Labor Day miscellanea

A few items for your edification as you kiss your summer goodbye.

• Joel McDurmon argues that David Barton failed to make his case in The Jefferson Lies.  The reason this is noteworthy is because McDurmon’s piece is posted at the American Vision website.  This organization calls for a nation “that recognizes the sovereignty of God over all of life, where Christians apply a Biblical worldview to every facet of society. This future America will be again a ‘city on a hill’ drawing all nations to the Lord Jesus Christ and teaching them to subdue the earth for the advancement of His Kingdom.”  It’s pretty interesting to see Christian Reconstructionists taking Barton apart.  (Hat tip to John Fea)
• A few months ago Connecticut rolled out a $27 million tourism marketing campaign organized around the slogan “Still Revolutionary,” which “speaks to Connecticut’s deep roots in the founding of this country and reminds us that we still have that independent, revolutionary spirit,” according to Gov. Daniel Malloy. It’s a little odd, therefore, that Fort Griswold (site of the 1781 Battle of Groton Heights and one of the state’s most important Rev War attractions) is conspicuously absent in the ads that have been released so far.  It’s the thought that counts, anyway.
• In a new book, Robert Sullivan does for the Revolutionary War in the middle states what Tony Horwitz did for the Civil War in the South.
• Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg is getting a new museum, slated to open next July.
• An Illinois Lincoln fan is heading out on a cross-country trip to read the Gettysburg Address from the steps of every state capitol.  If my reckoning is correct, that adds up to about an hour and forty minutes of actual speaking time.
• Speaking of Lincoln, the folks at Simon & Schuster know an opportunity when they see one.

Some conventional thinking

I’ve got a short piece on the Republican National Convention of 1860 (which was a lot more interesting than the one going on now) over at the Lincoln Institute blog.

Downright uncanny

Take a look at the photo, and then click here.

Taken at Brady’s studio on Jan. 8, 1864. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Fiction enslaved to facts

Dimitri Rotov on the late Gore Vidal’s historical fiction:

Characters were not integral to the plot but were inventory items on an historical checklist; they had to be present, kept busy somehow. They had to be there in the fiction because they had been there in history.

For Gore Vidal, the historical novel was a meander that touched on past events in the correct order leaving most in, regardless of story value. If you were a buff, I suppose the appeal might be to make a list of all the people and events included. Maybe that was the challenge for him – how much history he could pile into a fictional format.

Rotov’s analysis sums up more clearly than I could the reason why I rarely read novels about prominent historical figures. All too often, they’re nothing but historical narratives with dialogue added, which makes for a rather uninspiring read.

This was my main problem with the only Jeff Shaara book I’ve read, Rise to Rebellion. His father’s masterpiece, The Killer Angels, was as much a work of artistic imagination as historical reconstruction. Michael Shaara crawled into his characters’ skins, using the Battle of Gettysburg as a venue to meditate on universal themes—war, freedom, equality, country. I found Rise to Rebellion to be a completely different animal, a pageant in which prominent historical figures waited for their cues, stepped onstage, played whatever parts they played in the historical record, and then sauntered back to the wings. If you’re going to be so careful to color inside the lines, why not just write narrative non-fiction?

At the end of the day, of course, this comes down to personal taste, so your mileage may vary. Judging by the popularity of Jeff Shaara’s books, a lot of readers’ mileage varies quite a bit from mine. Fair enough.

Anyway, while we’re on the subject of Vidal’s Lincoln, I did enjoy the adaptation with Sam Waterston. Contrast his portrayal with that of Henry Fonda in Young Mr. Lincoln. Waterston gives us the gregarious, folksy Lincoln, whereas Fonda gives us the moody, melancholy one. Two very different performances, but they’re both right on the money.

Yet another Lincoln movie

This one is apparently about Abe’s boyhood, with Diane Kruger as Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln.  This carries on a long, proud tradition of filling Lincoln movie roles with actresses who are far more attractive than the historical figures they play.

Some thoughts on Lincoln and Sandburg

…prompted by a visit to Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site.  It was a scorchingly hot day to be visiting national parks, but it was still a nice trip, and King’s Mountain was only eighty miles away.

Sometimes a vampire is just a vampire

Is it a parable about social justice?

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is traditional progressive storytelling. It uses an axe-swinging superhero, Abe Lincoln, to retell the Left’s primary mythos – a parasitic few live off the misery of the people.

An attempt to grapple with dark chapters in our nation’s history?

The idea of America as a nation secretly created and controlled by vampires actually builds on a long history of popular “subversion myths” in which Freemasons, communists, or other conspiracies have secretly taken control of an otherwise good nation and threaten its social order. Like vampire stories, subversion myths frame good and evil in clear, unwavering terms. As nocturnal creatures who attack unseen, the vampires of folklore represent one of the oldest forms of subversion myth.

A “White Guilt Fantasy“?

When Abraham starts in on his vampire-hunting career, the movie still takes time to drop plot cookies that illuminate how awesome and pro-abolition he is, and how this fact makes him beloved by all good people. Such as the moment when Mary Todd, his future wife, gets all interested in him after he says something vaguely anti-slavery. Or the time when he and the black boy from the first act (Will Johnson) end up in jail for fisticuffs against some men who are determined to cart Will away as a slave.

And here I thought it was just a gimmick.

Pass the garlic

No doubt you’ve all been waiting breathlessly for me to review Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  Wait no more.  The short version: I went out of the theater feeling like the Calvinist who fell down the stairs, just glad it was over.

On a much more positive note, you’ll have to excuse me for a moment.  I need to go jump up and down while shrieking with girlish delight.

We’ve got an interview with William Harris

…over at the Lincoln Institute blog.  I had the privilege of asking him some questions about his work on Lincoln, which he was kind enough to answer.  We’re hoping to do an occasional series of these conversations with Lincoln scholars, so stay tuned.

I’ve got a few remarks on the Booth bobblehead brouhaha

…over at the Lincoln Institute blog, but Kevin Levin says pretty much the same thing more concisely and bluntly at Civil War Memory.