At the beginning of Lincoln we see the president addressing a small crowd at the opening of a new business. After he’s introduced he steps forward, lifts his top hat, pulls a paper out from under it, reads a short speech from it, and then folds the paper and puts it back inside his hat. It’s hilarious and humanizing, and gives the big hat a sense of usefulness.
The movie focuses on the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and depicts the House of Representatives, where it’s reviewed and just barely approved, as one big frat party. Men laugh, jeer, applaud, thump tables, talk over one another, and shout down any designated speaker. It’s a clear-eyed vision of the “noisy and messy and complicated” (as our current president put it on the night of his reelection) process of democracy. These men, stymied by personal and regional interests, might not be so different from those who currently represent us in DC. What distinguishes them is their extravagant dress and hair. The gentlemen's fitted waistcoats and frock coats, high collars, and silk dressing gowns are as ostentatious as the ladies’ dresses. And their sideburns and moustaches are teased into outlandish puffs that make them look like talking animals from Dr. Seuss. Lincoln’s top hat, an icon of rustic simplicity, is also a theatrical piece of headwear that adds about a foot to the president’s already imposing frame. Could he, like his contemporaries, have been something of a peacock?