Historian Howard Zinn on Abraham Lincoln and the eventual
abolition of slavery in the US. Which shows that Spielberg's new
film, Lincoln, is far from historically accurate. John Brown1
was executed by the state of Virginia with the approval of the
national government. It was the national government which, while
weakly enforcing the law ending the slave trade, sternly
enforced the laws providing for the return of fugitives to
slavery. It was the national government that, in Andrew
Jackson's administration, collaborated with the South to keep
abolitionist literature out of the mails in the southern states.
It was the Supreme Court of the United States that declared in
1857 that the slave Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom
because he was not a person, but property. Such a national
government would never accept an end to slavery by rebellion. It
would end slavery only under conditions controlled by whites,
and only when required by the political and economic needs of
the business elite of the North. It was