"Perhaps it is the era of cable news, with its permanent theater of politics, that has made it possible to engage more vigorously with the kind of historical detail in which Lincoln revels. An audience that has endured the protracted dramas surrounding the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the raising of the debt ceiling, and followed the statistics of political polling as if it were a new national pastime, is certainly ready to contemplate the overt and covert tactics involved in the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment." — Geoffrey O'Brien

That feels dead on.