While Spielberg’s Lincoln wrestles with the ethical dilemmas of dirty politics, he never seems to waver in his rock solid conviction that everything must take a back seat to ending slavery. And unlike most everyone around him, he doesn’t doubt that blacks deserve full legal, political and social equality. This Lincoln is inspiring. This Lincoln is thrilling. This is the Lincoln that every (white) moviegoer wants to be. And he is not the real Lincoln.

“The greatest measure of the nineteenth century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.” – Thaddeus Stevens. Supposedly.

“I can’t play Lincoln. That’s like playing God” – Henry Fonda

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Isn’t it just like a historian to complain and nitpick about the flaws of a good movie? You may not know any historians, but I do. We are like that. Just ask my daughters.

Yes, I have complaints about this very good film, “Lincoln.” And frankly, they are not insignificant complaints.

My first complaint: Steven Spielberg has a tendency to confuse Abraham Lincoln with Jesus Christ.

To be fair, he is not the first.

It has been a habit for Americans (particularly from the north) during the last century to make Lincoln into a demi-god. As a result, it is very difficult for any of us to get an accurate bead on this guy. Before I ever became a history major in college, my own mythic impressions of the man were shaped by dollar bills, luxury vehicles, pennies, granite monuments, state capitals, high schools, toy cabins, highways, Illinois license plates, and a trip to his boyhood home in southern Indiana when I was about ten, which left me with a memory of his mother’s tombstone set in a dark woods. That was kind of creepy. This image was balanced, or further confused, by a particularly memorable cartoon (which apparently is not shown on TV anymore because of its racial stereotypes) where Bugs Bunny suddenly appears in a stove-pipe hat, beard and long black coat and says in a deep, serious voice (to Yosemite Sam, who plays a Confederate officer), “What’s this I hear about you whippin’ slaves?” It’s just difficult to imagine Lincoln as a recognizable human being with all this material buried deep in one’s subconscious.

Let me, then, give Spielberg credit for making Lincoln look less than perfect in a couple of key ways. Lincoln gets deeply frustrated with his family (an unavoidable response if one were married to Mary Todd Lincoln) and even strikes his son in one scene. And throughout the film, Lincoln struggles with his conscience as he tries to reconcile his high anti-slavery goals with the dirty process of politics.

And, yet.

While Spielberg’s Lincoln wrestles with the ethical dilemmas of dirty politics, he never seems to waver in his rock solid conviction that everything must take a back seat to ending slavery. And unlike most everyone around him, he doesn’t doubt that blacks deserve full legal, political and social equality. This Lincoln is inspiring. This Lincoln is thrilling. This is the Lincoln that every (white) moviegoer wants to be.

And he is not the real Lincoln.

Now it is reasonable to argue that, for those weeks in January of 1865, Lincoln was firmly convinced that he had to get the 13th Amendment passed. The film does, after all, only focus on these few weeks. But by leaving out (or just plain missing) the Lincoln of 1862, the Lincoln of 1861 and the Lincoln of 1858, we end up with a Lincoln who is, in the words supposedly spoken by Thaddeus Stevens, “the purest man in America.”

Historians know better. Most Americans do not. Spielberg is like Disney: his portrayal of a story will become the definitive version. So his Lincoln will be what the next generation of Americans remember and believe about Lincoln. That’s not all bad, but there are problems.

Any high school history teacher worth her salt will tell you that Lincoln’s highest desire had always been the preservation of the Union and that his antislavery convictions came in second. Lincoln always opposed slavery – he was consistent about that throughout his life—but his first love was for nation-state. That meant that in 1862 he did not have the power to abolish slavery in the southern states, especially if it meant damaging the Union as it was presently constructed. He wrote, famously, to Horace Greeley in the summer of 1862, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” In his First Inaugural Address in 1861 Lincoln reassured the southern states that “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Obviously, Lincoln changed his mind between 1861 and 1865. That is the key. Lincoln’s greatest internal struggle did not revolve around whether to stoop to log-rolling and horse trading and playing dirty politics in order to push through the greatest measure of the nineteenth century. His biggest dilemma was whether or not he really ought to push through the greatest measure of the nineteenth century in the first place.

Nor does Spielberg’s Lincoln deal effectively with the real Lincoln’s internal struggle with his own racism.

Ouch. Painful subject. We are OK if our demigods have minor flaws, but it is just too much to attach racism to them. Better just leave those questions alone. Spielberg accomplishes this task masterfully.

The reality is that Lincoln believed blacks had the right to freedom but he was not sure that they were fit to live as social equals with whites. Some samples: In his famous 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln said about the black man, “I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects–certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas and the equal of every living man.” Hmm. He fudges a bit on social equality, though he does come out pretty strong on a type of labor equality. But then we have this declaration in another debate with Douglas: “While I was at the hotel today an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and the white people. [Great laughter.]….I will say then, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races–[applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarrying with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of political and social equality.”

And lest we think that Lincoln, that wily politician, was simply saying what he did not believe in order to curry support from racist voters in Illinois, we have other evidence. For instance, in the summer of 1862 he met with black leaders to try to convince them that they ought to embrace colonization. This plan promoted the wholesale migration of free blacks to some other country. In this case, he asked them if American blacks would move to Central America. His justification? “Your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong afflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race…. It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.” (The African American leaders politely, but firmly, refused).

The purest man in America?

No.

But it is at just this point where Christian theology is far more helpful to us than the modern faith in human purity. (Or the modern faith in the human purity of a few select heroes and demigods). Why should we be surprised by Lincoln’s racism? Abraham Lincoln, like you and me, was a sinner. More importantly, (and this is a point that many evangelicals miss), Lincoln internalized social norms and cultural patterns that were also a product of a fallen world. In other words, we also inherit cultural sins, most of the time without even realizing it. Lincoln, like the vast majority of white Americans of the mid-nineteenth century (and arguably just about every white American of that era), was socialized by a culture that viewed blacks as inferior. To greater or lesser degrees, this racism came out in his behavior and attitudes.

In one sense, Lincoln could not help the fact that he was shaped by a racist culture. But that does not make the racism of nineteenth-century whites acceptable. It was still wrong. It still harmed others. It still prevented Lincoln and others from loving their neighbor as themselves. And it demonstrates one way that original sin operates on humanity – through the cultural norms and practices that shape them.

It is not surprising, then, that those who do not believe in this kind of sin desperately want Lincoln to be a pure and shining example to all of us, one that we might be able to achieve if we just try hard enough. Nor is it surprising that we buy it. That reaction fits well with Christian theology also.

Strangely, perhaps, this is not my biggest complaint with the film. That will come in my next post.

Jay Riley Case (BA Taylor, PhD Notre Dame) is a former missionary in Kenya who now teaches American History at Malone University of Canton, Ohio. He is an Elder at Jackson Friends Church in Massillon, Ohio. He blogs about books at The Circuit Reader where this article first appeared; it is used with permission.