Lincoln Movie Rescues Abolitionist Sen. Thaddeus Stevens from the Shadows of History

[JPZenger]

http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/karen_heller/20130224_Karen_Heller__On_Oscar_weekend__Pennsylvania_s_19th-century_congressman_Thaddeus_Stevens_is_a_winner.html

Excerpts:

"For a state with few legends among our elected politicians, Stevens is a giant, albeit a largely forgotten or falsely maligned one. He was a champion of civil rights so far ahead of the curve as to be reviled by many during his day. Stevens wrote: "It is easy to protect the interests of the rich and powerful. But it is a great labor to protect the interests of the poor and downtrodden."

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln has sparked interest in "the Great Commoner." Ross Hetrick, founder of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, said: "More than any other politician, he epitomized what our country stands for, that all men are created equal.

... After Lincoln's assassination, Stevens championed the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to former slaves and expanded the protection of civil rights. During Reconstruction, he marshaled his political skills to make sure the South would not rise again in Congress and fought for Andrew Johnson's impeachment. In his will, Stevens left $50,000 to establish a Lancaster school for the orphaned and indigent, regardless of race and background, today known as the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology."

[FreeBC]

1. He was one of my grade school history heroes

I might just have to go see that movie now.

[Faygo Kid]

2. Exactly right. Stevens was a hero.

I don't normally care about these things, but I do hope Tommy Lee Jones wins Best Supporting Actor tonight for bringing Stevens alive.

[thucythucy]

3. There seems to have been a campaign to malign

pretty much all of the progressives of that era.

School teachers who went south to open schools for freed slaves were portrayed as "carpetbaggers" and the racist propaganda of the time depicted women school teachers especially as deranged sluts who came south only to sleep around with black men.

Southern whites who weren't racists, or didn't support secession, and saw no self-interest in protecting slavery, were "scalliwags."

Black politicians who were elected to various southern state governments during the early part of Reconstruction were portrayed as corrupt, ignorant, drunken, when in fact they provided some of the best and least corrupt governments in southern history up to that point.

I remember reading Bruce Catton's books as a kid, and being shocked at how he condemned "northern extremists" for helping bring on the war, and then "wrecking" the peace by insisting that freed slaves not be re-enslaved under Jim Crow.

In popular culture you see this in "Gone with the Wind"--especially the book, but also the movie--that includes a thinly veiled glorification of the KKK, and depicts events entirely from the viewpoint of the Southern 1%. Lincoln's program of land reform--which would have been implemented if he hadn't been murdered by a pro-confederate racist-- is ridiculed in the film as a pledge to ignorant blacks of "forty acres and a mule."

There's a really good book on how all this happened: David Blight, "Race and Reunion," about how northern and southern politicians after the war "healed" the nation by sanitizing history and agreeing to abandon equal rights for people of color.

As Taylor Branch put it, in "Parting the Waters", the result of this "was that no remotely accurate history of post-Reconstruction race relations survived in the majority culture, even in advanced scholarship.... Americans took it for granted that the Civil War sprang from causes that had little if anything to do with race."

We can see the same BS happening today, in the glorification of Reagan's abyssmal record as president, and attempts to sell the general public on the idea that the New Deal was a failure.

Reclaiming, and protecting, our history is hugely important to progressives. I'm glad to see it happening in the popular culture.

[grantcart]

4. by a strange coincidence I looked up and read Stevens wiki page today

Stevens wrote the inscription on his headstone that reads: "I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude, but finding other cemeteries limited as to race, by charter rules, I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life, equality of man before his Creator."[28]


a great man and I hope that Tommy Lee Jones gets an Oscar for his portrayal of him

[Voice for Peace]

5. my favorite part of the movie was him..

and something about him kept reminding me of
Alan Grayson. I think perhaps it was the boldness.