THE BATEMAN INCIDENT
HON. NEWTON BATEMAN was for many years Superintendent of Public
Instruction for the State of Illinois, being chosen to that position
in 1858 and holding the place with one brief intermission for fourteen
years. He was then elected President of Knox College and served with
distinction in that capacity for seventeen years. He knew Lincoln well.
He was small in stature, and Lincoln was very tall. Lincoln used to
introduce Bateman to friends, saying, "This is my little friend, the
big schoolmaster of Illinois." He was, perhaps, the last man to shake
hands with Abraham Lincoln as Lincoln was leaving Springfield, and
he was one of the pallbearers at Lincoln's funeral. The version of
Lincoln's Farewell Address which was published in the _Illinois State
Journal_ was printed on the day following Lincoln's departure and was
reproduced from Dr. Bateman's memory of it. Although it varies from the
official report it appears to have been a very nearly accurate report
of what Lincoln actually said as judged by Lincoln's own reproduction
of the address.
Reference has already been made to the difficulties which Dr. J. G.
Holland met in Springfield when he journeyed thither in quest of
material on the _Life of Lincoln_. To his great satisfaction he was
able to obtain from Mr. Bateman an incident which has become the
corner-stone of a thousand Lincoln eulogies. It is here reproduced
entire:
"Mr. Newton Bateman,[29] Superintendent of Public Instruction for the
State of Illinois, occupied a room adjoining and opening into the
Executive Chamber. Frequently this door was open during Mr. Lincoln's
receptions; and throughout the seven months or more of his occupation
Mr. Bateman saw him nearly every day. Often when Mr. Lincoln was tired
he closed his door against all intrusion, and called Mr. Bateman into
his room for a quiet talk. On one of these occasions Mr. Lincoln took
up a book containing a careful canvass of the city of Springfield
in which he lived, showing the candidate for whom each citizen had
declared it his intention to vote in the approaching election. Mr.
Lincoln's friends had, doubtless at his own request, placed the result
of the canvass in his hands. This was toward the close of October, and
only a few days before the election. Calling Mr. Bateman to a seat
at his side, having previously locked all doors, he said: 'Let us
look over this book. I wish particularly to see how the ministers of
Springfield are going to vote.' The leaves were turned, one by one,
and as the names were examined Mr. Lincoln frequently asked if this
one and that were not a minister, or an elder, or a member of such
or such a church, and sadly expressed his surprise on receiving an
affirmative answer. In that manner they went through the book, and
then he closed it and sat silently and for some minutes regarding
a memorandum in pencil which lay before him. At length he turned
to Mr. Bateman with a face full of sadness, and said: 'Here are
twenty-three, ministers, of different denominations, and all of them
are against me but three; and here are a great many prominent members
of the churches, a very large majority of whom are against me. Mr.
Bateman, I am not a Christian--God knows I would be one--but I have
carefully read the Bible, and I do not so understand this book'; and
he drew from his bosom a pocket New Testament. 'These men well know,'
he continued, 'that I am for freedom in the territories, freedom
everywhere as far as the Constitution and laws will permit, and that
my opponents are for slavery. They know this, and yet, with this book
in their hands, in the light of which human bondage cannot live a
moment, they are going to vote against me. I do not understand it at
all.'
"Here Mr. Lincoln paused--paused for long minutes, his features
surcharged with emotion. Then he rose and walked up and down the room
in the effort to retain or regain his self-possession. Stopping at
last, he said, with a trembling voice and his cheeks wet with tears:
'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. I
have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and
Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so. Douglas
don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down, but God cares,
and humanity cares, and I care; and with God's help I shall not fail.
I may not see the end; but it will come, and I shall be vindicated;
and these men will find that they have not read their Bibles aright.'
"Much of this was uttered as if he were speaking to himself, and with
a sad and earnest solemnity of manner impossible to be described.
After a pause, he resumed: 'Doesn't it appear strange that men can
ignore the moral aspects of this contest? A revelation could not make
it plainer to me that slavery or the government must be destroyed.
The future would be something awful, as I look at it, but for this
rock on which I stand [alluding to the Testament which he still held
in his hand] especially with the knowledge of how these ministers are
going to vote. It seems as if God had borne with this thing [slavery]
until the very teachers of religion have come to defend it from the
Bible, and to claim for it a divine character and sanction; and now
the cup of iniquity is full, and the vials of wrath will be poured
out.'"--HOLLAND: _Life of Lincoln_, pp. 236-38.
