PART II: AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVIDENCE

THE SOUL OF

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

BY

WILLIAM E. BARTON

AUTHOR OF "A HERO IN HOMESPUN," "THE

PRAIRIE SCHOONER," "PINE KNOT,"

ETC.

NEW [Illustration] YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO MY FOUR SONS

BRUCE, CHARLES, FREDERICK, ROBERT

AND MY SON-IN-LAW, CLYDE

PREFACE

THE author is aware that he is dipping his net into a stream already

darkened by too much ink. The fact that there are so many books on the

religion of Abraham Lincoln is a chief reason why there should be one

more. Books on this subject are largely polemic works which followed

the publication of Holland's biography in 1865, and multiplied in the

controversies growing out of that and the Lamon and Herndon biographies

in 1872 and 1889 respectively. Within that period and until the death

of Mr. Herndon in 1892 and the publication of his revised biography

of Lincoln in 1893, there was little opportunity for a work on this

subject that was not distinctively controversial. The time has come for

a more dispassionate view. Of the large number of other books dealing

with this topic, nearly or quite all had their origin in patriotic or

religious addresses, which, meeting with favor when orally delivered,

were more or less superficially revised and printed, in most instances

for audiences not greatly larger than those that heard them spoken.

Many of these are excellent little books, though making no pretense of

original and thorough investigation.

Of larger and more comprehensive works there are a few, but they do not

attempt the difficult and necessary task of critical analysis.

So much has been said, and much of it with such intensity of feeling,

on the subject of Lincoln's religion, that a number of the more

important biographies, including the great work of Nicolay and Hay, say

as little on the subject as possible.

The author of this volume brings no sweeping criticism against those

who have preceded him in the same field. He has eagerly sought out the

books and speeches of all such within his reach, and is indebted to

many of them for valuable suggestions. A Bibliography at the end of

this volume contains a list of those to whom the author knows himself

to be chiefly indebted, but his obligation goes much farther than he

can hope to acknowledge in print. With all due regard for these earlier

authors, the present writer justifies himself in the publication of

this volume by the following considerations, which seems to him to

differ in important respects from earlier works in the same field:

(1) He has made an effort to provide an adequate historical background

for the study of the religious life of Abraham Lincoln in the

successive periods of his life; and without immediately going too

deeply into the material of the main subject, to relate the man to his

environment. In this the author has been aided not only by books and

interviews with men who knew Lincoln, but by some years of personal

experience in communities where the social, educational, and religious

conditions were in all essential respects similar to those in which Mr.

Lincoln lived during two important epochs of his career. The author was

not born in this environment, but he spent seven years of his youth

and young manhood as a teacher and preacher in a region which give him

somewhat exceptional opportunities for a discriminating judgment.

(2) The author has assembled what is, so far as he knows, all the

essential evidence that has appeared in print concerning the religious

life and opinions of Mr. Lincoln, a larger body, as he believes, than

any previous writer has compiled. He has added to this all evidence

available to him from written and personal testimony.

He has subjected this evidence to a critical analysis, in an effort to

determine the degree of credibility with which its several portions may

reasonably be received. The author is not unaware that this is the most

disputable, as it is the most difficult part of his task, and, as he

believes, the most valuable part of it. Unless some such analysis is

made, the evidence resolves itself into chaos.

(3) Several entirely new avenues of investigation have been opened and

lines of evidence adduced which find no place in any previous book

on Mr. Lincoln's religious life, and very scant reference, and that

without investigation, in one or two of the biographies.

(4) The book also contains a constructive argument, setting forth the

conviction to which the author has come with regard to the faith of

Abraham Lincoln.

It is entirely possible that some readers will find themselves in

essential agreement with the author in the earlier parts of the book,

but will dissent in whole or in part from his own inferences. Whether

the reader agrees or disagrees with the author in his conclusions, he

will find in this book some material not elsewhere available for the

formation of an independent judgment. Nevertheless the author counts

himself justified not only in adducing the evidence but in stating

frankly the conclusion which to his mind this evidence supports.

This book treats of the religion of Abraham Lincoln; but it does not

consider his religion as wholly expressed in his theological opinions.

Important as it is that a man should think correctly on all subjects,

and especially on a subject of such transcendent value, religion is

more than a matter of opinion. We cannot adequately consider religion

apart from life. Abraham Lincoln's life was an evolution, and so was

his religion. In a way which this volume will seek to set forth,

Lincoln was himself a believer in evolution, and his life and religion

were in accord with this process as he held it.

This book is, therefore, more than an essay on the religion of Lincoln,

unless religion be understood as inclusive of all that is normal in

life. It deals, therefore, with the life, as well as with the opinions,

of Lincoln; and it considers both life and opinion as in process of

development in each of the successive stages of his career.

In this respect the present book may claim some distinctive place in

the literature of this subject. Other books have drawn sharp contrasts

between the supposed religious opinions of Lincoln's youth and those

which he is believed to have cherished later. This book undertakes what

may be termed a study of the evolution of the spiritual life of Abraham

Lincoln. The author is not aware that this has been done before in

quite this way.

The author acknowledges his obligations to many friends for their

assistance in the preparation of this volume. Mr. Jesse W. Weik, of

Greencastle, Indiana, associate of Mr. Herndon in the preparation of

his Life of Lincoln, and owner of the Herndon manuscripts, has been

generous to me. Mrs. Clark E. Carr, of Galesburg, Illinois, widow of

my honored friend, and the friend of Lincoln, Colonel Carr, author of

"Lincoln at Gettysburg," has placed at my disposal all her husband's

books and papers. Mr. Judd Stewart, of New York City, owner of one of

the largest collections of Lincolniana, has assisted me. President John

W. Cook of the Northern Illinois State Normal School has suggested

important lines of research. Mr. John E. Burton, of Lake Geneva,

Wisconsin, whose collection of Lincoln books was once the largest in

America, has sold me some of his chief treasures, and imparted to me

much of the fruit of his experience. Mr. O. H. Oldroyd, of Washington,

owner of the famous Lincoln Collection, and custodian of the house

where Lincoln died, has, on two visits, placed all that he has within

my reach. To these, and to a considerable number of men and women who

knew Lincoln while he was yet living, and to many others whom I cannot

name, my thanks are due.

I regret that one great collection, consisting, however, more largely

of relics than of manuscripts, is so largely packed away that it has

not been of much use to me. Mr. Charles F. Gunther of Chicago has,

however, produced for me such Lincoln material as seemed to him to bear

upon my quest, and I acknowledge his courtesy.

Mr. Oliver P. Barrett of Chicago has given me great joy in the

examination of his fine collection of Lincoln manuscripts.

I have spent a few pleasant and profitable hours in the collection of

Honorable Daniel Fish, the noted Lincoln bibliographer, of Minneapolis,

and thank him for his friendly interest in this undertaking.

Among libraries, my largest debt is to those of the Chicago Historical

Society, the Illinois State Historical Society at Springfield, and the

Library of Congress in Washington. In each of these I have had not only

unrestricted access to the whole Lincoln material possessed by them,

but the most generous and courteous assistance. I have examined every

rare Lincoln book, and many manuscripts, in these three collections. I

have had occasion also to use the Chicago Public Library, the Newberry

Library, and the Library of the University of Chicago, as well as those

of Chicago Theological Seminary and McCormick Theological Seminary. In

certain important local matters, I have been assisted by the libraries

of Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, Illinois College, Jacksonville,

Illinois, the Public Library of Peoria, Illinois, and the library of

Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky. I also visited the

Public Library of Louisville, with its historical collections, but most

that I found there I had already consulted elsewhere. The New York

Public Library and the Library of Columbia University supplemented my

research at a few important points. The Oak Park Public Library has

been constantly at my service. The Library of Berea College, Kentucky,

has given me very valuable assistance in finding for me a large amount

of periodical literature bearing on my study. The five great Boston

libraries would have yielded me much had I come to them earlier.

While the book was undergoing revision, I visited the Athenaeum, the

Massachusetts State, the Boston Public, the Massachusetts Historical,

and the Harvard University libraries. It was gratifying to discover

that even in the last named of these, enriched as it is with the

collections of Charles Sumner, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and the

Lincoln collection of my friend Alonzo Rothschild, author of "Lincoln,

Master of Men," there was practically nothing relating to this subject

which I had not already seen and examined. In the Massachusetts

Historical Library, however, I discovered some manuscripts, and that

quite unexpectedly, which afford me much aid in a collateral study.

In addition to the foregoing, I have my own Lincoln library, which,

while a working collection rather than one of incunabula, and modest in

size as compared with some that I have used, is still not small. The

Bibliography at the end of the volume is virtually a catalogue of my

own Lincoln books.

Claims of completeness are dangerous, and I make none. But I have

been diligent in pursuit of all probable sources of knowledge of this

subject, and I do not now know where to look for any other book of

manuscript that would greatly alter or add to the material which this

book contains. I am glad, therefore, at this stage, to share the fruits

of my investigations with the reader.

W. E. B.

THE FIRST CHURCH STUDY OAK PARK, ILLINOIS

CONTENTS

PART I: A STUDY OF RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I THE CONFLICT OF TESTIMONY 19

II WHY THE BIOGRAPHIES DIFFER 24

III THE ENVIRONMENT OF LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD 29

IV THE ENVIRONMENTS OF LINCOLN'S YOUNG MANHOOD 51

V THE ENVIRONMENT OF LINCOLN'S LIFE IN SPRINGFIELD 71

VI THE ENVIRONMENT OF LINCOLN'S LIFE IN WASHINGTON 86

PART II: AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVIDENCE

VII THE RULES OF EVIDENCE 101

VIII THE BATEMAN INCIDENT 114

IX THE LAMON BIOGRAPHY 128

X THE REED LECTURE 135

XI THE HERNDON LECTURES, LETTERS, AND BIOGRAPHY 140

XII LINCOLN'S BURNT BOOK 146

XIII "THE CHRISTIAN'S DEFENCE" 156

XIV "VESTIGES OF CREATION" 166

XV OTHER FORMATIVE BOOKS 172

XVI CHITTENDEN AND CHINIQUY 188

XVII THE BEECHER AND SICKLES INCIDENTS 198

XVIII "BEHIND THE SCENES" 203

XIX FROM THE HOUSETOPS AND IN THE CLOSET 210

PART III: THE RELIGION OF LINCOLN

XX WHAT LINCOLN WAS NOT 225

XXI WHY DID LINCOLN NEVER JOIN A CHURCH? 244

XXII THE CONSTRUCTIVE ARGUMENT 260

XXIII THE CREED OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 291

APPENDICES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

I EXTRACT FROM NEWTON BATEMAN'S LECTURE ON

LINCOLN WITH VARIANTS OF THE SPRINGFIELD

FAREWELL ADDRESS 303

II "HIGH-HANDED OUTRAGE AT UTICA" 307

By Artemus Ward

III "THE CONVERSION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN" 309

By the Rev. Edward L. Watson

IV THE REED LECTURE 314

V TWO HERNDON LETTERS CONCERNING LINCOLN'S

RELIGION 336

VI THE IRWIN ARTICLE, WITH LETTERS 341

VII "THE CHRISTIAN'S DEFENCE" 358

With full chapter analysis

VIII LINCOLN AND THE CHURCHES 377

By Nicolay and Hay

IX "BOUND TOGETHER IN CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIOTISM" 385

Hitherto unpublished address of Lincoln

BIBLIOGRAPHY 387

INDEX 401

PART I: A STUDY OF RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTS

CHAPTER I

THE CONFLICT OF TESTIMONY

OF no other American have so many biographies been written as of

Abraham Lincoln. No other question concerning his life has evoked more

interest than that of his religious faith and experience. What Abraham

Lincoln believed has been told by many who knew him and whose varied

relations to him during his lifetime rendered it not unreasonable to

suppose that they could give some assured answer to the question of his

belief. The answers are not only varied, but hopelessly contradictory.

It is stated on apparently good authority that in his young manhood he

read Volney's _Ruins_ and Paine's _Age of Reason_, and it is affirmed

that he accepted their conclusions, and himself wrote what might

have been a book or pamphlet denying the essential doctrines of the

Christian faith as he understood them. Friends of his who knew him

well enough to forbid the throwing of their testimony out of court

have affirmed that he continued to hold these convictions; and that,

while he became more cautious in the matter of their expression, he

carried them through life and that they never underwent any radical

change. On the other hand, there are declarations, made by those who

also knew Lincoln well, that these views became modified essentially,

and that Lincoln accepted practically the whole content of orthodox

Christian theology as it was then understood; that he observed daily

family worship in his home; that he carried a Bible habitually upon

his person; and that he was in short in every essential a professed

Christian, though never a member of a Christian church.

There is more than a conflict of testimony; there is positive chaos.

Every recent biographer has felt the inherent difficulties involved in

it. One or two of them have passed it over with practically no mention;

others have become fierce partisans of the one extreme or the other.

Besides the formal biographies, a literature of this special topic has

grown up. Entire books and many pamphlets and magazine articles have

been written on this one question. The Chicago Historical Society and

the Chicago Public Library have each devoted a principal division in

the Lincoln material to the literature relating to his religion. It has

been the writer's privilege to examine in both these libraries and in

several others the whole known body of literature of the subject.

In this investigation the writer came face to face with utterly

contradictory testimony from men who had known Abraham Lincoln

intimately.

Of him Mr. Herndon, for twenty years his law partner, said:

"As to Mr. Lincoln's religious views, he was, in short, an infidel....

Mr. Lincoln told me a thousand times that he did not believe the Bible

was the revelation of God as the Christian world contends."--LAMON:

_Life of Lincoln_, p. 489.

The direct antithesis of this statement is found in a narrative of Hon.

Newton Bateman, who knew Mr. Lincoln from 1842 until Mr. Lincoln's

death, and whose office was in the State House at Springfield next-door

to that which, for a period of eight months from the time of his

nomination till his departure for his inauguration, was occupied by Mr.

Lincoln. He affirmed (or at least was so quoted by Holland) that Mr.

Lincoln said to him:

"I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I

see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a

place and work for me--and I think He has--I believe I am ready. I am

nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know

that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God."--J.

G. HOLLAND: _Life of Lincoln_, p. 237.

Popular oratory has carried even farther these two extremes of

irreconcilable contradiction. On the one hand are to be found

scurrilous publications, shockingly offensive against all good taste,

declaring Lincoln to have been an atheist, a mocker, a hypocrite, a man

of unclean mind, and a violator in his speech of all canons of decency.

We will not quote from any of these at present; but of the length to

which the other extreme can go, has gone, and continues to go, let the

following incident, gleaned from a recent English book, serve as an

illustration:

"In the year 1861 the Southern States of America were filled with

slaves and slaveholders. It was proposed to make Abraham Lincoln

president. But he had resolved that if he came to that position of

power he would do all he could to wipe away the awful scourge from

the page of his nation's history. A rebellion soon became imminent,

and it was expected that in his inaugural address much would be said

respecting it. The time came. The Senate House was packed with people;

before him was gathered the business skill and the intellectual power

of the States. With one son lying dead in the White House, whom he

loved with a fond father's affection; another little boy on the

borders of eternity; with his nation's eternal disgrace or everlasting

honor resting upon his speech, he speaks distinctly, forcefully, and

without fear. Friend and foe marvel at his collected movements. They

know of the momentous issues which hang on his address. They know the

domestic trials that oppress his heart. But they do not know that,

before leaving home that morning, the President had taken down the

family Bible and conducted their home worship as usual, and then

had asked to be left alone. The family withdrawing, they heard his

tremulous voice raised in pleadings with God, that He whose shoulder

sustains the government of worlds would guide him and overrule

his speech for His own glory. Here was the power of this man's

strength."--G. H. MORGAN: _Modern Knights-Errant_, p. 104; quoted in

Hastings' _Great Texts of the Bible_, volume on "Isaiah," pp. 237-38.

This incident is now an integral part of the best and most recent

homiletic work in the English language, and will be used in thousands

of sermons and addresses. It is a story that carries its own refutation

in almost every line. Mr. Lincoln had no son either sick or dead and

lying in the White House or anywhere else at the time of his first

inaugural, nor had he as yet entered the White House; and the hours of

that day are fairly well accounted for; but this and similar incidents

illustrate the length to which the oratorical imagination may carry

a speaker either in the pulpit or on the platform, and not only be

preserved in books but pass the supposedly critical eye of a careful

compiler of material for sermons and lectures.

If another book is justified, it should be one that does more than

compile that part of the evidence which appears to support a particular

theory. The compilation should be as nearly complete as is humanely

possible. But it must do more than plunge the reader into this swamp of

conflicting testimony. It must somehow seek to evaluate the evidence

and present a reasonable conclusion.

