Quite right - my mistake! The sitting in his garden thing is accurate though - it’s mentioned in Team of Rivals. I’ll check later tonight to confirm.
Regarding the OP question about the lack of the vice president in the film, I have read a number of books on the Civil War and Lincoln. Hannibal Hamlin’s name is seldom mentioned. He was chosen for geographical balance (Hamlin was from Maine) by the convention. Lincoln and Hamlin didn’t meet until after the election.
Vice Presidents used to joke about how insignificant their job was (what John Adams called it). Thomas Marshall (Wilson’s VP) said there was were two brothers. One ran away to see, the other became vice president and neither was heard from again.
In the last 50 years or so, presidents from both parties have used the VP more than earlier ones.
The inclusion of the Vice President in political discussions at the White House pretty much began under Truman. Harry had been VP for 39 days, although he had been the VP elect for five months. During that five month period, FDR was involved in a lot of decisions, trying to bring the war to a close, preparing for post-war America, (and post-war Europe and Asia), including meeting with Churchill and Stalin, getting the idea of a United nations off the ground, and a host of other issues in the most massive undertaking with which the U.S. had ever been involved, and Truman had not been seriously involved with any of them. They all landed in his lap with almost no preparation.
Based on his experience, while he had no vice president for his first term, there being no provision for it in the Constitution, he is reported to have kept Barkley in the loop on most major decisions following the 1948 elections.
I don’t even understand the question. They cast Sally Field for the same reason the Tigers bat Miguel Cabrera in the middle of the lineup; she’s a fricking amazing actress who looked the part.
That people in the 1860s looked very old to us by comparison to today is a bonus. She could have pulled it off even if Mary Todd Lincoln hadn’t looked old. But she did. Here is a photo of Mary Todd Lincoln; how old do you think she is?
To my eyes she looks no different in age from Sally Field - but in fact she’s just 43 there.
And who was willing to put on some additional weight. In an NPR interview not long after the movie came out, Field said she had to eat some disgusting things to pack on the pounds.
http://www.npr.org/2012/11/19/165472869/sally-field-captures-history-in-role-of-mrs-lincoln
Since we’re discussing the vice-presidency, I thought I’d make a relevant book recommendation: The Warm Bucket Brigade by Jeremy Lott is an amusing, informative look at the vice presidency in general and several important vice presidents in particular. Hardcover link here, Kindle book link here.
I have to admit, Miguel Cabrera really is an amazing actress. Forget about just looking the part - she totally had me convinced she was a real baseball player. Is she even Venezuelan or is that part of the performance?
Huh. I don’t remember any pro baseball players appearing in Lincoln.
That would be the Richmond Gray Sox, there, in some of the background shots, in the far distance. (Their real color is “butternut”, though. Go figure.)
A good example of the role the Veep used to play in U.S. Politics 100-150 years ago, although I don’t have a cite handy, would be how a group of industrialists worked to promote Theodore Roosevelt as William McKinley’s running mate in 1900 because they were concerned about Teddy’s anti corporate “trust busting” agenda and they figured that as VP he would not be relevant enough to be a problem for them.
It apparently was more because as Governor of New York in cleaning up machine politics that got TR pushed to the VP slot, according to his wiki page. The job was available since the death of Garret Hobart a year earlier. Interesting Hobart was one vice president who was given significant role. Roosevelt may have gotten the nod anyways. He was a war hero, governor of a large state from a different region than McKinley and a Harvard graduate who also earned the respect of the cowboys he worked with following the death of his first wife and mother in a 24 hour period.