Review of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Knowing all Confederate compatriots are undoubtedly dying for a review of Lincoln: Vampire Hunter so they can get in line to see our favorite President over and over again in theatre HD with Dolby surround sound, I offer my unofficial SCV review.  It was hard to find a good seat in the totally empty theatre.  Totally empty except my wife and myself until a few minutes before the showing when a black couple arrived.  My wife warned me to mind my commentary during the movie and I tried with my utmost inner strength.  My wife loves paranormal books and movies so she wanted to see this one and the choice was Lincoln or some male stripper movie.  Now, even though my wife likes vampires, one might resent the fact that the movie portrays Southerners and the Confederacy as a nation of vampire aristocracy who apparently owned slaves in order to kill them and drink their blood.  After a frumpy President Jefferson Davis solicited help from the undead to turn the tide of the War, the subsequent Gettysburg battle scene showed the Confederate troops charging and overwhelming the Union lines on the first day of the battle - to a man, the Confederates shown were a snaggle-toothed vampire army all conquering with nary a weapon beyond their supernatural powers.  As a descendant of Confederate Pvt. Elijah Hunt who fought with Bennings Brigade at Gettysburg, one may resent that portrayal of Southerners as a blood thirsty lot of demons a tad bit.  An aside, my Montgomery native wife didn't even recognize Jeff Davis as the role was played by an unflatteringly short dowdy old man while Lincoln of course was the ax wielding tall strong hero of course.  The primary villainous plantation owner vampire had it right though when he defended the institution of slavery to Lincoln as a natural extension of thousands of years of human existence, Biblically condoned and evidenced in Egyptian, Roman, and even New World Aztec cultures. But we should be so much more enlightened now, certainly more so than the teachings of Jesus Christ no doubt - attempting to not digress but it was mentioned repeatedly at the SCV Murfreesboro convention that indeed the whole of the Southern states was effectively enslaved as a result of the defeat of the Confederacy and we continue to be so today with confiscatory taxation and an overbearing federal government seeking to limit our freedoms and liberty with each new day and each new law. Anyway, the movie also correctly stated that it was indeed the Africans who sold their own kind or enemy tribes into slavery to the Europeans and later European colonists.  But the factual integrity of the movie was short lived.  Instead of accurately providing quotes from Lincoln supporting his documented position that his every political maneuver was designed to reign in the money making Southern states and bind them with and subservient to the Northern states in a Union under force, the movie producers instead depicted Lincoln with a supposed life long black friend by his side and kicking off his political career with stump speeches railing on about liberty and freedom (apparently exclusively for the black slaves, certainly not for the greater Southern populace).  Nowhere a mention of his desire to deport freed blacks and his position that blacks and whites could not peacefully coexist in a society.  Recall his famous quote, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union."  This supported by his strategic attempt to stir an insurrection amongst the Southern slaves thru an Emancipation Proclamation which failed to free a single slave in the Northern states under which he had jurisdiction.  No, instead he was shown in the movie as a life long abolitionist fire brand. The Underground Railroad was front and center seemingly throughout the movie with Lincoln hiding out amongst the fugitive runaway slaves at one point. And of course, the freed slaves proved to be the heroes of the Union cause by delivering the bullets and cannon balls manufactured overnight from the silverware and sterling of Washington DC and delivered to the front lines at Gettysburg to turn the tide of the battle.  We knew how the movie would end of course but it was nonetheless nauseating in its perpetuation and furthering of the Lincoln mythology and historical inaccuracies. As the Neal Dhand Montgomery Advertiser review stated, "Hammering Lincoln-isms into the audiences head... how many times can the word honest or some iteration of it be said in a 105 minute span?"  Instead of teaching the truths and Constitutionality of the Confederate cause and the historical facts of the War Between the States, our public schools will no doubt begin to use this movie as an instructional aide in teaching this important topic to our children if they mention the "Civil War" at all in the curriculum.

Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Movies.