How Steven Spielberg Used Thaddeus Stevens in Lincoln To Make Points About Politics Today

 Introduction: In real life Lincoln was fond of using simple stories to illustrate complex points to his audiences. I’ve come to realize that’s a solid approach to take when you’re dealing with polarizing issues.

One of my favorite films of all time – one I’ve written about before in a different article – is Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, widely considered one of the most historically accurate movies ever made. One of the central characters in that film is Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the so-called Radical Republicans a group that has recently become widely celebrated in certain circles.

I’ve expressed some of my issues with the Radical Republicans in some of my earlier historical pieces and have gotten reviled in some circles for it. In a completely unrelated article, I now intend to talk about two critical scenes in Lincoln in which Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones, that speak much as to how Spielberg and his screenwriter Tony Kushner, accurately show how so many of the establishment thought of Stevens and how his approach in one of my favorite scenes in recent years, shows a clear different between idealism and pragmatism. Should you see any parallels between these scenes and any political movement, living or historical, well everything’s open to interpretation.

So here we go.

 

Lincoln deals with the 16^th President’s efforts in January of 1865 to get the 13^th Amendment, which would permanent ban slavery, through the House of Representatives. Many in his cabinet and prominent party leaders believe its impossible but Lincoln is determined to do so despite resistance.

He spends much of the first third of the film marshalling his forces. He sends his Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) to work behind the scenes with several prominent ‘fixers’ (John Hawkes and James Spader are the most prominent) to maneuver lame duck Democrats to vote for the amendment exchange for ‘jobs’. He goes to see Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook) the founder of the Republican Party to pressure the Republicans to vote as a bloc in favor of the amendment. Blair is the only man with the power to do so, but in exchange he insists that he make a trip to Richmond to make overtures for a Confederate peace, even though knowledge of it in Washington could scuttle any hope of the amendment’s passage. He visits critical members of the legislative team in the House, including the majority leader James Ashley (David Costabile). And he convinced his belligerent wife to constantly show her face in the House of Representatives to indicate the White House’s presence when the President’s would be seen as tipping the scales.

And he invites Thaddeus Stevens to the White House for a private discussion. A little historical context: Stevens, representing the Radical Republicans, had been as much a thorn in the side of the administration from its start with Stevens constantly complaining to Lincoln in private – and on the House floor – that he was managing the war and everyone else incorrectly. Lincoln was a radical thinker by the terms of the 19^th century but Stevens was far more ahead of it. The difference was, of course, Lincoln was in charge of the entire country and the Republican Party and Stevens was part of a small bloc of Northern Congressmen.

Lincoln as we hear in an earlier scene before the cabinet, is fully aware of the difficulties the country will be facing if the war comes to an end and the issue of slavery is not resolved for good. He is also concerned with a post-Civil War America, what it will look like for the South when they’ve lost and ‘the Negro’ when they are free.

Stevens has little concern of this: he makes clear his views on Reconstruction and they have nothing to do with Lincoln’s who gently says: “That’s the unvarnished Reconstruction.” Lincoln has a modest view about how to proceed:

Lincoln: When the people disagree, bringing them together requires going slow until they’re ready too…”

Stevens interrupts the President. I should mention that interrupting the President and treating him with disdain in the White House is an unwritten violation of etiquette. Stevens makes it very clear he doesn’t care about that:

 

Stevens: Shit on the people and what they want and what they’re ready for. I don’t give a goddamn about the people and what they want. This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the ‘good’ of the people without caring much for any of ‘em. The people elected me to represent them, to lead them, and I lead. You ought to try it.”

 

In this speech Stevens makes it very clear that he believes his judgment – and those of the Radical Republicans – is superior to that of all people, even the ones he doesn’t represent. Stevens’s is lecturing the President – who will be called Abraham Africanus on the House floor during the film – that a man who has lived his life in the North knows more than a man who was born in the South and has to look at an interest larger than that.

Lincoln is diplomatic in his response – both Kushner’s words and Daniel Day-Lewis’s deliver are no different than anything else – but in comparison to almost all the speeches he will give in the movie, we see he is sticking the knife in Stevens’s and his approach in a way he hasn’t before:

Lincoln: I admire your zeal, Mr. Stevens, and I have tried to profit from the example of it. But if I’d listened to you, I’d have declared every slave free the minute the first shell struck Fort Sumter. Then the border states would’ve gone over to the Confederacy, the war would’ve been lost and the Union along with it, and instead of abolishing slavery, as we hope to do in two weeks, we’d be watching helpless as infants as it spread from the American South to South America.”

Lincoln is telling Stevens, in no uncertain terms, that the path he suggested would have led to ruin for the nation and for the causes he fought for all his life. Stevens doesn’t acknowledge his flaws but in fact doubles down:

Stevens: Oh, how you have longed to say that to me. You claim you trust them, but you know what the people are. You know that the inner compass that should direct the soul towards justice has ossified in white men and women, North and South, unto utter uselessness through tolerating the evil of slavery. White people cannot bear the thought of sharing this country’s infinite abundance with Negroes.

Stevens is essentially telling Lincoln that even if he is right on everything he said politically, he is still morally wrong and therefore all the way wrong. Lincoln continues to take a diplomatic tone:

Lincoln: A compass, I learned when I was surveying, it’ll…point you true north from where you’re standing, but it’s got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms that you’ll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles and achieve nothing more than to sink into a swamp…what’s the point of knowing true north?

