The Day the World Wept-The Lincoln Story

What an interesting plot, where this time historical facts are invited in ONE STEP BEYOND tv show. It is an important element in American history, and as a French I perfectly understand this, no problem. Yes, it is riveting, mesmerizing, and told in a very unusual way, from an angle rarely, if never, made before. At least as far as I know. Maybe not as accurate as the Steven Spielberg's film LINCOLN from 2012, but this is a milestone in this series dedicated to fantasy and eerie matters. You won't see other episodes like this very one; so don't miss this one and take advantage of it. It looks like not other episode, I repeat.

Little-seen but effective historical-based episode examines the reported psychic phenomena that occurred on that awful April day in 1865 that 16th U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford's theater watching a play. This episode recounts Mr. Lincoln's reputed dream he had earlier of seeing himself in a coffin while hearing the nation weeping. His wife Mary(played by Jeanne Bates) is deeply worried, and with good reason... Also recounts two other stories of psychic foreknowledge of the assassination involving a newspaper typesetter and a hotel guest bothered by unseen wailing. Fine acting and presentation for the brief time allotted.

It's called Historiography - applying ruthless logic in the authenticating of so-called history, and evaluating the methods by which it has been reported and assembled.

Two of our critics on this page give conflicting verdicts about the well-known story of Lincoln's haunting dream, shortly before his death: that he heard the sound of weeping and saw a coffin guarded by a soldier who told him the president had been assassinated. One of them declares that no mention was made of any of this until twenty years afterwards, while the other repeats the standard version, apparently well-confirmed, that he spoke about it to colleagues in the few days' interval before the fatal theatre-visit.

Certain variations have somewhat blurred the Yes/No validity of the tale. It needs to be separated-out from the other (recurring) dream he had about travelling in a boat towards 'a vague, indefinite shore', which always left him feeling disturbed and distracted. Then we hear that his wife Mary appeared to have had a dream of foreboding at the same time, and was keen to stay at home on that evening, though we know that she was liable to nag him regularly throughout their marriage. As for the other psychic phenomena linked to the murder, reported from all over America, it is reasonable to treat these with scepticism, knowing the urge to fabricate legends in the wake of a catastrophe.

This makes for a somewhat untypical episode of OSB, not strictly in series (and the last minutes are affected by poor audio recording); also my YouTube upload at 20 minutes is ten minutes shorter than the running-time quoted by IMDb, so I may have missed some important clues. But it remains an interesting sidelight on America's supreme national tragedy.

Abraham Lincoln's old law partner, Ward Hill Lamon, told a story twenty years after Abe's murder. In this story, the President reported had a dream in which he dreamed he was assassinated--and looked down into his coffin at his own corpse. Neither he nor anyone else mentioned this dream until two decades later and most historians concluded Lamon was confabulating (a nice way to say he was lying). Logically, if the President had such a dream and told people about it, they would have soon begun repeating this and they would have claimed it was evidence of psychic experiences or a message from God. However, the folks at "One Step Beyond" took the story as truth and based the entire episode around a dream that most likely never occurred.

Barry Atwater plays Lincoln in this show and although it's all hogwash, it IS well constructed and compelling--and folks would believe it since it was presented in such a believable manner. But, despite being well made, it is mostly crap. Interesting crap, but crap.