The script was co-written by Stephen Vincent Benét, author of the Civil War prose poem John Brown's Body (1928), and Gerrit Lloyd.

Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times called it "quite a worthy pictorial offering with a genuinely fine and inspiring performance by Walter Huston in the role of the martyred President"[3] and later put it on his year-end list of the ten best films of 1930.

[4] "More than an outstanding classic of sound pictures, Abraham Lincoln eclipses the most conservative illusion of a modernized Birth of a Nation", wrote Variety in a rave review.

[8] The film covers some little-known aspects of Lincoln's early life, such as his romance with Ann Rutledge, his depression and feared suicidal tendencies after her death, and his unexplained ending of his engagement with Mary Todd.

However, the film surmises that the cause was because of his unresolved feelings over Ann Rutledge, and it adds a dramatic scene in which Lincoln stands Mary up on their scheduled wedding day.

Also, early in hostilities, General Winfield Scott is depicted as being overconfident of a quick victory and something of a buffoon, but in reality, he was one of the voices in the minority claiming the war would be long, costly, and bloody.

Abraham Lincoln is part of the David Wark Griffith collection at the Museum of Modern Art, and it was donated as a gift from screenwriter-producer Paul Killiam, a collector of silent movies.