Daniel Day-Lewis, center, as President Abraham Lincoln, looks across a battlefield in this scene from “Lincoln.”EXTRA EXTRAWhile the events portrayed in “Lincoln” have historical ties to the Chattanooga area, the film also boasts a modern-day connection.U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Joey Jones, a native of Dawnville, Ga., is cast as an extra in the film.Jones, who lost both legs in a bomb blast while serving in Afghanistan in August 2010, has a non-speaking role as amputee soldier in a Union hospital. In the film, Lincoln, played by actor Daniel Day-Lewis, visits the hospital and talks with the wounded soldiers.Jones is now stationed in Washington, D.C.
Most of the events in Steven Spielberg’s new film “Lincoln” take place well north of the Chattanooga area, but the people portrayed in the film have blood-and-bone connections to the region.
Jim Ogden, historian at the Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park, says several had relatives die at the Battle of Chickamauga, which took place Sept. 19-20, 1863.
Confederate Gen. Benjamin Hardin Helm, husband of the half-sister of Mary Todd Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln’s wife, was killed at the battle, Ogden says.
A strident abolitionist, Pennsylvania Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (played by actor Tommy Lee Jones in the film), lost a nephew, Union Capt. Alanson Stevens, at the same battle.