Dr. J. G. Holland was an author of ability and character. His _Life
of Lincoln_ was up to the time of its publication far and away the
best that had appeared. Even Herndon and Lamon are compelled to
speak of it with respect. Lamon says: "Out of the mass of work which
appeared, of one only--Dr. Holland's--is it possible to speak with
any degree of respect." That this also represented substantially the
opinion of Herndon is clearly in evidence. With two such names as
Newton Bateman and J. G. Holland supporting it, an incident of this
character was certain to carry great weight. It can be found more or
less abridged and in some cases garbled and enlarged in any one of a
hundred books and of a thousand or probably ten thousand Lincoln's
Day addresses. This report was the direct occasion for the assembling
of a considerable mass of opposing evidence which we shall find in
succeeding chapters. It was attacked publicly and directly by Ward Hill
Lamon in his _Life of Lincoln_ in 1872. The following is Mr. Lamon's
reply:
"Mr. Newton Bateman is reported to have said that a few days before
the Presidential election in 1860, Mr. Lincoln came into his office,
closed the door against intrusion, and proposed to examine a book
which had been furnished him, at his own request, 'Containing a
careful canvass of the city of Springfield, showing the candidate
for whom each citizen had declared his intention to vote at the
approaching election. He ascertained that only three ministers of the
gospel, out of twenty-three, would vote for him, and that, of the
prominent church-members, a very large majority were against him.'
Mr. Bateman does not say so directly, but the inference is plain
that Mr. Lincoln had not previously known what were the sentiments
of the Christian people who lived with him in Springfield: he had
never before taken the trouble to inquire whether they were for him
or against him. At all events, when he made the discovery out of
the book, he wept, and declared that he 'did not understand it at
all.' He drew from his bosom a pocket New Testament, and, 'with a
trembling voice and his cheeks wet with tears,' quoted it against his
political opponents generally, and especially against Douglas. He
professed to believe that the opinions adopted by him and his party
were derived from the teachings of Christ; averred that Christ was
God; and, speaking of the Testament which he carried in his bosom,
called it 'this rock, on which I stand.' When Mr. Bateman expressed
surprise, and told him that his friends generally were ignorant that
he entertained such sentiments, he gave this answer quickly: 'I know
they are: I am obliged to appear different to them.' Mr. Bateman is a
respectable citizen, whose general reputation for truth and veracity
is not to be impeached; but his story, as reported in Holland's Life,
is so inconsistent with Mr. Lincoln's whole character, that it must
be rejected as altogether incredible. From the time of the Democratic
split in the Baltimore Convention, Mr. Lincoln, as well as every other
politician of the smallest sagacity, knew that his success was as
certain as any future could be. At the end of October, most of the
States had clearly voted in a way which left no lingering doubts of
the final result in November. If there ever was a time in his life
when ambition charmed his whole heart,--if it could ever be said of
him that 'hope elevated and joy brightened his crest,' it was on the
eve of that election which he saw was to lift him at last to the
high place for which he had sighed and struggled so long. It was not
then that he would mourn and weep because he was in danger of not
getting the votes of the ministers and members of the churches he
had known during many years for his steadfast opponents: he did not
need them, and had not expected them. Those who understood him best
are very sure that he never, under any circumstances, could have
fallen into such weakness--not even when his fortunes were at the
lowest point of depression--as to play the part of a hypocrite for
their support. Neither is it possible that he was at any loss about
the reasons which religious men had for refusing him their support;
and, if he had said that he could not understand it at all, he must
have spoken falsely. But the worst part of the tale is Mr. Lincoln's
acknowledgment that his 'friends generally were deceived concerning
his religious sentiments, and that he was obliged to appear different
to them.'
"According to this version, which has had considerable currency,
he carried a New Testament in his bosom, carefully hidden from
his intimate associates: he believed that Christ was God; yet his
friends understood him to deny the verity of the gospel: he based his
political doctrines on the teachings of the Bible; yet before all men,
except Mr. Bateman, he habitually acted the part of an unbeliever and
reprobate, because he was 'obliged to appear different to them.' How
obliged? What compulsion required him to deny that Christ was God
if he really believed Him to be divine? Or did he put his political
necessities above the obligations of truth, and oppose Christianity
against his convictions, that he might win the favor of its enemies?
