In one scene Lincoln actually slaps his son Robert. Almost certainly that slap didn't happen.
For one thing, both father and son had tremendous reserve. In addition, Mary, a Southerner, raised Robert in the tradition of a Southern gentleman which means he wouldn't have goaded his father as happens in the movie. Even so, the scene has a kind of emotional validity because it accurately highlights the tension between father and son – and that certainly was true.
It’s interesting to note that Lincoln had been absent for much of Robert's early years. During that time Lincoln was riding the circuit for up to six months every year - traveling from one court house to the next with a group made up of a judge, court clerk(s) and an assortment of lawyers bringing grass-roots justice to the hinterlands. This arrangement also had the (happy?) circumstance of allowing Lincoln to be away from both a difficult wife and two demanding sons.
In other words, Lincoln was not gifted with an all-purpose golden touch. As a daddy clearly he was too much here, not enough there - just like you and I. That is, this man, like you and I, had feet of clay.
There's very good news here: by extension, if Lincoln matches us in our grubby humanity, the good news is, it's possible that we can match his ability to influence spectacularly the world he lived in by influencing equally spectacularly the world we live in!
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