The Bible and Christianity--Christ's Divinity--Future
Rewards and Punishments--Freedom of Mind--Fatalism--
Providence--Lines in Copy-book--Parker--Paine--Opposition of
Church--Clerical Officious-ness Rebuked--Irreverent Jokes--
Profanity--Temperance Reform--Indorsement of Lord
Bolingbroke's Writings--Golden Rule.
The testimony of one hundred witnesses will now be supplemented by
evidence from the tongue and pen of Lincoln himself. The greater portion
of what he wrote and uttered against Christianity has perished; but
enough has been preserved to demonstrate, even in the absence of other
evidence, that he was not a Christian. From his letters, speeches,
and recorded conversations, the following radical sentiments have been
extracted.
Notwithstanding the efforts of Holland and Bate-man to prove that
Lincoln was a believer in Christianity, it is admitted that in his
conversation with Bateman, he said:
"I am not a Christian" (Holland's Life of Lincoln, pp. 236, 237).
When his Christian friends at Petersburg interfered to prevent his
proposed duel with Shields, and told him that it was contrary to the
teachings of the Bible and Christianity, he remarked:
"The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession" (Letter of
W. Perkins). While at Washington, in a letter to his old friend, Judge
Wakefield, written in 1862, in answer to inquiries respecting his belief
and the expressed hope that he had become convinced of the truth of
Christianity, he replied as follows:
"My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of
salvation and the human origin of the Scriptures have become clearer and
stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall
ever change them."
In a discussion touching upon the paternity of Jesus, he said:
"There must have been sexual intercourse between man and woman, and not
between God and his daughter."
The above words were uttered in the presence of Mr. Green Caruthers and
Mr. W. A. Browning, of Springfield.
Lincoln contended that Jesus was either the son of Joseph and Mary, or
the illegitimate son of Mary.
In a conversation with his friend, Mr. E. H.
Wood, of Springfield, concerning the doctrine of endless punishment, he
said:
"There is no hell."
In regard to this subject, he often observed: "If God be a just God, all
will be saved or none" (_Manford's Magazine_).
The orthodox idea of God--a God that creates poor, fallible beings, and
then forever damns them for failing to believe what it is impossible for
them to believe--he abhorred. The Golden Rule was his moral standard,
and by this standard he measured not only the conduct of man, but of God
himself. Like the irrepressible Dr. T. L. Brown, he wanted God to
"damn others as he would be damned himself." He delighted to repeat the
epitaph of the old Kickapoo Indian, Johnnie Kongapod:
"Here lies poor Johnnie Kongapod;
Have mercy on him, gracious God,
As he would do if he were God
And you were Johnnie Kongapod."
Lincoln thought that God ought at least to be as merciful as a
respectable savage.
Many contend that the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, even
if untrue, has a restraining influence upon the masses of mankind. That
Lincoln did not share this fallacious opinion, is shown by the following
extract from an address delivered in Springfield in 1842: "Pleasures to
be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead and gone, are
but little regarded.... There is something so ludicrous, in promises
of good, or threats of evil, a great way off, as to render the whole
subject with which they are connected, easily turned into ridicule.
'Better lay down that spade you're stealing, Paddy--if you don't, you'll
pay for it at the Day of Judgment.' 'Be the powers, if ye'll credit me
so long I'll take another'" (Lincoln Memorial Album, p. 91).
Commenting upon the question of one's returning and communicating with
his friends after death, he observed: "It is a doubtful question whether
we ever get anywhere to get back" (Statement of E. H. Wood).
He did not believe in the freedom of the will. An observation which he
repeatedly made was the following:
"No man has a freedom of mind" (Testimony of W. H. Herndon).
His fatalistic notions are confirmed by his own words: "I have all my
life been a fatalist. What is to be will be; or, rather, I have found
all my life, as Hamlet says:
'There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.'"
(Every-Day Life of Lincoln, p. 198).
The following was a favorite maxim with him:
"What is to be will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree"
(Statement of Mrs. Lincoln).