It may be that his mere silence was sometimes misunderstood; but he
never made an express avowal of any religious opinion which he did
not entertain. He did not 'appear different' at one time from what he
was at another, and certainly he never put on infidelity as a mere
mask to conceal his Christian character from the world. There is no
dealing with Mr. Bateman, except by a flat contradiction. Perhaps
his memory was treacherous, or his imagination led him astray, or,
peradventure, he thought a fraud no harm if it gratified the strong
desire of the public for proofs of Mr. Lincoln's orthodoxy. It is
nothing to the purpose that Mr. Lincoln said once or twice that he
thought this or that portion of the Scripture was the product of
divine inspiration; for he was one of the class who hold that all
truth is inspired, and that every human being with a mind and a
conscience is a prophet. He would have agreed much more readily with
one who taught that Newton's discoveries, or Bacon's philosophy, or
one of his own speeches, were the works of men divinely inspired above
their fellows. But he never told anyone that he accepted Jesus Christ,
or performed a single one of the acts which necessarily follow upon
such a conviction. At Springfield and at Washington he was beset on
the one hand by political priests, and on the other by honest and
prayerful Christians. He despised the former, respected the latter,
and had use for both. He said with characteristic irreverence, that he
would not undertake 'to run the churches by military authority'; but
he was, nevertheless, alive to the importance of letting the churches
'run themselves in the interest of his party.' Indefinite expressions
about 'Divine Providence,' the 'justice of God,' 'the favor of the
Most High,' were easy, and not inconsistent with his religious notion.
In this, accordingly, he indulged freely; but never in all that time
did he let fall from his lips or his pen an expression which remotely
implied the slightest faith in Jesus as the Son of God and the Saviour
of men."--LAMON: _Life of Lincoln_, pp. 499-502.
Confronted by an irreconcilable contradiction like this, the easiest
way is to cut the knot, and this may be done by any one of several
methods. We may say that, while Lamon and Herndon were truthful men,
their reputation for veracity, good as it was, is less than that of
Bateman and Holland, and we prefer to believe the latter pair. Or, we
may say that, while Bateman knew Lincoln well, both Herndon and Lamon
knew him much better, and were better able to judge what Lincoln would
have said. Or, we may say that Bateman was present when Lincoln spoke,
and Holland was present when Bateman related the interview, and neither
Herndon nor Lamon was present on either occasion, and we will believe
the one credible witness who was actually there, and whose positive
testimony outweighs any possible volume of negative testimony on the
part of men who were not present, and who only imagine what Mr. Lincoln
would probably have said. Or, we may say that in the light of the
inherent improbability of such an utterance on the part of Mr. Lincoln,
as determined by a comparison of this alleged utterance with his
authentic statements, we cannot accept it, even though the two men who
vouch, the one for its utterance and the other for its transmission,
are men of exceptional veracity. Or, we may say that in such a
conflict of direct evidence and inherent improbability, and the mutual
opposition of honest men who were in a position to know something
about the religious views of Mr. Lincoln, it is impossible for us to
decide.
We will not seek by any of these convenient methods to cut the knot,
but endeavor to untie it. We are fortunate in having some collateral
evidence after the fact.
Herndon had awaited the publication of Holland's book with great
eagerness, and he was pleased with it as a whole. But the Bateman
incident roused his wrath. To him it made Lincoln a hypocrite,
dissembling a Christian faith, which he had no good reason to conceal,
beneath a pretense of infidelity, which was not, as Herndon believed, a
profession that would have helped him.
Herndon promptly walked over to the State House and interviewed Mr.
Bateman. "I instantly sought Mr. Bateman," he said, "and found him in
his office. I spoke to him politely and kindly, and he spoke to me in
the same manner. I said substantially to him that Mr. Holland, in order
to make Mr. Lincoln a technical Christian, had made him a hypocrite."
What Bateman said to Herndon he was forbidden to publish, but the
inference is ineluctable that he repudiated, in part, the interview
with Holland, but did it on condition that Herndon should not publish
the statement in a way that would raise the issue of veracity between
himself and Holland.
This was in the autumn of 1865. In the spring of 1866, Herndon again
called upon Bateman, but got no farther.
