Swanson.
(1995), during the weeks between Pres. Lincoln’s inauguration and the first shots at Fort Sumter, the president was physically exhausted by stress. But there was some relief after this date. Because the first shots were fired by the Confederates, the rebels now had the burden of starting the war, not the North.
notes that Mickey Newbury’s original intent is unclear, as the combination could have been about America’s lack of innocence or been intended ironically in reference to Pres. Nixon and the Viet Nam War.
(1975), critic Greil Marcus considered “An American Trilogy” to be Elvis’s attempt to combine all aspects of America and bring everyone together in a fantasy of freedom. But Marcus believed that Elvis’s song failed in that goal because the lack of complexity in the song creates “a throwaway America where nothing is at stake.” (p. 124.) For example, Marcus claimed, “There is no John Brown in his ‘Battle Hymn,’ no romance in his ‘Dixie,’ no blood in his slave song.”