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frazzled

(18,402 posts)
8. The most thought-provoking aspect for me was ...
Mon Jan 28, 2013, 12:03 PM
Jan 2013

the moral decision he faced and how he approached it. He could have ended the bloodshed and preserved the Union once the CSA was willing to negotiate an end to the hostilities, and many of his own advisors and party members were urgently pressing him to do so. But he knew the 13th Amendment would never get passed without the leverage the continuing war placed on all the parties. So he had to choose continued fighting and death, which is pretty awful, over the achievement of this fundamental issue. And he had to lie to Congress and buy off legislators to get it done. But the idea that the war would have been for nothing had it not been preserved in law (as opposed to his "Emancipation Proclamation&quot prevailed.

It was thought-provoking that this was not about idealism, particularly, but about legal and legislative questions.

It was thought-provoking that this was not the usual Spielberg schmaltz and bombast. I give a lot of credit for that to Tony Kushner, for the subtlety and complexity of the screenplay.

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