Moreover, in the judgment of the present writer, religion is more

than opinion, and cannot be considered as a detachable entity.

Lincoln's religion was more than his belief, his conjecture, his

logical conclusion concerning particular doctrines. It can only be

properly appraised in connection with his life. While, therefore, the

writer does not now undertake a complete biography of Lincoln, though

cherishing some hope that he may eventually write a book of that

character, this present work endeavors to study the religion of Lincoln

not in detachment, but as part and parcel of his life.

A word may be said concerning the author's point of view and the

experience which lies behind it. In his early manhood he had an

experience of several years which he considers of value as affording a

background for the interpretation of the Lincoln material. For several

years the author taught school and afterward preached in the mountain

region of Kentucky and Tennessee amid social conditions essentially

parallel to those in which Mr. Lincoln was born and amid which he

spent his manhood up to the time of his going to Washington. The

same kind of preaching that Lincoln heard, not only in Kentucky but

in the backwoods of Indiana and the pioneer villages of central and

southern Illinois, the present author heard in his own young manhood

as a teacher in district schools far back beyond the sound of the

locomotive's whistle or the inroads of modern civilization. How that

kind of preaching affected the inquiring mind of the young Lincoln,

the author is sure he knows better than most of Lincoln's biographers

have known. The fierce theological controversies that waged between

the old-time Baptists and the itinerant Methodists, together with the

emphatic dogmatism of the Southern type of Presbyterianism as it was

held and preached in the Kentucky mountains forty years ago and in

southern Illinois and Indiana eighty years ago are part of the vivid

memory of the present writer. A young man who refused to accept this

kind of teaching might be charged with being an infidel, and might

easily suppose himself to be one; but whether that would be a just

or fair classification depends upon conditions which some of the

controversialists appear not to have known or to have been capable of

appreciating through lack of experience of their own.

This book attempts, therefore, to be a digest of all the available

evidence concerning the religious faith of Abraham Lincoln. It

undertakes also to weigh that evidence and to pass judgment, the

author's own judgment, concerning it. If the reader's judgment agrees

with the author's, the author will be glad; but if not at least the

facts are here set forth in their full essential content.

CHAPTER II

WHY THE BIOGRAPHIES DIFFER

THE many biographies of Abraham Lincoln differ widely in their estimate

of his religious opinions and life, partly because the biographers

approach the subject from widely differing angles, and some of them

are seeking in advance the establishment of particular conclusions.

But apart from that personal bias, from which no author can claim to

be wholly free, the biographical study of Abraham Lincoln was itself

an evolution whose main outlines and processes it will be profitable

briefly to consider.

The first printed biographies of Mr. Lincoln appeared in 1860. They

were the familiar campaign biography, such as is issued for every

candidate for the Presidency. The first man who approached Mr. Lincoln

with a proposal to write his Life was J. L. Scripps of the Chicago

_Tribune_. Mr. Lincoln deprecated the idea of writing any biography.

"Why, Scripps, [said he] it is a great piece of folly to attempt to

make anything out of me or my early life. It can all be condensed into

a single sentence, and that sentence you will find in Grey's 'Elegy':

'_The short and simple annals of the poor._'

That's my life, and that's all you or anyone else can make out of

it."--HERNDON, I, 2.

Lincoln felt the meagerness of his biographical material, but the

biographers succeeded in making books about him, Scripps wrote his

booklet, and it appeared in thirty-two closely printed double-column

pages, and sold at twenty-five cents. It is now excessively rare.

Lincoln read the proof and approved it. The "Wigwam" Life of Lincoln

appeared simultaneously with the Scripps booklet, and it is not quite

certain which of the two emerged first from the press. It contained

117 pages, of which the last seven were devoted to Hannibal Hamlin,

Republican candidate for Vice-President. This also had a wide sale, and

is now very rare. That Lincoln did not read the proofs of this book is

evidenced by the name "Abram" instead of "Abraham" on its title page

and throughout the book. It relates that "when he was six years old,

his father died, leaving a widow and several children, poor and almost

friendless"; and in other respects shows that Lincoln did not furnish

the data of it, and also indicates how meager was the biographical

material at hand outside the little sketch which Lincoln prepared for

Scripps.

Another pamphlet, containing 216 pages, was "The Authentic Edition" by

J. H. Barrett, and still another, the "Authorized" edition by D. W.

Bartlett, which extended to 354 pages and was bound in cloth. Perhaps

the best of these campaign biographies of 1860 was that written by

William Dean Howells, then a young man and unknown to fame. Apparently

Lincoln furnished to each of these writers--except the Wigwam

edition--essentially the same material which he had given to Scripps,

or else they borrowed from Scripps, with permission, and to this extent

they were "authorized" or "authentic." But there is no indication that

Lincoln read any of them except that of Scripps. Even this must have

surprised him when he beheld how his little sketch could be spread out

over as many as thirty-two pages.

The campaign of 1864 brought out a new crop of campaign biographies,

and these used essentially the same material up to 1860, and found

their new matter in the history of the Civil War up to the date of

their publication.

This campaign material still stood in type or stereotyped pages when

Lincoln was killed, and was hastily used again. The author, who

owns all the books cited above, has also others which came from the

press in May or June of 1865, whose main part was taken over bodily

from the campaign biographies of 1864 and speaks of Lincoln as still

living, while the back part is made up of material concerning the

assassination, the funeral, and the trial of the conspirators. These

called themselves "Complete" biographies, but they were merely revamped

campaign booklets of 1864 with appended matter and virtually no

revision.

These works represent the first stage of the attempt to make books

out of the life of Abraham Lincoln. The outline of the life itself is

meager in all of them, and they are well padded with campaign speeches;

and the last of them, with full and interesting details of the funeral

services of Lincoln, the death of Booth, and other matter lifted from

the newspapers of the period.

* * * * *

The second epoch began with the publication of the Life of Abraham

Lincoln by John G. Holland in 1865. It was by all odds the best of

the books that undertook within a few years after his death to tell

the story of the life of Lincoln, with some estimate of his place in

history. It is also the book which began the controversy concerning

Lincoln's religion.

* * * * *

The third period was introduced by the biography of Abraham Lincoln

by Ward Hill Lamon, which was issued in 1872. It was based upon

manuscripts that had been collected by William H. Herndon, who

was supposed to have had a considerable share in the work of its

preparation. Herndon emphatically denied writing any part of it, and

said in a letter to Mr. Horace White that it was written for Lamon

by Chauncey F. Black, son of J. S. Black, a member of Buchanan's

cabinet and a political enemy of Lincoln (Newton: _Lincoln and

Herndon_, p. 307). This valuable but unwisely written book, containing

many things offensive to good taste, occasioned much controversy

for its stark realism and what seemed to many of Lincoln's friends

misrepresentations. Some of the intimate friends of Lincoln are alleged

to have bought a considerable part of the edition and destroyed the

books, but copies are in the principal libraries and in the best

private collections.

Unterrified by the reception which had been accorded Lamon's work,

William H. Herndon, for twenty years Lincoln's law partner, assisted

by Jesse W. Weik, published in 1889 a Life of Lincoln, in three

volumes.[1] The storm of denunciation that beat upon Herndon's head was

fierce and long. The greater part of the edition disappeared. Libraries

that contain it keep it under lock and key, and the prices bid for it

at occasional book auctions contrast strikingly with those for which

it went begging immediately after it was issued. Four years later,

assisted by Mr. Horace White, Mr. Herndon reissued the book in two

volumes, with those passages elided which had given greatest offense.

These two biographies mark the rise and high-water mark of the demand

for "the real Lincoln"; and nobody can deny that they were quite

sufficiently realistic.

The next stage in the Lincoln biography was the ten-volume Life of

Lincoln by his former secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay. It was

issued in 1890, and called itself "a history." It is a history rather

than a biography; the biographical material in it was condensed into a

single volume by Mr. Nicolay in 1904. This work is monumental, and may

be said to attempt the giving of materials for the complete Lincoln

rather than to be in itself an effort within the proper limits of

biography.

The two-volume biography by John T. Morse, Jr., issued in 1893, was the

first constructive piece of work in this field after the Nicolay and

Hay material had become available; and it remains in some respects the

best short Life of Abraham Lincoln; though the author's New England

viewpoint militates against his correct appraisal of many features of

the life of Lincoln.

The next period may be said to be the period of the magazine Lincoln,

and to be represented at its best by the work of Ida M. Tarbell, which

first appeared in _McClure's Magazine_, beginning in 1895, and was

subsequently issued in book form in several editions beginning in

1900. This was a pictorial biography, with much new illustrative and

documentary material, and is of permanent value.

Since 1900 the biographies that have been issued have largely been

devoted to specialized studies, as of Lincoln as a lawyer, Lincoln

as a political leader, Lincoln as a statesman; and there have been

innumerable books and articles made up of reminiscences of the men who

knew Lincoln more or less intimately.

None of the biographies before Holland attempted anything that could be

called a critical analysis of Lincoln's character. There is virtually

nothing in the earliest Lives of Lincoln concerning his religion or any

other important aspect of his private and personal life. In the nature

of the case those books were superficial.

Furthermore, some of the more important biographies of more recent

years have made no attempt at systematic character study. While there

is something about Lincoln's religion in almost every one of them, that

topic has been quite incidental and subordinate to the main purpose of

most of the larger books. The authors have been content to take for the

most part the ready-formed judgment of those whose views most nearly

accorded with their own.

The field of inquiry concerning Lincoln's religion is both more

narrow and broader than it would at first appear. Many even of the

more important biographical works about Lincoln yield nothing of

any real value, so far as this topic is concerned. On the other

hand, the subject has been exploited in magazine articles, newspaper

contributions, lectures and addresses almost innumerable and by no mean

consistent.

The task, then, is more and other than that of making a scrapbook of

what different authorities have said about Abraham Lincoln's religion.

A vast amount has been said by people who had no personal knowledge of

the subject they were discussing and no adequate power of historical

analysis. The volume of really first-hand evidence is not so vast as

at first it appears; and while it cannot all be reconciled nor its

direct contradictions eliminated, it is not hopelessly beyond the

limits of constructive probability. It is possible to determine some

facts about the religion of Abraham Lincoln with reasonable certainty

and to interpret others in the light of their probable bearing upon the

subject as a whole.

CHAPTER III

THE ENVIRONMENT OF LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD

WE have read Buckle's _History of Civilization_ to little effect if we

have not learned that the development of an individual or a nation is

profoundly influenced by environment. The biographers of Lincoln would

appear to have kept this fact carefully in mind, for they have been at

great pains to give to us detailed descriptions of the houses in which

Lincoln lived and the neighborhoods where from time to time he resided.

Although the camera and the descriptive power of the biographers have

done much for us, they leave something to be desired in the way of

sketching a background from which the Abraham Lincoln of the successive

periods emerged into conditions of life and thought that were more

or less religious. For the purpose of this present study the life of

Lincoln divides itself into four parts.

The first is the period of his boyhood, from his birth in Kentucky

until his coming of age and the removal of his family from Indiana into

Illinois.

The second is the period of his early manhood, from the time he left

his father's home until he took up his residence in Springfield.

The third is the period of his life in Springfield, from his first

arrival on April 15, 1837, until his final departure on February 11,

1861, for his inauguration as President.

The fourth is the period covered by his presidency, from his

inauguration, March 4, 1861, until his death, April 15, 1865.

Before considering at length the testimony of the people who knew him,

except as that testimony relates to these particular epochs, we will

consider the life of Lincoln as it was related to the conditions in

which he lived in these successive periods.

The first period in the life of Abraham Lincoln includes the

twenty-one years from his birth to his majority, and is divided

into two parts,--the first seven and one-half years of his life in

the backwoods of Kentucky, and the following thirteen years in the

wilderness of southern Indiana.

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, was born

near Hodgenville, Kentucky, on Sunday, February 12, 1809. He was the

second child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who were married near

Beechland, Washington County, Kentucky, on June 12, 1806, when Thomas

was twenty-eight and Nancy twenty-three. Nine days before the birth

of Abraham Lincoln the territory of Illinois was organized by Act of

Congress; the boy and the future State were twin-born. For four years

the family lived on the Rock Spring farm, three miles from Hodgenville,

in Hardin, now Larue County, Kentucky. When he was four years old his

parents moved to a better farm on Knob Creek. Here he spent nearly four

years more, and he and his sister, Sarah, began going to school. His

first teacher was Zachariah Riney; his second, Caleb Hazel.

In the autumn of 1816, Thomas Lincoln loaded his household goods upon

a small flatboat of his own construction and floated down Knob Creek,

Salt River, and the Ohio, and landed on the northern bank of the Ohio

River. He thence returned and brought his family, who traveled on

horseback. The distance to where the goods had been left was only about

fifty miles in a straight line from the old home in Kentucky, but was

probably a hundred miles by the roads on which they traveled. Thomas

doubtless rode one horse with a child behind him, and Nancy rode the

other, also carrying a child behind her saddle.

When the family arrived at the point where the goods had been left, a

wagon was hired, and Thomas Lincoln, with his wife, his two children,

and all his worldly possessions, moved sixteen miles into the

wilderness to a place which he had already selected, and there made his

home. That winter and the greater part of the following year were spent

in a "half-faced camp" from which the family moved in the following

autumn to a log cabin, erected by Thomas Lincoln. For more than a year

he was a squatter on this farm, but subsequently entered it and secured

title from the government. Here Nancy Hanks Lincoln died, October 5,

1818, when Abraham was less than ten years old. A year later Thomas

Lincoln returned to Kentucky and married Sally Bush Johnson, a widow,

with three children. She brought with her better furniture than the

cabin afforded, and also brought a higher type of culture than Thomas

Lincoln had known. She taught her husband so that he was able with some

difficulty to read the Bible and to sign his own name. On this farm

in the backwoods in the Pigeon Creek settlement, with eight or ten

families as neighbors, and with the primitive village of Gentryville a

mile and a half distant, Abraham Lincoln grew to manhood. Excepting for

a brief experience as a ferryman on the Ohio River and a trip to New

Orleans which he made upon a flatboat, his horizon was bounded by this

environment from the time he was eight until he was twenty-one.

The cabin in which the Lincoln family lived was a fairly comfortable

house. It was eighteen feet square and the logs were hewn. It was high

enough to admit a loft, where Abe slept, ascending to it by wooden

pins driven into the logs. The furniture, excepting that brought by

Sally Bush, was very primitive and made by Thomas Lincoln. Three-legged

stools answered for chairs, and the bedsteads had only one leg each,

the walls supporting the other three corners.

Of the educational advantages, Mr. Lincoln wrote in 1860:

"It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still

in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools so-called,

but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond readin',

writin', and cipherin' to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed

to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was

looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite

ambition for education."--NICOLAY, p. 10.

Here he attended school for three brief periods. The first school was

taught by Azel W. Dorsey, when Abraham was ten years old; the next by

Andrew Crawford, when he was fourteen; and the third by a teacher

named Swaney, whose first name Mr. Lincoln was unable to recall in

later life. His schooling was under five different teachers, two in

Kentucky and three in Indiana. It was scattered over nine years and

embraced altogether less than twelve months of aggregate attendance.

In Kentucky it is probable that his only textbook was Webster's

Elementary Speller. It was popularly known as the "Old Blueback."

Webster's Speller is a good speller and more. Each section of words

to be spelled is followed by short sentences containing those words,

and at the end of the book are three illustrated lessons in Natural

History--one on The Mastiff, another on The Stag, and the third on The

Squirrel. Besides these are seven fables, each with its illustration

and its moral lesson. I used this book in teaching school in the

backwoods of Kentucky, and still have the teacher's copy which I thus

employed.

The two Kentucky schools which Lincoln attended were undoubtedly "blab"

schools. The children were required to study aloud. Their audible

repetition of their lessons was the teacher's only assurance that they

were studying;[2] and even while he was hearing a class recite he would

spend a portion of his time moving about the room with hickory switch

in hand, administering frequent rebuke to those pupils who did not

study loud enough to afford proof of their industry.

In Indiana, Lincoln came under the influence of men who could cipher

as far as the Rule of Three. He also learned to use Lindley Murray's

English Reader, which he always believed, and with much reason, to be

the most useful textbook ever put into the hands of an American youth

(Herndon, I, 37). He also studied Pike's Arithmetic. Grammar he did not

study in school, but later learned it under Mentor Graham in Illinois.

The first of these schools was only about a mile and a half distant

from his home; the last was four miles, and his attendance was

irregular.

In the second school, taught by Andrew Crawford, he learned whatever he

knew of the usages of polite society; for Crawford gave his pupils a

kind of drill in social usages (Herndon, I, 37).

