Abe Lincoln in the Age of Obama and Spielberg

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dc.contributor.authorField, Peter
dc.date.accessioned2024-11-28T01:45:00Z
dc.date.available2024-11-28T01:45:00Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.description.abstractWriting of Abe Lincoln after the Civil War, Frederick Douglass foreshadowed a natural divergence when evaluating the 16th president. ‘Viewed from the genuine abolitionist ground’, observed Douglass, ‘Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country … he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined’. Douglass himself concluded that ‘Great Emancipator’ had largely failed to imagine anything approaching a biracial America, remaining ‘pre-eminently the white man’s President’. Taking their cue from Douglass, scholars in our own time have largely concurred. A central tenet of Civil War history since the 1950s has revolved around the notion of a great chasm dividing the ‘dull and indifferent’ Lincoln from the zealous and idealistic abolitionists. Only recently, almost coterminous with the ascension of Barack Obama to American presidency, this divide seems to have shrunk and the evaluation of the radicals and the reformer president shown signs of what I call ‘convergence’. Prominent historians now view the radicals and the Republican leader more synoptically. Hollywood has reinforced the new Lincoln in the public eye. Stephen Spielberg has joined the scholars in giving us a Lincoln for the Age of Obama. How long this convergence view will last is open for debate, with the Trump era already reminding Americans that the stark divisions of the present suggest fundamental rifts in the past.
dc.identifier.citationField PS (2017). Abe Lincoln in the Age of Obama and Spielberg. Comparative American Studies: An International Journal. 15(1-2). 21-35.
dc.identifier.doihttp://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2017.1406718
dc.identifier.issn1741-2676
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10092/107507
dc.languageen
dc.publisherInforma UK Limited
dc.rightsAll rights reserved unless otherwise stated
dc.rights.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10092/17651
dc.subjectLincoln
dc.subjectabolitionists
dc.subjectradicalism
dc.subjectconvergence
dc.subjectRepublican Party
dc.subjectFrederick Douglass
dc.subjectBarack Obama
dc.subjectStephen Spielberg
dc.subject.anzsrc43 - History, heritage and archaeology::4303 - Historical studies::430321 - North American history
dc.subject.anzsrc43 - History, heritage and archaeology::4303 - Historical studies::430312 - Histories of race
dc.titleAbe Lincoln in the Age of Obama and Spielberg
dc.typeJournal Article
uc.collegeFaculty of Arts
uc.departmentHumanities
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