Quote:
The Friday afternoon meeting with congressional leaders at the White House represents a potential “Lincoln” moment for President Obama as time has effectively run out to cut a deal to avert the Jan. 1 “fiscal cliff” of spending cuts and tax hikes.
That’s the view, anyway, of many Senate Republicans, back in session this week, who say that, with Congress gridlocked, it’s now all up to Mr. Obama to produce a plan that can both cut deficits and win bipartisan support.
“To get hard things done, the president has to lead,” says Sen. Roy Blunt (R) of Missouri, referencing the must-see film of the year for Washington insiders, “Lincoln.”
“Virtually every member of the Senate, I think, has seen this new movie on Lincoln, and the lesson of that movie is that to get hard things done the president has to decide he wants something done,” he adds.
OK. I've got a peeve with this assessment.
Spielberg has done great injustice to the truth with this movie, propping up the legend of Lincoln instead of the facts about him and his role in the civil war and slavery.
So to pass on info so no one else makes such claims as the misinformed senate republicans -
According to the foremost authority on Lincoln among mainstream Lincoln scholars, Harvard University Professor David H. Donald, the recipient of several Pulitzer prizes for his historical writings, including a biography of Lincoln, notes that Lincoln did discuss the Thirteenth Amendment with two members of Congress – James M. Ashley of Ohio and James S. Rollins of Missouri. But if he used "means of persuading congressmen to vote for the Thirteeth Amendment," the theme of the Spielberg movie, "his actions are not recorded. Conclusions about the President’s role rested on gossip . . ."
Moreover, there is not a shred of evidence that even one Democratic member of Congress changed his vote on the Thirteenth Amendment (which had previously been defeated) because of Lincoln’s actions.
Most interesting about the 13th amendment
There is no evidence that Lincoln provided any significant assistance in the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in the House of Representatives in 1865, but there is evidence of his effectiveness in getting an earlier Thirteenth Amendment through the House and the Senate in
1861. This proposed amendment was known as the "Corwin Amendment," named after Ohio Republican Congressman Thomas Corwin. It had passed both the Republican-controlled House and the Republican-dominated U.S. Senate on March 2, 1861, two days before Lincoln’s inauguration, and was sent to the states for ratification by Lincoln himself.
The Corwin Amendment would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with Southern slavery. It read as follows:
"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State,, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."
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