In a speech on Kansas, delivered in 1856, he used the following words
in regard to Providence: "Friends, I agree with you in Providence; but
I believe in the Providence of the most men, the largest purse, and the
longest cannon" (Lincoln's Speeches, p. 140).
The writer has in his possession, among others of Lincoln's papers, a
leaf from his copybook, tattered and yellow from age, on which, seventy
years ago, Lincoln, a school-boy of fourteen, wrote the following
characteristic lines:
"Abraham Lincoln, his hand and pen;
He will be good, but God knows when."
If by _good_ he meant _pious_, the prophecy was never fulfilled.
But a short time before he was elected President, he said to Dr. Ray: "I
think that I stand about where that man [Theodore Parker] stands"
(Statement of Rev. Eobert Collyer).
The author whose writings exerted the greatest influence upon Lincoln's
mind, in a theological way, was Thomas Paine. Ah! that potential "Age of
Reason!" Criticise it as you may, no one ever yet carefully perused its
pages and then honestly affirmed that the Bible is the infallible word
of God. Hern-don and others declare that Paine was a part of Lincoln
from 1834 till his death. To a friend he said:
"I never tire of reading Paine" (Statement of James Tuttle).
In the later years of his life, when the subject of religion was
mentioned, with a knowing smile, he was wont to remark:
"It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as
it is apt to lead to Infidelity" (_Manford's Magazine_).
It has been stated that Lincoln was opposed in his political campaigns
on account of his disbelief. This is confirmed by a letter he wrote to
Martin M. Morris, of Petersburg, Ill., March 26,1843. In this letter, he
says:
"There was, too, the strangest combination of church influence against
me. Baker is a Campbellite; and therefore, as I suppose, with few
exceptions, got all that church. My wife has some relatives in the
Presbyterian churches, and some with the Episcopal churches; and
therefore, wherever it would tell, I was set down as either the one or
the other, while it was everywhere contended that no Christian ought
to go for me, because I belonged to no church--was suspected of being a
Deist.... Those influences levied a tax of a considerable per cent
upon my strength throughout the religious controversy" (Lamon's Life of
Lincoln, p. 271).
He never changed his opinions, and the church never ceased to oppose
him. In the Bateman interview, seventeen years later, he was compelled
to note its relentless intolerance:
"Here are twenty-three ministers of different denominations, and all
of them are against me but three; and here are a great many prominent
members of the churches, a very large majority of whom are against me"
(Holland's Life of Lincoln, p. 236).
For thirty years the church endeavored to crush Lincoln, but when, in
spite of her malignant opposition, he achieved a glorious immortality,
this same church, to hide the mediocrity of her devotees, attempts to
steal his deathless name.
In a speech delivered in Springfield, in 1857, alluding to the negro,
he said: "All the powers of the earth seem rapidly combining against him.
Mammon is after him,... and the theology of the day is fast joining in
the cry" (Lincoln Memorial Album, p. 100).
The theology of the day was orthodox Christianity. "In this sentence,"
says Mr. Herndon, "he intended to hit Christianity a left-handed blow,
and a hard one."
In his Second Inaugural address, referring to the contending Christian
elements in the civil war, he says: "Both read the same Bible and pray to
the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other."
What a commentary upon the hypocritical assumption that Christians
possess an infallible moral standard, is contained in the above words!
The "Lincoln Memorial Album" pretends to give the Second Inaugural
complete, but omits the words quoted. As this address comes almost
immediately after his reputed speech to the "Illinois clergyman," the
editor probably noticed a lack of harmony between the two, and thought
that the retention of these heretical words would cast suspicion upon
the genuineness of that remarkable confession. The "Memorial Album" is
a meritorious work, but had Mr. Oldroyd manifested as great a desire to
present the genuine utterances of Lincoln as the apocryphal, its value
would have been enhanced. The unmutilated version of the last Inaugural
may be found in Holland's "Life of Lincoln," pp. 503, 504; Arnold's
"Life of Lincoln," pp. 403, 404; Arnold's "Lincoln and Slavery," pp.
625-627; and "The Every-Day Life of Lincoln," pp. 681, 682.