In Swaney's school he probably learned that the earth was round. A

classmate, Katy Roby, afterward Mrs. Allen Gentry, between whom and

Abraham a boy-and-girl attachment appears to have existed, and who at

the time was fifteen and Abe seventeen, is authority for the statement

that as they were sitting together on the bank of the Ohio River near

Gentry's landing, wetting their bare feet in the flowing water and

watching the sun go down, he told her that it was the revolution of the

earth which made the moon and sun appear to rise and set. He exhibited

what to her appeared a profound knowledge of astronomy (Herndon, I, 39;

Lamon's _Life_, p. 70).

It is not necessary for us to assume that Abraham knew very much more

about astronomy than the little which he told to Katy Roby; but it is

worth while to note in passing that when Abraham Lincoln learned that

the earth was round, he probably learned something which his father did

not know and which would have been admitted by no minister whom Abraham

had heard preach up to this time.

We are ready now to consider the character of the preaching which

Abraham Lincoln heard in his boyhood. Direct testimony is fragmentary

of necessity; but it is of such character that we are able without

difficulty to make a consistent mental picture of the kind of religious

service with which he was familiar.

A recent author has said that Lincoln never lived in a community having

a church building until he went to the legislature in Vandalia in 1834

(Johnson, _Lincoln the Christian_, p. 31). This is probably true if

we insist upon its meaning a house of worship owned exclusively by

one denomination, but the same author reminds us that there was a log

meeting-house[3] within three miles of Lincoln's childhood home in

Kentucky (p. 22).

Dr. Peters says:

"The prayers that Parson Elkin said above the mound of Nancy

Hanks were the first public prayers to which Abraham ever

listened"--_Abraham Lincoln's Religion_, p. 24.

This is absurdly incorrect. Abraham Lincoln almost certainly heard

public prayers at intervals, probably from the time he was three months

old.

Abraham Lincoln was born in February, or his mother probably would have

taken him to church earlier; but by May or June, when there was monthly

preaching at the log meeting-house three miles away, she mounted a

horse and Thomas Lincoln another, he with Sarah sitting before him

at the saddlebow and she with Abraham in her arms, and they rode to

meeting. If they had had but one horse instead of two they would have

gone just the same. She would have sat behind Thomas with Abraham in

her arms and Thomas would have had Sarah on the horse before him.

Thomas Lincoln was too shiftless to have a horse-block, but Nancy could

mount her horse from any one of the numerous stumps in the vicinity of

the home. She and every other young mother in the neighborhood knew how

to ride and carry a baby, and having once learned the art, the young

mother was not permitted to forget it for several years.

Arrived at the log meeting-house, they hitched their horses to

swinging limbs, where the animals could fight flies without breaking

the bridle-reins. Nancy went inside immediately and took her seat on

the left side of the room; Thomas remained outside gossiping with his

neighbors concerning "craps" and politics, and maybe swapping a horse

before the service had gotten fairly under way. After a while he heard

the preacher in stentorian tones lining and singing the opening hymn,

the thin, high voices of the women joining him feebly at first but

growing a little more confident as the hymn proceeded. Then Thomas and

his neighbors straggled in and sat on the right side of the house.

The floor was puncheon and so were the seats; they were rudely split

slabs, roughly hewn, and the second sitting from either end had an

added element of discomfort in the projection of the two legs that had

been driven in from the under side and were not sawed off flush with

the surface of the slab. There were no glass windows. On either side of

the house one section of a log may have been sawed out about four feet

from the floor; but most of the light of the interior came in through

the open door in mild weather, or was afforded by the fireplace in cold

weather.

On the rude pulpit lay the preacher's Bible and hymn book, if he had

a hymn book--no one else had one; and beside these were a bucket of

water and a gourd. There was no time in the service when Thomas Lincoln

did not feel free to walk up to the pulpit and drink a gourd of water,

and the same was true of every other member of the congregation, the

preacher included. As for Nancy, she spread her riding-skirt on the

seat under her and when her baby grew hungry she nursed him just as the

other women nursed their babies.

To such congregations the author of this present book preached hundreds

of times in the woods of Kentucky; and there is no essential feature of

the church services which he does not know.

In the autumn, just before fodder-pulling time, there was an

occasional camp-meeting or big revival, followed by a baptizing, which

brought multitudes of people from long distances. They brought their

provisions, or they stayed with friends, one cabin proving elastic

enough to accommodate two or three households. Under these conditions

the author of this book has slept many nights in houses of one room,

with as many beds as the room could well contain, inhabited not only by

the family but by visitors of both sexes; and in all that experience he

is unable to recall any incident that was immodest.

When the converts of the camp-meeting or revival were baptized, they

were led into the water with due solemnity; but as each one came to the

surface he or she was likely to break forth into shouting, a proceeding

which, as the author can testify, was sometimes embarrassing, if not

indeed perilous,[4] to the officiating clergyman.

Herndon tells us of the fondness of the Hanks girls for camp-meeting

and describes one in which Nancy appears to have participated a little

time before her marriage (I, 14). We have no reason to believe that

that was her last camp-meeting.

Thomas Lincoln is alleged by Herndon to have been a Free-will Baptist

in Kentucky, a Presbyterian in the latter part of his life in Indiana,

and finally a Disciple (I, 11). He does not state where he obtained

his information, but it is almost certain that he got it from Sally

Bush Lincoln on the occasion of his visit to her in 1865; as she is the

accredited source of most of the information of this character.

I am more than tempted to believe that either she or Herndon was

incorrect in speaking of Thomas Lincoln's earliest affiliation as a

Free-will Baptist. There were more kinds of Baptists in heaven and on

earth than were understood in her philosophy; and I question whether

the Free-will Baptists, who originated in New England, had by this

time penetrated to so remote a section of Kentucky. What she probably

told Herndon was that he was not of the most reactionary kind--the

so-called "Hardshell" or anti-missionary Baptists. Of them we shall

have something to say later. The Scripps biography, read and approved

by Lincoln, said simply that his parents were consistent members of

the Baptist Church. Nicolay and Hay do not record the membership of

Thomas Lincoln in the Presbyterian Church, and one is more than tempted

to question the accuracy of Herndon at this point. Presbyterianism

had at that date very little part in the shaping of the life of the

backwoods of Illinois and Indiana, as we shall see when we come to

the life of Lincoln in Illinois. Nicolay and Hay tell us that "Thomas

Lincoln joined the Baptist church at Little Pigeon in 1823. His oldest

child, Sarah, followed his example three years later. They were known

as consistent and active members of that communion" (Nicolay and

Hay, I, 32-33). If Sarah joined the Baptist church in 1826, and the

family was remembered as active in that church, the relation of Thomas

Lincoln with the Presbyterians in Indiana must have been brief, for

he left that State in 1830. We are assured that he observed religious

customs in his home and asked a blessing at the table; for one day,

when the meal consisted only of potatoes, Abraham said to his father,

that he regarded those as "mighty poor blessings" (Herndon, I, 24).

While Thomas Lincoln was not an energetic man, there is no reason

to doubt the consistency of his religion, in which he was certainly

aided by Sally Bush Lincoln. That he died in the fellowship either

of the Disciples or of the New Lights is probably correct; but the

Presbyterian membership in Indiana, while not impossible, appears more

likely to have been a mistake in Herndon's interpretation of Mrs.

Lincoln's narrative.

Herndon's statement concerning Thomas Lincoln's religion is as follows:

"In his religious belief he first affiliated with the Free-will

Baptists. After his removal to Indiana he changed his adherence to the

Presbyterians--or Predestinarians, as they were then called--and later

united with the Christian--vulgarly called Campbellite--Church, in

which latter faith he is supposed to have died" (I, 11-12).

I am satisfied that Herndon is mistaken in two if not in all three of

these assertions. I am confident that Predestinarian was not a popular

or commonly understood name for Presbyterians, but it was a name for

one type of Baptists. Mrs. Lincoln probably told Herndon that her

husband joined in Indiana, not the hardshell, or most reactionary kind

of Baptists, but the Predestinarians. Knowing that predestination

was a doctrine of Presbyterianism, Mr. Herndon assumed that that was

what the name implied. It implied nothing of the sort. Thomas Lincoln

probably belonged to the old Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian

Baptists, not quite as hard in their shell as the Hardshells, but very

different from the Free-will Baptists or the Presbyterians, the kind

whose preachers were accustomed to shout--"I'd rather have a hard shell

than no shell at all!"

Dennis Hanks[5] was far from being impeccable authority on matters

where his imagination permitted him to enlarge, but he seldom forgot

anything, and still less frequently made it smaller than it really was.

If Thomas Lincoln had ever sustained any relation to the Presbyterian

Church, he would surely have told it, or some member of his family,

jealous as those members were for the reputation of "Grandfather

Lincoln," would not have failed to report it. In his interview with

Mrs. Eleanor Atkinson, in which his family participated, Dennis evinced

a definite attempt to set forth Thomas Lincoln in as favorable a light

as possible, and there was a high and deserved tribute to his "Aunt

Sairy," Thomas Lincoln's second wife.

"Aunt Sairy sartainly did have faculty. I reckon we was all purty

ragged and dirty when she got there. The fust thing she did was to

tell me to tote one of Tom's carpenter benches to a place outside

the door, near the hoss trough. Then she had me an' Abe an' John

Johnson, her boy, fill the trough with spring water. She put out a

gourd full of soft soap, and another one to dip water with, an' told

us boys to wash up fur dinner. You just naturally had to be somebody

when Aunt Sairy was around. She had Tom build her a loom, an' when

she heerd o' some lime burners bein' round Gentryville, Tom had to

mosey over an' git some lime an' whitewash the cabin. An' he made her

an ash hopper fur lye, an' a chicken-house nothin' could git into.

Then--te-he-he-he!--she set some kind of a dead-fall trap fur him, an'

got Tom to jine the Baptist Church. Cracky, but Aunt Sally was some

punkins!"--_American Magazine_, February, 1908, p. 364.

I am of opinion that what Mrs. Sarah Bush Lincoln told Herndon was

that her husband sometimes attended the Presbyterian service, and that

the church he joined was the Baptist, but not the Hardshell Baptist.

But evidence is wholly lacking that he had any connection with the

Presbyterian Church, or with the Free-will Baptists, of which latter

sect he probably never heard.

The church at Farmington of which Thomas Lincoln became a member is

not now in existence. I have endeavored through investigation in

Farmington, and by correspondence with Mr. Robert T. Lincoln, to

ascertain its denomination. It called itself "Christian," and Herndon

did not doubt that that name indicated that it was a church of the

denomination sometimes called "Campbellite." But that is not certain.

Other denominations claim that as their distinctive name, and one of

them was at that time active in that part of Illinois. My inquiries

have brought me no certain knowledge on this point; but Mr. Jesse W.

Weik is of opinion that the denomination was that known as "New Light."

It is possible that Herndon was in error in every one of his three

affirmations concerning the religion of Thomas Lincoln, and that the

President's father was never a Free-will Baptist, never a Presbyterian,

and never a Disciple or Campbellite. I have endeavored to learn whether

his change from the Baptist to the "Christian" church was a matter of

conviction or convenience, but on this I have found nothing except a

statement from the minister who buried him, in which it would appear

that his change of polity was a matter of conviction. This minister

spoke very highly of Thomas Lincoln, whom he had known well in the

latter years of his life.

There has been undue attempt to credit the pious boy Abraham with the

religious service conducted over the grave of his mother by Rev. David

Elkin[6] some months after her demise. There is no good authority for

this legend. Herndon probably tells the truth about it:

"Within a few months, and before the close of the winter, David

Elkin, an itinerant preacher whom Mrs. Lincoln had known in Kentucky,

happened into the settlement, and in response to the invitation from

the family and friends, delivered a funeral sermon over her grave. No

one is able now to remember the language of Parson Elkin's discourse,

but it is recalled that he commemorated the virtues and good phases of

character, and passed in silence the few shortcomings and frailties of

the poor woman sleeping under the winter's snow."--HERNDON, I, 28.

This does not compel us to believe that there had been no preacher in

the Pigeon Creek settlement since the death of Nancy Hanks.[7] It was

customary among these Kentucky-bred people to hold the funeral service

some weeks or months after the burial. The author of this volume has

attended many such services.

The reasons require some explanation. The dead were commonly buried

on the day following death. There were, of course, no facilities for

embalming or preserving the corpse for any great length of time.

Preachers were nearly all farmers; and the particular minister

with whose church the family was affiliated might be living at a

considerable distance and be at that time at some distant place upon

his wide circuit. No minister expected to preach every Sunday in any

one place. A monthly appointment was the maximum attempted; and the

more remote settlements were not reached statedly by any one preacher

oftener than once in three months. There were occasional services,

however, by other ministers riding through the country and preaching

wherever they stayed overnight. It was the author's custom when coming

unexpectedly into a valley to spread word up and down the creek that

there would be preaching that night in the schoolhouse or in the home

where he was entertained. The impromptu announcement never failed to

bring a congregation.

What took David Elkin into Indiana we do not know. He may have been

looking for a better farm than he had in Kentucky, where he could dig

out a living between his preaching appointments. He may have been

burdened for the souls of certain families formerly under his care

and now gone out like the Lincolns into a howling wilderness. The

late summer and early autumn between the end of corn-plowing and the

beginning of fodder-pulling afforded such a minister opportunity to

throw his saddlebags over his horse and start on a longer circuit than

usual; and the winter gave him still another opportunity for long

absence. He took no money and he collected none, or next to none, but

he had free welcome everywhere with pork and corn pone for supper and

fried chicken for breakfast. Many a time the author of this volume has

ridden up to a house just before suppertime, has partaken with the

family of its customary cornbread and bacon or ham, and after preaching

and a good night's rest has been wakened in the morning before the

rising of the sun by a muffled squawk and flutter as one or more

chickens were pulled down out of the trees. After this fashion did the

people of the backwoods welcome the messengers of the Lord.

Not necessarily on his next appearance in a settlement is the preacher

requested to conduct the funeral service of persons deceased since his

last visit. The matter is arranged with more of deliberation. A date

is set some time ahead and word is sent to distant friends.[8] After

a time of general sickness such as had visited Pigeon Creek in the

epidemic of the "milk sick," Parson Elkin may have had several funerals

to preach in the same cemetery or at the schoolhouse nearest at hand. I

have known a half-dozen funerals to be included in one sermon with full

biographical particulars of each decedent and detailed descriptions

of all the deathbed scenes, together with rapturous forecasts of the

future bliss of the good people who were dead and abundant warnings of

the flaming hell that awaited their impenitent neighbors. Even those

people who had not been noted for their piety during life were almost

invariably slipped into heaven through a deathbed repentance or by

grace of the uncovenanted mercies of God. It is the business of all

preachers to be very stern with the living and very charitable toward

the dead.[9]

I must add a further word about the custom of deferred funerals.

Although the burial was conducted without religious service, it was not

permitted to be celebrated in neglect. The news that a man was dying

would bring the sympathetic neighbors from miles around, and horses

would be tied up the creek and down while people waited in friendly

sorrow and conversed in hushed voices in the presence of the solemn

dignity of death. That night a group of neighbors would "sit up" with

the dead, and keep the family awake with frequent and lugubrious song.

Next day the grave must be dug; and that required a considerable part

of the male population of the settlement. If only two or three men

came in the morning they would sit and wait for others and go home for

the dinner and come back. It thus has happened more than once in my

experience that we have brought the body to the burial and have had to

wait an hour or more in sun or wind for the finishing of the digging of

the grave.

I remember well an instance in which death occurred in the family of

one of the county officials. His wife died suddenly, and under sad

conditions. I mounted my horse and rode four or five miles to his

home. I hitched my horse to the low-swinging limb of a beech tree and

threaded my way among other horses into the yard, which was filled with

men, and up to the porch, which was crowded with women. Passing inside,

I spoke my word of sympathy to the grief-stricken husband and his

children. Then I passed out into the yard and moved from group to group

among the men. Presently a neighbor of the sorrowing husband approached

me and asked me to step aside with him for private converse. This was

strictly in accordance with the custom of the country, and I walked

with him behind the corn-crib. He said to me: "Mr. McCune"--naming

the bereaved husband--"wants to know whether you have come here as a

preacher or as a neighbor?" I answered, "Tell him that I have come as a

neighbor." With this word he returned to the house. Up on the hillside

I could see the leisurely movements of the grave-diggers. From the shed

behind the house came the rhythmic tap of the hammer driving in the

tacks that fastened the white glazed muslin lining of the home-made

coffin. We had some little time still to wait before either the grave

or the coffin would be finished. Presently the neighbor returned to

where I waited behind the corn-crib and brought with him Mr. McCune.

