New Bikes of Lincoln

Plot
In January 1865, President Abraham Lincoln expects the Civil War to end within a month. However, he is concerned that his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation may be discarded by the courts once the war has concluded and that the Thirteenth Amendment be defeated by the returning slave states. Lincoln feels it is imperative to pass the amendment by the end of the month, thus removing any possibility that slaves who have already been freed may be re-enslaved. The Radical Republicans fear the amendment will merely be defeated by some who wish to delay its passage; the support of the amendment by Republicans in the border states is not yet assured either, since they prioritize the issue of ending the war. Even if all of them are ultimately brought on board, the amendment will still require the support of several Democratic congressmen if it is to pass. With dozens of Democrats having just become lame ducks after losing their re-election campaigns in the fall of 1864, some of Lincoln's advisors believe that he should wait until the new Republican-heavy Congress is seated, presumably giving the amendment an easier road to passage. Lincoln, however, remains adamant about having the amendment in place and the issue of slavery settled before the war is concluded and the southern states readmitted into the Union.

Cast
Lincoln household

• Daniel Day-Lewis as President Abraham Lincoln
• Producer Kathleen Kennedy described Day-Lewis's performance as "remarkable" after 75% of the filming had been completed, and said, "Every day you get the chills thinking that Lincoln is sitting there right in front of you." Kennedy described Day-Lewis's method acting immersion into the role: "He is very much deeply invested and immersed throughout the day when he's in character, but he's very accessible at the end of the day, once he can step outside of it and not feel that – I mean, he's given huge scenes with massive amounts of dialogue and he needs to stay in character, it's a very, very performance-driven movie." His performance as Abraham Lincoln earned him his third Academy Award for Best Actor.
• Sally Field as First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln
• Field was first announced to join the cast as early as September 2007, but officially joined the cast in April 2011. Field said, "To have the opportunity to work with Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis and to play one of the most complicated and colorful women in American history is simply as good as it gets." Spielberg said, "she has always been my first choice to portray all the fragility and complexity that was Mary Todd Lincoln". Her performance as Mary Todd Lincoln earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
• Gloria Reuben as Elizabeth Keckley
• Keckley was a former slave who was dressmaker and confidante to Mary Todd Lincoln.
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Todd Lincoln[18]
• Robert Lincoln had recently left his studies at Harvard Law School and was newly named a Union Army captain and personal attendant to General Grant. He returned to the White House on April 14, 1865 to visit his family. His father was assassinated that night.
• Gulliver McGrath as Tad Lincoln
• Stephen Henderson as Lincoln's valet William Slade
• Elizabeth Marvel as Mrs. Jolly

White House

• David Strathairn as Secretary of State William H. Seward
• Bruce McGill as Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton
• Joseph Cross as Major John Hay, Lincoln's military secretary
• Jeremy Strong as John George Nicolay, Lincoln's private secretary
• Grainger Hines as Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles
• Richard Topol as Attorney General James Speed
• Dakin Matthews as Secretary of the Interior John Palmer Usher
• Walt Smith as Secretary of the Treasury William P. Fessenden
• James Ike Eichling as Postmaster General William Dennison

House of Representatives

• Tommy Lee Jones as Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania.
• A leader of the Radical Republicans and a fervent abolitionist, Stevens feared that Lincoln would "turn his back on emancipation." Jones' performance as Stevens earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
• Lee Pace as Democratic Congressman and fiery orator Fernando Wood of New York
• Peter McRobbie as Democratic Congressman George H. Pendleton of Ohio, leader of the Democratic opposition
• Bill Raymond as Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax of Indiana, a Republican
• David Costabile as Republican Congressman James Ashley of Ohio
• Stephen Spinella as radical Republican Congressman Asa Vintner Litton
• Michael Stuhlbarg as Democratic Congressman George Yeaman of Kentucky
• Boris McGiver as Democratic Congressman Alexander Coffroth of Pennsylvania
• Walton Goggins as Democratic Congressman Clay Hawkins of Ohio. A composite character based on the 16 Democrats who broke with their party to cast decisive votes in favor of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery.
• David Warshofsky as Congressman William Hutton, whose brother died in the war
• Michael Stanton Kennedy as Republican Congressman Hiram Price of Iowa
• Christopher Evan Welch as Clerk of the House Edward McPherson

Republican Party

• Hal Holbrook as Francis Preston Blair
• Blair was an influential Republican politician who tried to arrange a peace agreement between the Union and the Confederacy. Holbrook had previously portrayed Lincoln in the 1976 mini-series Carl Sandburg's Lincoln and in the 1980s North and South mini-series.
• James Spader as Republican Party operative William N. Bilbo
• Bilbo had been imprisoned but was freed by Lincoln, and then lobbied for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.
• Tim Blake Nelson as lobbyist Richard Schell. (Schell was a Democratic lobbyist who worked with Republicans to obtain votes in the House for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.)
• John Hawkes as Republican operative Colonel Robert Latham
• Byron Jennings as Conservative Republican Montgomery Blair, son of Francis Preston Blair
• Julie White as Elizabeth Blair Lee: Lee was the daughter of Francis Preston Blair, and wrote hundreds of letters documenting events during the Civil War
• S. Epatha Merkerson as Lydia Smith: Smith was Thaddeus Stevens's biracial housekeeper.
• Wayne Duvall as Radical Republican Senator Benjamin "Bluff Ben" Wade
• John Hutton as Senator Charles Sumner