No President, probably, was ever so much annoyed by the clergy as
Lincoln. The war produced an increased religious fervor, and theological
tramps innumerable, usually labeled "D. D.," visited the
White House, each with a mission to perform and a precious morsel
of advice to offer. In the following caustic words, he expresses his
contempt for their officiousness: "I am approached with the most opposite
opinions and advice, and by religious men who are certain they represent
the Divine will.... I hope it will not be irreverent in me to say, that
if it be probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point
so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it
directly to me" (Religious Convictions of Abraham Lincoln).
Equally pertinent, and, indeed, similar was his language to a pious
lady, a Friend, who came as God's agent to instruct him what to do: "I
have neither time nor disposition to enter into discussion with the
Friend, and end this occasion by suggesting for her consideration the
question, whether, if it be true that the Lord has appointed me [she
claimed that he had] to do the works she has indicated, it is [(is it)
PG Ed.] not probable that he would have communicated knowledge of the
fact to me as well as to her?" (Every-Day Life of Lincoln, pp. 536,
537).
He steadily prohibited his generals from meddling with the religious
affairs of those residing within the limits of their respective
departments, and at the same time counseled them not to permit the
pretended sanctity of the church to shield offenders from justice.
In a letter to General Curtis, censuring the provost marshal of St.
Louis for interfering with church matters, he writes: "The United States
Government must not undertake to run the churches. When an individual in
a church, or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest he must
be checked" (Nicolay and Hay's Life of Lincoln).
In an order relating to a church in Memphis, issued May 13, 1864, he
said: "If there be no military need for the building, leave it alone,
neither putting any one in or out of it, except on finding some one
preaching or practicing treason, in which case lay hands upon him, just
as if he were doing the same thing in any other building" (Ibid).
During the war his attention was called to the notoriously bad character
of army chaplains. He expressed his contempt for them, and for
orthodox preachers generally, by relating the following story: "Once, in
Springfield, I was going off on a short journey, and reached the depot
a little ahead of time. Leaning against the fence just outside the depot
was a little darky boy, whom I knew, named Dick, busily digging with his
toe in a mud-puddle. As I came up, I said, 'Dick, what are you about?
'Making a church,' said he. 'A church?' said I; 'what do you mean?'
'Why, yes,' said Dick, pointing with his toe, 'don't you see? there
is the shape of it; there's the steps and front door--here's the pews,
where the folks set--and there's the pulpit.' 'Yes, I see,' said I, 'but
why don't you make a minister?' 'Laws,' answered Dick, with a grin, 'I
hain't got _mud_ enough'" (Anecdotes of Lincoln, p. 86).
The most highly aristocratic church in Washington is St John's Episcopal
church. So very aristocratic is it that applicants for membership deem
it necessary to give references respecting their social standing in the
community. The New York _Star_ relates the following joke which Lincoln
once perpetrated at the expense of this church: "One day during the war
a young officer called on him to secure an appointment in the army, and
brought with him letters of recommendation signed by the F. E. V.'s
in the District of Columbia. There had been no application for office
before President Lincoln so strongly supported by the aristocracy, and,
turning to the young man, he said he would give him the appointment
and handed him back the papers. 'Don't you want to place the papers on
file?' asked the office-seeker. 'I supposed that was the custom.' 'Yes,
that is the custom,' said President Lincoln, 'but you had better take
them with you, as you might want to join St. John's church.'"
Did Lincoln ever use profane language? If he did, this fact will afford
no evidence to Freethinkers that he was a disbeliever in Christianity.
Freethinkers are as free from this vice, if vice it be, as Christians.
Very pious persons, however, such as Lincoln is represented to have
been by his Christian biographers, are very careful about their use of
profane words. Christ commanded his followers to pray in private, and
bade them swear not at all. Devout Christians usually pray in public and
swear in private. Lincoln was but little addicted to profanity, but if
he had occasion to use a word of this character he did not go to his
closet to use it. In a business letter to a friend, he said:
"A d------d hawk-billed Yankee is here besetting me at every turn"
(Lamon's Life of Lincoln, p. 316).
