Random Lincoln News: Spielberg, Podcasts, and a New Website

Three bits of short information to pass along today. Last week, I wrote about recent information about Steven Spielberg's long-planned Lincoln movie. Earlier this week, Spielberg's publicist confirmed that the award-winning director plans on shooting the movie sometime in 2009. Read the brief confirmation given to a reporter from Entertainment Weekly. Despite the financial and legal issues involved, I imagine that Spielberg will get to do what he wants.

I'm still coming across bicentennial week features about Abraham Lincoln. Bloomberg.com featured a series of five Lincoln podcasts with scholars like Harold Holzer and James McPherson. (A tip of the hat to Samuel Wheeler at his Lincoln Studies site for uncovering these interviews.) I've listened to the solid interview with McPherson and look forward to listening to the others during upcoming trips to the gym. Here are links to the podcasts:

• James McPherson
• Michael Beschloss
• Harold Holzer
• Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Mario Cuomo

Earlier this week, I wrote about a new educational site designed to introduce middle school students to the Lincoln White House, sponsored by the White House Historical Association. Last night, I found another new online resource, Lincoln's Commute, sponsored by the White House Historical Association and President Lincoln's Cottage at the Soldier's Home. This site, appropriate for all ages, shows some of what Abraham Lincoln would have seen on his roughly three-mile commute in the summer month's between the Soldier's Home and the White House. There is a short film and the ability to learn about various locations and people along Lincoln's normal route.

Lincoln Bicentennial Articles

The obligatory articles about the meaning of Abraham Lincoln in American history have started appearing. The next is in this weekends USA Weekend supplement. Featuring the hyperbole that USA Today (McNews) is famous for -- here calling Presidential historian Michael Beschloss "America's foremost historian"* -- the cover article (whatever that's worth in USA Weekend) is still worth a look.

Click here to read the article.

All seven of Beschloss' points is accurate, and I'm not sure what I would add. But I was most intrigued by #4 "[Lincoln] helped pioneer modern race relations." This is a very interesting way to put it. While Beschloss points to the legacy of emancipation, perhaps Lincoln should also be recognized for the way that his own treatment of African-Americans developed, especially during his presidency. Here was a man who was uncomfortable about the race issue, as opposed to the slavery issue, but who refused to allow his discomfort to prevent him from dealing with African-Americans (like Frederick Douglass) face-to-face. Part of this was political savvy -- he needed Douglass' standing among freed Blacks -- but part of it, I think, was his recognition that separating the races (via colonization) would never occur, and that he, just as a person, needed to learn how to live beside freed Blacks. Lincoln didn't always say the right things; he never completely lost his white supremacist viewpoint (a relic of his upbringing). But he refused to be a prisoner of his past, and he acted more often with charity towards others than with fear. In some ways, that could describe race relations in the United States for the last fifty years.

*By the way, I'm not sure who America's foremost historian is currently. Until his death, it was probably Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Popularly speaking, it might be David McCullough -- might be. But by any yardstick, Beschloss, respected historian that he is, should never be described as America's foremost historian.