The latter shook my hand warmly and said, in substance: "I appreciate

your coming and the respect which you thus show for me and for my dead

wife. I was glad to see you come when you entered the house, but was

a little embarrassed because I knew it to be your custom to preach

the funeral sermon at the time of the burial. I have no objection to

that custom; and while we are Baptists [he pronounced it Babtist, and

so I have no doubt did Thomas Lincoln], there is no man whom I would

rather have preach my wife's sermon than you. We shall undoubtedly

have a Baptist preacher when the time for the funeral comes, but I

hope you also will be present and participate in the service. But it

is not our custom to hold the service at the time of the burial, and

we have distant friends who should be notified. Moreover, there is

another consideration. I have been twice married, and I never yet have

got round to it to have my first wife's funeral preached. It seems to

me that it would be a discourtesy to my first wife's memory to have my

second wife's sermon preached before the first. What I now plan to do

is to have the two funerals at once, and I hope you will be present and

participate."

I need only add that before I departed from that region he was

comfortably married to his third wife, not having gotten round to it to

have the funeral sermon of either of his first two wives. I am unable

to say whether when he finally got round to it there was any increase

in the number. It never was my fortune to conduct the joint funeral of

two wives of the same man at the same time; but I have more than once

been present where a second wife was prominent among the mourners; and

I sometimes believed her to be sincerely sorry that the first wife was

dead.

It is not easy for people who have not lived amid these conditions and

at the same time to have known other conditions to estimate aright

the religious life of a backwoods community. Morse, whose biography

of Lincoln is to be rated high, is completely unable to view this

situation from other than his New England standpoint. He says:

"The family was imbued with a peculiar, intense, but unenlightened

form of Christianity, mingled with curious superstition, prevalent in

the backwoods, and begotten by the influence of the vast wilderness

upon illiterate men of a rude native force. It interests scholars to

trace the evolution of religious faiths, but it might not be less

suggestive to study the retrogression of religion into superstition.

Thomas Lincoln was as restless in matters of creed as of residence,

and made various changes in both during his life. These were, however,

changes without improvement, and, so far as he was concerned, his son

Abraham might have grown up to be what he himself was contented to

remain" (I, 10).

This criticism is partly just, but not wholly so. There was

superstition enough in the backwoods religion, and Abraham Lincoln

never wholly divested himself of it; but it was not all superstition.

There was a very real religion on Pigeon Creek.

In like manner, also, it is difficult for Lincoln's biographers to

strike an even balance between adoring idealization of log-cabin life

and horrified exaggeration of its squalor. Here again Morse is a

classic example of the attempt to be so honest about Lincoln's poverty

as to miss some part of the truth about it.

The Lincoln family was poor, even as poverty was estimated in the

backwoods. Lincoln himself was painfully impressed with the memory of

it, and Herndon and Lamon, who understood it better than most of his

biographers, felt both for themselves and for Lincoln the pathos of his

descent from "the poor whites"; but there is no evidence that Lincoln

felt this seriously at the time. His melancholy came later, and was

not the direct heritage of his childhood poverty. Life had its joys

for families such as his. Poverty was accepted as in some sort the

common lot, and also as a temporary condition out of which everybody

expected sometime to emerge. Meantime the boy Abraham Lincoln had not

only the joy of going to mill and to meeting, but also the privilege

of an occasional frolic. We know of one or two boisterous weddings

where he behaved himself none too well. Besides these there were other

unrecorded social events on Pigeon Creek where the platter rolled

merrily and he had to untangle his long legs from under the bench and

move quickly when his number was called or pay a forfeit and redeem

it. He played "Skip-to-My-Lou" and "Old Bald Eagle, Sail Around," and

"Thus the Farmer Sows His Seed," and he moved around the room singing

about the millwheel and had to grab quickly when partners were changed

or stand in the middle and be ground between the millstones. As large a

proportion of people's known wants were satisfied on Pigeon Creek as on

some fashionable boulevards. We need not seek to hide his poverty nor

idealize it unduly; neither is it necessary to waste overmuch of pity

upon people who did not find their own condition pitiable.

* * * * *

What kind of man had been produced in this environment and as the

result of the conditions of his heredity and of his inherent qualities?

What do we know about the Abraham Lincoln who in 1830 took simultaneous

leave of Indiana and his boyhood, and entered at once upon his manhood

and the new State, that, twin-born with him, was waiting his arrival?

He was a tall, awkward, uncouth backwoodsman, strong of muscle,

temperate and morally clean. He had physical strength and was not a

bully; was fond of a fight but fought fairly and as a rule on the side

of weakness and of right. He was free from bad habits of all kinds, was

generous, sympathetic, and kind of heart. He was as yet uninfluenced

by any women except his own dead mother and his stepmother. He was

socially shy, and had not profited greatly by the meager lessons in

social usage which had been taught in Andrew Crawford's school. He was

fond of cock-fighting and of boisterous sports, and had a sufficient

leadership to proclaim himself "the big buck of the lick" and to have

that declaration pass unchallenged.

He could read, write, and cipher, and was eager for learning. He was

ambitious, but his ambitions had no known focus. He was only moderately

industrious, but could work hard when he had to do so. He had some

ambition to write and to speak in public, but as yet he had little

idea what he was to write or speak about. He was a great, hulking

backwoodsman, with vague and haunting aspirations after something

better and larger than he had known or seemed likely to achieve.

What do we know about the spiritual development of the young Boanerges

who grew almost overnight in his eleventh year into a six-footer and

was so wearied by the effort that he was slow of body and mind and was

thought by some to be lazy ever afterward?

We know the books he read--the Bible, _Pilgrim's Progress_, _Æsop's

Fables_, _Robinson Crusoe_, and Weems' _Life of Washington_. It was a

good collection, and he made the most of it. Sarah Bush Lincoln noted

that while he did not like to work he liked to read, and she said, "I

induced my husband to permit Abe to study" (Herndon, I, 36).

John Hanks said of him, "He kept the Bible and _Æsop's Fables_ always

within reach, and read them over and over again."

Sarah Bush did not claim that he showed any marked preference for the

Bible. Lamon quotes her as saying, "He seemed to have a preference for

the other books" (_Life_, pp. 34, 486). But he certainly read the Bible

with diligence, as his whole literary style shows. Indeed, if we had

only his coarse "First Chronicles of Reuben," which we could heartily

wish he had never written, and whose publication in Herndon's first

edition was one of the chief reasons for an expurgated edition,[10] we

should know that even then Abe Lincoln, rough, uncouth and vulgar as he

was, was modeling his style upon the Bible.

We are told that when he went to church he noted the oddities of the

preachers and afterward mimicked them (Lamon: _Life_, pp. 55, 486).

This might have been expected, for two reasons. First, he had a love of

fun and of very boisterous fun at that; secondly, he had a fondness for

oratory, and this was the only kind of oratory he knew anything about.

It is a remarkable fact that the Lincoln family appears never at

any time in its history to have been strongly under the influence

of Methodism.[11] This is not because they did not know of it; no

pioneer could hide so deep in the wilderness as to be long hidden from

the Methodist circuit riders. But the prevailing and almost the sole

type of religion in that part of Indiana during Lincoln's boyhood

was Baptist, and in spite of all that Mrs. Lincoln believed about

the freedom of it, it was a very unprogressive type of preaching.

The preachers bellowed and spat and whined, and cultivated an

artificial "holy tone" and denounced the Methodists and blasphemed the

Presbyterians and painted a hell whose horror even in the backwoods was

an atrocity. Against it the boy Abe Lincoln rebelled. Many another boy

with an active mind has been driven by the same type of preaching into

infidelity.

Dr. Johnson quotes as indicative of the religious mind of the young

Lincoln the four lines[12] which in his fourteenth year he wrote on

the flyleaf of his schoolbook, and the two lines which he wrote in the

copybook of a schoolmate:

"_Abraham Lincoln

his hand and pen--

he will be good but

God knows When_";

and

"_Good boys who to their books apply

Will all be great men by and by._"

Commenting on these Dr. Johnson says: "These show two things: First,

that the youthful boy had faith in his mother's God; and, second, that

he believed his mother's teachings."[13]

In like manner Dr. Johnson takes the four hymns which Dennis Hanks

remembered to have been sung by himself and Abe and says:

"A soul that can appreciate these hymns must recognize, first, that

without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin; second,

that Jesus Christ died upon the Cross for the salvation of the world;

third, that life without the Saviour is an empty bubble, and, fourth,

that loyal devotion to the Christ and his cause is man's highest

calling, and the test of true character."--_Lincoln the Christian_,

pp. 28-29.

This is very far-fetched. It shows only that Abe sang such songs, good,

bad, and indifferent, as were current in his day, and without any very

fine discrimination either in songs sacred or secular. If one were to

make a creed out of any of his poetry in this period, it were better to

find it in his jingle, about the Kickapoo Indian, Johnny Kongapod.[14]

He was supposed to have composed an epitaph for himself that ran on

this wise:

"_Here lies poor Johnny Kongapod;

Have mercy on him, gracious God,

As he would do if he was God

And you were Johnny Kongapod._"

It matters not for our purpose that these lines were not strictly

original with Johnny Kongapod. We meet them in George Macdonald's story

"David Elginbrod," and they have been used doubtless in rural England

for generations. But they involve a certain rude and noble faith that

the Judge of all the earth will do right and that divine justice and

human justice have a common measure. Lincoln never forgot that, and he

learned it on Pigeon Creek.

Herndon is our authority, if we needed any, that the Baptist preaching

of Lincoln's boyhood made him a lifelong fatalist.[15] He emerged into

manhood with the conviction that "whatever is to be will be," and Mrs.

Lincoln declared that this was his answer to threats concerning his

assassination; that it had been his lifelong creed and continued still

to be the ruling dogma of his life.

It would have gladdened the heart of Sarah Bush if her stepson, whom

she loved with a tenderness almost surpassing that which she bestowed

upon her own flesh and blood, had manifested in his youth some signs

of that irresistible grace which was supposed to carry the assurance

of conversion as an act not of man but of the Holy Spirit. He did not

manifest that grace in the form in which she desired. She could not

consistently blame him very much, for, according to her own creed and

that of Thomas Lincoln, nothing that he could have done of his own

volition would have mattered very much.

Horace Bushnell's _Christian Nurture_ had not yet been written; and if

it had there was not a preacher among the Baptists in southern Indiana

who would not have denounced it as a creation of the devil. There were

no Sunday schools in those churches, and when they began to appear they

were vigorously opposed. There was no Christian nurture for the boy Abe

Lincoln save the sincere but lethargic religion of his father and the

motherly ministrations of his stepmother.

But "Abe was a good boy." With tears in her eyes Sarah Bush could

remember that he never gave her a cross word. He was unregenerate, but

not unlovable; and he had more faith than perhaps he realized.

CHAPTER IV

THE ENVIRONMENTS OF LINCOLN'S YOUNG MANHOOD

THE second period of Lincoln's religious life extends from his removal

into Illinois in March of 1830 until the establishment of his residence

in Springfield, April 15, 1837.

Thomas Lincoln was a thriftless farmer who blamed external conditions

for his misfortunes. Following a second appearance of the "milk sick,"

which came to southern Indiana in the winter of 1829, he and his family

removed in March of 1830 to Illinois. Abraham was twenty-one years of

age. He assisted his father to get established in the new home, to

which a wearying journey of fourteen days had brought the household,

and then set out in life for himself. For several months he worked

near home, but in the spring of 1831 he made his second flatboat trip

to New Orleans. The boat stuck on a dam at Rutledge's mill at New

Salem, and his ingenuity in getting it over the dam won him local fame

and had something to do with his subsequent establishment of a home

there. The flatboat stuck on April 19, 1831. In June he returned to

New Salem and entered into business with Denton Offutt in a small and

non-remunerative general store. While waiting for the opening of this

store he became acquainted with Mentor Graham, a school teacher of

local celebrity, whom Lincoln assisted as clerk of a local election,

and through him learned the contents of Kirkham's Grammar, and also

acquired the essential elements of surveying. New Salem was a sporadic

town which had no good reason to exist. It was established in 1829 and

lasted barely seven years. It was located on the Sangamon River, some

fifteen miles from Springfield.

In February, 1832, this flatboat hand, then working as clerk, began

his canvass for the Legislature, his formal announcement of candidacy

appearing March 9. He was defeated, but received an encouraging local

vote. In 1832 he had a brief experience as a soldier, serving in the

Black Hawk War, starting in pursuit of the Indians on April 27 and

returning in July. Excepting for his absences at the Black Hawk War

and in attendance upon the meetings of the Legislature in Vandalia,

he was in New Salem practically during the whole of the history of

that little town. He established a partnership in the firm of Lincoln

& Berry, keepers of a general store, a business for which he had no

qualification, and he accumulated debts, which he was unable to pay in

full until after his first term in Congress seventeen years later. On

May 7, 1833, he became postmaster of the microscopic village of New

Salem, and held that position until May 30, 1836, about which date the

town disappeared. In August, 1834, he was elected to the Legislature,

then sitting at Vandalia, and had an important share in the removal of

the state capital from there to Springfield.

In New Salem occurred two of Lincoln's three recorded love affairs.[16]

In 1834 he fell in love with Ann Rutledge, to whom he became engaged,

and who died, August 25, 1835. In the autumn of 1836 he made love to

Miss Mary Owens, who refused him. These two love affairs are related

in detail by Lamon and by Herndon; the second of them gave rise to

Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Browning, one of the least creditable things

that ever came from his pen (Herndon, I, 192).

Heart-broken over the death of Ann Rutledge and ashamed of himself for

his lack of gallantry in his love affair with Miss Owens, he saw New

Salem doomed in all its hopes of being a city.

While sitting about the store waiting for business which did not come,

he read law after a desultory fashion, becoming what he called not

inappropriately "a mast-fed lawyer." For the benefit of any reader

to whom this term conveys no meaning, it may be stated that "mast"

consists of acorns, nuts, and other edible commodities, which hogs

running at large in the wilderness are able to feed upon. Between a

hog corn-fed in a stye and a backwoods mast-fed razor-back, there

is a marked difference, and Lincoln's phrase was a very apt one. In

the autumn of 1836 he obtained a law license. On March, 1837, he was

admitted to the bar. On April 15, 1837, he moved to Springfield.

With his Springfield experience we shall deal later; that is an epoch

by itself. We now consider the conditions of life in New Salem and

their influence in shaking the religious character of Abraham Lincoln.

New Salem, while an insignificant hamlet, was located on the Sangamon

River and received its share of the travel to and from Springfield.

Its central institutions were its tavern, where Lincoln boarded, and

the store, where he read grammar and law, discussed politics, and

occasionally sold goods.

The influence of life in New Salem upon the mind of Abraham Lincoln was

very marked. We must not make the mistake of considering it solely in

the character of a poor little frontier town destined to short life and

in its day of no consequence to the world. To Lincoln it was a city,

and it had its own ambitions to become a greater city. Although it had

scarcely twenty houses, not one of them costing much over a hundred

dollars, and not more than a hundred inhabitants, it was to him no mean

city. Here Lincoln developed rapidly. He read, discussed, thought,

wrote, and spoke on a wide variety of subjects. His style was that of

florid declamation, a stump oratory with some affectation of erudition.

He made the most of his few books, and every one of them left its deep

impression upon him. He continued to read the Bible, and grew somewhat

familiar with Shakespeare, Burns, and even Byron. While there was no

church building in New Salem, and church services were irregular, such

services as were held were generally in the tavern where he boarded, a

tavern kept at first by James Rutledge and afterward by Henry Onstott.

It is interesting to cull out of T. G. Onstott's reminiscences a number

that are based on his own recollections, supplemented perhaps by

traditions received from his father:

"After James Rutledge moved out of the log tavern, my father, Henry

Onstott, moved in and occupied it from 1833 till 1835, and still had

for a boarder Abraham Lincoln. It was at this time that my early

impressions of him were formed. We did not know at that time that

we were entertaining an angel unawares. My first knowledge of him

was as a great marble player. He kept us small boys running in all

directions gathering up the marbles he would scatter. During this

time he followed surveying, having learned in six weeks from books

furnished him by John Calhoun, of Springfield. About this time he

commenced to read some law-books which he borrowed of Bowling Green,

who lived one-half mile north of Salem. I think my father and Esquire

Green did more than any other two men in determining Lincoln's future

destiny."--T. G. ONSTOTT: _Lincoln and Salem--Pioneers of Menard and

Mason Counties_, p. 25.

Of Lincoln's habits he says:

"Lincoln never drank liquor of any kind and never chewed or smoked.