In a letter to Speed, concerning an alleged murder case, he wrote:
"Hart, the little drayman that hauled Molly home once, said it was too
_damned_ bad to have so much trouble and no hanging" (Ibid, p. 321).
For the sake of pleasing the "fools," he attached his signature to "the
pious nonsense of Seward," With equal readiness he indorsed the profane
nonsense (?) of Stanton. During the war the patriotic Lovejoy had
devised a military scheme which he believed would prove beneficial
to the Union cause, and obtained an order from the President for its
execution. He took the order to Stanton, but all that ever resulted from
it was the following spirited colloquy:
"'Did Lincoln give you an order of that kind?' said Stanton. 'He did,
sir.' 'Then he is a d------d fool,' said the irate Secretary. 'Do
you mean to say the President is a d------d fool?' asked Lovejoy,
in amazement. 'Yes, sir, if he gave you such an order as that.' The
bewildered Illinoisan betook himself at once to the President, and
related the result of his conference. "Did Stanton say I was a d------d
fool?' asked Lincoln at the close of the recital. 'He did, sir, and
repeated it.' After a moment's pause, and looking up, the President
said:
'If Stanton said I was a d------d fool, then _I must be one_, for he is
nearly always right, and generally says what he means'" (Every-Day Life
of Lincoln, pp. 483, 484).
At a Cabinet meeting, in 1863, when a conflict between the President and
Congress regarding the admission of certain representatives from loyal
districts of the South, which he favored, was threatened, he turned to
Secretary Chase, and exclaimed: "There it is, sir. I am to be bullied by
Congress, am I? If I do I'll be d------d!"
When Lincoln visited New Orleans he attended a slave sale. A beautiful
girl, almost white, was placed upon the auction block and exposed to the
grossest indignities. As he turned to leave, boiling with indignation,
he exclaimed:
"By God, if I ever get a chance to hit that institution, I will hit it
hard" (Arnold's Life of Lincoln, Note).
Thirty years later the chance came. He struck the blow--a mortal one.
The following is a prayer which Lincoln, while at the White House,
put into the mouth of a belated traveler who was caught in a violent
thunderstorm:
"O Lord, if it is all the same to you, give us a little more light and a
little less noise!" (Six Months at the White House, p. 49).
Is it possible that a Christian and a Calvinist would repeat such an
irreverent, not to say blasphemous, supplication? According to the
Brooklyn Calvinist, God visits such supplicants with paralysis and
petrifaction.
Like most Freethinkers, Lincoln was a genuine reformer. The Antislavery
reform was not the only reform that enlisted his support. At an early
day he espoused the Temperance cause. When the church was the ally of
intemperance as it was of slavery--when, to use his own words, "From
the sideboard of the parson down to the ragged pocket of the houseless
loafer intoxicating liquor was constantly found," he was laboring and
lecturing in behalf of the Washingtonian movement. With the fervor of an
enthusiast, he exclaims in true Free-thought language: "Happy day, when,
all appetites controlled, all passions subdued, all matter subjugated,
mind, all-conquering mind, shall live and move, the monarch of the
world! Glorious consummation! Hail, fall of fury! _Reign of Reason, all
hail!_" (Lincoln Memorial Album, p. 96).
To sumptuary laws and to the denunciatory methods so common among
orthodox Christians to-day, he was, however, strenuously opposed. He
says: "It is not much in the nature of man to be driven to anything;
still less to be driven about that which is exclusively his own
business" (Ibid, p. 86).
"When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind,
unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted" (lb., p. 87).
His nephew, Mr. Hall, informed me that Lincoln once made it cost a
meddlesome clergyman, of Coles County, eighty dollars for seizing and
destroying a quart of whisky, valued at twelve and a half cents, and
belonging to a relative of theirs.
