Goofs

When Thaddeus Stevens takes the original bill after the vote, he folds it in half vertically. When his housekeeper, Lydia Smith, reads it to him in bed, the document's crease is horizontal.

In the opening scene, as the soldiers start to disperse and return to their units, the view from behind Lincoln shows Private Green turning and throwing his gun around his shoulder. In the next scene, viewed from behind Private Green, he turns and throws the gun around his shoulder again.

When the President slams his hand on the desk to stop everyone from arguing, he hits his glasses, which move in front of his book. Two pans later, the glasses have disappeared.

When President Lincoln is speaking to Private Green and Corporal Clark, the view from behind the soldiers shows a hard rain falling, with water dripping off Clark's hat every few seconds. Shots from in front of the two soldiers show very little rain, and no water drips from Clark's hat.

When General Grant's staff emerges from The McLean House in Appomattox Courthouse on 9 April 1865, Ely Parker is behind Grant and stands with his hands crossed in front of him. In the next shot, Grant starts descending the stairs to greet Robert Edward Lee, and Parker emerges from inside the courthouse crossing his hands.

Two Connecticut Congressmen vote against the 13th Amendment during the movie; however, all four Connecticut Congressmen actually supported and voted in favor of the Amendment in 1865.

In Lincoln's death scene, he is shown lying somewhat on his side, on top of the covers on a bed at the Petersen House (across from Ford's Theatre). In reality, Abraham Lincoln lingered nearly 10 hours and had been put into bed under the covers to keep him warm, and diagonally, because he was so tall he wouldn't have fit otherwise.

When the Speaker of the House does the Congressional roll call, in alphabetical order by state, he starts with Connecticut. He should have started with California, which was admitted to the union in 1850 and had three representatives in the 38th Congress (March 1863 to March 1865).

When Congress debates and ultimately votes on the 13th Amendment, every desk in the chamber is occupied. Eighteen seats should have been empty because of the states that seceded.

There was no voice vote. The 13th Amendment was passed by paper ballot.

Thaddeus Stevens says that the 13th Amendment will be the first time slavery is mentioned in the Constitution. Slavery is often believed to be mentioned explicitly - particularly in the first paragraph of Article 1, Section 9 - but it was not. In fact, the absence of the direct mention of slavery formed the basis of an argument made by abolitionists including Lysander Spooner that slavery was unconstitutional even before the 13th Amendment.

On 14 April 1865, the pit orchestra plays Ludwig van Beethoven's "Egmont" Overture. The scene is a play (not a concert) attended by Tad Lincoln that night at Grover's Theater: "Aladdin! Or His Wonderful Lamp."

Abraham Lincoln's secretary, John Nicolay, was Bavarian by birth, but immigrated with his parents to the United States at age 6, grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and did not speak with a German accent. (Despite this, in the 1992 documentary Lincoln (1992), his letters were read by future California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger with his usual trademark Germanic accent.)

At the beginning, a young soldier tells Lincoln that he'd heard Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address two years earlier. The scene is set in December 1864 or early January 1865. Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on 19 November 1863, 13 months earlier.

The soldier likely didn't have a calendar with him on the battlefields. It can't be expected that a soldier in an active war of that era would keep a detailed timeline of events.

Early in the film, Lincoln meets with Seward and others in a White House office or drawing room, and bright daylight streams through a window in the background. The camera briefly pans past a clock that reads 5 p.m., very close to sunset in mid-November.

While Thaddeus Stevens is giving his responses to Representative Wood, (equally before the law speech), two large holes can be seen in the speaker's/clerk's platform right behind Stevens. These holes are where the shelf that holds the Mace of Virginia is mounted, and it is placed in a cradle on that shelf during State legislative sessions.

When the cameras are facing the rear of the House of Representatives (away from the speaker), flush-mounted speakers for the modern PA system can be seen as can sprinkler heads of the fire suppression system in the ceiling under the upstairs visitors gallery.