We never heard him swear, though Judge Weldon said at the Salem

Chautauqua that once in his life when he was excited he said, 'By

Jing!'"--ONSTOTT: _Lincoln and Salem_, p. 73.

Of Peter Cartwright, Onstott says:

"He was a great man for camp-meetings and prayer meetings. He was

converted at a camp-meeting, and in his early ministry lived in

a tented grove from two to three months in a year. He said: 'May

the day be eternally distant when camp-meetings, class meetings,

prayer meetings, and love feasts shall be laid aside in Methodist

churches.'...

"There was sound preaching in those days. The preachers preached hell

and damnation more than they do now. They could hold a sinner over

the pit of fire and brimstone till he could see himself hanging by a

slender thread, and he would surrender and accept the gospel that was

offered to him."--ONSTOTT: _Lincoln and Salem_, pp. 120, 127.

Of one of these preachers, Abraham Bale, Onstott says:

"He had a habit when preaching of grasping his left ear with his hand,

then leaning over as far as he could and lowering his voice. He would

commence to straighten up and his voice would rise to a high key. He

would pound the Bible with his fist and stamp the floor, and carry

everything before him. He created excitement in the first years of

his ministry in Salem. He was a Baptist, though not of the hardshell

persuasion."--ONSTOTT: _Lincoln and Salem_, p. 149.

This was the general and accepted habit of Baptist preachers in that

movement, and the author has heard scores of sermons delivered in this

fashion.

Of the religious life of early Illinois and of frontier communities in

general, Professor Pease says:

"Religion came to be the most universally persuasive intellectual

force of the frontier. As might be expected, on the frontier the first

tendency was toward a disregard of religious observances. The emigrant

from the older settled regions left behind him the machinery and the

establishment of sectarian religion. Until that machinery could be set

up again on the frontier he lived without formal worship and often for

the time at least the sense of the need of it passed out of his life.

In cases where observance had been due to social convention, there was

no doubt a welcome feeling of freedom and unrestraint.

"Normally the frontiersman was unreligious. Birkbeck noted with relish

the absence of ceremony at baptism or funeral and the tolerance

of all backwoods preachers alike, whether they raved or reasoned.

Sunday was a day for riot and disorder. Other observers looked with

horror on such a state of things, did their best to set up at least

stated regular worship, and noted an improvement in morals as a

result."--PEASE: _Centennial History of Illinois_, II, 23.

There were, however, some compensations. Fordham wrote:

"This is not the land of hypocrisy. It would not here have its reward.

Religion is not the road to wordly respectability, nor a possession of

it the cloak of immorality."--_Personal Narrative_, p. 128.

Of the sporadic nature of much of the religious effort on the frontier,

Professor Buck says:

"In spite of the tremendous exertions of the pioneer preachers,

many of the remote settlements must have been practically devoid of

religious observances, and even in the older settlements the influence

of occasional visitations, however inspiring they might be, was often

lacking in permanence."--_Illinois in 1818_, p. 179.

Of the lack of permanence there may be some room for a difference of

judgment; there certainly was lack of continuity. As in Kentucky and

southern Indiana, and for a time in southern Illinois, there was no

expectation of a regular weekly religious service conducted by any one

minister, but preachers moved in extended circuits and no considerable

settlement was long without occasional religious service.

There was much godlessness in many of the early settlements. John

Messenger wrote in 1815: "The American inhabitants in the villages

appear to have very little reverence for Christianity or serious things

in any point of view."

While there was some attempt at Sabbath observance, Reynolds says:

"In early times in many settlements of Illinois, Sunday was observed

by the Americans only as a day of rest from work. They generally were

employed in hunting, fishing, getting up their stock, hunting bees,

breaking young horses, shooting at marks, horse and foot racing, and

the like. When the Americans were to make an important journey they

generally started on Sunday and never on Friday; they often said; 'the

better the day the better the deed,'"--REYNOLDS: _My Own Times_, p. 80.

One must not infer from the irregularity of religious services that the

people in these new regions were wholly without religion. Professor

Buck says:

"The spiritual welfare of the Illinois pioneers was not neglected.

The religious observances, with the exception of those of the French

Catholics, were of the familiar type. The principal Protestant

denominations at the close of the territorial period were the

Methodists and the Baptists, the latter classified as 'regular,'

or 'hardshell,' and separating. Presbyterianism was just beginning

to get a foothold. The ministers were of two types--the circuit

rider, who covered wide stretches of country and devoted all his

time to religious work, and the occasional preacher who supplemented

his meager income from the church by farming or some other

occupation."--BUCK: _Illinois in 1818_, p. 173.

Governor Ford has left an account of the unlearned but zealous frontier

preachers, of their sermons, and of the results of their work, which

cannot easily be improved upon:

"Preachers of the gospel frequently sprang up from the body of the

people at home, without previous training, except in religious

exercises and in the study of the Holy Scriptures. In those primitive

times it was not thought to be necessary that a teacher of religion

should be a scholar. It was thought to be his business to preach from

a knowledge of the Scriptures alone, to make appeals warm from the

heart, to paint heaven and hell to the imagination of the sinner, to

terrify him with the one, and to promise the other as a reward for

a life of righteousness. However ignorant these first preachers may

have been, they could be at no loss to find congregations still more

ignorant, so that they were still capable of instructing someone. Many

of them added to their knowledge of the Bible, a diligent perusal of

Young's _Night Thoughts_, Watts' hymns, Milton's _Paradise Lost_, and

Hervey's _Meditations_, a knowledge of which gave more compass to

their thoughts, to be expressed in a profuse, flowery language, and

raised their feelings to the utmost height of poetical enthusiasm.

"Sometimes their sermons turned upon matters of controversy; unlearned

arguments on the subject of free grace, baptism, free-will, election,

faith, good works, justification, sanctification, and the final

perseverance of the saints. But that in which they excelled, was

the earnestness of their words and manner, leaving no doubt of the

strongest conviction in their own minds, and in the vividness of the

pictures which they drew of the ineffable blessedness of heaven, and

the awful torments of the wicked in the fire and brimstone appointed

for eternal punishment. These, with the love of God to sinful man,

the sufferings of the Saviour, the dangerous apathy of sinners, and

exhortations to repentance, furnished themes for the most vehement and

passionate declamations. But above all, they continually inculcated

the great principles of justice and sound morality.

"As many of these preachers were nearly destitute of learning and

knowledge, they made up in loud hallooing and violent action what they

lacked in information. And it was a matter of astonishment to what

length they could spin out a sermon embracing only a few ideas. The

merit of a sermon was measured somewhat by the length of it, by the

flowery language of the speaker, and by his vociferation and violent

gestures. Nevertheless, these first preachers were of incalculable

benefit to the country. They inculcated justice and morality, and

to the sanction of the highest human motives to regard them, added

those which arise from a belief of the greatest conceivable amount of

future rewards and punishments. They were truly patriotic also; for

at a time when the country was so poor that no other kind of ministry

could have been maintained in it, they preached without charge to

the people, working week days to aid the scanty charities of their

flocks, in furnishing themselves with a scantier living. They believed

with a positive certainty that they saw the souls of men rushing to

perdition; and they stepped forward to warn and to save, with all

the enthusiasm and self-devotion of a generous man who risks his own

life to save his neighbor from drowning. And to them are we indebted

for the first Christian character of the Protestant portion of this

people."--THOMAS FORD: _History of Illinois_, pp. 38-40.

"Of the hostility of certain of the early Baptists to enlightenment,

there is abundant evidence in their own fierce opposition to their

ablest minister, John Mason Peck. He was born in 1789 in the

Congregational atmosphere of Connecticut, but, becoming a Baptist

by conviction, became a missionary to the West in 1817. His foes

were they of his own household. They fiercely fought against Bible

societies, Sunday schools, and missionary societies. In 1828, when

Peter Cartwright and James Lemen endeavored to secure the passage of a

bill for the prevention of vice and immorality, there was an attempt

to amend it in the interests of certain of the Hardshell Baptists

by adding to the section against the disturbance of public worship

a clause to fine in any sum not less than five dollars or more than

fifteen any person who on Sunday would sell any pamphlet or book or

take up an offering 'for the support of missionary societies, Bible

societies, or Sunday school.' There were not less than twelve members

of the House of Representatives who voted for this bill."--PEASE:

_Centennial History of Illinois_, II, 28, 29.

One evidence of the hostility of many of the early inhabitants and

especially of some who were active in politics toward organized

religion, as well as the tendency of ministers of that period to

participate in politics, is found in the fact that Illinois narrowly

escaped having in her Constitution a provision disqualifying all

ministers to hold office in the State. When the Constitutional

Convention assembled at Kaskaskia this question was earnestly

discussed, and the controversy was waged also in the columns of the

_Western Intelligencer_, which was published in Kaskaskia from 1806

to 1814. A writer who signed himself "A Foe to Religious Tyranny"

roundly denounced the political sermons of certain of the ministers,

and charged that they intended to disqualify any citizens for office

excepting "professors of religion."

When the first draft of the Constitution was submitted in August, 1818,

Article II, Section 26, read: "Whereas the ministers of the gospel are

by their profession dedicated to God and the care of souls, and ought

not to be diverted from the great duties of their function: Therefore,

no minister of the gospel or priest of any denomination whatever, shall

be eligible to a seat in either house of the Legislature."

This article was warmly commended by a writer in the _Intelligencer_

under date of August 12, 1818, who commended the framers of the

Constitution for their provision "to exempt ministers of the gospel

from the servile and arduous drudgery of legislation, and of

electioneering to procure themselves seats in the Legislature," but

urged the convention to extend the provision so as to disqualify

ministers from holding any office whatever. A number of members of

the Constitutional Convention favored this drastic proscription. On

the first reading the proposed article was approved; but it was later

reconsidered and voted down.

Ministers thus were left on a plane with other citizens as regarded

the holding of public office; and their candidacy for the Legislature

especially was not infrequent; indeed, one of the writers who engaged

in this controversy considered the appalling possibility that the

Constitutional Convention might have been composed entirely of

ministers, and that some future session of the Legislature might find

them in complete control. There never was any danger that ministers

would make up a controlling faction in the Illinois Legislature; but

they were not a negligible element in the early political life of the

State.

Lincoln soon came into the political atmosphere which was thus affected

by religious controversy, and it had an influence upon him. His most

formidable and persistent opponent, until he met Douglas, was a

Methodist preacher, the redoubtable Peter Cartwright who defeated him

in a contest for the Legislature and whom he defeated in a race for

Congress. Lincoln was quite familiar with religion in its relation to

politics in early Illinois.

Of Lincoln's theological opinions, especially those which he cherished

while at New Salem, and which Herndon believed he did not materially

change, Herndon says:

"Inasmuch as he was often a candidate for public office Mr. Lincoln

said as little as possible about his religious opinions, especially

if he failed to coincide with the orthodox world. In illustration of

his religious code, I once heard him say that it was like that of an

old man named Glenn, in Indiana, whom he heard speak at a religious

meeting, and who said, 'When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad,

I feel bad; and that's my religion.' In 1834, while still living in

New Salem, and before he became a lawyer, he was surrounded by a

class of people exceedingly liberal in matters of religion. Volney's

_Ruins_ and Paine's _Age of Reason_ passed from hand to hand, and

furnished food for the evening's discussion in the tavern and village

store. Lincoln read both these books, and assimilated them into his

own being. He prepared an extended essay--called by many, a book--in

which he made an argument against Christianity, striving to prove that

the Bible was not inspired, and therefore not God's revelation, and

that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God. The manuscript containing

these audacious and comprehensive propositions he intended to have

published or given a wide circulation in some other way. He carried

it to the store, where it was read and freely discussed. His friend

and employer, Samuel Hill, was among the listeners, and seriously

questioning the propriety of a promising young man like Lincoln

fathering such unpopular notions, he snatched the manuscript from his

hands, and thrust it into the stove. The book went up in flames, and

Mr. Lincoln's political future was secure. But his infidelity and his

skeptical views were not diminished."--HERNDON, III, 439-440.

We shall have occasion in a subsequent chapter to recur to this

so-called book which Lincoln is alleged to have written while in New

Salem. It is sufficient at this time to remember, and the fact must

not be overlooked, that our knowledge of this book depends solely upon

the testimony of Herndon. Herndon never saw the book, and so far as

is known he never talked with anyone who had seen it. He affirms that

Lincoln never denied having written a book on the subject of religion,

but he nowhere claims that Lincoln told him in detail concerning its

contents. Herndon's principal visit, and perhaps the only one which

he made to New Salem in quest of literary material, was in October in

1866. He had attended the Circuit Court of Menard County on Saturday,

October 13, and on Sunday morning at 11:20 A.M., as he tells us with

painstaking and lawyer-like particularity, he visited the site of New

Salem. That afternoon and a part of the next morning, which he says

was misty, cloudy, foggy, and cold, he made inquiry of the oldest

inhabitant of that part of the country and wrote out the substance of

his lecture on Ann Rutledge. This was a whole generation after Lincoln

had removed from the now depopulated New Salem, and there were very

few people in the neighborhood who remembered him through any personal

association. The town had completely disappeared, but Herndon found

the site of the houses that once had stood there, and also found and

identified the grave of Ann Rutledge. To that visit we are indebted

for a good deal of our knowledge of the background of Lincoln's life

during this formative epoch. But we are not bound to accept all of Mr.

Herndon's inferences regarding it.

It must be remembered that Herndon's lecture did not pass unchallenged.

So small was the audience when he delivered it and so uniformally

unfavorable were the press comments that he never repeated this

lecture, and some of its statements are open to question. It is not in

this lecture that we learn of the essay which Lincoln is alleged to

have written in criticism of the Bible, but that was the visit on which

Herndon appears to have gathered his information concerning Lincoln's

more intimate relations with New Salem.

There is no good reason to doubt that Lincoln during this period read

Volney and Paine, and that having read them he rushed rather quickly to

paper and set down his immature thoughts in argumentative fashion. It

would divert us from our present purpose of portraying the environment

if we were to consider in detail at this point the story of Lincoln's

burnt book. The reader will do well to remember, however, that Herndon,

though truthful, was not infallible nor on this point free from bias;

that neither Herndon nor anyone else then living was known to have

seen, much less to have read, the book alleged to have been burned

thirty-two years before; and that there was abundant opportunity

not only for exaggeration but even for a complete misunderstanding

concerning the actual content of this book.

Indeed, this incident has been allowed to pass with too little

criticism or challenge. Those who did not believe Lincoln to have been

a man of faith were glad to accept the story; those who believed that

he later was a man of faith were not wholly unwilling to believe that

he had once been an infidel and later had undergone a marked change

of opinion. There seemed no good reason to dispute Herndon, and no

one else was supposed to know more about the subject than he. But we

shall discover that Herndon may not have learned the whole truth. There

is more than a possibility that the manuscript that was burned was a

document of quite another sort.

If Lincoln was regarded as an infidel, and if he ever was tempted

to think himself one, we should not be justified in accepting that

judgment as final until we knew and considered what was required in

that time and place to constitute a man an infidel.

In the mind of most if not all of the Baptist preachers whom Lincoln

heard while he was at New Salem, a belief that the earth was round was

sufficient to brand a man as an infidel. The Methodists, as a rule,

would have admitted that the earth was round, but Peter Cartwright

would probably have considered a man an infidel who believed that the

earth was not created in seven literal days. At Vandalia, Lincoln heard

some ministers of wider vision, such as Edward Beecher and Julian M.

Sturtevant, who were occasionally there, and John Mason Peck; but these

experiences were rare. His association with Methodists was largely in

the political arena, where he crossed swords three times with Peter

Cartwright. That doughty hero of the Cross was born in Virginia on

September 1, 1786, and exerted a mighty influence for good in early

Illinois. With a nominal salary of $80 a year, and an actual salary

of $30 or $40, he rode thousands of miles through deep mud, baptized

8,000 children and 4,000 adults, conducted camp-meetings and political

campaigns, and sang and shouted and in his own language whipped the

devil round the stump and hit him a crack at every jump until his death

at Pleasant Plains, Illinois, September 25, 1872. He defeated Lincoln

for the Legislature, and was defeated by him for Congress in 1846. So

far as we know, Lincoln left no record of his feeling toward Cartwright

and the Methodists. He could not have failed to respect such men, but

it is not altogether certain that he was tempted to love them.

By the time Lincoln was seventeen, and possibly earlier, he believed

the earth to be round. I shall not succeed in making the reader

understand the possible effect of this discovery upon him and certain

of his associates without relating an experience of my own.

