Lincoln Biography and National Reconciliation in the Films Birth of a Nation and Lincoln

Abstract

This essay explores how Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012) invoked, argued with, and sometimes paid homage to D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915). It argues that the films’ portrayal of Lincoln as a national hero is inseparable from the fantasy that if Lincoln had lived into the postwar period, the nation would have reunited peacefully and without racial conflict. Birth of a Nation exemplified and helped to popularize that narrative, which represented congressional Reconstruction policy as a disaster for white southerners and for the nation. Historians have long since discredited that version of history, but it lives on in fantasies about Abraham Lincoln and his tragic death, and the film Lincoln unfortunately perpetuates and extends it.