MOVIE TRAILERS

It's humbling to see what the office of President used to mean when filled with men of character and principles. One can only hope the men vying for that position tomorrow will strive to push forward agendas of the people, by the people, and for the people once more instead of the personal power plays.

All of these trailers seem to show that this film will gloss over Lincoln's true complex nature. I hope not, but it seems to be presenting an incomplete and inaccurate picture. Lincoln never believed in the equality of whites and "negroes", nor did he accept the idea of freed slaves and whites ever mixing. Frederick Douglass said of Lincoln: "He was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave states. He was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the Government." Lincoln was a product of the times in which he lived. He was both a great man and flawed man; not the American Christ some would have you believe. Hopefully these facts will be presented, but I won't hold my breath counting on Hollywood for historical accuracy. The movie will be worth seeing for Daniel Day-Lewis. This guy can stay home in bed and phone in an Oscar-worthy performance.