Confederate States

• Jackie Earle Haley as Confederate States Vice President Alexander H. Stephens
• Stephens had served with Lincoln in Congress from 1847 to 1849. He met with Abraham Lincoln on the steamboat River Queen at the unsuccessful Hampton Roads Conference on February 3, 1865
• Gregory Itzin as John Archibald Campbell
• Campbell was a former Supreme Court Justice who had resigned at the start of war and then served as Assistant Secretary of War in the Confederate government. He was also a member of the Confederate delegation that met with Lincoln at the Hampton Roads Conference.
• Michael Shiflett as the third Confederate delegate to Hampton Roads, Senate President Robert M. T. Hunter
• Christopher Boyer (non-speaking role) as Robert E. Lee

Union Army

• Jared Harris as Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant
• Asa-Luke Twocrow as Lieutenant Colonel Ely S. Parker, (a Native-American,) Military Secretary to Ulysses S. Grant and drafter of the terms of the Confederate Army's surrender at Appomattox Court House
• Colman Domingo as Private Harold Green
• David Oyelowo as Corporal Ira Clark
• Lukas Haas as First White Soldier
• Dane DeHaan as Second White Soldier
• Adam Driver as Lincoln's telegraph operator, historically Grant's operator, Samuel Beckwith

Production
Development
While consulting on a Steven Spielberg project in 1999, Goodwin told Spielberg she was planning to write Team of Rivals, and Spielberg immediately told her he wanted the film rights. DreamWorks finalized the deal in 2001, and by the end of the year, John Logan signed on to write the script.His draft focused on Lincoln's friendship with Frederick Douglass. Playwright Paul Webb was hired to rewrite and filming was set to begin in January 2006, but Spielberg delayed it out of dissatisfaction with the script. Neeson said Webb's draft covered the entirety of Lincoln's term as President.

Casting
Liam Neeson was cast as Lincoln in January 2005, having previously worked with Spielberg in Schindler's List. In preparation for the role, Neeson studied Lincoln extensively.[38] However, in July 2010, Neeson left the project, saying that he had grown too old for the part. Neeson was 58 at the time, and Lincoln, during the time period depicted, was 55 and 56. Co-star Sally Field, in a 2012 PBS interview, intimated that Neeson's decision was influenced by the loss of his wife less than a year earlier. In November 2010, it was announced that Day-Lewis would replace Neeson in the role.

Tony Kushner replaced Webb. Kushner considered Lincoln "the greatest democratic leader in the world" and found the writing assignment daunting because "I have no idea [what made him great]; I don't understand what he did any more than I understand how William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet or Mozart wrote Così fan tutte." He delivered his first draft late and felt the enormous amount written about Lincoln did not help either. Kushner said Lincoln's abolitionist ideals made him appealing to a Jewish writer, and although he felt Lincoln was Christian, he noted the president rarely quoted the New Testament and that his "thinking and his ethical deliberation seem very talmudic".By late 2008, Kushner joked he was on his "967,000th book about Abraham Lincoln". Kushner's initial 500-page draft focused on four months in the life of Lincoln, and by February 2009 he had rewritten it to focus on two months in Lincoln's life when he was preoccupied with adopting the Thirteenth Amendment.

Filming
While promoting Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in May 2008, Spielberg announced his intention to start filming in early 2009, for release in November, ten months after the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth.In January 2009, Taunton and Dighton, Massachusetts were being scouted as potential locations. Spielberg arranged a $50 million budget for the film, to please Paramount Pictures CEO Brad Grey, who had previously delayed the project over concerns it was too similar to Spielberg's commercially unsuccessful Amistad . Spielberg had wanted Touchstone Pictures–which agreed to distribute all his films from 2010–to distribute the film, but he was unable to afford paying off Paramount, which had collaborated with DreamWorks on the film's development.

Filming took place in Petersburg, Virginia. 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".Lincoln toured Petersburg on April 3, 1865, the day after it fell to the Union Army. Scenes were also filmed in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Virginia Repertory Theatre's November Theatre which represented Grovers Theatre and at the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, which served as the Capitol of the Confederacy during the Civil War.Abraham Lincoln visited the building on April 4, 1865, after Richmond fell to the Union Army.

On September 4, 2012, DreamWorks and Google Play announced on the film's Facebook page that they would release the trailer for the film during a Google+ hangout with Steven Spielberg and Joseph Gordon-Levitt on September 13, 2012 at 7pm EDT/4pm PDT. Then, on September 10, 2012, a teaser for the trailer was released.

Music
The soundtrack to Lincoln was released by Sony Classical on November 6, 2012 in the United States and was recorded by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Chorus.