In this chapter I wish to present some radical thoughts, not from the
pen of Lincoln himself, but which in the work from which they are taken
bear unmistakable signs of his approval. Mr. D. W. C. Shattuck, an old
and respected merchant of Way-land, Mich., has in his possession a book
which belonged to Lincoln. Its history is as follows: Shortly after
Lincoln's election to the Presidency a young man from Springfield, Ill.,
and a relative or intimate acquaintance of Lincoln's, came to board with
Mr. Shattuck, who then resided in Kalamazoo. Looking over the contents
of his trunk one day the young man picked up a book and at the same time
remarked: "That book belongs to Abe Lincoln. I forgot to return it to
him before leaving Springfield. It is his favorite book, and I must not
fail to return it." Mr. Shattuck expressing a desire to peruse the work,
it was handed to him, and the young man being soon after unexpectedly
called away, it was forgotten. It proved to be a volume of the writings
of Lord Bolingbroke, the great English Infidel. On a fly-leaf was the
signature of Abraham Lincoln. In the work certain passages which seem
to have especially impressed Lincoln are marked with a pencil and in a
manner peculiar to him. The following are the passages he marked,
which I have copied from the book, and which evidently received his
unqualified indorsement:
"Abbadie says in his famous book, that the Gospel of St. Matthew is
cited by Clemens Bishop of Borne, a disciple of the Apostles; that
Barnabas cites it in his epistle; that Ignatius and Polycarp receive
it; and that the same Fathers, that give testimony for Matthew, give
it likewise for Mark. Nay, your lordship will find, I believe, that the
present Bishop of London, in his third pastoral letter, speaks to the
same effect. I will not trouble you nor myself with any more instances
of the same kind. Let this, which occurred to me as I was writing,
suffice. It may well suffice; for I presume the fact advanced by the
minister and the Bishop is a mistake. If the Fathers of the First
Century do mention some passages that are agreeable to what we read in
our Evangelists, will it follow that these Fathers had the same gospels
before them? To say so is a manifest abuse of history, and quite
inexcusable in writers that knew, or should have known, that these
Fathers made use of other gospels, wherein such passages might be
contained, or they might be preserved in unwritten tradition. Besides
which I could almost venture to affirm that these Fathers of the First
Century do not expressly name the gospels we have of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John." "Writers of the Roman religion have attempted to show,
that the text of the Holy Writ is on many accounts insufficient to be
the sole criterion of orthodoxy; I apprehend too that they have shown
it. Sure I am that experience, from the first promulgation of Christianity
to this hour, shows abundantly with how much ease and success the most
opposite, the most extravagant, nay the most impious opinions, and
the most contradictory faiths, may be founded on the same text; and
plausibly defended by the same authority. Writers of the Reformed
religion have erected their batteries against tradition; and the only
difficulty they had to encounter in this enterprise lay in leveling and
pointing their cannon so as to avoid demolishing, in one common ruin,
the traditions they retain, and those they reject. Each side has been
employed to weaken the cause and explode the system of his adversary;
and, whilst they have been so employed, they have jointly laid their
axes to the root of Christianity; for thus men will be apt to reason
upon what they have advanced. 'If the text has not that authenticity,
clearness, and precision which are necessary to establish it as a divine
and a certain rule of faith and practice; and if the tradition of the
church from the first ages of it till the days of Luther and Calvin, has
been corrupted itself, and has served to corrupt the faith and practice
of Christians; there remains at this time no standard at all of
Christianity. By consequence either this religion was not originally
of divine institution, or else God has not provided effectually
for preserving the genuine purity of it, and the gates of hell have
prevailed, in contradiction to his promise, against the church.'" "I
have read somewhere, perhaps in the works of St. Jerome, that this
Father justifies the opinion of those who think it impossible to fix
any certain chronology on that of the Bible; and this opinion will be
justified still better, to the understanding of every man that considers
how grossly the Jews blunder whenever they meddle with chronology." "The
resurrection of letters was a fatal period; the Christian system has
been attacked, and wounded too, very severely since that time."
When interrogated as to why he had never united with any church, Lincoln
replied: "When you show me a church based on the Golden Rule as its only
creed, then I will unite with it."
He never joined a church, because of all the Christian sects, not one
could show such a creed. The Golden Rule--conceding to others the same
rights he claimed for himself--was, however, the very cornerstone of
Freethought, and hence he remained a Freethinker.