I have to grasp this moment of history, as a duty, if nothing else. Thus, Part ii. is delayed until after midnight.
“Lincoln at Peace”
Today is April 14, and 146 years ago today, five days after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox courthouse, Booth assassinated Lincoln:
The assassination of President of the United States Abraham Lincoln took place on April 14, 1865, as the American Civil War was drawing to a close, just five days after the surrender of the commanding general of the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee, and his battered Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant. Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated,[1] though an unsuccessful attempt had been made on Andrew Jackson in 1835. [Wikipedia]
But what’s important is that Robert Redford has decided to make a buck of the national tragedy, and, following in the venerable tradition of making only Civil War movies that lionize the South and the Lost Cause that goes back to “Birth of a Nation” and “Gone With the Wind,” somehow, the Lincoln assassination is about a poor woman, a Southern sympathizer — a traitor, in other words — and her mistreatment following the assassination of Lincoln, the attempted assassination of Vice President Johnson (the assassin jumped onto his carriage but then chickened out) and the maiming and near-murder of Secretary of State William Seward in his own home, in his own bed. Continue reading