In the summer of 1881, being then a college student on vacation, I

taught school in the mountains of Kentucky far beyond the end of

the railroad. The school was a large and prosperous one and brought

many students from other districts who paid a trifling tuition and

were preparing to teach. The curriculum included everything from the

alphabet to a simplified normal course. A majority of my pupils had but

one textbook, Webster's Blueback Speller. I endeavored to make up for

the lack of textbooks by lessons in the Natural Sciences and in such

other branches of study as seemed adapted to the requirements of my

pupils. After a few weeks one of my pupils, son of a Baptist minister,

was taken out of school. His father being interviewed stated that he

was sorry to have the boy lose his education, but could not afford to

permit him to be converted to infidelity. What the boy had learned

which disturbed his father was that the earth was round.

The subject provoked widespread discussion, and finally resulted in a

joint debate between two school teachers and two Baptist preachers on

the question:

"_Resolved_, That the earth is flat and stationary, and that the sun

moves around it once in twenty-four hours."

At early candle-lighting on two successive Friday evenings this

question was debated. On each night the procedure was the same. Each

of the speakers spoke forty-five minutes, and each of the leaders

spent a half-hour in rebuttal, a total of four hours each evening of

solid oratory. I should like to relate, but it would unduly extend

this narrative, the learned arguments of the two college students who

stood for the rotundity of the earth, and how those arguments were

met. I well remember the closing argument of my chief opponent, not

the local preacher but an abler man whom he brought in, the cousin of

a Confederate General of the same name (though himself a stanch Union

man) who stood beside and above me with long descending gestures that

threatened to crush my skull as he shouted:

"He's a college student-ah! And he's come out here to larn us and

instruct us about the shape of the yarth-ah! And he knows more'n

Joshua-ah! And he'd take Joshua into this here school and tell him he

didn't know what he'd ort to pray for-ah! He'd tell Joshua that he

hadn't orter said, 'Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon-ah, and thou moon

in the valley of Ajalon-ah!' He'd tell Joshua that he'd ort to have

prayed, 'Yarth, stand thou still upon thine axle-tree-ah!' But I reckon

God knowed what Joshua had ort to have prayed for, for it is written

in the Word of God that the sun stood still-ah! I tell ye, brethering,

hit's the doctrine of infidelity-ah! And any man that teaches it ort to

be drove out of the country-ah!"

There is much more of the story, but this must suffice to illustrate

an important point. Until he went to live in Springfield, Abraham

Lincoln probably never had heard a Baptist preacher, unless it was John

Mason Peck on some errand to Vandalia, who did not believe the earth

flat, and who would not have classified Abraham Lincoln as an infidel

for denying the declaration.

Now, I knew that I was not an infidel, even though I parted company

with my friends in the Baptist ministry in my belief that the earth

was round, and even though I had a similar debate with a well-informed

Methodist preacher on the length of time that was required to make the

earth. But Abraham Lincoln did not know. Thomas Paine and the preachers

were agreed in their misinformation.

I count it a privilege to have lived with earnest and intelligent

people who believed the earth flat, and to whom that belief was an

important article of Christian faith. But I saw intelligent young men

who had come to another opinion concerning some of these matters who

accepted without protest the names that overzealous mountain preachers

applied to them, and who, believing themselves to be infidels, in time

became so.

Not many of Lincoln's biographers, if indeed any of them, have shared

these advantages which for several profitable years I had in the

mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee; and I am less ready than some of

even the most orthodox of them have been to accept the declaration that

when Lincoln left New Salem he was an infidel. Even if I knew that

he thought himself to be such, I should like before forming my final

conclusion to know just what he thought constituted an infidel. I do

not think that at this period of his history Abraham Lincoln possessed

an adequate knowledge of the subject to have been altogether competent

to classify himself.

A few things we know about him. He had established a reputation for

courage, for kindness, and for honesty. "Honest Abe" was his sobriquet,

and he deserved it. Whatever his opinions, he held them honestly; and

neither on earth nor in heaven can any man be rightfully condemned for

the holding of an honest opinion.

We shall have occasion later to refer to Mentor Graham, and to quote

him. He came into Lincoln's life at this time, and taught him Kirkham's

Grammar, and the study of surveying, and assisted him with his literary

composition. He knew more of the mind of Abraham Lincoln during this

period than any other man, and we shall hear from him in due time.

New Salem "winked out," as Lincoln was accustomed to say. It

disappeared from the map. The post-office was discontinued. There was

nothing to hold Lincoln there. But the great city of Springfield,

with its one thousand inhabitants and its majestic pride in its new

State Capitol, which Lincoln had done much to remove thither from

Vandalia, beckoned to this ambitious young lawyer and politician, and

on March 15, 1837, he borrowed a horse, rode to Springfield with all

his worldly goods in his saddlebags, and the saddlebags none too full,

and thereafter became a resident of the capital city of Illinois, and a

permanent factor in its legal and political life.

* * * * *

Lincoln arrived in New Salem on April 19, 1831, a tall, lank flatboat

hand, with his trousers rolled up "about five feet," and he left it

on a borrowed horse with all his belongings in a pair of saddlebags,

March 15, 1837. So far as worldly wealth was concerned, he was richer

when he arrived at the age of twenty-two than when he left at the

age of twenty-eight, for he was heavily in debt. It had fared better

with him financially had he spent those six years in Illinois College

at Jacksonville. He might have entered Springfield at the same time

with a college diploma and a smaller debt. A college education was

not impossible for him, and he might have had it had he cared for it

as much as did the Green brothers or the brother of Ann Rutledge, or,

among his later associates, Shelby M. Collum or Newton Bateman. It is

a fair question whether an education under such good and great men

as Julian M. Sturtevant and Edward Beecher would have been more or

less valuable than what he actually got; in any event, it was not an

impossibility if he had cared as much for it as did some other boys as

poor as he.

But New Salem was his _alma mater_, as Mrs. Atkinson has aptly termed

it, and there he got what had to stand as the equivalent of his

academic course.

To have seen him entering New Salem on a flatboat and leaving it on

a borrowed horse, one might easily have arrived at very erroneous

conclusions as to what the six years had done for him. But the years

were not lost.

He came to New Salem a strong pioneer, proud of his great height,

and he always remained almost childishly proud of it, and ready to

challenge any other tall man to back up to him and discover which was

the taller. He was capable of hard work, and disinclined to perform it.

Thomas Lincoln had taught him to work, but not to love work; and his

employers declared that he loved labor far less than his meals and pay.

If he must work, he preferred almost any kind of work rather than that

of the farm, and he had welcomed the brief experiences of the river and

had serious thoughts of being a blacksmith. He had prized his great

strength less for the labor he might perform than for the supremacy

which it gave him in physical contests; and it had made him the admired

leader of the local wrestlers and the idol of the Clary Grove gang.

He had come to New Salem able to read, and to make what he called

"rabbit tracks" as clerk on election day, assisting Mentor Graham,

who rewarded him many fold in what he later taught to the young

giant. He left New Salem a competent surveyor, a member of the bar, a

representative in the Legislature, and, he might have called himself

Captain, if he had chosen to do so, or even taken advantage of the

frontier's ready system of post-bellum promotions and acquired higher

rank as an officer who had seen actual military service. He had the

good sense not to do this, and about the only commendable thing in

his one important speech in Congress in later years was his mirthful

description of his own military performance.

He had learned to think, to compose reasonably good English, to stand

on his feet and debate. He had learned to measure his intellectual

strength against that of other men, and to come out ahead at least part

of the time. He was possessed of almost inordinate ambition, and had

no false notion that in his case the office was to seek the man;[17] he

was more than ready for any office that would support him, enable him

to reduce his "national debt," and advance him toward something higher.

He was entering the profession of the law, but law was to him as yet a

means to an end, and that end was office. Politics was the vocation and

law the avocation in a large percentage of the law offices in Illinois

and other new States; and Lincoln was a politician long before he was a

lawyer.

His residence in New Salem had tested his moral character and confirmed

his personal habits. He did not drink nor swear nor use tobacco.

In a state of society such as then existed, there was almost nothing

which such a young man might not have aspired to, and Lincoln had high

self-esteem and large aspiration. From this distance we see him leaving

New Salem to "wink out" while he rode his borrowed steed far beyond

Springfield, to tether him at last where Thomas Jefferson is alleged to

have hitched his horse, to the palings of the White House.

But it was no exultant mood which possessed the soul of Lincoln as he

turned his back upon his _alma mater_ and went forth to conquer the

world. He was a briefless lawyer, and bedless as well as briefless. He

had met and mastered men, but had become painfully aware of his own

poverty, his lack of education, his utter ignorance of the usages of

even such polite society as had been in New Salem, to say nothing of

that in Springfield.

He was unsettled in love and unsettled in religion, though he had been

on speaking terms with both. He had loved and lost Ann Rutledge, and

he did not love Mary Owens and could not lose her. He was about to

begin one of the loneliest periods of his very lonely life. For a year

only one woman in Springfield spoke to him, and she would rather not

have done so. He did not go to church nor mingle in society, but faced

the hard and bitter problems that confronted him in earning a living,

making some small payments on his debt, settling his relations with

Mary Owens, and possibly giving some thought to his soul. But this was

not a time of one of his spiritual high water-marks.

If we had seen Abraham Lincoln as he entered New Salem and again

six years later as he left it, we should have found small reason to

anticipate very much of what afterward occurred. But looking back upon

him in the light of what occurred afterward, we discern the "promise

and potency" of the great man he afterward became in the sad young man

who already had become a leader of men, and had earned the right to be

called "Honest Abe."

CHAPTER V

THE ENVIRONMENT OF LINCOLN'S LIFE IN SPRINGFIELD

ABRAHAM LINCOLN became a resident of Springfield on Wednesday, March

15, 1837, and continued to live there until his removal, Saturday,

February 11, 1860, to assume his duties as President of the United

States. He was accepted as partner by his friend and former commander,

Major John T. Stuart, and shared an office in which politics was the

major interest and law was incidentally practiced. His partnership

with Stuart continued for four years, from April 27, 1837, until April

14, 1841. His next partnership was with Judge Stephen T. Logan, and

extended from April 14, 1841, to September 20, 1843.

He then formed a partnership with William H. Herndon which began on

the day of the dissolution of the partnership with Judge Logan and was

never formally dissolved. Lincoln had a working alliance with some

lawyer in almost every county seat which he habitually visited, whereby

the local lawyer secured the cases and worked them up, and Lincoln took

them in charge as senior counsel when they came to trial.[18] These

were not formal partnerships, though they were often so spoken of. This

method gave him a large practice, and brought him into contact and

collision with the ablest lawyers in central and southern Illinois.

In 1838 and again in 1840 he was re-elected to the Legislature, and

showed little of the ability which he later manifested, but was a

faithful member, and he flung himself with ardor into the noisy

campaign of 1840.

In 1842 he had his "duel" with James T. Shields, and later had the good

sense to be ashamed of it.

In 1846 he ran for Congress, and at this third attempt was elected,

taking his seat December 6, 1847, and continuing for two years.

The slavery issue was becoming dominant. Lincoln was not at the outset

an abolitionist, and was unwilling to be placed in a position where

he would be compelled to imperil his political chances by taking too

definite a stand on this divisive measure; but on March 3, 1837,

he introduced into the Legislature a vigorous protest against the

aggressions of the pro-slavery party, a protest which probably failed

to affect his political future because it contained only one signature

beside his own. Only a few months later occurred the martyrdom of Owen

Lovejoy at Alton, and the slavery issue was no longer one to be kept

in the background. It is good to be able to remember that Lincoln's

first protest against it was recorded before it had become so burning

an issue. He himself dated his hostility to slavery to what he saw of a

slave market in New Orleans when he visited that city as a boat hand.

But he was unable to remember a time when he had not believed that

slavery was wrong.

On other moral questions he now began to speak. He delivered an

address on Temperance on Washington's Birthday in 1842. His first

notable oratorical flight outside the spheres of politics and law was

delivered before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield on January 27,

1837, and was on "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions."

It took him longer to say it than it did at Gettysburg, and it was

not so well said, but the rather florid lecture was intended to mean

essentially the same thing which he later expressed much more simply

and effectively.

His most important case that had a bearing on the slavery issue was

that of Bailey _vs._ Cromwell, when he was thirty-two years of age. In

preparing to argue before the Supreme Court of Illinois in favor of the

freedom of a slave girl, he learned the legal aspects of the question

which later he was to decide on its military and ethical character.

In 1858 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate

against Stephen A. Douglas, and conducted that series of debates which

made him known throughout the nation as the champion of freedom in the

territories, and of the faith that the nation could not forever endure

half slave and half free. In the autumn of 1859 he visited Kansas, and

was hailed as the friend of freedom.

On Tuesday evening, February 27, 1860, he delivered an address in

Cooper Union in New York City, an address which greatly extended his

fame. On the preceding Sunday he attended Plymouth Church and heard and

met Henry Ward Beecher.

On May 16, 1860, he was nominated for the Presidency of the United

States by a great convention meeting in a temporary structure known as

"the Wigwam" standing on Lake and Market Streets near the junction of

the two branches of Chicago River. On November 7, 1860, he was elected

President.

On Friday, November 4, 1842, he was married to Miss Mary Todd. She

was born in Lexington, Kentucky, December 13, 1818, and had come to

Springfield to be with her sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, in whose

home the marriage occurred. Concerning this marriage and the events

which went before and after, much has been written and nothing need

here be repeated.

When Lincoln arrived in Springfield, he found himself for the first

time in his life living in a town with churches that held service every

Sunday, and each church under the care of its own minister. Springfield

had several churches, and he did not at first attend any of them.

This does not seem to have been on account of any hostility which he

entertained toward them, but his first months in Springfield were

months of great loneliness and depression. He was keenly conscious of

his poverty and of his social disqualifications. He was still tortured

by his unhappy love affair with Mary Owens. More than a year after his

arrival in Springfield he wrote to her that he had not yet attended

church and giving as the reason that he would not know how to behave

himself:

"This thing of living in Springfield is rather a dull business, after

all; at least, it is so to me. I am quite as lonesome here as I ever

was anywhere in my life. I have been spoken to by but one woman since

I have been here, and should not have been by her if she could have

avoided it. I have never been to church yet, nor probably shall not

be soon. I stay away because I am conscious I should not know how to

behave myself. I am often thinking about what we said of your coming

to live at Springfield. I am afraid you would not be satisfied. There

is a great deal of flourishing about in carriages here, which it would

be your doom to see without sharing it. You would have to be poor,

without the means of hiding your poverty."

Lincoln's habit with respect to churchgoing underwent no very marked

improvement after his marriage until the year 1850. He came, however,

to know a number of ministers[19] and to sustain somewhat pleasant

relations with some of them.

Mary Todd had been reared a Presbyterian. For a time after her

marriage she attended and was a member of the Episcopal Church. On

February 1, 1850,[20] their second son, Edward Baker Lincoln, died.

The little boy was between three and four years old. The rector of the

Episcopal Church was absent from the city and the funeral service was

conducted by Rev. James Smith, D.D., of the First Presbyterian Church.

A friendship was established between them, and Mr. Lincoln took a pew

in Dr. Smith's church and he and Mrs. Lincoln attended there regularly.

In a later chapter we shall have occasion to consider more directly and

at length the influence of Dr. Smith upon Mr. Lincoln. We now confine

ourselves to the fact that Lincoln now became a church attendant under

the ministry of a preacher quite different from any he had previously

known.

James Smith was a large and stalwart Scotchman. He is described as

Websterian in appearance and in the strength of logical argument. Lamon

speaks of him in contemptuous phrase which reflects little credit upon

Lamon, describing him as a man of slender ability. Whatever Dr. Smith

was, he was not a man of meager intellectual power. He had a massive

mind and one well trained. He had a voice of great carrying power and

was accustomed to speaking to large congregations both indoors and out.

He was a wide reader and a skilled controversialist. In his own young

manhood he had been a deist, and when he was converted he entered with

great ardor into various discussions with men who opposed the Christian

faith. One such discussion he had engaged in with a widely known

infidel author. The debate had continued evening after evening in a

Southern city for nearly three weeks and Dr. Smith had emerged from it

triumphant.

Dr. Smith was just the kind of man to win the admiration of Lincoln

at that time. There is some reason to believe that Dr. Smith's three

weeks' debate with C. G. Olmsted at Columbus, Mississippi, suggested to

Lincoln the idea of his debate with Stephen A. Douglas.

That Lincoln's views underwent some change at this time there is the

best reason to believe. Lincoln himself declared to his brother-in-law,

Ninian W. Edwards, that his views had been modified.

Lamon and Herndon both seek to represent Dr. Smith as an officious,

self-advertising meddler, who sought to win renown for himself by

proclaiming Mr. Lincoln's conversion through his personal influence.

