Lincoln, Slavery, and Race in Civil War New Jersey: The Documentary Evidence and Treatments in Film

Abstract

“struggle without end” is an appropriate title for a war that took more american lives than all other american wars combined and a conflict that both sides expected to be over in a matter of months. Recent recalibrations have increased the death toll from 620,000 to nearly 750,000. the then apparent unending nature of the war and its horrific casualties gave it an appearance of a war without end. But the war came to an end with the emancipation of four million slaves, the nation reunited, and a president whose stewardship of america through the most tumultuous four-and-one-half years of its young history marked him as one of america’s greatest presidents.1 certainly, this is the view of lincoln that emerges in steven spielberg’s recent movie, Lincoln (2012). it is a view that is difficult to disagree with, yet is irritatingly incomplete. the enduring legacy of lincoln as the consummate politician, one of our greatest wartime presidents with a keen untutored military acumen and a humanitarian sensibility earning him the appellation, the “great emancipator,” are all perceptions of lincoln foregrounded in the film. yet, what is missing from the film is lincoln’s ambivalence on the issue of racial equality, his inability to envision america as a multiracial democracy even well into the war, and his early reticence to support emancipation despite his eventual issuance of the emancipation Proclamation. in not addressing these issues, the film thereby fails to explore lincoln’s capacity for transformative growth away from some of these early restrictive and conservative views. in short, lincoln’s conservatism and yet his capacity for growth are also that of the nation, the north, and new Jersey. two other films released just before and after Lincoln in 2012 and 2013 raise important questions concerning this turbulent era. directors steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013) and Quentin