As the controversy waxed furious, Herndon made further and insistent
efforts to obtain from Bateman a statement which could be made to the
public. Herndon preserved notes of the interviews, which he dated,
December 3, 12, and 28, 1866. Bateman still refused to emerge from his
silence. One can imagine Herndon in his yellow trousers twice rolled
up at the bottom, hitching his chair a little closer to the little
superintendent, and with long, skinny forefinger outstretched, probing
with insistent cross-examination into the innermost recesses of the
_ipsissima versa_ of the interview with Lincoln and the subsequent one
with Holland. Whether he and Mr. Bateman continued to address each
other politely is not known, but Herndon endeavored first to persuade
and afterward to force, Bateman to do one of three things,--to avow
over his own signature the story as Holland told it; to repudiate the
interview and throw the responsibility upon Holland; or to permit
Herndon to publish what Bateman had told to him. Bateman would do
none of these three things. If he did the first, Herndon would accuse
him of falsehood; if he did the second, Holland would accuse him of
falsehood; and if he did the third, he would become the central figure
in a controversy that already had become more than red-hot. He refused
to say anything, and announced to all comers that the publicity was
"extremely distasteful" to him.
Herndon went as far as he could toward making public what Bateman told
to him. He published the following statement, designed to throw the
greater part of the blame upon Holland, but to force Bateman to relate
to the public what Bateman had said to him, and what he had written
down and held ready to produce:
"I cannot now detail what Mr. Bateman said, as it was a private
conversation, and I am forbidden to make use of it in public. If some
good gentleman can only get the seal of secrecy removed, I can show
what was said and done. On my word, the world may take it for granted
that Holland is wrong; that he does not state Mr. Lincoln's views
correctly. Mr. Bateman, if correctly represented in Holland's _Life of
Lincoln_, is the only man, the sole and only man, who dare say that
Mr. Lincoln believed in Jesus as the Christ of God, as the Christian
world represents. This is not a pleasant situation for Mr. Bateman. I
have notes and dates of our conversation; and the world will sometime
know who is truthful, and who is otherwise. I doubt whether Bateman is
correctly represented by Holland."--LAMON: _Life of Lincoln_, p. 496.
Mr. Bateman was, indeed, in an uncomfortable position and any one
of the three ways out of it seemed likely to make it still more
uncomfortable. He continued to maintain a profound silence. Years
afterward when Arnold was preparing his _Life of Lincoln_ for the press
and Arnold asked him concerning the truth of the incident as recorded
by Holland, he replied with extreme brevity that it was "substantially
correct." (Arnold: Life of Lincoln, p. 179).
The only portion of Bateman's admission to Herndon which Bateman
finally, and with great reluctance, consented to have published, was
one which covered the alleged utterance "Christ is God." It was a
letter written in 1867, and marked "Confidential." In this letter
Bateman said:
"He [Lincoln] was applying the principles of moral and religious truth
to the duties of the hour, the condition of the country, and the
conduct of public men--ministers of the gospel. I had no thought of
orthodoxy or heterodoxy, Unitarianism, Trinitarianism, or any other
ism, during the whole conversation, and I don't suppose or believe he
had."
This is a guarded letter, but it is sufficiently specific for our
purposes. If the conversation between Bateman and Lincoln was of this
character, with nothing to distinguish the view of Lincoln as Unitarian
or Trinitarian, Lincoln certainly did not say:
"I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ
teaches it, and Christ is God."
It is evident that Bateman, crowded by Herndon in repeated
cross-examination, came as near to repudiating those parts of the
interview to which Herndon objected as he could do without raising
publicly the issue of veracity between himself and Holland. The
attitude of Dr. Bateman in this matter forbids us to believe that the
story as it stands in Holland's book can be true.
Bateman is not mentioned in the index of Nicolay and Hay's _Life of
Lincoln_, and it is practically certain that they did not credit the
incident.
What, under these circumstances, shall be our judgment concerning this
most hotly contested of all incidents concerning the religious life of
Abraham Lincoln?
The incident had a basis of fact. Neither Bateman nor Holland would
have created such a story out of whole cloth. But Bateman was under
very strong temptation to enlarge upon the incident, and had had
five years in which to magnify it in his own mind. The then recent
death of Mr. Lincoln and the strong desire of Christian people for a
clear statement of his faith, made it easy to color the recollection
and sketch in details, which did not seem to be important departures
from the truth when related in verbal conversation, but which had a
different look when they appeared in cold type. Holland, who was a
writer of fiction as well as history, did not fail to embellish the
story as Bateman told it to him. He probably did not write it down
at the time, but recalled it afterward from memory, and in his final
report it underwent additional coloring and the sketching in of detail.