Lincoln is making a very clear point to Stevens about the different between idealistic politics, which Stevens and the Radical Republicans believed in, and the pragmatism of real politics. It is telling that while we see countless people involved in persuading swing Congressman to vote for the 13^th Amendment, Stevens is only seen doing so once, to a Pennsylvania Congressman who he goes out of his way to humiliate, degrade and bully in to voting for the amendment.

Much of Stevens fighting for the amendment is on the House floor where we see the combat persuade. It is there the second and more important scene occurs. The Democrats, led by George Pendleton, are trying to arrange the amendment’s defeat. Pendleton thinks the best way to do so is to use Stevens, a boogeyman for radical causes across the country, as a straw man. He tells his second in command Fernando Wood (Lee Pace) that he will arrange for the national press to be there. Wood’s job is to bring Stevens to full froth. “You excel at that.” In that rage he will make clear his views on racial equality become known to the national news and that will shift public opinion against it.

When the day comes Ashley notes the press and realizes the game. He admonishes Stevens: “Say only you believe equality under the law. Not equality for all races. Compromise, or you risk it all.”

We hear Wood demand of Stevens: “Do you know believe that the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, applies literally? Is that not the true purpose of the amendment?”

Stevens begins to rage. “The true purpose of the amendment, Mr. Wood, you perfectly named obstructive object…” The laughter begins and Ashley starts. When Wood repeats the question, its clear Stevens is about to say his beliefs but then he looks at the galleries.

In a quiet, almost humble tone he says: “I don’t believe in equality in all things. Only equality before the law. Only that and nothing more.”

Wood is clearly thrown by this. “That’s not so. You’ve said so countless times before.” Pendleton cries out: “For shame. For shame! Stop prevaricating!”

Stevens repeats it. Ashley with a look of disbelief says: “He’s answered your question. This amendment’s not to do with race equality.”

Pendleton takes matters into his own hands. “Your behavior is unworthy of a representative. It is in fact unworthy of a white man.”

In one of my favorite monologues of all time, Stevens snaps:

Stevens: “How can I hold that all men are created equal when here before me stands, stinking, the moral carcass of the gentleman from Ohio? Proof that some men ARE inferior, endowed by their maker with dim wits, impermeable to reason, with cold, pallid slime in their veins instead of hot, red blood. YOU are more reptile than man, George, so low and flat that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you.”

He says this to applause while Pendleton adds: “How dare you!”

Stevens: Yet even YOU, Pendleton – who should have been gibbeted for treason long before today – even worthless, unworthy you ought to be treated equally before the law! And so again, sir, and again and again, I say, I do not hold with equality in all things, only with equality before the law! Nothing more.

The press leaves the floor, disappointed and Ashley practically weeps in relief.

But there are two separate sets of reactions. The first comes from Mary Todd Lincoln, no fan of Stevens, who gives him a backhanded compliment. But “Who’d thought that old reprobate capable of such restraint? He might make a politician someday.” But Elizabeth, the wife of a former slave and a fan of Stevens, is struck silent and tells the first lady: “I have to go” before rushing out of the room.

Then Asa Vintner Litton, a colleague of Stevens who doesn’t trust Lincoln and worshipped Stevens admonishes Stevens for showing restraint. According to Litton by not giving into the will of the Democrats and doing exactly what they wanted him too, he has failed the cause.

Litton: “Have you lost very soul, Mr. Stevens? Is there nothing you won’t say?”

Stevens is angry but quietly so.

I’m sorry you’re nauseous Asa. That must be unpleasant. I want the amendment to pass, so that the constitution’s first and only mention of slavery is its absolute prohibition. For this amendment, for which I have worked all my life and for which countless colored men and women have fought and died and now hundreds of thousands of soldiers…No, sir, no, it seems there’s very nearly nothing I won’t say.”

It's worth noting Litton has lost his seat in Congress and has no stake in what comes next. Stevens does. Stevens is trying to think of the future. This scene and the conversation Litton has with Stevens after it is over show the difference between pragmatism and ideology better than almost any scene I’ve seen involving politics in a film. To Stevens it is more important to lose a rhetorical battle if its means winning the war. To Litton, many Radicals and countless abolitionists, rhetoric and moral bluster mattered more than actual winning the war they’d fought for.

It’s worth noting in Lincoln’s last cabinet meeting before he goes to Ford’ Theater Lincoln is discussing an equally controversial subject:

Lincoln: “I did say some colored men, the intelligent, the educated, and veterans, I qualified it.

Ashley: Mr. Stevens is furious. He wants to know why you qualified it.

The Speaker of the House: “No one heard the ‘intelligent’ or the ‘educated’ part. All they heard was the first time any president has ever made mention of Negro voting.”

Lincoln: “Still, I wish I mentioned it in a better speech.”

Ashley: “Mr. Stevens also wants to know why you didn’t make a better speech.”

The assembled all chuckle. They know that the fight they just waged, however difficult and messy it was, has done nothing to change Stevens’s fundamental view on the administration, the President, or the people. However the next battle is waged Lincoln knows Stevens will be as much an obstacle to it as he a proponent of it. For him and his Radicals, pragmatism is not something for leaders and even the occupants of the White House have to keep proving they will follow true north even if they sink into a swamp in its pursuit