The claims and conduct of Dr. Smith do not seem to merit any such

rebuke. Whatever Dr. Smith claimed, Mr. Lincoln knew about it and

was not offended by it. Subsequently he appointed Dr. Smith's son

United States Consul to Dundee, Scotland, and on the son's return to

the United States Mr. Lincoln appointed his father, who by that time

had retired from the ministry, to succeed him in that position. Even

Lamon is compelled to admit that Dr. Smith's claims were made with Mr.

Lincoln's knowledge, and says:

"Mr. Lincoln permitted himself to be misunderstood and misrepresented

by some enthusiastic ministers and exhorters with whom he came in

contact. Among these was the Rev. Mr. Smith, then pastor of the First

Presbyterian Church of Springfield, and afterward consul at Dundee, in

Scotland, under Mr. Lincoln's appointment."--LAMON, _Life of Lincoln_,

p. 498.

This statement is thoroughly discreditable, and that which follows

in Lamon's account of Mr. Lincoln's relations with Dr. Smith is a

thorough misrepresentation, as we shall later discover. Lamon was not a

deliberate liar; neither was he in this matter free from prejudice; and

he wrote with reckless disregard of some facts which he did not know

but ought to have known, and which the reader of this book shall know.

About this time Mr. Lincoln received word that his own father was

dying, and was prevented from making him a personal visit, which,

apparently, he was not wholly sorry for. On January 12, 1851, he wrote

to his stepbrother, John D. Johnson:

"I sincerely hope father may recover his health, but, tell him to

remember to call upon and confide in our great and good and merciful

Maker, who will not turn away from him in any extremity. He notes the

fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our head, and He will not

forget the dying man who puts his trust in Him. Say to him that if we

could meet now it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful

than pleasant, but that if it be his lot to go now, he will soon have

a joyous meeting with many loved ones gone before, and where the rest

of us, through the help of God, hope ere long to join them."

Even Herndon grew indignant when anyone attempted to explain away that

letter, or to make it seem anything less than it purported to be. He

said in his letter to Mr. Abbott, under date of February 18, 1870:

"It has been said to me that Mr. Lincoln wrote the above letter to

an old man simply to cheer him up in his last moments, and that

the writer did not believe what he said. The question is, Was Mr.

Lincoln an honest and truthful man? If he was, he wrote that letter

honestly, believing it. It has to me the sound, the ring, of an honest

utterance. I admit that Mr. Lincoln, in his moments of melancholy

and terrible gloom, was living on the border land between theism and

atheism, sometimes quite wholly dwelling in atheism. In his happier

moments he would swing back to theism, and dwell lovingly there....

So it seems to me that Mr. Lincoln believed in God and immortality as

well as heaven--a place."--LAMON, p. 495.

Another incident comes to us from this period and is related by Captain

Gilbert J. Greene. He was a young printer living in Springfield, and at

the time of this incident was eighteen years of age. Whether the story

was in any way exaggerated we may not certainly know, but it is here

given as he himself furnished it for publication and is now printed

with one or two other Lincoln stories in a small volume in limited

edition:

"'Greene,' said Lincoln to him one day on the streets of Springfield,

'I've got to ride out into the country tomorrow to draw a will for

a woman who is believed to be on her deathbed. I may want you for a

witness. If you haven't anything else to do I'd like to have you go

along.'

"The invitation was promptly accepted.

"On the way to the farmhouse the lawyer and the printer chatted

delightfully, cementing a friendship that was fast ripening into real

affection. Arriving at the house, the woman was found to be near her

end.

"With great gentleness Lincoln drew up the document disposing of the

property as the woman desired. Neighbors and relatives were present,

making it unnecessary to call on Greene to witness the instrument.

After the signing and witnessing of the will the woman turned to

Lincoln and said, with a smile:

"'Now I have my affairs for this world arranged satisfactorily. I am

thankful to say that long before this I have made preparation for the

other life I am so soon to enter. Many years ago I sought and found

Christ as my Saviour. He has been my stay and comfort through the

years, and is now near to carry me over the river of death. I do not

fear death, Mr. Lincoln. I am really glad that my time has come, for

loved ones have gone before me and I rejoice in the hope of meeting

them so soon.'

"Instinctively the friends drew nearer the bedside. As the dying woman

had addressed her words more directly to Lincoln than to the others,

Lincoln, evincing sympathy in every look and gesture, bent toward her

and said:

"'Your faith in Christ is wise and strong; your hope of a future life

is blessed. You are to be congratulated in passing through life so

usefully, and into the life beyond so hopefully.'

"'Mr. Lincoln,' said she, 'won't you read a few verses out of the

Bible for me?'

"A member of the family offered him the family Bible. Instead of

taking it, he began reciting from memory the twenty-third Psalm,

laying emphasis upon 'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow

of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy

staff they comfort me.' Still without referring to the Bible, Lincoln

began with the first part of the fourteenth chapter of John:

"'Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in

me.

"'In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would

have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

"'And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and

receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.'

"After he had given these and other quotations from the Scriptures, he

recited various familiar comforting hymns, closing with 'Rock of Ages,

cleft for me.' Then, with a tenderness and pathos that enthralled

everyone in the room, he spoke the last stanza--

"'_While I draw this fleeting breath,

When mine eyes shall close in death,

When I rise to worlds unknown,

See Thee on Thy judgment throne,

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee._'

"While Lincoln was reciting this stanza a look of peace and

resignation lit up the countenance of the dying woman. In a few

minutes more, while the lawyer and the printer were there, she passed

away.

"The journey back to Springfield was begun in silence. It was the

younger man who finally said:

"'Mr. Lincoln, ever since what has just happened back there in the

farmhouse, I have been thinking that it is very extraordinary that you

should so perfectly have acted as pastor as well as attorney.'

"When the answer to this suggestion finally was given--and it was not

given at once--Lincoln said:

"'God, and Eternity, and Heaven were very near to me today.'"--CHARLES

T. WHITE, _Lincoln the Comforter_, pp. 11-16.

Reference should be made in our review of this period to Lincoln's

stories as exhibiting an important phase of his character.

It is not easy to decide what stories actually were Lincoln's. Very

few of them are to be found in their original setting, for he did not

commonly tell stories when he made speeches. They were told in personal

interviews, in hours of recreation, and especially in taverns and other

loafing places. The period of their greatest vogue was that in which

Lincoln traveled the circuit. Most of the successful lawyers of that

day were story-tellers; and in the evenings of court-week they swapped

yarns with local wits. Lincoln was the most famous of a considerable

group of noted Illinois story-tellers.

During his lifetime he was asked about how many of the stories

attributed to him were his own, and he said he thought about half.

A much larger discount would need to be made now. Many such stories

Lincoln probably never heard.

The stories which lawyers told to each other and to groups of men were

not all of them overnice; and Lincoln's stories were like the rest. He

did not always confine himself to strictly proper stories. But in those

that are authentic and not quite proper, it is to be observed that the

coarseness was incidental to the real point of the story. I have not

heard any story, authenticated as Lincoln's, which is actually obscene.

It has been my privilege to examine a considerable quantity of

unpublished writing of Lincoln's, including some manuscripts that

have been withheld for the reason that they were not quite proper.

Of these I can say that they are few in number, and that the element

of vulgarity is very small. Excepting only the "First Chronicles of

Reuben," which was a rude backwoods joke, written in his boyhood, and

in full accord with the standards of humor current in the time and

general environment, there is not very much that one could wish had

been destroyed.

The frankest piece of questionable literature from Lincoln's pen in

mature years, so far as I am aware, is in a private collection, and its

owner does not permit it to be copied. Not many people are permitted

to see it. It is probably the least attractive scrap of Lincoln's

writing extant that dates from his mature years. It is undated, but

belongs to the period of his life on the circuit. It is a piece of

extravagant nonsense, written in about twenty lines on a quarter sheet

of legal cap, and is probably the effort to recall and record something

that he had heard and which amused him. Its whole point is in the

transposition of the initial letters of compound words, or words in

juxtaposition in a sentence, such as a speaker sometimes makes in a

moment of mental confusion. Thus a cotton-patch is a "potten-catch" and

a fence-corner is a "cence-forner." Every clause contains one or more

of these absurdities, until a sense of boisterous mirth is awakened at

the possibility that there should be so many of them. Most of them are

harmless as the two above quoted, but there are two or three that are

not in good taste. They are not vile nor obscene, but not very pretty.

Lincoln wasted ten minutes of spare time in writing out this rather

ingenious bit of nonsense, and it is not worth more than that length of

discussion. It is probably the worst bit of extant writing of Lincoln's

mature years, written in the period of his circuit-riding, and it has

little to commend it and not a great deal to condemn.

* * * * *

Lincoln's religious life in Springfield has been and is the subject of

violent controversy. Much that has been written on both sides bears

the marks of prejudice and exhibits internal evidence of having been

consciously or unconsciously distorted. In a later chapter it will come

before us for review and analysis. Of it we may now remind ourselves

that in this period covering nearly a quarter of a century Lincoln

was developing in many ways. He emerged from grinding poverty into a

condition in which he owned a home and had a modest sum of money in the

bank. From an ill-trained fledgling lawyer, compelled by his poverty

to share a bed in a friend's room above the store, he had come to be a

leader at the Illinois bar. From an obscure figure in State politics

he had come to be the recognized leader of a political party that was

destined to achieve national success and to determine the policies of

the nation with little interruption for more than half a century. Out

of a condition of great mental uncertainty in all matters relating to

domestic relations he had come into a settled condition as the husband

of a brilliant and ambitious woman and the father of a family of sons

to whom he was devotedly attached. For the first time in his life he

lived in a community where there were buildings wholly dedicated to

the purposes of public worship; and after a considerable period of

non-church attendance, and perhaps another of infrequent or irregular

attendance, he had become a regular attendant and supporter of a church

whose minister was his personal friend and whom he greatly admired.

During his years in Springfield, Mr. Lincoln's political ideals had

undergone marked change. His experience in the Illinois Legislature is

not discreditable; neither does it manifest any notably high ideals.

Nor was he brilliantly successful in his one term in Congress. Lincoln

was an honest politician, in the sense that he kept his promises and

stood by his announced convictions. But it is impossible to read into

his legislative history any such lofty purpose as later possessed him.

He and the other members of the "Long Nine" log-rolled in orthodox

political fashion, and won from Governor Ford the title "spared

monuments of popular wrath."[21]

As a jury lawyer, also, his arts were those of the successful trial

lawyer of the period. So far as the author has been able to find,

there was no unworthy chapter in all this long history. The story,

for instance, that in the trial of Armstrong Lincoln used an almanac

of another year and won his case by fraud, has, as the author is

convinced, no foundation whatever in fact. On the contrary, Lincoln was

at a serious disadvantage in any case in whose justice he did not fully

believe.

But there came a time when Lincoln was more than a shrewd and

honest politician; more than a successful jury lawyer. In the brief

autobiographical sketch which he prepared for Mr. Fell, he speaks of

his work at the end of his term in Congress, and says:

"In 1846 I was once elected to the lower House of Congress. Was not

a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive,

practiced law more assiduously than ever before. Always a Whig in

politics, and generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making active

canvasses, I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the

Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since is pretty

well known."

He expanded this brief statement somewhat in the sketch which he

furnished a little later to Scripps as a basis of his campaign

biography:

"Upon his return from Congress, he went to the practice of the law

with greater earnestness than ever before.... In 1854 his profession

had almost superseded the thought of politics in his mind, when the

repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused him as he had never been

before."

The full effect of this unprecedented arousing was manifest

in his speech at Springfield on June 16, 1858, the

"House-Divided-Against-Itself" speech.

Lincoln himself is our authority for the statement that the moral

aspects of the slavery issue called him back into politics and roused

him as he never before had been aroused. Politically, at least, Abraham

Lincoln had been born again. Nor had it been a period of spiritual

inaction or retrogression, as we have seen and shall see yet further.

In addition to all this he had known the discipline of sorrow, and had

had occasion to test religion on the practical side of its availability

for comfort in time of bereavement. He had now been chosen to a

position of responsibility such as no man in all the history of his

nation had ever been called upon to occupy.

On the day before he was fifty-two years old he stood upon the platform

of a railroad train ready to leave Springfield for the last time.

He did not know that it was the last time, but he had a haunting

presentiment that it might be so. With tears filling his eyes and in

a voice choked with emotion he spoke his last words to his neighbors

and friends. Just what he said we shall never know. A shorthand

reporter endeavored to write it down, but with indifferent success.

Hon. Newton Bateman, State Superintendent of Schools, of whom we shall

hear later, hurried to his office after the train pulled out and wrote

down what, judged by any reasonable test, must be considered a very

satisfactory report of it. Lincoln sat down in the train after it had

left Springfield and endeavored to recall the exact language which

he had used, and in this was assisted by his private secretary, John

Hay. Of these three, and a considerable number of other versions, the

Illinois Historical Society has chosen the third as the authentic

version. It represents what Lincoln wished to be remembered as having

said, and very nearly what he actually did say. This version of his

farewell address, representing the deep feeling of his heart at

the hour of parting, and recorded on the same day as embodying his

deliberate revision of the extempore utterance, is taken from Nicolay

and Hay's edition of his Life and of his Works. It is that which was

cast in bronze and placed in the year of his Centennial, in front of

the State House at Springfield. If one would measure the growth of

Abraham Lincoln intellectually and spiritually he might ask, What kind

of an address in comparison with this Lincoln might have delivered on

his departure from Kentucky in 1816, from Indiana in 1830, or from New

Salem in 1837? The answer is so emphatic as almost to make the question

absurd; but it is worth while to ask the question before we read again

the familiar words of his farewell address. No one reading these few

sentences can question the sincerity of Lincoln's utterance or the

depth of his religious feeling:

"My friends: No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling

of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these

people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century,

and have passed from a youth to an old man. Here my children have been

born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when or whether

ever I may return, with the task before me greater than that which

rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being

who ever attended him I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot

fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and

be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be

well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will

commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell."--NICOLAY AND HAY,

III, 291.

CHAPTER VI

THE ENVIRONMENT OF LINCOLN'S LIFE IN WASHINGTON

ABRAHAM LINCOLN was inaugurated sixteenth president of the United

States, on Monday, March 4, 1861. His journey to Washington had served

to impress him even more deeply than before with a sense of the

solemnity of his task. He still was earnestly hoping, and if we may

judge from his speeches along the route, even expecting, that war would

be averted;[22] but the possibility of war was always apparent and its

probability was growing daily more certain.

Several incidents are related tending to show the solemnity of

Lincoln's feeling at this time. Some of them are plainly apocryphal,

but others are deeply significant. The following was related by Rev.

Dr. Miner, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Springfield, who

was intimately acquainted with the Lincoln family and who visited

them in the White House. This story he declared was related to him by

Mrs. Lincoln on the occasion of his visit to the White House and was

published while Mrs. Lincoln was still living. It appears to rest upon

a sound basis of fact:

"Here I relate an incident which occurred on the 4th of March, 1861,

as told me by Mrs. Lincoln. Said she:

"'Mr. Lincoln wrote the conclusion of his inaugural address the

morning it was delivered. The family being present, he read it to

them. He then said he wished to be left alone for a short time. The

family retired to an adjoining room, but not so far distant but that

the voice of prayer could be distinctly heard. There, closeted with

God alone, surrounded by the enemies who were ready to take his

life, he commended his country's cause and all dear to him to God's

providential care, and with a mind calmed by communion with his Father

in heaven, and courage equal to the danger, he came forth from that

retirement ready for duty.'"--_Scribner's Monthly_, 1873, p. 343.

Fort Sumter fell April 13, and on the 15th Lincoln issued his call for

volunteers, and called Congress in extraordinary session for July 4. On

July 21 occurred the battle of Bull Run, and the war settled down to

its weary and varying fortunes. On September 22, 1862, he issued the

Emancipation Proclamation to take effect January 1, 1863. The battle

of Gettysburg occurred July 1-4, 1863, and destroyed the hope of the

Southern Army of a successful invasion of the North. Simultaneously

with Lee's defeat at Gettysburg, General Grant captured Vicksburg,

opening the Mississippi to the Union gunboats. On November 19, 1863,

Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg address. On March 4, 1865, he was

inaugurated President a second time. On Sunday, April 9, 1865, General

Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox. On Friday night, April 14, at

10:20 P.M., Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theater and died on

Saturday morning, April 15, at 7:22. On Thursday, May 4, his body was

interred at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield.

