Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lincoln: Divided We Stand’ On CNN, Where Sterling K. Brown Narrates A Portrait Of Abraham Lincoln That You May Not Have Learned About In School

Lincoln: Divided We Stand is a six-part docuseries that takes a look at Abraham Lincoln’s life and tries to paint a full picture of him, one that is well beyond what people know about “The Great Emancipator.” The series, produced by Nancy Glass and Jon Hirsch and narrated by Sterling K. Brown, combines expert interviews, photos from the era, as well as dramatic reenactments to show that Lincoln was ambitious as any politician of the era, and that while he was anti-slavery, he wasn’t necessarily an abolitionist, at least early on in his political career.

LINCOLN: DIVIDED WE STAND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shots of Washington, DC. Sterling K. Brown says, “America is at a reckoning.”

The Gist: In the first episode, Lincoln’s early years are examined, from his birth in Kentucky in 1809 — right at the end of Thomas Jefferson’s time as president — and his dirt-poor upbringing in Illinois. Yes, he grew up in a log cabin, but the reality isn’t nearly as romantic as the legend makes it seem. His mother died when he was young, and his father left him and his sister to fend for themselves on the farm one winter as he went looking for a new wife.

As the show moves on to Lincoln’s early law career and his undistinguished single term in Congress as a member of the strong-federal-government Whig party, the series discusses his relationship to slavery. His tyrannical father had Lincoln labor for him on their farm for years, and that’s a common theme regarding his hatred of slavery.

But it’s more complicated than that. While he was anti-slavery, he didn’t side with abolitionists. He was more in favor of keeping slavery from spreading to new territories, but current enslaved people would not be set free. In fact, he advocated for enslaved Black people to form their own sovereign nation. Not exactly the enlightened view of someone who later emancipated every enslaved person in the U.S.

The episode also discusses his relationship with Mary Todd, who had a number of connections in Springfield’s society circles. Their relationship was tumultuous, to say the least, but there also seemed to be an attraction between the two that was undeniable, especially during the times they spent apart.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The format of Lincoln: Divided We Stand reminds us of History’s Washington miniseries, which tried to tell the unvarnished truth about one of the U.S.’s greatest historical figures, using expert interviews and reenactments.

Our Take: Lincoln: Divided We Stand tries like crazy to make sure we see Lincoln as he really was, not the heroic figure history has made him into. Yes, he was one of our best presidents and he ended slavery in this country, all while seeing the nation through the Civil War. But he was also a human being with good points and faults, and viewpoints that people may be surprised to learn about. And this docuseries does a good job of exploring these grey areas in Lincoln’s life and resume.

Of course, this isn’t the first documentary to do such a thing, but what we liked about this one is that many of the experts the filmmakers talk to are Black, and they give a different perspective of Lincoln’s life and presidency. Because of his views on slavery in the years before he was elected president, it’s useful to break it down in the context of the times in which he lived, to see if Lincoln, who didn’t think of Blacks as equal to whites, was racist or just a product of his era. It would have been a disservice to not diversify the experts that were interviewed.

The first episode tries to take the first decades of Lincoln’s life in 3-10-year chunks, in order to make sure people have an idea where they are in the timeline. And the filmmakers take all reverence and throw it out the window, especially when it comes to his childhood and his undistinguished term in Congress, which ended when new president Zachary Taylor refused to give him a Cabinet post.

Parting Shot: After Congress, his career a mess and his marriage starting to collapse, we see Lincoln riding a horse through the foggy woods, and hear Brown say, “If it were not for a contentious bill being drafted in Congress, we may have never heard from Abraham Lincoln again.”

Sleeper Star: Van Jones, for saying this about the connection between Lincoln working for his father and his hatred of slavery: “Listen, I’m sure he was pissed off at his dad, but it didn’t drive his politics.”

Most Pilot-y Line: The reenactments are free of dialogue, so they’re better than most. But they’re distracting.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you want to find out more about Abraham Lincoln’s politics and aspects of his personality beyond the hagiographies, then Lincoln: Divided We Stand is a good starter course.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

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