When President Lincoln is expressing his frustrations over the pending vote of the 13th Amendment, he slams his hand on the table. The gesture would surely raise a visible reaction by those present. Secretary of War Stanton is appropriately startled. However, sitting behind the president is his personal secretary, John Nicolay, whose expression and clenched arms never change throughout the lengthy shot. This indicates that Daniel Day-Lewis performed the scene in front of a green screen. The inanimate Nicolay was part of the CGI scenery inserted by the technical editor. As the angle of the camera reverses in the subsequent scene, Seward remains the only "live" character in the shot with Lincoln. Congressman James Ashley, Preston, and Montgomery Blair are motionless, inanimate parts of the background.

Mary Lincoln worries that Robert will be killed by a sniper. The term sniper was not used in the US until well after the Civil War. The equivalent term was sharpshooter.

In the planning for the Wilmington attack, the term barrage is used several times. The term at that time was bombardment. The barrage as a tactic was developed in the 1880s by the British, and the first English military usage of the term was in WWI at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, 10-13 March 1915.

After one of the House sessions, the camera pans to the Washington statue in the Virginia Presidents room at the Virginia State Capitol. Shots from the front include the bust to the right, President Woodrow Wilson, who was born 28 December 1856, and was only 8 years old when the movie is set.

Shortly after Thaddeus Stevens tells the full House that he's not for racial equality, he walks outside into the Rotunda area and sits down. He is quickly joined by an angry fellow Representative. The shot of him sitting on a bench in the Rotunda shows a modern electrical outlet in the wall below him.

Filming took place in the Virginia State Capitol. On the wall behind the Speaker of the House is an inscribed marble tablet which reads: "Erected by THE SOCIETY OF THE COLONIAL DAMES OF AMERICA IN THE STATE OF VIRGINIA 1916". Additionally, the society itself was not formed until 1890.

(about 47 min) The camera's shadow can be briefly seen on the right side of the shot.

In many of the scenes set in the House of Representatives, the marble behind the Speaker bears the words "State of Virginia." All of the House scenes were filmed in the Old Chamber at the Virginia State Capitol, in Richmond, Va.

During the debate on the day before the vote is taken, Lincoln's team has to rush back to the White House to secure a letter from Lincoln which will reassure the House that he has not met with Confederate commissioners. The team members are seen running out of the front of the Capitol to do this. But the Capitol was built the wrong way around and, in reality, they would have rushed out the back to get to the White House faster.

William Bilbo mentions that Lincoln's face is on the 50-cent piece. Abraham Lincoln appeared on fractional currency pieces - paper currency that was issued instead of silver coins during the Civil War. The 50-cent denomination was not one of the ones he was on until the fourth series, starting 1869.

When Lincoln is in the War Department telegraph room and beginning to tell his story about Ethan Allen, he states that Allen took Fort Ticonderoga in 1776. The correct date was May 10, 1775.

W.N. Bilbo refers to murderous congressman "Bob" Hollister, when in fact, the character is determined to be named Harold Hollister during the vote on the 13th Amendment.

When Thaddeus Stevens is confronted by an outraged Asa Litton for denying the full humanity and equality of Blacks, Stevens tells him "I want the amendment to pass so that the Constitution's first and only mention of slavery is its absolute prohibition." Although the words "slave" and "slavery" appear nowhere in the Constitution, it is in fact addressed in several places: Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 (3/5 of the slaves counted as population for determining representatives and direct taxes); Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 (importing slaves was to be unrestricted by Congress until at least the year 1808); and Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 (fugitive slaves had to be returned to their owners when caught). Additional references to these provisions show up in Article I, Section 9, Clause 4, and Article V.

Lincoln says that a compass will "point you true north," but a compass will actually point towards magnetic north. The magnetic North Pole is slightly off from the geographic North Pole, so a compass does not actually point true north.