Review of Lincoln in the White House

Joining in the ranks of Walter Huston, Henry Fonda, Raymond Massey and most recently Daniel Day Lewis comes forgotten character actor Frank McGlynn Jr. as Abraham Lincoln. As the President faces the succession of the south, he reaches into his own spirituality as he faces the biggest battle of the country up to that time. It's episodic and incomplete with details, but it shows the obstacles from his own cabinet, support from his otherwise nagging wife (Nana Bryant) and the moral obligation to explain what freedom means to him to his own son (Dickie Moore). These color films weren't meant to be a complete histories of the struggles for freedom, but interest youngsters to explore it on their own and adults to remember the issues of the past as another war loomed on the horizon. Not bad for what they are if you take them in the propaganda spirit in which they are made, but lacking the details of the previous movies and plays, and sort of "American History for Dummies".