[8] It features Sally Field, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Hal Holbrook, and Tommy Lee Jones in supporting roles.

At the 85th Academy Awards, it received twelve nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director; it won for Best Production Design and Best Actor for Day-Lewis, his third in the category.

He is concerned that his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation may be discarded by the courts after the war and that the proposed Thirteenth Amendment will be defeated by the returning slave states.

With dozens of Democrats being lame ducks after losing their re-election campaigns in 1864, some of Lincoln's advisors believe that he should wait for a new Republican-heavy Congress.

Lincoln's hopes rely upon Francis Preston Blair, a founder of the Republican Party whose influence could win over members of the state conservative faction.

Meanwhile, Lincoln's son, Robert, returns from law school and announces his intention to discontinue his studies and enlist in the Union Army, hoping to earn a measure of honor and respect outside of his father's shadow.

Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady fears that Robert will be killed and presses her husband to pass the amendment and end the war, promising woe upon him if he should fail.

Meanwhile, Confederate envoys are ready to meet with Lincoln to discuss terms for peace, but he instructs that they be kept out of Washington as the amendment approaches a vote on the House floor.

[b] When Lincoln meets with the Confederates, he tells them that slavery cannot be restored, as the North is united for ratification of the amendment, and several of the southern states' reconstructed legislatures would also vote to ratify.

On April 14, Lincoln meets members of his cabinet to discuss future measures to enfranchise blacks, before leaving for Ford's Theatre.

That night, while Lincoln's son Tad is watching Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp at Grover's Theatre, the manager stops the play to announce that the President has been shot.

[46] Co-star Sally Field, in a 2012 PBS interview, suggested that Neeson's decision was influenced by the death of his wife Natasha Richardson less than a year earlier.

[49] While promoting Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in May 2008, Spielberg announced his intention to start filming in early 2009,[50] for release in November, ten months after the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth.

In reference to Petersburg, according to location manager Colleen Gibbons, "one thing that attracted the filmmakers to the city was the 180-degree vista of historic structures" which is "very rare".

[2] For its international release, 20th Century Fox added a minute-long introduction with photographs to provide historical context and reference for audiences unfamiliar with the American Civil War.

[61] Lincoln was released by Buena Vista Home Entertainment on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download in North America on March 26, 2013.

The website's critical consensus reads: "Daniel Day-Lewis characteristically delivers in this witty, dignified portrait that immerses the audience in its world and entertains even as it informs.

[70] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars, and said: "The hallmark of the man, performed so powerfully by Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln, is calm self-confidence, patience and a willingness to play politics in a realistic way.

The team of Steven Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis and Tony Kushner has brought forth a triumphant piece of historical journalism, a profound work of popular art and a rich examination of one of our darkest epochs.

[76] Eric Foner (Columbia University), a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the period, claimed in a letter to The New York Times that "The film grossly exaggerates the possibility that by January 1865 the war might have ended with slavery still intact."

"[77] Kate Masur (Northwestern University) accused the film of oversimplifying the role of blacks in abolition and dismissed the effort as "an opportunity squandered" in an op-ed for The New York Times.

[78] Harold Holzer, the co-chair of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation and author of more than 40 books, served as a consultant to the film and praised it, but also observed that there is "no shortage of small historical bloopers in the movie" in a piece for The Daily Beast.

Holzer states, "As for the Spielberg movie's opening scene ... it is almost inconceivable that any uniformed soldier of the day (or civilians, for that matter) would have memorized a speech that, however ingrained in modern memory, did not achieve any semblance of a national reputation until the 20th century.

"[79] Barry Bradford, a member of the Organization of American Historians, offered an analysis of some of the finer historical points of the film's representation of clothing, relationships and appearance.

[80] Allen Guelzo (Gettysburg College), also writing for The Daily Beast, had some plot criticism, but disagreed with Holzer: "The pains that have been taken in the name of historical authenticity in this movie are worth hailing just on their own terms".

[84] Lincoln biographer Ronald White also admired the film, though he noted a few mistakes and pointed out in an interview with NPR, "Is every word true?

"[87] Regarding the historical source material for Kushner's screenplay, legal historian Michael Vorenberg, a professor at Brown University and author of Final Freedom: The Civil War, The Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment,[88] noted several details throughout the film that "could only have come from [his] book.

[89] Ultimately, Kushner replied directly to inquiries from The New Republic writer Timothy Noah, explaining that while he had read Vorenberg's book and many others as research, he insists that Team of Rivals was his principal source material.