There is the question of just how accurate we can expect any historical movie to be, no? But I think most historians would agree that Lincoln was trying harder than most movies. The costumes and sets were good- actors playing Lincoln, Mary Todd, Seward and Stanton really looked ( or were made to look) like Lincoln, Mary Todd, Seward and Stanton. The speeches and formal language was not as sentimental and loaded with latinate words as the original stuff of the 1860's could be, but it captured much of the effect, was not at all the terse dialog you expect from modern Californian script writers. And it spent most of its time trying to portray an often forgotten but very important crisis: whether the North, weary with fighting the South, would permit the seceding states back into the Union and allow them to keep their slaves. With a significant number of Northerners perfectly happy to allow slavery if they could have peace, this could have happened. Copperheads like Clement Vallandigham were leading the Democrats and were pushing for it. It was quite possible Lincoln could have failed his 1864 re-election bid, resulting in a truce signed and slavery continued, and the Congressional vote for the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, was not a foregone conclusion- it really did take some politicking . So, not as exciting as the simple Gods n' Generals kind of Civil War movie, but far more significant than any particular battlefield victory. The film should get major points for trying to be more intelligent.

There are a couple of slight poetic liberties. Putting Thaddeus Stevens into bed with his housekeeper Lydia Hamilton Smith is a bit of stretch ( whether she was his romantic partner and not just housekeeper is not settled- she was certainly not openly one) . And modern audiences would perhaps be impatient with the omnipresent Christian prayers, references and invocations that were a big part of 19th c. American life, so they're pretty understated in the film. But that's small stuff.

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