Apple announces 'Lincoln's Dilemma' documentary exploring the journey to end slavery
A new four-part docuseries coming to Apple TV+ will offer a new look at Abraham Lincoln and what it took to end slavery in the United States.
Apple describes 'Lincoln's Dilemma' as a "21st-century examination of a complicated man and the people and events that shaped his evolving stance on slavery." The series is designed to be a nuanced look into not only Lincoln but the narratives of enslaved people.
The series will be narrated by Jeffrey Wright and features the voices of Bill Camp as Abraham Lincoln and Leslie Odom Jr. as Frederick Douglass.
'Lincoln's Dilemma' is based on acclaimed historian David S. Reynolds' award-winning book, "Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times." It is produced by Eden Productions and Kunhardt Films.
The new docuseries joins a growing catalog of titles in Apple TV+'s library, including "Boys State," "The Velvet Underground," and "Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds."
Read on AppleInsider
Apple describes 'Lincoln's Dilemma' as a "21st-century examination of a complicated man and the people and events that shaped his evolving stance on slavery." The series is designed to be a nuanced look into not only Lincoln but the narratives of enslaved people.
The series will be narrated by Jeffrey Wright and features the voices of Bill Camp as Abraham Lincoln and Leslie Odom Jr. as Frederick Douglass.
'Lincoln's Dilemma' is based on acclaimed historian David S. Reynolds' award-winning book, "Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times." It is produced by Eden Productions and Kunhardt Films.
The new docuseries joins a growing catalog of titles in Apple TV+'s library, including "Boys State," "The Velvet Underground," and "Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds."
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Prior to the Civil War, the cumulative dollar value of slave holdings in the US exceeded the cumulative dollar value of all other business and industry. Much like the present, that wealth was held by a relative few patrician elites, mostly in the South. Also like the present, the vast majority of the Southern populace did not have any personal stake in that wealth, but were manipulated by fear-mongering and racist arguments into serving the wealthy elites' interests by giving their support (and in fact their lives during the war). Poor whites supported it because no matter how bad things were for them, they could at least see themselves as superior to enslaved black people. Blind racism assured that it never occurred to poor Southern whites that their own employment and wage prospects were greatly diminished when the rich folks could get labor for free from people they 'owned.'
Sure, slavery was 'complicated,' because it was so intertwined into the antebellum social economy, but it was no more 'complicated' than pressing issues today. Owning other people is wrong, and even slave holders like Jefferson and Washington knew it. It was only 'complicated' because facing up to that fact forced unpleasant decisions, making sacrifices to give up ill-gotten benefits and privileges based on past wrong decisions, and fighting through all the lying, cheating and coordinated misinformation efforts generated by those who valued their own wealth more than doing right by others. None of those things are more complicated than or unfamiliar to our current lives. In fact, all of that should be unsettlingly familiar.
This was all a contrived lie, of course. There are numerous ways to prove it was a lie, but the simplest is to look at the Confederates' own constitution. In it, they clearly expressed their priorities and what they seceded and fought for. Interestingly, in Article IV of that constitution, they nationalized "the institution of negro slavery," assuring that no current or future state or territory of the Confederate States could choose for itself not to allow slavery. So it turns out states' rights were of no consequence to the Confederates so long as they could keep their slaves.
This all remains relevant, because there is an important lesson that advocacy for states' rights is a red flag that almost always represents a diversionary lie, seeking to apply a false veneer of nobility onto attempts to do nefarious things (like disenfranchise certain non-preferred voters who might be coincidentally descended from previously enslaved people) without meddling federal interference.
Hopefully Lincoln's Dilemma will ultimately enlighten more than a few people to how all of this actually played out.
Looking at the context in which people made their choices in a previous era is absolutely key. That is presumably what Lincoln's Dilemma is all about. We can't learn, change, and make better choices without doing that, but we have to do it honestly. Understanding context is incredibly important, like how contemporary context led or allowed people to make abhorrent choices, like rounding native people up and sending them away on death marches for hundreds of miles to reservations in barren territory because white "settlers" wanted to take the natives' fertile land and homes for themselves. Simply calling them "savages" and considering them to be less than human made it easier to do that. It has also made it easier to continue various large and small abuses of and profound injustices toward native people up to this very day.
If you choose to learn nothing and write all that off as simply "people who were simply living with and under the morals, ethics, laws and values of their day," it's just as easy to respond to "the profound injustices going on today" as nothing more than "people simply living with and under the morals, ethics, laws and values of our day."
"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - variously, Churchill/Santayana/Burke
Also, you misread what he said about the battle to end slavery *not* being a simple issue back in its day (nor the moral question, mind you, but the intricacies of ending it and how messy it got, as we all know). Re-read:
We look on the battle to end slavery as a simplified, black and white question of: "Should people own people -- or not"? But, in actuality it was far more complex...