Neither of these two men intentionally falsified, but between the two
the story was materially enlarged, and there was an undistributed
margin of error between the original event as it occurred in 1860 and
the very pretty story which Holland printed in 1865. Neither Holland
nor Bateman cared, probably, to face too searching an inquiry as to how
that enlargement had come.
Dr. Bateman was a man of probity and upright character. He never
willfully misrepresented. But he had a rhetorical mind; not only his
style, but his mind, was rhetorical. He embellished his narratives
because it was in him to do so. The two reports which he made of
Lincoln's farewell address in Springfield[30] showed, both of them,
such embellishments,[31] and he was as unconscious that he in later
years enlarged upon his own first report as he was that his first
report enlarged upon the address itself. These enlargements were
slight, and did not destroy nor greatly alter the sense; but his
changes never tended to simplicity. He was a master of good English
style, but it was a grander, more rhetorical style than that of
Lincoln. Lincoln, after receiving his special notice of nomination,
submitted his letter of acceptance to Bateman, and at Bateman's
suggestion changed a split infinitive. Lincoln knew that Bateman was
an authority on good English, and respected his opinion and valued
his friendship. Whatever enlargements Bateman's memory made upon
his interview with Lincoln were made without intent to deceive; and
whatever Holland added was added without intent to deceive. But the
interview of 1860 and the story about it in Holland's book five years
later have between them a discrepancy which must be distributed in a
ratio which we are not able positively to determine between two good
and truthful men, each of whom enlarged a little upon the material that
was given to him.
A final evidence that Bateman saw no way to remedy the situation by
telling the public exactly what occurred in his interview with Lincoln
in 1860, is found in the fact that while he was President of Knox
College he had occasion to prepare and deliver there and elsewhere a
carefully written lecture on "Abraham Lincoln." Every generation of
Knox College students heard, at least once, that famous oration. That
lecture contains little else than Bateman's own personal reminiscences,
and is an interesting and valuable document. For our present purpose it
is chiefly valuable in this, that it contains not one word about the
interview which had forever associated the name of Newton Bateman with
that of Abraham Lincoln. The fact that Bateman felt compelled to omit
it altogether from that oft-repeated lecture on Lincoln is a sufficient
reason why no one else should ever use it.
Precisely what did Bateman tell Herndon that he had told to Holland,
which led Herndon to tell the public that Holland misrepresented
Bateman? We do not know precisely. What became of Herndon's carefully
cherished notes of his five interviews with Bateman is not known,[32]
but we are not left wholly to conjecture. Though Herndon was forbidden
to tell what Bateman told to him, he came as near to it as he could do
without open violation of his pledge of secrecy. In his own _Life of
Lincoln_, published in 1889, he inserted a footnote in which he said:
"One of what Lincoln regarded as the remarkable features of his
canvass for President was the attitude of some of his neighbors in
Springfield. A poll of the voters had been made in a little book and
given to him. On running over the names he found that the greater part
of the clergy of the city--in fact all but three--were against him.
This depressed him somewhat, and he called in Dr. Newton Bateman, who
as Superintendent of Public Instruction occupied the room adjoining
his own in the State House, and whom he habitually addressed as 'Mr.
Schoolmaster.' He commented bitterly on the attitude of the preachers
and many of their followers, who, pretending to be believers in the
Bible and God-fearing Christians, yet by their votes demonstrated
that they cared not whether slavery was voted up or down. 'God cares
and humanity cares,' he reflected, 'and if they do not they surely
have not read their Bible aright.'"--HERNDON: _Life of Lincoln_, III,
466-67.
To accept this as containing the essential part of the interview
between Lincoln and Bateman does not involve our preferring the
statement of Herndon to that of Bateman, for we have no definite
statement of Bateman. Bateman, under close examination, told Herndon
what he remembered that Lincoln told him, and Herndon promised not to
tell it without Bateman's permission. Herndon did tell, however, that
it was very different from Holland's story, and he published this in
Lamon's book in 1872 and Bateman did not deny it. He published the
above quoted and additional note in his own book in 1889, while Bateman
was living, and Bateman did not protest. We cannot, therefore, be far
from the truth if we accept the above and stop there.
Unless the notes of Herndon's five interviews with Bateman shall be
found and published, this is probably the nearest we shall ever come
to knowing what Bateman told Herndon that Lincoln had said to him.
If those notes shall be found, they may amplify the conversation but
cannot be expected materially to modify it. This is all that it is safe
to assume of Lincoln's confession of faith to Bateman. Whoever adds to
it the glosses of the Holland biography does it at his own risk.