Even inaccurate movies can teach history

When I was in the sixth or seventh grade, we learned about the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War by memorizing the following summation: “The 13th Amendment freed the slaves, the 14th made them citizens and the 15th gave them the right to vote.”

It still comes in handy from time to time, and I thought of it the other day when I saw that Congressman Joe Courtney (D-2) was observing the 150th anniversary of the 13th Amendment on Jan. 31 by resuming his attack on the fine Steven Spielberg movie, “Lincoln.” You may remember it showed two of Connecticut’s three members of the House voting against the amendment when, in fact, all four Connecticut House members and two senators voted for it.

When the movie came out in 2013, Courtney got a lot of attention by demanding that Spielberg correct the error before the movie was released on a DVD. Spielberg refused and the script writer, the highly regarded Tony Kushner, argued he changed the facts to serve the larger story with the 15-second scene to show that abolishing slavery was not universally supported in the North. He also pointed out that he changed the congressmen’s names to protect the real ones. It’s not unlike the way the new, widely praised movie “Selma” builds up Martin Luther King by playing down Lyndon Johnson’s role in passing civil rights legislation.

At the time, I thought Courtney had a point in regard to “Lincoln”and agreed the DVD version might include a written clarification, even though it was, after all, a movie, but now, Courtney’s overdoing it. He’s prepared what he calls “a resource guide” for state teachers to “set the record straight.”

For the record, the affirmative votes were cast by Congressmen Augustus Brandegee of New London, Henry Deming of Hartford, James English of New Haven and — drum roll, please — John Henry Hubbard of Salisbury. 

I wonder if the Courtney teacher’s guide will note that none of these House or Senate members was re-elected in 1866. One retired, and the others lost because they were Democrats or Republicans considered too moderate by the Radical Republicans who tried and failed to impeach Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson. The guide should also mention that Connecticut and New Hampshire were the last northern states to ratify the amendment in their legislatures. They were only ahead of South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina and Georgia in voting to free the slaves.

If you detect I love history, you’re right. But I readily admit I first learned a lot of it, not in school, but in the movies, and it was the movie versions, with all their inaccuracies, that made me want to learn more. As they say, it’s all in the presentation. 

My mother was unintentionally my best history teacher because she took me to so many matinees after school at Loew’s Embassy in North Bergen, N.J. Tickets were a quarter for her and 11 cents for me and Loew’s showed MGM movies almost exclusively. That was also good because MGM movies were heavy into American history from Errol Flynn as General Custer to Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy as Thomas Edison, not to mention Pat O’Brien as Knute Rockne and Ronald Reagan as the Gipper.

I saw “Gone with the Wind” in its first run when I was 6 and mostly remembered the burning of Atlanta and Rhett’s naughty word at the end. There was also Scarlett vowing in the middle of the movie that she’d never be hungry again and my mother turning to me and saying, “And she never was.” Like almost everyone over 6 in 1939, she’d read the book.

Later, of course, I learned that all the slaves didn’t enjoy life as much as those working for Gerald O’Hara at Tara, and I doubt very much that the few kids who actually saw “Lincoln” even noticed the votes by the Connecticut delegation. When I learned all I needed to know about Reconstruction with those bare facts about the three amendments, the votes of the New Jersey delegation were not mentioned. Congressmen apparently didn’t do study guides in the ’40s.

There’s one more thing the Lincoln movie reminded lovers of history if they paid attention. The 13th Amendment was pushed by Lincoln because he doubted his Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves as of Jan. 1, 1863, would survive the war.

The proclamation was one of those terrible presidential executive orders like the ones so recently in the news. Lincoln’s enemies, like Obama’s, believed executive orders were “clearly unconstitutional.”

Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.