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Abraham and Mary Lincoln :

Published by : WGBH Educational Foundation : | Distributed by PBS Home Video, ([United States] :) Physical details: 3 videocassettes of 3 (360 min.) : | Copyright: no reg. sd., col. and b&w ; 1/2 in. ISBN:078063490X. Year: 2001
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Special features include: interviews with the producer and cinematographer, audio descriptions, audio navigation, three-part featurette, interactive map, videos interview of historians, timelines, essays, photo galleries, and teacher's guide.

A six part program which examines the Lincolns' family life and marriage, Abraham Lincoln's presidency, and the Civil War era. Videocassette 1. includes episode one : Ambition and episode two: We are elected. Videocassette 2 includes episode three: Shattered and episode four: Dearest of all things. Videocassette 3 includes epiosde five: This frightful war and episode six: Blind with weeping.

Videocassette 1. This film begins in 1882 when Mary Todd Lincoln is an old woman living near Springfield, Illinois. It backtracts to tell the story of the couple's childhoods his in a remote backwoods log cabin, hers in a wealthy Kentucky home. And it describes their courtship. Mary sets her heart on the raw, socially awkward Lincoln, saying later. “ He’ll be president of the United States on day. If I had not thought so I never would have married him. “ Their partnership is both tempestuous and passionate. She has a temper, and he suffers bouts of depression. But they share a powerful political ambition that sends Lincoln to the House of Representatives and later, with the country splitting apart over slavery, propels him to run for president. On election night, when the results finally come in, Lincoln goes home and tells his wife, “Mary, Mary, we are elected”

Videcassette 2: When the Lincolns arrive in Washington in 1861, the country is breaking apart. The country's president-elect is unknown, untested, and mistrusted. His wife, the daughter of a Southern slave owner, is suspected of being a Confederate sympathizer, As Lincoln leads a confused and frightened people through the most terrible conflict in their history, disaster strikes his own home: Willie Lincoln -- the child Mary says will be the hope and stay of her old age – dies. Mary, though tormented by her grief, visits wounded soldiers and helps slaves who have made their way to the North. Losing her grip on sanity, she also turns to spiritualists for comfort. Her husband, bowed down with sorrow, never loses sight of the tragedy consuming the nation. With the war going badly in the east, enlistments drying up, and morale low, Lincoln takes a step that changes the country forever and in ding so he changes himself. On January 1, 1863 the sixteenth president issues the Emancipation Proclamation liberating millions of Americans from bondage. The Move turns the Civil War from a conflict over union into a struggle for freedom.