During his residence in Washington, Mr. Lincoln habitually attended

the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. He was a warm personal friend

of the pastor, Rev. Phineas D. Gurley, D.D., whose grandson, Captain

Gurley of the War Department, relates that Lincoln sat with Dr. Gurley

on the rear porch of the White House during the second battle of

Bull Run, and when the strain had become almost unbearable he knelt

in prayer and Mr. Lincoln knelt beside him and joined reverently in

the petition. Dr. Gurley's testimonies to the religious development

of Lincoln's life were conservative, and bear upon their face marks

of trustworthiness. There are no extravagant claims; no florid and

declamatory theological affirmations,[23] but such as this which Dr.

Gurley remembers to have heard Lincoln say to a company of clergymen

calling upon him in one of the darkest times in the Civil War:

"My hope of success in this struggle rests on that immutable

foundation, the justness and the goodness of God; and when events

are very threatening I still hope that in some way all will be

well in the end, because our cause is just and God will be on our

side."--_Scribner's Magazine_, 1873, p. 339.

Lincoln sometimes varied this form of expression and said that he was

less anxious to proclaim that God was on his side than he was to be

sure that he was on God's side.

During this period Lincoln had frequent occasion to meet delegations

from religious bodies and to reply to their addresses. We shall have

occasion later to consider some of his words to these different

religious bodies. He also issued a number of proclamations, calling

for days of fasting and prayer and days of thanksgiving, in which

he expressed not only the formal sentiment which he might assume

represented the mind of the people, but also to a considerable extent

what must have been his own religious conviction.

An unbiased reading of these proclamations and addresses compels the

reader to recognize in them, not merely the formal courtesy of an

official to the representatives of large and influential bodies, but

the sincere expression of his own faith. An illustration may be found

in his attitude toward the Quakers. No religious body suffered more

during the Civil War, and with no religious fellowship did Mr. Lincoln

feel a more instinctive sympathy, though he was compelled by the logic

of events to pursue courses of action in contravention of their desires

and at times of their convictions.

In September, 1862, he received a delegation of Friends, and listened

to an address on their behalf by Mrs. Eliza P. Gurney, wife of Joseph

John Gurney, a wealthy banker, entreating him on behalf of their

peace-loving organization to bring the war to a speedy end. He could

not do what they wished, and moreover, he believed that it was not

the will of God that the war should end till it had wrought out the

purposes of the Divine will. He said:

"I am glad of this interview, and glad to know that I have your

sympathy and prayers. We are indeed going through a great trial--a

fiery trial. In the very responsible position in which I happen to

be placed, being a humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly

Father, as I am, and as we all are, to work out His great purposes,

I have desired that all my works and acts may be according to His

will, and that it might be so, I have sought His aid; but if, after

endeavoring to do my best in the light which He affords me, I find my

efforts fail, I must believe that for some purpose unknown to me, He

wills it otherwise. If I had had my way, this war would never have

been commenced. If I had been allowed my way, this war would have been

ended before this; but we find it still continues, and we must believe

that He permits it for some wise purpose of His own, mysterious and

unknown to us; and though with our limited understandings we may not

be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but believe that He who made

the world still governs it."

We are not permitted to believe that on this and similar occasions Mr.

Lincoln met the situation with words of pious evasion, or that what

he said was simply what he thought he might be expected to say. Some

months after this interview Mrs. Gurney, being then in London, wrote

to Mr. Lincoln. He could easily have acknowledged the letter without

committing himself to any religious expression. For several months he

kept the letter, and then, on September 4, 1864, he wrote to her as

follows:

"My esteemed Friend: I have not forgotten--probably never shall

forget--the very impressive occasion when yourself and friends visited

me on a Sabbath forenoon two years ago. Nor has your kind letter,

written nearly a year later, ever been forgotten. In all it has been

your purpose to strengthen my reliance on God. I am much indebted to

the good Christian people of the country for their constant prayers

and consolations; and to no one of them more than to yourself. The

purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we

erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. We

hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this;

but God knows best and ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His

wisdom, and our own error therein. Meanwhile we must work earnestly in

the best light He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces

to the great ends He ordains. Surely He intends some great good to

follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no

mortal could stay. Your people, the Friends, have had, and are having,

a very great trial. On principle and faith opposed to both war and

oppression, they can only practically oppose oppression by war. In

this hard dilemma some have chosen one horn, and some the other. For

those appealing to me on conscientious grounds, I have done, and shall

do, the best I could and can, in my own conscience, under my oath to

the law. That you believe this, I doubt not, and believing it, I shall

receive for my country and myself your earnest prayers to our Father

in Heaven."

Of Lincoln's habit of public worship during his Presidency, Rev.

William Henry Roberts, Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian General

Assembly, writes in a foreword to Dr. Johnson's book:

"It was my privilege as a young man to have known Abraham Lincoln.

Entering the service of the United States government in the fall

of 1863, the first Sabbath of my sojourn in Washington City I went

to the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. When the time for the

long prayer came, according to immemorial usage in many Presbyterian

congregations, a number of the men stood up for prayer, and among

those upright figures I noticed in particular that of the President

of the United States. As a member of the New York Avenue Church I was

seated not far from Mr. Lincoln at Sunday services for a year and

a half, and his attitude was always that of an earnest and devout

worshiper. He was also an attendant at the weekly meeting, though

for a considerable period taking part in the services privately. It

having become known that he was an attendant at the prayer meeting,

many persons would gather in or near the church at the close of the

service in order to have access to him for various purposes. Desiring

to put an end to these unwelcome interruptions, the Rev. Dr. Phineas

D. Gurley, the pastor of Mr. Lincoln, arranged to have the President

sit in the pastor's room, the door of which opened upon the lecture

room, and there Mr. Lincoln would take a silent part in the service.

He informed his pastor on several occasions that he had received great

comfort from the meetings, and for the reason that they had been

characterized more by prayer than by the making of addresses.

"Dr. Gurley bore repeated testimony to myself and to other members of

the church of the deeply religious character of Mr. Lincoln, and it is

with pleasure that I add this brief testimony from my own experience

and observation.

"It will be fifty years next fall since I came into direct touch with

the man, who in the providence of God was the liberator of a race, and

I shall always hold in sweet and blessed memory my first sight of him,

as a devout worshiper standing for prayer in the sanctuary of the Most

High."--_Abraham Lincoln the Christian_, pp. 13-15.

I have copied direct from the original letter, in possession of Mr.

Jesse W. Weik, Nicolay's letter to Herndon affirming that, to the best

of his knowledge, Lincoln's belief did not change during his years in

the White House. It was addressed to Herndon, and it reads:

"Executive Mansion,

"Washington, May 27, 1865.

"FRIEND HERNDON:--

"I have this morning received your note of the 23rd inst. and reply at

once.

"Mr. Lincoln did not, to my knowledge, change in any way his religious

views, beliefs, or opinions from the time he left Springfield to the

day of his death. I do not know just what they were, never having

heard him explain them in detail; but I am very sure he gave no

outward indication of his mind having undergone any change in that

regard while here.

"Very truly,

"JNO. G. NICOLAY.

"HON. WILLIAM H. HERNDON."

While Nicolay's declaration that Lincoln gave no outward indication

that his views had undergone any change during his residence in the

White House is entitled to great weight, it is not wholly conclusive.

It is quite possible that Mr. Lincoln changed more than those who

were closest to him every day realized, more, indeed, than he himself

realized. Some men who had known him in earlier years and who met him

from time to time while he was in the White House observed a change

too subtle to be fully realized by those who saw him daily. Joshua Fry

Speed knew Lincoln from the day Lincoln arrived in Springfield until

his death. Indeed, he had known Lincoln earlier; but their intimate

acquaintance began on the day when Lincoln received his law license

and moved to Springfield, where he shared Speed's bed. Speed told of

that incident frequently, how Lincoln came into his store, greatly

depressed, asking to be permitted to purchase a single bed which he

was not certain he could ever pay for; but Speed invited Lincoln

to sleep with him in the room above the store. Lincoln carried his

saddlebags upstairs and set them down, and came down the stairs with

his countenance beaming, as he said, "Well, Speed, I've moved!" Lamon

declares that Speed was "The most intimate friend Mr. Lincoln ever had

at this or any other time" (_Life of Lincoln_, p. 231). Says Lamon:

"He made to Speed the most confidential communications he ever made

to mortal man. If he had on earth 'a bosom crony,' it was Speed, and

that deep and abiding attachment subsisted unimpaired to the day of

Lincoln's death." To Speed alone Lincoln gave his full confidence in

the matter of his love affairs, and they talked together as men seldom

talk to each other. Speaking out of a most intimate knowledge, Speed

wrote in his lecture on Lincoln:

"I have often been asked what were Mr. Lincoln's religious opinions.

When I knew him in early life, he was a skeptic. He had tried hard

to be a believer, but his reason could not grasp and solve the great

problem of redemption as taught. He was very cautious never to give

expression to any thought or sentiment that would grate harshly upon a

Christian ear. For a sincere Christian he had great respect. He often

said that the most ambitious man might live to see every hope fail;

but no Christian could live and see his hope fail, because fulfillment

could only come when life ended. But this was a subject we never

discussed. The only evidence I have of any change, was in the summer

before he was killed. I was invited out to the Soldiers' Home to spend

the night. As I entered the room, near night, he was sitting near a

window intently reading his Bible. Approaching him I said, 'I am glad

to see you so profitably engaged.' 'Yes,' said he, 'I am profitably

engaged.' 'Well,' said I, 'if you have recovered from your skepticism,

I am sorry to say that I have not.' Looking me earnestly in the face,

and placing his hand on my shoulder, he said, 'You are wrong, Speed;

take all of this Book upon reason that you can, and the balance on

faith, and you will live and die a happier man.'"--SPEED: _Lecture on

Abraham Lincoln_, pp. 32, 33.

The Bible which the colored people presented to Lincoln was kept and

prized by him. Hon. H. C. Deming, in his address before the Legislature

of Connecticut, just after Lincoln's death, referred to it:

"The interview which I am recalling was last summer [1864] just after

General Fremont had declined to run against him for the Presidency.

The magnificent Bible, which the negroes of Washington[24] had just

presented to him lay upon the table, and while we were both examining

it, I recited the somewhat remarkable passage from the Chronicles,

'Eastward were six Levites, northward four a day, southward four a

day, and toward Assuppim two and two. At Parbar westward, four at

the causeway, and two at Parbar.'[25] He immediately challenged me

to find any such passage as that in _his_ Bible. After I had pointed

it out to him, and he was satisfied of its genuineness, he asked me

if I remembered the text which his friends had applied to Fremont,

and instantly turned to a verse in the first of Samuel, put on his

spectacles, and read in his slow, peculiar, and waggish tone,--'And

everyone that was in distress and everyone that was in debt, and

everyone that was discontented gathered themselves unto him; and he

became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred

men.'"[26]

There are two interesting facts about this incident related by

Representative Deming. One is that Lincoln knew his Bible well enough

to challenge an unfamiliar passage and require that it be shown to him

before believing that the Bible contained it. Only a man who had read

his Bible much would have been so confident. The other is that this

story recalled to Mr. Deming that very important declaration of Lincoln

which is attested by a number of other credible witnesses in substance,

but which Deming first gave to the world in his notable address:

"I am here reminded of an impressive remark which he made to me

upon another occasion, and which I shall never forget. He said, he

had never united himself to any church, because he found difficulty

in giving his assent, without mental reservations, to the long

complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterize their

Articles of Belief and Confessions of Faith. 'When any church,' he

continued, 'will inscribe over its altar as its sole qualification

for membership the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance

of both the law and Gospel, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with

all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy

neighbor as thyself,--that church will I join with all my heart and

soul.'"--_Eulogy upon Abraham Lincoln, before the General Assembly of

Connecticut, 1865_, p. 42.

Henry C. Whitney knew Lincoln well, from the days of their circuit

riding in Illinois till Lincoln's death. His testimony is valuable:

"Mr. Lincoln was a fatalist: he believed, and often said, that

'_There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will,_'

and as a corollary from this belief, that the Almighty controlled the

affairs of men and made the wrath of men to praise Him. In all stages

of his administration and before, commencing with his first public

utterance after his election, he declared that with God's help he

should succeed, and without it he would fail. Likewise, before he was

run for the Presidency, he made frequent references to God in the same

spirit of devoutness and trust; and, therefore, he was honest; honest

with his Father on his dying bed, honest in what he feared was (and

which proved to be) his last affectionate farewell to his neighbors,

honest to the many eminent bands of clergymen and Christian people

who visited him, and honest with his Cabinet in the most important

consultation it ever held; then Lincoln, whether as man or as

President, believed in God as the Ruler of the Universe, in a blessed

hereafter, and in the efficacy of prayer. . . . Mr. Lincoln believed

himself to be an instrument of God; and that, as God willed, so would

the contest be. He also believed in prayer and its efficacy, and that

God willed the destruction of slavery through his instrumentality, and

he believed in the Church of God as an important auxiliary."--_Life on

the Circuit with Lincoln_, pp. 267-68.

Among the men in Washington who best knew the mind of Abraham Lincoln

was Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and

afterward Vice-President under General Grant. In his memorial address

delivered just after the assassination, he paid a high tribute to the

deep religious spirit of Lincoln as he knew it, and said:

"Nor should I forget to mention that the last Act of Congress signed

by him was one requiring that the motto, in which he sincerely

believed, 'In God we trust' should hereafter be inscribed upon all

our national coins."--HON. SCHUYLER COLFAX, in _Memorial Address in

Chicago, April 30, 1865_.

During his residence in the White House Mr. Lincoln again met the

discipline of personal bereavement. His son Willie died. There is

conflict of testimony as to Mr. Lincoln's love for his wife, though

the present writer believes that he truly loved her, but no one who

knew him ever doubted his devotion to his children. The death of this

little boy, William Wallace, who was born in Springfield, December 21,

1850, and died in the White House, February 20, 1862, seemed, according

to the testimony of Mrs. Lincoln, to turn his thoughts more to

religion. It must have recalled to him all that had occurred when his

other boy died in Springfield, and it brought new and solemn thoughts

and possibly convictions.

Moreover, he was now father to the boys of a nation. They were marching

at his order, singing,

"_We are coming, Father Abraham,

Six hundred thousand more._"

They were laying down their young lives for a cause that he told

them was holy. How he felt for the fathers and mothers of the land,

his letter to Mrs. Bixby and his countless deeds of mercy testify.

Again and again, as Ingersoll well said, he abused his great power

on the side of mercy and never otherwise. The deepening sense of

responsibility, as he affirmed, again and again drove him to his knees

(Noah Brooks in _Harper's Monthly_ for July, 1885). Did he consciously

change his theology? Very likely not; but he certainly became a more

and more deeply religious man under the discipline of these experiences.

Perhaps more than all else, the moral aspects of the slavery question

thrust themselves into a foremost place in his religious thinking. We

need not trouble ourselves overmuch about the accuracy of John Hanks's

story that when Lincoln saw slaves sold in the market in New Orleans he

vowed to "hit that institution and hit it hard"; part of that story may

have originated in John's fertile imagination. But the story is not an

unworthy one, and we know from Lincoln's own declaration that on that

very occasion he was smitten with a sense of the iniquity of slavery,

and that on its moral rather than its political side. That he freed

the slaves as a war measure, and that he must thus justify the action

as an extra-constitutional prerogative, need not lessen in our mind

the moral aspects of the decision. The evidence is incontestable, and

we shall quote it later, that to him it was a solemn obligation, the

fulfillment of a vow which he had made to God.

We are presently to go into a detailed examination of the available

evidence concerning Lincoln's religious life. We are here considering

his environment in the successive stages of his career, and his visible

reaction to it. But even if we were to go no further, we should find

ourselves compelled to believe in the reality of Lincoln's religion.

We might not be able accurately to define it, and we may not be able

to do so to our complete satisfaction after we have finished; we might

even question, and we may still question, whether he himself ever fully

defined it. But we are assured that his religion was real and genuine,

and that it grew more vital as he faced more completely the moral and

spiritual aspects of the work to which, as he honestly believed, he was

divinely called.

When General Lee surrendered his armies on April 9, 1865, Mr. Stanton,

Secretary of War, though not a very religious man in his profession,

felt with the whole nation the Providence of God in the result. He

surrounded the dome of the Capitol with a transparency, reading, "This

is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes."

He believed it; the nation believed it; Abraham Lincoln believed it.

That conviction that the hand of God had been in it all had but lately

been expressed in his Second Inaugural. That faith was warm in his

heart, and its expression fresh upon his lips, when on April 14, 1865,

he was shot and killed.

So ended the earthly life of Abraham Lincoln; and with that end came

the beginning of the discussion of his religion. To the history of that

discussion, and the critical consideration of the evidence which it

adduced, we are now to address ourselves.

PART II: AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVIDENCE