FROM THE HOUSETOPS AND IN THE CLOSET
THIS part of our inquiry draws near its close. We have reserved for
this chapter a selection from those religious expressions of Abraham
Lincoln which belong to his mature years, and which are indisputably
his. They are largely in addresses, proclamations, and official
documents. In them religion is, as a rule, an incidental subject. But
it finds frequent expression.
Here no literary criticism is necessary, for there is no question
about the accuracy of the report. We shall quote nothing that is
not contained in an accredited compilation of Lincoln's papers or
addresses, omitting all that is disputable or open to the suspicion of
glossation or coloring or exaggeration.
There is only one question, Was Abraham Lincoln sincere in these
utterances? Did he speak them as his own profound convictions, or
because he was expected to say something of this sort, and took refuge
in pious commonplaces? Both statements have been made concerning these
and like utterances. Let us read them with an open mind and discover
what evidence they bear of their own sincerity.
These are not reports of private conversations, or utterances addressed
to small groups. These are the words which Lincoln uttered in the ears
of all men; and they afford some evidence of the faith that was in him.
* * * * *
In Lincoln's first annual Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, dated October
3, 1863, after reciting the blessings of God to the nation in the
harvest and in the success of our arms, he said:
"No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out
these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God,
who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless
remembered mercy.
"It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly,
reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one
voice by the American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow
citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at
sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and
observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving
and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And
I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly
due Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also,
with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience,
commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans,
mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are
unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the
Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it,
as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full
enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union."
In the summer of 1864, a resolution was adopted concurrently by the
Senate and House of Representatives, requesting the President to
appoint a day of prayer, Mr. Lincoln issued the following proclamation,
July 7, 1864, in which, after quoting the words of the resolution, he
continued:
"Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
cordially concurring with the Congress of the United States in
the penitential and pious sentiments expressed in the aforesaid
resolutions, and heartily approving of the devotional design and
purpose thereof, do hereby appoint the first Thursday of August next
to be observed by the people of the United States as a day of national
humiliation and prayer.
"I do hereby further invite and request the heads of the executive
departments of this government, together with all legislators, all
judges and magistrates, and all other persons exercising authority
in the land, whether civil, military, or naval, and all soldiers,
seamen, and marines in the national service and all the other loyal
and law-abiding people of the United States, to assemble in their
preferred places of public worship on that day, and there and then to
render to the Almighty and merciful Ruler of the Universe such homages
and such confessions, and to offer to Him such supplications, as the
Congress of the United States have, in their aforesaid resolution, so
solemnly, so earnestly, and so reverently recommended."
Mr. Lincoln issued another special thanksgiving proclamation on May 9,
1864, saying:
"Enough is known of army operations within the last five days to
claim an especial gratitude to God, while what remains undone demands
our most sincere prayers to, and reliance upon, Him without whom all
human effort is vain. I recommend that all patriots, at their homes,
in their places of public worship, and wherever they may be, unite in
common thanksgiving and prayer to Almighty God."
In a response to a serenade at the White House, on May 9, 1864,
following the Battle of the Wilderness, Mr. Lincoln said:
"While we are grateful to all the brave men and officers for the
events of the past few days, we should, above all, be very grateful to
Almighty God, who gives us victory."
May 18, 1864, in a letter of reply to a deputation of ministers
who presented to him resolutions adopted by the Methodist General
Conference, he said, "God bless the Methodist Church--bless all the
churches--and blessed be God, who, in this our great trial giveth us
the churches."
In a letter to a committee consisting of the Rev. Dr. Ide, Honorable J.
R. Doolittle, and Honorable A. Hubbell, May 30, 1864, Mr. Lincoln says:
"In response to the preamble and resolutions of the American Baptist
Home Mission Society, which you did me the honor to present, I can
only thank you for thus adding to the effective and almost unanimous
support which the Christian communities are so zealously giving to the
country, and to liberty. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive how it
could be otherwise with anyone professing Christianity, or even having
ordinary perceptions of right and wrong. To read the Bible, as the
word of God Himself, that 'In the sweat of _thy_ face shalt thou eat
bread,' and to preach therefrom that, 'In the sweat of _other men's_
faces shalt thou eat bread,' to my mind can scarcely be reconciled
with honest sincerity. When brought to my final reckoning may I have
to answer for robbing no man of his goods; yet more tolerable even
this, than for robbing one of himself and all that was his. When, a
year or two ago, those professedly holy men of the South met in the
semblance of prayer and devotion, and, in the name of Him who said,
'As ye would all men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them,'
appealed to the Christian world to aid them in doing to a whole race
of men as they would have no man do unto themselves, to my thinking
they contemned and insulted God and His church far more than did
Satan when he tempted the Saviour with the kingdoms of earth. The
devil's attempt was no more false, and far less hypocritical. But let
me forbear, remembering it is also written, 'Judge not, lest ye be
judged.'"
On December 7, 1863, in making announcement of Union success in East
Tennessee, he closed as follows: "I recommend that all loyal people do,
on receipt of this information, assemble at their places of worship
and render special homage and gratitude to Almighty God for His great
advancement of the national cause."
His Third Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1863, began: "Another
year of health, and of sufficiently abundant harvests, has passed.
For these, and especially for the improved condition of our national
affairs, our renewed and profoundest gratitude to God is due."
After the capture of Mobile and Atlanta, on September 3, 1864, Mr.
Lincoln issued his fourth special thanksgiving proclamation, calling on
all people to offer thanksgiving to God "for His mercy in preserving
our national existence"; and also "that prayer be made for divine
protection to our soldiers and their leaders in the field, who have so
often and so gallantly periled their lives in battling with the enemy;
and for blessings and comforts from the Father of Mercies to the sick,
wounded, and prisoners, and to the orphans and widows of those who have
fallen in the service of their country, and that He will continue to
uphold the Government of the United States against all the effects of
public enemies and secret foes."
He issued a proclamation calling for thanksgiving for victories, July
15, 1863:
"It has pleased Almighty God to hearken to the supplication and
prayers of an afflicted people, and to vouchsafe to the army and navy
of the United States victories on land and on sea so signal and so
effective as to furnish reasonable grounds for augmented confidence
that the union of these States will be maintained, their Constitution
preserved, and their peace and prosperity permanently restored. But
these victories have been accorded not without sacrifice of life,
limb, health, and liberty, incurred by brave, loyal, and patriotic
citizens. Domestic affliction in every part of the country follows
in the train of these fearful bereavements. It is meet and right to
recognize and confess the presence of the Almighty Father and the
power of His hand equally in these triumphs and in these sorrows.
"Now, therefore, be it known that I do set apart Thursday, the 6th
day of August next, to be observed as a day of national thanksgiving,
praise, and prayer, and I invite the people of the United States to
assemble on that occasion in their customary places of worship, and,
in the forms approved by their own consciences, render the homage
due to the Divine Majesty for the wonderful things He has done in
the nation's behalf, and invoke the influence of His Holy Spirit to
subdue the anger which has produced and so long sustained a needless
and cruel rebellion, to change the hearts of the insurgents, to guide
the counsels of the government with wisdom adequate to so great a
national emergency, and to visit with tender care and consolation
throughout the length and breadth of our land all those who, through
the vicissitudes of marches, voyages, battles, and sieges, have been
brought to suffer in mind, body, or estate, and finally to lead the
whole nation through the paths of repentance and submission to the
Divine Will back to the perfect enjoyment of union and fraternal
peace."
On March 30, 1863, President Lincoln issued a proclamation appointing
another national fast-day. It reads as follows:
"Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the
supreme authority and just government of Almighty God in all the
affairs of men and of nations has by a resolution requested the
President to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and
humiliation:
"And whereas, it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their
dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and
transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine
repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime
truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history,
that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:
"And insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like
individuals, are subject to punishments and chastisements in this
world, and may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil
war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted
upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national
reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the
choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many
years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth,
and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we have forgotten
God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in
peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have
vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these
blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient
to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to
pray to the God who made us:
"It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended
Power, and confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and
forgiveness:
"Now, therefore, in compliance with the request and fully concurring
in the views of the Senate, I do by this my proclamation designate and
set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national
humiliation, fasting, and prayer. And I do hereby request all the
people to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits,
and to unite at their several places of public worship and their
respective homes in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to
the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn
occasion. All this being done in sincerity and truth, let us then rest
humbly in the hope authorized by divine teachings, that the united
cry of the nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings
no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of
our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of
unity and peace."
In 1863 Washington's Birthday occurred on Sunday, and Rev. Alexander
Reed, superintendent of the United States Christian Commission, invited
Mr. Lincoln to preside at a meeting in the House of Representatives on
that day. In reply Mr. Lincoln said: "Whatever shall be sincerely, and
in God's name, devised for the good of the soldier and seaman in their
hard spheres of duty, can scarcely fail to be blest.... The birthday
of Washington and the Christian Sabbath coinciding this year, and
suggesting together the highest interests of this life and of that to
come, is most propitious for the meeting proposed."
January 5, 1863, in reply to a letter, Mr. Lincoln wrote the following:
"It is most cheering and encouraging for me that in the efforts which
I have made and am making for the restoration of a righteous peace
for our country, I am upheld and sustained by the good wishes and
prayers of God's people. No one is more deeply than myself aware that
without His favor our highest wisdom is but as foolishness and that
our most strenuous efforts would avail nothing in the shadow of His
displeasure."
"I am conscious of no desire for my country's welfare that is not
in consonance with His will, and no plan upon which we may not ask
His blessing. It seems to me that if there be one subject upon which
all good men may unitedly agree, it is imploring the gracious favor
of the God of Nations upon the struggles our people are making for
the preservation of their precious birthright of civil and religious
liberty."
Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862:
"While it has not pleased the Almighty to bless us with a return of
peace, we can but press on, guided by the best light He gives us,
trusting that in His own good time and wise way all will be well."
Reply to a committee of colored people who presented him with a Bible,
September 4, 1864:
"This occasion would seem fitting for a lengthy response to the
address which you have just made. I would make one if prepared; but
I am not. I would promise to respond in writing had not experience
taught me that business will not allow me to do so. I can only say
now, as I have often before said, it has always been a sentiment with
me that all mankind should be free. So far as able, within my sphere,
I have always acted as I believe to be right and just; and I have
done all I could for the good of mankind generally. In letters and
documents sent from this office, I have expressed myself better than I
now can.
"In regard to this great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift
God has given to man. All the good Saviour gave to the world was
communicated through this Book. But for it we could not know right
from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and
hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it. To you I return my most
sincere thanks for this very elegant copy of the great Book of God
which you present."--Complete Works of Lincoln by John G. Nicolay and
John Hay. New and Enlarged Edition, Twelve Volumes. New York: Francis
D. Tandy Company, 1905, X, 217-18.
Compiling these and kindred passages from his authentic works, his
two secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, were impressed anew with the
manifest sincerity and deep religious conviction which they expressed.
Commenting upon these as a whole, and having particularly in mind
certain stories which given to the public could not, from their date
and nature, have been mere conventional expressions, and others so
manifestly personal that no consideration of the public opinion could
have had any weight with him, they said:
"He was a man of profound and intense religious feeling. We have
no purpose of attempting to formulate his creed: we question if he
himself ever did so. There have been swift witnesses who, judging
from expressions uttered in his callow youth, have called him an
atheist; and others who, with the most laudable intentions, have
remembered improbable conversations which they bring forward to
prove at once his orthodoxy and their own intimacy with him. But
leaving aside these apocryphal endeavors, we have only to look at his
authentic public and private utterances to see how deep and strong
in all the latter part of his life was the current of his religious
thought and emotion. He continually invited and appreciated, at
their highest value, the prayers of good people. The pressure of
the tremendous problems by which he was surrounded; the awful moral
significance of the conflict in which he was the chief combatant; the
overwhelming sense of personal responsibility which never left him
for an hour--all contributed to produce, in a temperament naturally
serious and predisposed to a spiritual view of life and conduct, a
sense of reverent acceptance of the guidance of a superior Power.
From the morning when, standing amid the falling snowflakes in the
railway car at Springfield, he asked the prayers of his neighbors in
those touching phrases whose echo rose that night in invocations from
thousands of family altars, to that memorable hour when on the steps
of the Capitol he humbled himself before his Creator in the sublime
words of the Second Inaugural, there is not an expression known
to have come from his lips or pen but proves that he held himself
answerable in every act of his career to a more august tribunal
than any on earth. The fact that he was not a communicant of any
church, and that he was singularly reserved in regard to his personal
religious life, gives only the greater force to these striking proofs
of his profound reverence and faith.
"In final substantiation of this assertion, we subjoin two papers
from the hand of the President, one official and the other private,
which bear within themselves the imprint of a sincere devotion and
a steadfast reliance upon the power and benignity of an overruling
Providence. The first is an order which he issued on the 16th of
November, 1864, in the observance of Sunday.
Lincoln's Sunday Rest Order, November 15, 1862:
"The President, Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy, desires and
enjoins the orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers and
men in the military and naval service. The importance for man and
beast of the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian
soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiments of
a Christian people, and a due regard for the Divine Will, demand that
Sunday labor in the army and navy be reduced to the measure of strict
necessity.
"The discipline and character of the national forces should not
suffer, nor the cause they defend be imperiled by the profanation
of the day or name of the Most High. 'At this time of public
distress'--adopting the words of Washington in 1776--'men may
find enough to do in the service of God and their Country without
abandoning themselves to vice and immorality.' The first general
order issued by the Father of his Country, after the Declaration of
Independence, indicates the spirit in which our institutions were
founded and should ever be defended. 'The General hopes and trusts
that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a
Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his
country.'
"The date of this remarkable order leaves no possibility for the
insinuation that it sprang from any political purposes or intention.
Mr. Lincoln had just been re-elected by an overwhelming majority; his
own personal popularity was unbounded; there was no temptation for
hypocrisy or deceit. There is no explanation of the order except that
it was the offspring of sincere convictions.
"But if it may be said that this was, after all, an exoteric utterance
springing from those relations of religion and good government which
the wisest rulers have always recognized in their intercourse with
the people, we will give another document of which nothing of the
sort can be said. It is a paper which Mr. Lincoln wrote in September,
1862, while his mind was burdened with the weightiest question of his
life,--the weightiest with which this country has had to grapple.
Wearied with all the considerations of law and of expediency with
which he had been struggling for two years, he retired within himself
and tried to bring some order into his thoughts by rising above the
wrangling of men and parties, and pondering the relations of human
government to the Divine. In this frame of mind, absolutely detached
from any earthly considerations, he wrote this meditation. It has
never been published. It was not written to be seen of men. It was
penned in the awful sincerity of a perfectly honest soul trying to
bring himself into closer communion with its Maker.
Meditation on the Divine will, September [30], 1862:
"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act
in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be,
wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.
In the present Civil War it is quite possible that God's purpose is
something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the best
instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation
to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably
true: that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end
yet. By His mere great power on the minds of the now contestants He
could have saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet
the contest began. And, having begun, He could give the final victory
to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds."--NICOLAY AND HAY,
Life of Lincoln, _Century_, August, 1889. Vol. 35, pp. 567-68.
PART III: THE RELIGION OF LINCOLN
CHAPTER XX
WHAT LINCOLN WAS NOT
It is amazing to discover how many forms of faith and non-faith have
claimed Abraham Lincoln.
"_Seven cities strove for Homer, dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread._"
More than seven churches have striven for the dead Abraham Lincoln,
some of whom would not even now admit to their membership a living man
who professed his sentiments.
Before we undertake the difficult task of assessing the real faith of
Abraham Lincoln, let us dispose of a few of the claims that have been
made on his behalf, or the charges that have been made against him, and
which clearly have no sufficient weight of evidence. Let us ask first,
_Was Abraham Lincoln an atheist?_
Herndon declared that Lincoln was an infidel, "sometimes bordering on
atheism." This last phrase has been overstrained. What Herndon appears
to have meant was that in some of Lincoln's blackest hours of gloom his
mind hung over that utter void; and he more than hints that in such
hours Lincoln's mind was scarcely sound. Herndon was far from believing
or meaning to charge that atheism was Lincoln's real view of God and
the world. The contrary is shown in a score of places in Herndon's
works and letters.
Some years ago the _Open Court_ of Chicago contained an article by
Theodore Stanton, quoted from the _Westminster Review_. It said:
"That Lincoln was an orthodox Christian nobody pretends to assert. But
his friends and biographers differ as to how much of a Christian he
was. If Lincoln had lived and died an obscure Springfield lawyer and
politician, he would unquestionably have been classed by his neighbors
among freethinkers. But as is customary with the Church, whether Roman
Catholic or Protestant, when Lincoln became one of the great of the
world, an attempt was made to claim him.... The shrewd politician who
has not an elastic conscience--and that was Lincoln's case--simply
keeps mum on religious subjects, or, when he must touch on the
subject, deals only in platitudes, and this is just what Lincoln
did. Lincoln thought little on religious subjects, and read less.
That, when left to himself, he was quite indifferent to religion, is
frequently evident in the acts of his life."--_Open Court_, September
24, 1891, pp. 2962-63, quoting _Westminster Review_ of September, 1890.
This statement was not sufficiently radical for one reader of the _Open
Court_, who thought that Mr. Stanton had made Lincoln out to have been
virtually an agnostic, and who wished to prove him an atheist. He wrote
an article in which he said:
"Free-thinker means anything or nothing.... Plain words are the best.
That Lincoln was _A-theos_ connotes a definite attitude toward the
great religious chimera, and really defines Mr. Lincoln's position
more closely than any of Mr. Stanton's epithets [as, e.g., Agnostic].
It is positive, not negative, indicates what the man professedly was
rather than what he was not or what he oppugned. We are in position to
define his life-creed with all due measure of exactness."--"What Was
Abraham Lincoln's Creed?" by George M. McCrie, _Open Court_, November
26, 1891.
This writer then proceeded to define Mr. Lincoln's creed in terms
of atheism. But his argument was based on a subjective scheme of
philosophy, a kind of Hylo-Idealism derived from Hegel more than from
Lincoln, and one which it is safe to affirm Lincoln would neither have
admitted nor even understood.
Some time after, the same journal had a third and very different
article, which said:
"Lincoln was an extremely religious man, though not a technical
Christian. He thought deeply, and his opinions were positive. His
seriousness was a characteristic trait, showing itself even in his
genuine good humor. His very jokes were a part of his seriousness....
Lincoln was an extremely practical man. He believed not for belief's
sake, but for his own sake. He made a practice of religion; he used
it. His religion was his life, and his life was his religious service.
It was his own public profession. Religion was a fact to him. He
believed in prayer, because he found use for it: and when the fate of
the Union seemed to waver, when doubt and despair hovered over the
land and the future was uncertain, Lincoln often shut himself within
his room and offered up his prayer to God. 'So, many times,' he said,
'I was forced to my knees, not knowing where else to go.'
"While there is considerable in his writings to indicate a strong
faith in God and prayer, there is little to indicate his beliefs
regarding Christ, the Bible, etc. But the very absence of anything on
those points is good evidence that he did not hold the views that have
been attributed to him....
"He was a firm believer in the 'great and good and merciful God,' but
not in a revengeful or cruel God who could consign them to an eternal
hell when nothing good to those who suffered could possibly come from
such punishment. He believed in and used prayer as a means to bring
himself in closer relations with right in everything.... He believed
in 'universal inspiration and miracles under law,' and that all
things, both matter and mind, are governed by law. He believed that
all creation is an evolution under law, not a special creation of the
Supreme Being. He hoped for a joyous meeting in the world to come with
many loved ones gone before. He believed that Christianity consists in
being, not believing; in loving 'the Lord thy God with all thy heart
and thy neighbor as thyself.' He believed that the Bible is a book
to be understood and appreciated as any other book, not merely to be
accepted as a divine creation of infallibility. He believed in the man
Christ, not in the God Christ.... He was once an admirer of Volney,
Paine, and Voltaire; later of Theodore Parker, Emerson, and Channing.
He was once a scoffer of religion; later a supporter."--R. C. ROPER,
Religious Beliefs of Abraham Lincoln, _Open Court_, 1903, pp. 76-85.
Whatever Abraham Lincoln was, he was not an atheist. If any other
convenient term were to be applied to him, it would be necessary that
the term itself should be defined. Thus, Lyman Abbott has spoken of
Lincoln as an agnostic, meaning that Lincoln did not find himself
in position to affirm dogmatically on certain of the articles of
faith. This article by Dr. Abbott was particularly illuminating as
discriminating between the measure of uncertainty which a man may feel
in the matter of positive declaration of his views, while cherishing
in his heart and manifesting in his life the essentials of a Christian
faith. It was published as an editorial in reply to a letter of
inquiry, and both are worth reprinting entire:
"'My dear Dr. Abbott: You are quoted in the New York _Press_ of
October 15 as having referred in your Yale sermon to Abraham Lincoln
in the following terms: "Agnostic though he was." Are you correct
in the implication? If so, I should greatly like to know, as it is
a subject in which I am much interested. J. G. Holland says, in his
_Life of Lincoln_, page 61 ff., "He believed in God, and in His
personal supervision of the affairs of men.... This unwavering faith
in a divine Providence began at his mother's knee, and ran like a
thread of gold through all the inner experiences of his life"; and
much more to the same purpose. You are doubtless familiar with his
words on leaving Springfield for Washington: "He [Washington] would
never have succeeded except for the aid of divine Providence upon
which he at all times relied. On that same Almighty Being I place
my reliance. Pray that I may receive that divine assistance without
which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain." The
first inaugural would seem to indicate a most pronounced Christian
sentiment. Not to consume too much of your time, I might refer further
to Nicolay and Hay's _Life_, the following passages: Vol. VI, p. 539,
which contains a statement of Lincoln's religious principles; also,
same volume, pp. 323, 324, 327, 328, 341, 342.
R. A. A.'"
To this letter Dr. Abbott replied:
"The life of Abraham Lincoln appears to me to furnish a very striking
illustration both of the difference between theology and religion and
of the way in which religious experience is often developed in the
life of a true man, and is accompanied by a real though generally
quite unconscious change in theological opinion. Mr. Herndon, in
his _Life of Lincoln_, portrays the earlier religious faith of Mr.
Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay his later religious faith: neither biographer
is able to find that he ever formulated his own creed, neither is able
to formulate one for him. Yet between the religious convictions of the
period when he wrote an essay against Christianity, which, fortunately
for his reputation, a wise friend threw into the fire, and the period
when he wrote his second inaugural address, there is a difference
which cannot be measured by the mere lapse of years.
"Agnostic? What is an agnostic? Huxley invented the phrase to define
his own position in contrast with that of his friends whom he called
gnostics because they had each a theory of the universe and he had
none. He more specifically defines the basis of his no-theory of the
universe in a pathetic letter to Charles Kingsley (_Life and Letters_,
Vol. II, pp. 233-239): 'It is no use to talk to me of analogies and
probabilities. I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law
of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my lifelong hopes upon
weaker convictions. I dare not, if I would.' Compare with this Mr.
Herndon's measure of Mr. Lincoln's earlier habit of thought: 'As
already expressed, Mr. Lincoln had no faith. In order to believe, he
must see and feel, and thrust his hand into the place. He must taste,
smell, or handle before he had faith or even belief.' Or compare Mrs.
Lincoln's expression concerning her husband's religious opinions, as
quoted by Mr. Herndon: 'Mr. Lincoln had no faith and no hope, in the
usual acceptance of those words. He never joined a church; but still,
as I believe, he was a religious man by nature. He first seemed to
think about the subject when our Willie died, and then more than ever
about the time he went to Gettysburg; but it was a kind of poetry in
his nature; and he was never a technical Christian.'
"Religion is always a kind of poetry. Faith is kin to imagination;
both faith and imagination look upon the unseen and refuse to base
life merely upon the senses or upon mathematical formularies like the
law of the inverse squares. This poetry is often quite dissociated
from philosophy, or is even inconsistent with the philosophy which the
individual entertains. But Mr. Lincoln's early philosophy prepared for
his later religious experience. Mr. Herndon reports him as saying:
'There are no accidents in my philosophy. The past is the cause of
the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All
these are links in the endless chain stretching from the Infinite to
the finite.' With this philosophy of fatalism was a profound faith in
justice, a profound reverence for it, and an uncompromising obedience
to it. At first he did not put this philosophy and this faith
together. He who does put them together, that is, he who infuses this
philosophy in an overruling cause with this faith, which is a 'kind
of poetry,' in the supremacy of righteousness, comes to a faith in a
righteous God, who deserves our reverence, not because he is great,
but because he is good.
"When Abraham Lincoln began to feel the burden of the nation resting
upon him, and felt it too great a burden for him to carry unaided,
he wanted the sympathy of all men and women in the country who with
him believed in a Power directing the course of human history greater
than the actors in it, and who also believed in eternal justice; and
he asked their prayers. As the conflict went on and the burden grew
heavier and heavier, his faith in righteousness more and more infused
his belief in a superhuman power and transformed it into a belief in a
righteous God; but it was, till the last, a belief in a God of justice
rather than a Christ of pity, even as it phrased itself in that most
religious utterance of his life, his second inaugural: 'Fondly do
we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may
speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the
wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred years of unrequited toil
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall
be paid with another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand
years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are
true and righteous altogether."'
"There is no evidence that Mr. Lincoln had become a gnostic, or that
he had a comprehensive scheme of the universe, or that he had either
wrought out a system of theology for himself or accepted any that had
been wrought out by others; but there is abundant evidence that he had
learned in the four years of tragedy a lesson of dependence and trust,
that he had insensibly put together his belief in a supreme Power
and his faith in righteousness, and that thus there had been born in
him faith in a supreme righteous Power, whose will we may help to
carry out, and on whose wisdom and strength we may rely in achieving
it. It is thus that the life of Abraham Lincoln illustrates both
how a reverent agnostic may be deeply religious and how the life of
service and self-sacrifice leads through doubt to faith.--L. A."--_The
Outlook_, November 17, 1906.
_Was Abraham Lincoln a Roman Catholic?_
The question is absurd, and worth asking only that it may receive a
simple negative answer. Yet, singularly, a report was current and
somewhat widely believed in 1860 that Abraham Lincoln had been baptized
as a Roman Catholic and was himself a renegade from that faith. The
rumor appears to have had two roots. First was the fact that much
missionary work was done in early Illinois by Jesuit priests; and it
was assumed, not only contrary to every fact but to every element of
probability, that Abraham Lincoln had been baptized by one of them. The
other was the fact that he acted as attorney for Rev. Charles Chiniquy,
who after fifty years in the Church of Rome came out from that
communion and became a notable antagonist of the church in which he had
been reared. His unsparing criticisms led to various attacks upon him
through the courts and otherwise. When Lincoln was elected President
much was made of the fact that Lincoln had been Father Chiniquy's
attorney, and the rumor that he also was a renegade Catholic gained
wide currency.
Chiniquy professed to see in these rumors a peril to the life of Mr.
Lincoln, and both then and at intervals during his administration
warned the President that his life was in danger. The scarcely
concealed favor of the Vatican toward the cause of the South did not
tend to allay this anxiety. The fact that among those concerned in the
plot which finally ended in the assassination of the President were
several Roman Catholics, revived these reports immediately after his
death, and they are occasionally recalled even now.
So far as our present inquiry is concerned, we have only to ask and
answer the question. Mr. Lincoln was not in any period of his life
affiliated in any way with the Roman Catholic Church.
_Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist?_
During Mr. Lincoln's occupancy of the White House, there were several
rumors to the effect that President and Mrs. Lincoln were both
Spiritualists. A definite claim that Mr. Lincoln fully believed in
Spiritualism was set forth in 1891 by a medium named Mrs. Nettie
Colburn Maynard. She wrote a book relating in detail almost innumerable
sittings which she alleged were attended by Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln.
According to her story her mediumship began in her childhood in 1845.
At the outbreak of the war she was lecturing and giving public séances
and went to Washington to gain a furlough for her brother. She learned
of Mr. Lincoln's interest in Spiritualism, and of the visits to the
White House of two mediums, Charles Colchester and Charles Foster.
She was invited to the White House, where, if we are to credit her
story, she imparted to Mr. Lincoln very nearly all the wisdom which he
possessed during the period of the Civil War.
We learn from other sources that Lincoln permitted two or three mediums
to come to the White House and to tell him what the spirits said he
ought to know; but Lincoln said of them that the advice of the spirits,
as thus received, was as contradictory as the voices of his own
Cabinet, of whose meetings the séances reminded him.
The last attempt to make Mr. Lincoln out a Spiritualist is by Mrs.
Grace Garrett Durand, in a privately printed book issued since Sir
Oliver Lodge's _Raymond_. She claims to have talked with Raymond,
with William T. Stead, and other people, as well as with Mrs. Eddy,
from whom she expects to receive additional material supplementary to
her _Science and Health, and Key to the Scriptures_. She is, however,
according to her own account, especially intimate with Mr. Lincoln. She
says:
"President Lincoln has himself told me in many conversations I have
had with him from the spirit world that he was directed in his great
work during the Civil War by his mother and others in the spirit
world. Mr. Lincoln, or 'Uncle Abe,' as he has lovingly asked me to
call him, said that had he respected his mother's advice the day of
his assassination he would not have gone to the theater the fateful
night, as his mother had that day warned him not to go."
If Mr. Lincoln's spirit has indeed requested this lady to call him
"Uncle Abe" he has accorded her a liberty which was infrequent during
his lifetime. Near neighbors of Mr. Lincoln during his years in
Springfield inform me that no one called him "Abe" to his face, and
that very few even of his political opponents thus spoke of him. He
habitually addressed his partner as "Billy," but Mr. Herndon uniformly
called him "Mr. Lincoln." One could wish that Abraham Lincoln in heaven
might be at least as dignified as Abraham Lincoln was on earth.[52]
_Was Abraham Lincoln superstitious?_
Both President and Mrs. Lincoln were superstitious. They believed in
dreams and signs, he more in dreams and she more in signs. When Mrs.
Lincoln was away from him for a little time, visiting in Philadelphia
in 1863, and Tad with her, Lincoln thought it sufficiently important to
telegraph, lest the mail should be too slow, and sent her this message:
"Executive Mansion,
"Washington, June 9, 1863.
"MRS. LINCOLN,
"Philadelphia, Pa.
"Think you better put Tad's pistol away. I had an ugly dream about him.
"A. Lincoln."
--Quoted in facsimile in _Harper's Magazine_ for February, 1897;
_Lincoln's Home Life in the White House_, by Leslie J. Perry.
In Lamon's book of _Recollections_, published in 1895, a very different
book from his Life of Lincoln, he devotes an entire chapter to
Lincoln's dreams and presentiments. He relates the story of the dream
which Lincoln had not long before his assassination wherein he saw the
East Room of the White House containing a catafalque with the body of
an assassinated man lying upon it. Lincoln tried to remove himself from
the shadow of this dream by recalling a story of life in Indiana, but
could not shake off the gloom of it. Lamon says:
"He was no dabbler in divination, astrology, horoscopy, prophecy,
ghostly lore, or witcheries of any sort.... The moving power of
dreams and visions of an extraordinary character he ascribed,
as did the Patriarchs of old, to the Almighty Intelligence that
governs the universe, their processes conforming strictly to natural
laws."--_Recollections_, p. 120.
In his Life of Lincoln, Lamon tells the story of the dream which
Lincoln had late in the year 1860, when resting upon a lounge in his
chamber he saw his figure reflected in a mirror opposite with two
images, one of them a little paler than the other. It worried Lincoln,
and he told his wife about it. She thought it was "a sign that Lincoln
was to be elected for a second term and that the paleness of one of
the faces indicated that he would not see life through the last term"
(p. 477).
As this optical illusion has been so often printed, and has seemed so
weirdly prophetic of the event which followed, it may be well to quote
an explanation of the incident from an address by Dr. Erastus Eugene
Holt, of Portland, Maine:
"As he lay there upon the couch, every muscle became relaxed as
never before.... In this relaxed condition, in a pensive mood and
in an effort to recuperate the energies of a wearied mind, his eyes
fell upon the mirror in which he could see himself at full length,
reclining upon the couch. All the muscles that direct, control, and
keep the two eyes together were relaxed; the eyes were allowed to
separate, and each eye saw a separate and distinct image by itself.
The relaxation was so complete, for the time being, that the two eyes
were not brought together, as is usual by the action of converging
muscles, hence the counterfeit presentiment of himself. He would have
seen two images of anything else had he looked for them, but he was
so startled by the ghostly appearance that he felt 'a little pang as
though something uncomfortable had happened,' and obtained but little
rest. What a solace to his wearied mind it would have been if someone
could have explained this illusion upon rational grounds!"--Address
at Portland, Maine, February 12, 1901, reprinted by William Abbatt,
Tarrytown, N. Y., 1916.
Other incidents which relate to Mr. Lincoln's faith in dreams,
including one that is said to have occurred on the night preceding his
assassination, are well known, and need not be repeated here in detail.
It is not worth while to seek to evade or minimize the element of
superstition in Lincoln's life, nor to ask to explain away any part
of it. Dr. Johnson admits it in general terms, but makes little of
concrete instances:
"The claim that there was more or less of superstition in his nature,
and that he was greatly affected by his dreams, is not to be disputed.
Many devout Christians today are equally superstitious, and, also,
are greatly affected by their dreams. Lincoln grew in an atmosphere
saturated with all kinds of superstitious beliefs. It is not strange
that some of it should cling to him all his life, just as it was with
Garfield, Blaine, and others.
"In 1831, then a young man of twenty-two, Lincoln made his second trip
to New Orleans. It was then that he visited a Voodoo fortune teller,
that is so important in the eyes of certain people. This, doubtless,
was out of mere curiosity, for it was his second visit to a city. This
no more indicates a belief in 'spiritualism' than does the fact that
a few days before he started on this trip he attended an exhibition
given by a traveling juggler, and allowed the magician to cook eggs in
his low-crowned, broad-rimmed hat."--_Lincoln the Christian_, p. 29.
I do not agree with this. Superstition was inherent in the life of the
backwoods, and Lincoln had his full share of it. Superstition is very
tenacious, and people who think that they have outgrown it nearly all
possess it. "I was always superstitious," wrote Lincoln to Joshua F.
Speed on July 4, 1842. He never ceased to be superstitious.
While superstition had its part in the life and thought of Lincoln, it
was not the most outstanding fact in his thinking or his character. For
the most part his thinking was rational and well ordered, but it had in
it many elements and some strange survivals--strange until we recognize
the many moods of the man and the various conditions of his life and
thought in which from time to time he lived.
_Was Lincoln a Quaker?_
In his autobiographical sketch written for Jesse W. Fell, Mr. Lincoln
stated that his paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from
Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782; "his
ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County,
Pennsylvania." This reference to a remote Quaker ancestry has suggested
to some writers the possibility that Mr. Lincoln himself may have been,
in conviction, a Quaker.
This suggestion is utilized to its full value and beyond by Henry Bryan
Binns, the first English biographer of Lincoln, whose book appeared in
1907, and others have followed his intimations. He says:
"In some brief autobiographical notes, Lincoln remarks that his
ancestors, when they left Berks County, Pennsylvania, were Quakers.
The allusion has significance, not merely because it is the only
reference to any religious body in these notes, but because it
suggests an interesting spiritual affiliation to which we shall refer
again later."
He fulfills this promise, and refers to it repeatedly. The Quaker
ancestry finds reinforcement in his assurance that the Shipley strain
in Nancy Hanks was "probably" Quaker. These references occur a number
of times in the early part of his book, and recur in the concluding
chapter with more than a suggestion that Mr. Lincoln continued to bear
some of the inherited spiritual qualities of the Quaker.
These suggestions lack evidential value. Lincoln's grandfather's
ancestors were believed by him to have been Quakers in Pennsylvania,
and their ancestors are believed to have been Puritans in
Massachusetts. But the New Englanders no more surely dropped their
Massachusetts Puritanism in Pennsylvania than the Pennsylvania
Quakers dropped their Quakerism in Virginia and Kentucky. The Quaker
ancestry was not forgotten nor was it a thing to be ashamed of,
but the distinctive tenets of the Friends had no large part in the
working creed of Abraham Lincoln. He respected the Quakers, and on
more than one occasion showed his interest in them; but there is no
reason to believe that he shared either their theology or their theory
of non-resistance. He was compelled to approve some severe measures
against American citizens who refused to fight, and a number of Quakers
suffered in consequence. Lincoln saw no way to prevent these sufferings
altogether, though he did his best to mitigate them, and he always
respected the principles of those who held in sincerity the Quaker
faith which he did not share.
_Was Lincoln a Unitarian or a Universalist?_
It is my opinion that Lincoln did not believe in endless punishment,
and also that he did not accept the supernatural birth of Christ. The
evidence on which these opinions rest has already been indicated. But
I do not regard him as a Universalist or a Unitarian. The basis of
his religious belief was Calvinism of the most rigid sort. It could
accept some incidental features of other systems, but at heart it was
Calvinistic.
I have talked with Rev. Jasper Douthit, of Shelbyville, concerning
Unitarianism in central Illinois. He quotes Jenkin Lloyd Jones as
saying of his Shelbyville church, that "Unitarianism attempted to
locate in the Capitol City of Illinois, but struck the dome of the
State House, glanced off, and stuck in the mud at Shelbyville." In
some sense the movement of Mr. Douthit is the present survival of
the attempt before the Civil War to domesticate Unitarianism in
Springfield and vicinity. I have clipped from the _Christian Register_
a communication which, without pretending to technical knowledge of the
organific principle of the several sects, goes near to the heart of
this question:
"To the editor of the Christian Register:--
"_Apropos_ of 'Lincoln Day,' may I ask for _definite information_ as
to Mr. Lincoln's religious belief? The author of that little pamphlet,
'What do Unitarians Believe?' implies that he is to be numbered among
Unitarians, and quotes from the author of _Six Months at the White
House_ to prove his assertion. Now I don't know _who_ the _author_
of _Six Months at the White House is_, and care less. His testimony
is 'second hand' viewed in any light you please. He may have been a
Unitarian himself, though I hardly think he would have used the word
'Saviour,' in speaking of Mr. Lincoln's words, unless Lincoln himself
had used it. At any rate, the only _direct_ testimony bearing on Mr.
Lincoln's religious views is found in _his own writings_, and I want
to quote from his Fast Day proclamation of March 30, 1863, as throwing
some light on the subject.
"He says: 'Whereas, it is the duty of nations, as well as of men,
to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess
their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured
hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to
recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures, and
proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God
is the Lord.
"'And, insomuch as we know that by His Divine laws, nations, like
individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this
world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of Civil War,
which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon
us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national
reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the
choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years
in peace and prosperity.
"'We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has
ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious
hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and
strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of
our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior
wisdom and virtue of our own.'
"If this isn't _Calvinism_ pure and simple, then I don't know what
Calvinism is.
"Now, Mr. Editor, if you can show me any reference in _Mr. Lincoln's
own words_ that point as strongly toward 'Unitarianism' and those
truths which _it_ claims as peculiarly its own, I shall be glad to see
it.
"CHARLES B. TOLEMAN."
A number of Lincoln's old neighbors, contributing to the Irwin article
in denial of the alleged infidelity of Lincoln, affirm that he was a
Universalist. In their denial of his infidelity they were correct;
and also in their detection of the fallacy of Herndon in which he
counted every opinion to be infidel that did not conform to the severe
orthodoxy with which he was familiar. As between Herndon and these
writers, they were correct. Lincoln's "infidelity" consisted in good
part of his denial of eternal punishment. But that did not make him
an infidel; neither did it constitute him technically a Universalist.
The substratum of his belief was the old-time predestinarianism which
he heard in his youth and never outgrew. How he could make this blend
with his wide departures from conventional orthodoxy in other points,
those can best understand who have heard the kind of preaching on which
Lincoln grew up. Its effect is not easily obliterated.
_Was Abraham Lincoln a Methodist?_
This question would seem to require no answer, yet it is one that
should receive an answer, for claims have been made, and are still
current, which imply that Lincoln was actually converted in the
Methodist Church, whose doctrine he accepted because Calvinism
was repugnant to him; and that while he continued to attend the
Presbyterian Church, he was essentially a Methodist.
Lincoln had a very high regard for the Methodist Church. It was rent
asunder during the Civil War, and the Northern branch of the church
which had long been vigorously anti-slavery was warmly loyal. On May
18, 1864, in a letter of reply to a deputation of ministers from
that body, he said, "God bless the Methodist Church--bless all the
churches, and blessed be God who, in this our great trial, giveth us
the churches."
Reference has been made to the fact that Methodism did not at any time
appear greatly to influence the Lincoln family in matters of theology,
and that the early environment of the family from the birth of Lincoln
was Baptist. I am inclined to think that the Hanks family had Methodist
antecedents. Thomas and Nancy Lincoln were married by a Methodist
preacher, Rev. Jesse Head. He is known to have been a foe of slavery,
and there is some reason to think that the Lincoln family derived some
part of its love of freedom from him.
From time to time Lincoln met Methodist preachers who deeply impressed
him. One of these was Rev. Peter Akers, whom he heard in 1837, when
Lincoln was twenty-eight years of age.
"He and a group of associates went out to hear him at a camp-meeting
six miles west of Springfield, at the 'Salem Church.' The Rev. Peter
Akers was a vigorous and fearless man. He spoke of certain prophecies,
and predicted 'the downfall of castes, the end of tyrannies, and
the crushing out of slavery.' On the way home they were earnestly
discussing the sermon. Lincoln is alleged to have said: 'It was the
most instructive sermon, and he is the most impressive preacher, I
have ever heard. It is wonderful that God has given such power to
men. I firmly believe his interpretation of prophecy, so far as I
understand it, and especially about the breaking down of civil and
religious tyrannies; and, odd as it may seem, I was deeply impressed
that I should be somehow strangely mixed up with them."--TARBELL,
_Life of Lincoln_, I, 237.
In the lecture on Abraham Lincoln by Bishop Fowler, as finally prepared
for the press, is an incident which apparently was not in its earlier
editions. At a reunion of the Seventy-third Illinois Volunteers, held
in Springfield on September 28, 29, 1897, the colonel of that regiment,
Rev. James F. Jacquess, D.D., related an incident in which he stated
that while he was serving a Methodist Church in Springfield in 1839,
Mr. Lincoln attended a series of revival services held in that church,
and was converted. The story was heard with great interest by the old
soldiers of that regiment, many of whose officers had been Methodist
preachers, and it was printed in the Minutes of the Proceedings of the
Eleventh Annual Reunion of Survivors of the Seventy-third Illinois
Infantry.
Twelve years later, in 1909, in connection with the Centenary
Celebration of the birth of Lincoln, the story was reprinted, with
certain added details obtained from the brother of Colonel Jacquess.
As thus wrought into literary form, it was printed in the New York
_Christian Advocate_ in an article entitled "The Conversion of
Lincoln," by Rev. Edward L. Watson, of Baltimore.
Already Bishop Fowler, to whom Colonel Jacquess alluded in his address
at Springfield as having no adequate account of Lincoln's conversion,
had accepted the story and incorporated it into the final version of
his famous lecture (_Patriotic Orations_, p. 102). The death of Colonel
Jacquess and the additions made by his brother give this incident its
permanent form in the _Christian Advocate_ article of November 11, 1909.
I am glad to have been able to obtain from the _Christian Advocate_
their last copy of that issue, outside their office file, and it
appears in full in the Appendix to this volume. It may be accepted as
the authoritative form of this story.
That the story as told by Colonel Jacquess must have had some element
of truth I think beyond question; that it occurred exactly as he
related it, I greatly doubt. The years between 1839 and 1897 numbered
fifty-eight, and that is more than ample time for a man's memory to
magnify and color incidents almost beyond recognition.
The story as it is thus told lacks confirmatory evidence.[53] If
Lincoln was converted in a Methodist Church in 1839 and remained
converted, a considerable number of events which occurred in subsequent
years might reasonably have been expected to have been otherwise than
they really were. Each reader must judge for himself in the light of
all that we know of Abraham Lincoln how much or how little of this
story is to be accepted as literal fact. The present writer cannot say
that he is convinced by the story.
_Was Abraham Lincoln a Freemason?_
In an address delivered before Harmony Lodge, in Washington, D. C.,
on January 28, 1914, Dr. L. D. Carman delivered an address, which has
since been printed, entitled "Abraham Lincoln, Freemason." In this
address it was set forth that "It was not an unusual practice in the
early days of Masonry in this country in sparsely settled localities,
remote from an active lodge, for several members of the fraternity to
get together, form an emergent or occasional lodge, and make Masons."
Abraham Lincoln was presumed to have been made such a Mason because of
utterances of his, quoted at length, which appeared to show familiarity
with Masonic usage.[54]
Those utterances, when examined, carry no such presumption, nor was
there any occasion for such an emergent lodge. A lodge existed at
Petersburg, near New Salem, and a number of Lincoln's friends belonged
to it; their names are on record. The records of the Springfield Lodge,
also, are preserved, and bear no mention of his name; nor is there any
evidence so far as the present author knows that on any occasion he
was ever in a Masonic Lodge. Orators may use the symbolic language of
architecture without knowledge of speculative Masonry, and Lincoln used
it so.
CHAPTER XXI
WHY DID LINCOLN NEVER JOIN THE CHURCH?
MR. THOMAS LEWIS, attorney in Springfield with an office on the same
floor and an elder in the First Presbyterian Church, informs us that
there was some real expectation that Lincoln would have united with
that church in Springfield after his views had been modified through
the influence of Dr. Smith. He says that Lincoln attended with
considerable regularity a series of revival meetings in progress in
the church, but was out of town when application was made for church
membership and the officers of the church were disappointed that he did
not then unite.
Rev. Dr. Phineas D. Gurley, of Washington, tells of conversations with
Lincoln concerning religion and of some expressed desires on the part
of Lincoln for church fellowship. His feeling of support in prayer was
manifest in his coming to the mid-week prayer service, where, however,
as Dr. Gurley affirms, he commonly sat in the pastor's room with an
open door, hearing the prayers that were offered but preferring not to
attract attention by his visible presence.
The best statement, and one that has been accepted as truly
representative of Lincoln's feeling with regard to church membership,
is one that comes to us on thoroughly good authority and from the
period immediately following Lincoln's death.
Hon. Henry C. Deming, member of Congress from Connecticut, in a
memorial address given before the Legislature of Connecticut, June 8,
1865, related that he had asked Mr. Lincoln why he never united with a
church, and Mr. Lincoln answered:
"I have never united myself to any church, because I have found
difficulty in giving my assent, without mental reservation, to the
long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterize
their articles of belief and confessions of faith. When any church will
inscribe over its altars, as its sole qualification for membership, the
Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both 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 all my soul" (p. 42).
To his Washington pastor, Rev. Phineas D. Gurley, he said that he could
not accept, perhaps, all the doctrines of his Confession of Faith,
"but," said he, "if all that I am asked to respond to is what our Lord
said were the two great commandments, to love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart and mind and soul and strength, and my neighbor as myself,
why, I aim to do that."
Mr. Henry B. Rankin, who wrote his _Reminiscences_ in 1916, states
that he was a boy in Lincoln's office and his parents knew Lincoln
intimately during his years of struggle in New Salem. Mr. Rankin's
recollection of a conversation which Lincoln had with Mr. Rankin's
mother indicates that Lincoln had some such feeling as far back as
his New Salem days. The Rankin family were warm friends of Peter
Cartwright, whom they called Uncle Peter, and also of Mr. Lincoln.
Mrs. Rankin asked him concerning the rumor that he was an infidel, and
Lincoln denied it; but being pressed to explain why he did not then
confess his Christian faith, he gave to her much the answer which in
later years he gave to Mr. Deming and to Dr. Gurley (_Reminiscences of
Lincoln_, pp. 324-26).
I think, then, we are compelled to accept this threefold testimony
as establishing beyond any reasonable doubt the answer that Lincoln
himself gave to the question, why he did not unite with the Church. It
is a great pity that he was not brought into contact with some form
of organized Christianity, orthodox and constructive in its essential
teachings, but with conditions of church membership as broad as those
of entrance into the kingdom of heaven. Churches have learned a little
better than they understood in 1846 that a church creed should be
a testimony and not a test; that it is entirely consistent with the
organization and ideal of a thoroughly orthodox church to receive into
its membership any and every person who loves God and his fellow-man
even though he doubts thirty-eight of the thirty-nine articles of the
creed and is more or less uncertain about the other one.
But we cannot consider the question of Lincoln's possible church
membership and his failure to acquire it without asking whether the
fault was wholly that of the churches. Other men beside Abraham Lincoln
were more liberal than the churches, including old Mentor Graham, but
were able to find a home there; though Graham was ultimately turned
out of the so-called "hardshell" church for his warm advocacy of the
principles of temperance. Some share of the responsibility for his
failure to unite with the Church must belong to Lincoln himself.
It is a hazardous thing to suggest any element short of perfection in
the life or thought of any popular hero. Nevertheless let us remind
ourselves that Lincoln had the defects of his qualities.
Lincoln lacked some of the finer feelings. He combined a deep personal
sympathy for anything which he could visualize with a rather strange
mental obtuseness toward things remote or abstract. Darwin, who was
born in the same year, had an early love of poetry and music. How
these tastes became atrophied in his concentration of thought upon
matters relating to the natural sciences was confessed and mourned by
him, and has often been commented upon by others. The time came to him
when music and poetry gave him physical nausea. Lincoln never had an
appreciation or love of anything very fine either in poetry or music.
At a time when he was being considered for President he could sit in a
stage coach playing "Yankee Doodle" on the mouth-organ[55] and playing
it badly, but he had no fine musical or poetic taste.
Not long before his assassination his sister-in-law, Mrs. Edwards,
visited at the White House, and he accompanied her one evening to the
conservatory. She greatly admired the rare exotics which she there
beheld for the first time, and Lincoln vainly strove to share her
enthusiasm but confessed to her that something had been left out of his
nature. Such things seemed to make no appeal to him.
Of Lincoln's lack in matters involving the finer feelings we have
abundant testimony not only in the pages of Lamon and Herndon, but in
other intimate sketches of his life in Illinois, as, for example, in
Whitney's _With Lincoln on the Circuit_,[56] and especially in his
article in the _Arena_ in April, 1898. There were aspects of religion
which did not make as strong an appeal to Abraham Lincoln as they would
have made but for this blind spot in his nature.
It is not the purpose of this book to go in any detail into Mr.
Lincoln's love affairs; but if any further illustration were desired of
this point of which we are speaking, it could be found very painfully
in his relations with Miss Owens, and his letter to Mrs. Browning.
Reference has been made to a certain lack of good taste which Lincoln
sometimes manifested, and of which the reminiscences of Lamon, Herndon,
Whitney, and others of his associates have given us sufficient
example. But it was not always so with Lincoln. There was in him an
innate courtesy, an intuitive sympathy, an ability to adapt himself
to another's point of view, which gave him the essential quality of
a gentleman. Fred Douglass said of him that Mr. Lincoln was the only
white man with whom he ever talked for an hour who did not in some way
remind him that he was a negro. That same fine feeling showed itself in
many ways.
It should be remembered, too, when his uncouthness of apparel is
recalled, that while he was always a careless man in his dress, the
period in which he lived was one in which people of the regions where
he formed his lifelong habits were not given to fastidious dress. He
dressed much as other men dressed. The shawl which he wore was such
a shawl as the author's father wore; such as many men wore. It was a
mark of good breeding rather than the reverse, and some men wore the
shawl very effectively for purposes of display. The author himself has
often carried with him in long rides in the southern mountains what was
called a "saddle-shawl" not unlike that of Lincoln; and he now owns
such a shawl, bequeathed to him by one of Lincoln's contemporaries, and
of the same color and approximately the same size that Lincoln used.
Mrs. Jane Martin Johns of Decatur, died recently at the age of
ninety-two. Her mind was clear and her memory precise. She has left
this, among other memories of Lincoln, as a reminder that he was a
gentleman, and that at times he showed the finest discrimination and
good taste:
"When I first knew Mr. Lincoln, he was forty years old; had been a
member of the state legislature and of congress; had traveled the
circuit with men of culture and refinement; had met great statesmen
and elegant gentlemen; and the ungainliness of the pioneer, if he ever
had it, had worn off and his manner was that of a gentleman of the
old school, unaffected, unostentatious, who arose at once when a lady
entered the room, and whose courtly manners would put to shame the
easy-going indifference to etiquette which marks the twentieth century
gentleman.
"His dress, like his manner, was suited to the occasion, but was
evidently a subject to which he gave little thought. It was certainly
unmarked by any notable peculiarity. It was the fashion of the day for
men to wear large shawls and Mr. Lincoln's shawl, very large, very
soft, and very fine, is the only article of his dress that has left
the faintest impression on my memory. He wore it folded lengthwise
(three and one-half yards long) in scarf fashion over his shoulders,
caught together under the chin with an immense safety-pin. One end of
the shawl was thrown across his breast and over the shoulder, as he
walked up the steps of the Macon House one day in December, 1849.
"Court was in session in Decatur, Judge David Davis presiding. The
hotel, where I was living temporarily, was kept by David Krone and
his good lady, whose popularity extended over the fourteen counties of
the Eighth Judicial District.
"Court week was always anticipated with great interest by the people
of the county seat. It was customary for the entire bar of the
district to follow the court from county to county, every man either
seeking new business, or as counsel in cases already on the docket.
The date of their arrival at any particular county seat could not be
definitely fixed, as the judge held court at his pleasure, usually
trying to finish all the business ahead before he migrated to the next
station.
"He was followed by a curious crowd. Lawyers, clients, witnesses,
itinerant peddlers, showmen, and gamblers filled the towns to
overflowing. It was no unusual thing for men who had no business in
the court, to follow from town to town merely seeking entertainment.
Social events of any moment were wont to be arranged for court week,
as the harvest time when strangers could be taken in. Taverns were
crowded and the hospitality of the people was taxed to the utmost
limit.
"To the men of the town, who always crowded the court house, the
examination of witnesses and the speeches of the lawyers furnished
an intellectual treat, for there were giants at that bar. There was
David Davis, the companionable judge, who knew the law and who loved
a laugh. And there were Stephen Logan the scholarly, and Stuart the
shrewd and kindly, Swett the clever, and Browning the handsome, and
Lamon the amusing, and Weldon and Gridley and Parks and Harmon and
Ficklin and Linder and Whitney and Oliver L. Davis, and the best
beloved Abraham Lincoln. Some of them traveled to only two or three
counties, but Judge Davis, Mr. Lincoln and Leonard Swett went the
whole circuit; Davis because he had to, Lincoln because he loved it,
and Swett because he loved their company.
"The Macon House was an oasis in the wilderness of miserable inns at
which they were usually compelled to 'put in.' In Decatur they found
clean beds, good bread and an abundance of the good things of the
season, administered by a genial landlady who greeted them all as
friends.
"It was in court week that my piano, after a long journey by steamer
down the Ohio and up the Wabash to Crawfordsville, Ind., and thence
by wagon, arrived in Decatur. The wagon was backed up to the steps at
the front door of the Macon House and the question of how to unload
it and get it into the house was a puzzling one. Not a man except the
landlord was to be found, but he soon solved the problem. "Court will
soon adjourn and there will be plenty of men," and almost as he spoke
the crowd began to appear. They gathered curiously around the wagon
that blocked the entrance. Landlord Krone explained:
"'There is a piano in that box that this woman here wants someone to
help unload. Who will lend a hand?'
"A tall gentleman stepped forward and, throwing off a big gray Scotch
shawl, exclaimed, 'Come on, Swett, you are the next biggest man.'
"That was my first meeting with Abraham Lincoln.
"After a few moments' consultation with the driver of the wagon, Mr.
Lincoln went into the basement where Mr. Krone had a carpenter shop,
and returned with two heavy timbers across his shoulders. With them
he established communication between the wagon and the front door
steps. The piano was unloaded with the assistance of Mr. Linder and
Mr. Swett, amid jokes and jeers galore, most of the jeers coming from
little Judge Logan.
"Before the legs had been screwed into place, dinner was announced,
and the men hurried to the back porch where two tin wash basins, a
long roller towel and a coarse comb, fastened to the wall by a long
string, afforded toilet accommodations for all guests. When dinner
was served, 'Mother Krone' placed a roast of beef in front of Dr.
Trowbridge to be carved and exclaimed, 'Men, if you can't get your
teeth through this beef you will have to fall back on the sausage. I
agreed to try roasting it without parboiling it, and I am afraid it
will be tougher than it was yesterday, and that was bad enough.'
"The beef, however, proved to be tender and juicy and was highly
praised by the guests. I recall this incident because Mr. Lincoln once
reminded me of it, saying that 'that was the time he learned that
roast beef ought not to be boiled.'
"After dinner, Mr. Lincoln superintended the setting up of the piano,
even to seeing that it stood squarely in the center of the wall space
allotted it, and then received my thanks with a polite bow and asked:
'Are you expecting to follow the court and give concerts?' The immense
relief expressed on his countenance, when he was assured that he
would not be called upon to repeat the performance was very laughable.
"'Then may we have one tune before we go?' he asked, and I played
'Rosin the Bow,' with variations.
"Someone shouted, 'Come on, boys, the judge will be waiting,' and
after I had assured them that if they desired it, I would give my
'first and only concert on this circuit' when they returned to the
hotel in the evening, the crowd dispersed.
"Here I wish to note that in the crowd that had assembled to watch the
unloading of the piano, the members of the bar, Mr. Lincoln's friends
and equals, always addressed him as 'Mr. Lincoln,' while to the rabble
and hangers-on he was often 'Abe.'
"The piano was a 'Gilbert,' made in Boston, and its fame extended far
and wide. It was visited by people from all over the state, stage
coach passengers frequently 'holding the stage' while they went down
to the other tavern (the Harrell House was the stage office) to see
and hear the novel instrument.
"That evening a notable crowd assembled in the parlor of the Macon
House. Judge Davis, who did not put up with Landlord Krone but was
the guest of Mrs. A. A. Powers, came in after supper; and practically
all of the bar of the Eighth Judicial District was present at what I
suppose we would now call a recital. I found that Mr. Charles Brown, a
wealthy landowner and stock dealer of McLean County, not only sang but
played a little and I called on him for assistance.
"The program, as I remember it, will illustrate the style of music in
vogue at that period.
"For show pieces, I played the 'Battle of Prague' and the 'Carnival of
Venice,' then followed with 'Washington's March,' 'Come Haste to the
Wedding,' and 'Woodup Quick Step' to convince the audience that I did
know a tune or two. For tragedy, I sang Henry Russel's 'Maniac' and
'The Ship on Fire,' and then made their blood run cold with the wild
wail of the 'Irish Mother's Lament.' For comic, we sang 'The Widdy
McGee' and 'I Won't Be a Nun,' topping off with 'Old Dan Tucker,'
'Lucy Long,' and 'Jim Crow,' the crowd joining in the chorus. These
were followed by more serious music. Mr. Brown and Mr. Swett joined
me in the duet 'Moonlight, Music, Love, and Flowers,' 'Rocked in the
Cradle of the Deep,' 'Pilgrim Fathers,' 'Bonaparte's Grave,' and
'Kathleen Mavourneen.' Each and all met with applause.
"As a finale, I sang 'He Doeth All Things Well,' after which Mr.
Lincoln, in a very grave manner, thanked me for the evening's
entertainment, and said: 'Don't let us spoil that song by any other
music tonight.' Many times afterwards I sang that song for Mr. Lincoln
and for Governor Oglesby, with whom it was also a favorite."
Another limitation must be found in Lincoln's morbid cautiousness.
Herndon tells us that his very walk gave the impression of craftiness;
that it was not the product of deceit, but only of a caution so
excessive that it became something more than second nature. He was
secretive to a marked degree. When he seemed to be confidential it
was in minor matters, or matters on which he had already made up his
mind and intended soon to make a public statement. Whatever may be
the true story of his engagement to Mary Todd and of those stormy and
obscure months between "that fatal first of January, 1840," and the
date of their wedding, November 4, 1842, Lincoln's letters to Speed
show an excess of caution that was positively abnormal. That it was
a mark of insanity has been vigorously denied and with much apparent
reason; but if it was not the mark of acute mental aberration, it was
the manifestation of a permanent mental trait. Such a nature, which
debated like Hamlet the question of suicide and actually printed a
brief article which was later cut from the files of the Springfield
paper--probably by Lincoln himself--which lingered shivering on the
brink of matrimony like the "timorous mortal" of whom Lincoln was
taught to sing, must have hesitated long before coming to such a
confident poise between alternating faith and doubt as that he could
have stood before the altar of a Presbyterian church in Springfield or
in Washington and taken upon him the vows of church membership.
Different writers have attempted to account for Lincoln's failure to
affiliate with the church wholly on the basis of his being greater than
the churches. I quote from one of these characteristic addresses, and
one that is in many respects excellent:
"Perhaps his religious nature was so broad that it could not be
compassed within the limits of any particular creed or system of
doctrines. Perhaps he saw the soul of truth so clearly that he could
not accept any one of them as a complete and final revelation of
truth. Perhaps he so clearly realized that all religious creeds and
systems have their roots in human nature that he could look upon
the Christian system as the only deposit of truth committed to the
children of men. Perhaps his conception of Deity was so vast that
he could not see all the Divine attributes manifest in the historic
Christ. Perhaps he felt that some of the doctrines of Christianity,
as they were formulated and preached in his day, would be a hindrance
rather than a help to his religious faith, so clear was his vision of
the things which are unseen and eternal, and so close was his relation
to the Author of his being. Perhaps he felt no need of a daysman or
mediator, because he himself knew the Lord face to face."--MILTON R.
SCOTT: _Lincoln, Was He an Inspired Prophet?_, pp. 55-57.
There is a measure of truth in this presentation of one side of the
case, but it is not the whole truth. Lincoln did not possess this
supposed clarity of vision of all spiritual truth. Some things he
saw clearly, but his faith and vision had each of them marked and
undeniable limitations.
In his widely popular and in many respects excellent oration on
Lincoln, Bishop Fowler said:
"Let us analyze Mr. Lincoln if we are able. This task is difficult
on account of his symmetry. He was so much like a sphere that he
projected farthest in every direction. His comprehension is to us
impossible on account of his immensity, for a man can be comprehended
only by his peers" (p. 28).
He found the same difficulty in estimating Grant. "It is difficult
to analyze General Grant, because he is so simple and complete. Like
Lincoln, he is like a sphere; approached from any side he seems to
project farthest toward you. Try to divide, and each section is like
all the rest. Cut him through, and he is all the way through alike" (p.
127).
I do not think that this is correct concerning Grant, and it certainly
is not true concerning Lincoln. He was not a sphere; he was angular or
he was nothing.[57] In endeavoring to assess his religious convictions,
we are liable to encounter contradictions. But there is a certain
inconsistent consistency in those contradictions. There are certain
kinds of contradictions which we do not encounter, and certain which,
encountering, may be interpreted in the light of certain underlying
agreements.
For instance, the Calvinism which he inherited and heard through
his childhood and which he accepted in a kind of semi-fatalistic
philosophy might seem the reverse of scientific. But the natural
science which Lincoln learned from _Vestiges of Creation_, while it
would have been repudiated by every Baptist preacher whom Lincoln ever
heard in his youth, was capable of being grafted upon that very root.
I suggest one more limitation in the character of Abraham Lincoln,
which had its possible relation to his hypothetical church membership.
He was possessed in marked degree of the obstinacy of irresolution.
That genial good-nature of his had behind it stubbornness, irony, and a
sullen but mighty temper which rarely broke the bounds of self-control,
but sometimes manifested itself on very slight provocation. Just when
men thought they had discovered in Abraham Lincoln a nose of wax which
they could shape to their own liking, they encountered in him a wholly
unexpected element of passive inertia and of active obstinacy. When he
did not know what to do, he would not do anything. It was this quality
in him which enabled him to rule a rampant Cabinet and which justified
the qualities set forth in such books as Major Putnam's _Abraham
Lincoln the Leader_, Richard Watson Gilder's _Lincoln the Leader_, and
Alonzo Rothschild's _Lincoln, Master of Men_. It was this which enabled
Herndon to write of him: "I know Abraham Lincoln better than he knows
himself.... You and I must keep the people right; God will keep Lincoln
right."
Those do greatly err who see in Lincoln only genial good humor and
teachableness; there was a point at which his good humor became
withering scorn or towering passion and his gentle and tractable
disposition became adamantine inertia. His successor, Andrew Johnson,
quoted as characterizing himself the lines from Sir Walter Scott:
"_Come one, come all; this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I._"
Lincoln might with much more appropriateness have quoted it of himself.
Mary Todd Lincoln united with the First Presbyterian Church of
Springfield on April 13, 1852, upon profession of her faith. The
church records contain no record of her dismissal, but only the word
"Deceased" without a date. She remained a member until her death,
though, after her return to Springfield in an unhappy state of mind,
she was not a very active one. The only other Lincoln record on the
books of this church is the baptism of Thomas Lincoln--"Tad," "son
of Abraham and Mary"--on April 4, 1855. The records of the financial
secretary, not very complete, show Abraham Lincoln to have been a
pew-holder from 1852 to 1861, and he departed for Washington with his
pew rent paid to the date of his departure. This is all that is to be
learned from the church records in Springfield.
Mary Todd Lincoln was a member in good and regular standing of the
Episcopal Church when she united with the Presbyterian, but she united
on profession of her faith. She affirmed that she did not believe
that she had ever previously been converted. This statement is one of
several indications that she, and with her her husband, came into a
new religious experience after the death of Willie in Washington, as
earlier he had been profoundly impressed after the death of Eddie in
Springfield.
We learn through sources outside the records, but wholly credible
sources, that her uniting with the Presbyterian Church was preceded by
a revival in the church, and she and her husband attended the revival
meetings regularly. Not only so, but many of Lincoln's associates,
including Major Stuart and other influential men of Springfield, were
present almost every night and were deeply interested. The letter of
Thomas Lewis, already cited, refers to the general expectation that
Lincoln would have united with the church with his wife. A similar and
wholly independent report comes to us[58] from Lincoln's associates
outside the church. They, also, expected him to go in with his wife.
But Lincoln was not fully persuaded. The logic of Dr. Smith demolished
all the arguments of the infidels and did it over again:
"_And thrice he vanquished all his foes,
And thrice he slew the slain._"
But doubts, though logically answered, still rose in Lincoln's mind. On
the other hand, and more important, Lincoln did not find himself able
to accept the rigid Calvinism of the Presbyterian Church of that day.
The evangelist made strong appeals, and Lincoln was not unmoved. But he
said to his friends that "he couldn't quite see it."
Lincoln was a man of mighty courage when his convictions were assured.
But he was also a man of more than normal caution. He could meet an
issue which he was fully convinced was right with all needful heroism.
But he was capable of evading an issue about which he was uncertain.
We know what Lincoln did just after his State Fair speech in
Springfield on October 3, 1854. He was roused "as never before," to
quote his own words, by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and
he came out in a four hours' speech following Douglas, and committed
himself unqualifiedly to the anti-Nebraska program. The Abolitionists
were overjoyed, and Lovejoy wanted him to address that body that very
night. Lincoln was in a quandary. To offend the Abolitionists meant
political death, for they were now strong and growing stronger; but, on
the other hand, to become an Abolitionist meant political death also at
that stage of the fight. Herndon, who was himself an Abolitionist, and
not much given to compromise, fully realized that Lincoln was in grave
political danger.[59] With Herndon's approval, Lincoln took Bob in his
buggy and drove off out into the country till the crisis was over.[60]
We know something also, though probably not the whole truth, about
Lincoln's wavering indecision with respect to his marriage to Mary
Todd. Whether he ran away from his own wedding, as he ran away from the
offer of the leadership of the Abolition movement, and if so, whether
he was sane or insane at the time, are questions which I prefer not, at
this time, to undertake to answer. But that incident may be cited as
another reminder that Lincoln had times of great mental uncertainty,
and that at such times he sometimes did unexpected things.
It is my firm conviction that, after the death of Eddie, Lincoln was
profoundly stirred in his own spiritual life; that the arguments of Dr.
Smith went far toward answering the arguments of Paine, Volney, and his
freethinking friends; that bereavement and spiritual comfort had done
their work of grace; that the desire for a home more truly united in
its religious relations and spiritual sympathies made a strong appeal
to him; and that the atmosphere of the revival seemed to make it easy
and natural for him to enter the church with Mrs. Lincoln. But, though
a Calvinist in his early training, he was not ready to accept Calvinism
as a complete and articulated system as presented in the Westminster
Confession and in the preaching of Dr. Smith.
He wavered. Whether he left town to avoid pressure to attend the
meeting of the Session at which his wife made her application for
church membership, we do not know. It is not improbable. Certainly
if his absence had been unavoidable he could have joined at the next
opportunity. I think that he did not join because he was still in
some measure of intellectual uncertainty with reference to doctrinal
matters. I am only sorry that someone did not tell him that these were
no sufficient reasons for his declining to unite with the church.
It would be possible to carry this study further, but it is not
necessary. An explanation of Lincoln's failure to unite with a
Christian church in that time of bitter sectarianism when to have
joined one church would have made him a target for criticism from
others and when his mind was intent rather upon the application of his
Christian principles than the proclamation of his religious opinions,
is partly to be attributed to the faults of the churches; but a portion
of the explanation is to be found also in qualities inherent in the
life of Abraham Lincoln.
CHAPTER XXII
THE CONSTRUCTIVE ARGUMENT
WE are ready now to undertake the difficult task of determining with
some approach to certainty the essential content and character of
Abraham Lincoln's religious belief.
We must not be surprised if we find ourselves unable to construct a
perfectly symmetrical and consistent confession of faith. The material
is much more abundant and explicit and much better attested in some
departments than in others. Not only so, but we must never forget the
mighty elements of contradiction in Lincoln's personality.
Mediocre men have this in their favor, that it is relatively easy to
classify them. Not only may they be readily assigned to their several
occupations, and conveniently pigeon-holed as butchers, bakers, and
candlestick makers, but it is a comparatively simple task to group
them under single adjectives, as good and bad, black and white, tall
and short, fat and lean, old and young, intelligent and stupid.
The process is less easy with really great men. There is always an
admirable element of human inconsistency in men of large mold which
would be intolerable in lesser personalities. It has been truly said
that no man becomes really great and influential who is not a good
subject for caricature. The sublime is own sister to the ridiculous.
Genius is next akin to insanity. The men who do really great things
are a perpetual puzzle to those who possess only commonplace standards
of classification. A commonplace villain is a villain, first, last,
and all the time; but a villain like Milton's Satan, Napoleon, or the
late German Kaiser is so great a villain as to be half a hero. The two
hundred seventy-six dripping men who struggled through the surf at
Malta one stormy morning rather more than eighteen hundred years ago
and gathered shivering round the fire, were quickly classified, for
the most part, into four convenient companies, of sailors, soldiers,
passengers, and prisoners; but when one of them shook off a viper into
the fire and showed no sign of hurt, it was quite certain that he was
either a murderer or a god. Opinions might differ and did differ as to
which of the two extremes might properly be claimed for him, but no one
proposed to find a place for him in middle ground.
The strength of great men lies in their possession and their
counterpoise of opposing qualities. Over against the monotonous
uniformity, the stupid consistency, of those common people whom Lincoln
said God must love because He made so many of them, this quality
displays itself as a peculiar possession of genius. Now and then it is
given to a great man sufficiently so to subordinate the inconsistencies
without which real greatness could not exist as to incarnate some
outstanding principle of which he becomes the exponent. Abraham
Lincoln did this; and the world, or that small part of the world which
can lay claim to any considerable measure of moral discernment, has
redefined its conception of certain high qualities, its measure of the
moral significance of certain notable achievements, in terms of his
personality. This process is highly desirable as well as inevitable;
but the elements of inconsistency are not thereby removed from the
character itself. Of him we might say:
"_His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world: This was a man!_"
--_Julius Caesar, V, 5._
It has often been affirmed that "'Lincoln knew his Bible better than
any minister," and large claims have been made concerning his use of it
in public addresses. Mr. Lincoln did know and use the Bible, and his
style is saturated with it; but it would be easy to exaggerate both his
knowledge and use of it.
Prof. Daniel Kilham Dodge of the University of Illinois examined
twenty-five of Lincoln's extended and carefully prepared addresses with
this result:[61]
In five speeches from 1839 to 1852 he found six Biblical quotations, of
which four were in his temperance address.
In his reply to Douglas in 1852 there were two Biblical quotations,
both from the Old Testament.
In 1856 he found one, and that most notable of all--the "house divided
against itself."
In his "lost speech" at Bloomington, as recorded by Whitney, there were
six Biblical quotations, four from the Old Testament and two from the
New--the largest number in any single speech.
In his ten speeches in the Lincoln and Douglas debates there were
two Biblical references, besides a number of allusions to the "house
divided against itself."
There were no Biblical quotations in the Cooper Union address or in the
First Inaugural or in the Gettysburg address; none in the two messages
to Congress in 1861.
His Second Inaugural was itself a kind of leaf out of the books of the
prophets.
In the whole of the twenty-five speeches, there were found twenty-two
Biblical references, eight in the Old Testament and fourteen in the
New. This notwithstanding the impression of many who knew him that
Lincoln preferred the Old Testament to the New, as recorded by Noah
Brooks.
But this rather meager use of direct quotations and allusions need not
disappoint us. Nor does it militate against the essentially Biblical
substratum of his style. When we come to the study of Lincoln's
literary and oratorical method, we find more striking contradictions
and evolutions than we have here. Lincoln's oratory was not of the same
style at all periods of his career, nor were his methods uniform at any
one period.
He was a ready stump-speaker, yet he became so cautious while in the
White House that he was timid about responding even to a serenade
without having first written out his address, and on occasion could
appear rude in declining to utter even a simple word of greeting and
appreciation, as on the night before his address in Gettysburg, when he
was very abrupt to the company that serenaded him.
He had been accustomed to large use of gesture, swinging his great
arms, and sometimes, even in the Douglas debates, bending his knees
till they almost touched the platform, and then rising suddenly almost
with a whoop, but he became very quiet and self-restrained in his
oratory.
He is alleged to have loved Burns more than any other poet, yet his
speeches have been searched in vain for a single quotation from Burns.
It is said that next to Burns he loved Byron, and he is not known
ever to have quoted Byron in any speech or paper. It is said that
his favorite Shakspeare play was _Richard III._, but his Shakspeare
quotations are from _Hamlet_, _Lear_, _Macbeth_, the _Merchant of
Venice_; and there is one allusion to Falstaff.
Besides Shakspeare, whom he quoted next to the Bible, his literary
allusions are to T. H. Bayley, Dickens, Robert Herrick, Pope and Scott,
and they are not numerous. The total number of his quotations, as
listed by Professor Dodge, including Shakspeare, but not including the
Bible, is thirty.
What is more surprising, Lincoln was known as a great story teller. But
his addresses contain hardly a single anecdote. He told stories in jury
trials and to illustrate points in conversation, but he rarely told
them in his addresses.[62]
No man who knew Lincoln intimately studied him so long, so
industriously, or, in spite of many limitations, so appreciatively,
as William H. Herndon. He was a profound believer in the mental and
spiritual evolution of Lincoln.
In 1887, while Herndon, after many years of interruption, began
again the preparation of his _Life of Lincoln_, he had an extended
correspondence, partly from Springfield, and partly from Greencastle,
Indiana, where Mr. Jesse W. Weik was at work with him on his book, and
with a Boston sculptor, Mr. Truman H. Bartlett, who was planning a
statue of Lincoln. Herndon's letters went more and more into detail as
the correspondence proceeded, and he gave in some respects the very
best affirmation of the development of Lincoln on the higher side of
his nature that Herndon wrote at any time.
Herndon seemed to have some apprehension that a study of photographs
and life-masks and other evidences of the physical appearance of
Lincoln would not reveal the man himself. He said that a person
studying his physical nature would say "that his physical nature was
low, coarse, and not high and fine." Before he sent this letter he
re-read it, and inserted the word "comparatively" before "low." Mr.
Bartlett asked him further about this, and Herndon went into detail
as to Lincoln's body. "His blood ran slowly. He was of a low or slow
mechanical power, within him. I did not intend to say that Lincoln's
organization was a low, animal organization. What I meant to say was
that it was a slow-working machine. Lincoln's flesh was coarse, pimply,
dry, hard, harsh; color of his flesh saffron brown; no blood seemingly
in it; flesh wrinkled."
Mr. Bartlett apparently inquired whether the abnormal qualities of
frontier life produced these effects, and whether Herndon had known
other men of the Lincoln type. Apparently he alluded to the presence of
malaria and the large use of pork in frontier diet.
Herndon did not accept the pork and malaria theories. He said that all
such theories must give way to facts, and he dealt with facts. The men
of the frontier had the best meat in the world, "venison, bear, turkey,
and of course some hog."
"You ask me if I ever saw in this great wild west many men of
Lincoln's type, and to which I answer, Yes. The first settlers of
central and southern Illinois were men of that type. They came from
the limestone regions of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and were
men of giant strength, physical force, and by nature mentally strong.
They were original, were individualists. The strong alone from 1818 to
1830 could get here, and the strong alone could survive here.... No
one was like Lincoln, and yet many were of his type.... He was, as
you say, 'a man of extraordinary contrasts.' You would not look for a
well-rounded man in such a description."
Lincoln was, then, as Herndon saw him, and as the world must see him,
a legitimate product of his environment. Herndon had read Buckle and
Spencer and Darwin, and was a thoroughgoing believer in evolution, as
was Lincoln, from a far narrower reading, but a very thoughtful study
of _Vestiges of Creation_.
Physically, Lincoln was akin to the strong pioneers of early Illinois,
and it was not difficult to find each several trait of Lincoln
reduplicated in many of them. But Lincoln himself was never duplicated.
He was a product of his environment, but he was also an evolution which
in terms of an individual personality went beyond environment, and was
still going forward when death came to him.
This evolution of Lincoln, the spiritual Lincoln, as portrayed in these
letters to a sculptor, who must not be permitted to forget, if he was
in danger of forgetting, that the real man Lincoln had in him more than
his bodily measurements could portray, is one of the most suggestive
studies disclosed by Herndon, and it is sound, both as approached from
the standpoint of science, and as considered in the personal study of
Lincoln in his growth from year to year.
Like St. Paul, Lincoln had a warfare in his members. He was an
embodiment of forces mutually antagonistic. He would not have been
the man he was had either of them been lacking, and the growth of
either at the total expense of the other would have given us a man
abnormal, which Mr. Lincoln came perilously near to being. But his real
development was mental and spiritual.
In another place St. Paul says that "The first man is of the earth,
earthy, and the second man is from heaven." It has been assumed without
due warrant that what he had in mind was a contrast between Adam and
Christ, and this view is strengthened by the intrusion of the words
"the Lord" in the authorized English text. But it is quite possible
that St. Paul, even if Adam and Christ were a part of his contrast,
had really in mind the evolution of any man's life; he being himself
in his bodily nature the first man and in the birth and growth of his
higher nature the second and contrasting man. "First is that which is
natural, and after, that which is spiritual."
This was Herndon's thought of Lincoln, as disclosed in these
letters,[63] and it is true of Lincoln. Lincoln was more than an
embodiment of contrasts; the solar system is that, and it is more. In
the solar system the opposing forces do not neutralize each other, but
together hold the earth and planets in their orbits. So it was with
Lincoln. But with him the higher and nobler forces became increasingly
dominant.
Herndon resented it when anyone said that Lincoln had died at the right
time. He believed that, great as Lincoln was, his nobler qualities had
not yet come to their full maturity, and that a longer-lived Lincoln
would have been an even nobler Lincoln. Here are some of the things he
says of him in these letters:
"I said to you once that Mr. Lincoln had not arrived at maturity
in 1865, and I say so now. His blood ran slowly--had low or slow
circulation and consequently a slow build-up. As he had a slow
build-up, so he had a slow development; he grew up like the forest
oak, tough, solid, knotty, gnarled, standing out with power against
the storm, and almost defying the lightning. Hence I conclude that
he had not arrived at his highest development in 1865.... The
convolutions of his brain were long; they did not snap off quickly
like a short, thick man's brain.... The enduring power of Mr.
Lincoln's thought and brain was wonderful. He could sit and think
without food or rest longer than any man I ever saw."
He goes into detail concerning Mr. Lincoln's bodily lethargy and its
effect on body and mind, the sluggishness of all his functions, and
affirms that this must be taken into account in any right estimate of
the man; but that steadily, and the more surely because slowly, his
mind and soul developed and became more and more dominant.
"His flesh looked dry and leathery, tough and everlasting; his eyes
were small and gray; head small and forehead receding; but when this
great man was moved by some great and good feeling, by some idea of
Liberty, or Justice, or Right, then he seemed an inspired man. It
was just then that Lincoln's nature was beautiful, and in complete
harmony with the laws of the Great Eternal. I have seen him in this
inspired condition, and thought he was molded in the Spirit's best
mold. Lincoln was a great man, a good man, and a pure man; and beneath
his rough bodily exterior, Nature wove her fine network of nerve....
Lincoln was a gloomy man at one moment and a joyous man the next; he
was conscious that a terrible fate awaited him. He said to me, 'I
cannot help but believe that I shall meet with some terrible end.'
This idea seized him and made him gloomy. At times his better nature
would get the mastery of him, and he would be happy till the shadow of
his fate flitted before him. In philosophy Lincoln was a fatalist....
In my poor opinion, Lincoln had not arrived, when he was assassinated,
at the meridian of his intellectual power.... Were you to read his
early speeches thoroughly you would see his then coarse nature. He
gradually rose up, more spiritualistic. This is one of the reasons why
I say that Lincoln was not fully developed in mind at the last. When
a great Boston man said, 'Lincoln died at the right time,' he did not
know what he was talking about."
In these and like paragraphs Herndon testified to the mental and
spiritual evolution of Lincoln; and he was probably correct when he
opined that that evolution was still in process, and that Lincoln was,
up to the very hour of his death, a growing man in all that meant most
to America and the world.
The religion of Abraham Lincoln was part and parcel of his life; and
his life was an evolution whose successive stages can be measured with
reasonable certainty. Not only did his religious convictions develop
and broaden under the stimuli of Lincoln's constantly broadening
intellectual and spiritual environment, but they broadened in the
growth of his own personality.
There was an evolution in his apprehension of the ethical implications
of public office. The Lincoln who re-entered politics after the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise was a changed man from the Lincoln
who, with the other members of the "Long Nine," earned by political
log-rolling the severe but not wholly unmerited name applied to them
by one of Illinois' best governors, "spared monuments of popular
wrath." That Lincoln did not in this earlier period commit any
personally dishonorable act is not an argument against the theory
here advocated. He had, in his later political career, a far higher
ideal of political honor, a greatly nobler conception of the dignity
of public office--which he always sought--as a field of popular
service. His political career was an evolution, and it developed nobler
characteristics than that which characterized his earlier political
life.
Lincoln's emancipation policy was an evolution. The successive stages
of that policy were worthily set forth by Paul Selby in an address
before the Historical Society of Chicago.[64] There never was a time
when Abraham Lincoln did not believe slavery to be wrong, but there was
a time when he was not an Abolitionist. The moral aspect of the slavery
question grew in his mind and conscience till he promised his God to
free the slaves.
On Sunday evening, September 7, 1862, a public meeting was held in
Bryan Hall, Chicago, to urge upon the President the desire of Christian
people that he should free the slaves. A petition was circulated, and
was signed by all the Congregational and nearly all the Methodist and
Baptist ministers of that city, courteously requesting the President
to give the matter his earnest attention. The petition was sent
to Washington by the hand of Rev. William W. Patton and Rev. John
Dempster, who met the President by appointment on Saturday afternoon,
September 13, the interview being arranged by Hon. Gideon Welles.
The story of that meeting has often been told in part, with undue
emphasis upon Mr. Lincoln's statement then made that if God had a
message for him on this subject He would be more likely to communicate
it directly to Mr. Lincoln than to others for him. The latest book to
misuse this incident is one just from the press in Great Britain, the
_Short Life of Lincoln_, by Hon. Ralph Shirley, who says:
"Some of the ministers in this deputation even went so far as to
assure him that they had authority in God's name to command him to
emancipate the slaves."
Inasmuch as there were but two of the ministers, and neither of them
assumed any such authority to speak the mind of God, such statements
ought to cease, especially as the true story, from which all these
accounts are garbled, is available for inspection in the files of the
Maryland Historical Society.
Mr. Lincoln did say to them that he hoped it would not appear
irreverent in him to say that if God were to reveal this duty of his
to others, it was probable that He would reveal it also directly to
Mr. Lincoln. At the beginning of the interview he was guarded; but as
he found common ground with his visitors, he threw first one leg and
then the other over the arm of his chair, and talked to them with the
utmost freedom, and asked them concerning the opinion of ministers and
churches, and assured them that he desired to know the will of God, and
whatever seemed to him to be God's will he would do.
The next week occurred the battle of Antietam, and on Saturday,
September 20, exactly a week after his interview with the Chicago
ministers, Mr. Lincoln called the Cabinet together and read to them
the Emancipation Proclamation, which was signed and published on the
following Monday. We know now that Lincoln had promised God that if
that battle resulted in the success of the Union cause he would issue
the proclamation. We also know that the meeting with the Chicago
ministers was very timely, and gave him an added assurance of moral
support from the churches, if not added confidence in the help of God.
Some time after, Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago _Tribune_,
returning from Washington, said, "Secretary Stanton told me to say
to those Chicago clergymen who waited on the President about the
Proclamation of Emancipation, that their interview finished the
business. After that there was no manifestation of doubt or talk of
delay. Mr. Lincoln's mind was fully made up."--_Proceedings of the
Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore_, 1888.
Lincoln's literary style was an evolution.[65] His spread-eagle
stump-speeches, with their florid rhetoric and grandiloquent figures
of speech evolved into the calm, dignified, and forceful English of
his maturer years.[66] An able monograph in which this evolution is
traced is cited elsewhere in this volume.[67] That change of style was
the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual as well as
intellectual grace.
In like manner Lincoln's religion was an evolution, both in its
intellectual and its spiritual qualities. Up to the time of his
residence in New Salem he had heard only the dogmatic sectarianism of
unlettered preachers, proclaiming a creed which furnished him certain
lifelong tenets but which as a whole he could not accept. At New Salem
he read the negative arguments which confuted the dogmas he had heard,
and perhaps unwittingly made room for a more intelligent faith.
He was deeply impressed by the argument of Dr. Smith in his _The
Christian's Defence_. It was the first time he had heard the Christian
apologetic rationally presented, and it made a lasting impression upon
him without, however, fully satisfying him. He was, however, a much
more religious man when he left Springfield than he was when he came
to it, whether he knew it or not.
The solemn responsibilities of his office, the daily contemplation of
death as it menaced him and came into the homes of the people of his
country, the profound conviction that God was working His infinite
purpose through the war, and through the human agency of Lincoln
himself, took hold of the deepest impulses of his nature, and became
the controlling forces of his policy.
Lincoln was no theologian, but I do not find any authority for the
statement of Mr. Binns that Lincoln said, "the more a man knew of
theology, the farther he got away from the Spirit of Christ." It is
possible, of course, for a man to learn theology as an intellectual
system and to have little religion as a spiritual experience, and to
lose that little in the process of his logical subtleties: but Lincoln
was too just a man to make so sweeping and unjust an affirmation of
something of which he would certainly have admitted he knew very little.
The rock-bottom foundation of Abraham Lincoln's religious faith was
the ultra-Calvinism of his boyhood. He was reared a Predestinarian
Baptist; and while he never became a Baptist he never ceased to be
a Predestinarian. To this he added a strong rationalistic tendency,
inherent in his nature, and strengthened by his study of Paine and
Volney. This also he never wholly outgrew. As a lawyer who was not
well read, pleading before juries that cared little for the letter of
the law, he was accustomed to reduce his cases to simple principles of
elementary justice, and to rest all upon these principles. This habit
of thought and practice he applied also to his theology. His early
recollection of the epitaph of Johnny Kongapod was nothing less than
the application of the Golden Rule to theology--the assurance of an
eternal justice throned in heaven and intelligible on earth.
Thus, when he argued in favor of universal salvation he did it upon the
basis of the old Calvinistic theology with which he had been familiar
all his life. If God was, indeed, absolute sovereign, and as good as
He was great, and willed not that any should perish, then no one could
finally perish. Universal salvation became logically and ethically
compulsory. The Christ who tasted death for every man, did so as the
necessary means to the efficiency of a plan of salvation whereby the
curse of the fall was fully offset by the sacrifice of Christ, at the
instance of the sovereign will of God. As in Adam all died, even so in
Christ were all made alive. His theory of universal salvation was the
logical expression of his determinism, influenced by his rationalism
and confirmed by his appeal to a justice that would not accept a fall
more universal than the atonement of Christ. This was not because
Lincoln approached the theme from the direction of the grace of Christ,
but of the irresistibility of a divine decree. He profoundly believed
himself an instrument of the divine will, believing that will to be
right, and creation's final law.
If it were asked, where in such a system as his he found a place
for the forgiveness of sins, the answer would be first that he had
no system, and secondly that he found no place for the doctrine;
but it would then be necessary to add that he found the doctrine,
nevertheless. He had no system. He thought without logical method. But
his thinking was in right lines. He followed simple paths, "blazed"
through technicalities and in quite thorough disregard of them. As
his office desk was in confusion, and he kept a package marked,
"When you don't find it anywhere else, look here," so he had in his
thinking a parcel of unassorted first principles to which he recurred
when he needed them. Forgiveness and law were to him two unreconciled
postulates; but law he had to assume, even though he denied
forgiveness. But if he did not admit belief in forgiveness, he did
believe in mercy, for he himself was merciful, and he believed that he
would be merciful to God if he were God and God were man. Stanton could
argue him down as to the necessity for shooting a soldier who slept on
duty, but Lincoln injected an intuitive, and from Stanton's point of
view, an unreasonable and a certainly unarticulated, element of mercy
that forbade the killing of this particular boy.
His theory of governmental forgiveness was as irreconcilable with his
theory of military discipline as his theory of divine mercy was with
his system of inexorable law. He did not harmonize the contradictions:
he was merciful, and let his system take the consequences, and he
believed in a divine mercy while holding a theory with which the
exercise of mercy was irreconcilable.
To such a mind as that of Abraham Lincoln, it was not necessary to
prove the fact of immortality. If God possessed immortality and
intended it for man, then God would make His decree effective in man.
Adam's fall could not hopelessly lose to man what God designed; and,
whether he accepted for himself or not the theory of the fall and of
redemption, he accepted both in meeting an argument which by reason of
the fall could have deprived man of his birthright of immortality. He
believed in the immortality of the soul.
Did he harmonize that doctrine with the rest of his creed? Probably
not. He was no theologian, in the strict and formal sense, no logician.
He reasoned on the basis of very simple and elementary principles,
whose lines of direction were determined by the early Calvinistic
preaching to which he listened, the rationalistic method which he
learned from Paine, and his simple sense of justice and right.
His was not wholly an optimistic faith. He knew that man was sinful
and sad and that "the spirit of mortal" had little occasion for pride;
but he believed in an eternal justice and an unconquerable goodness,
regnant above the perplexities and contradictions of this life, and
triumphant in the life everlasting.
Abraham Lincoln believed in God. Save in his moments of deepest gloom
when everything turned black, he appears never seriously to have
questioned this fundamental article of belief. It is not easy to see
how he could have done so. His idea of causation forbade it, and, what
was more, his profound supernaturalism affirmed it as incontrovertible.
This element of supernaturalism went the full length of orthodox
preaching, as Lincoln heard it and accepted it. It was in accord with
the teachings both of the Baptists, whom he heard in Indiana and rural
Illinois, and the Presbyterians, to whom he listened in Springfield and
in Washington. In a great God, a mighty Creator, a Sovereign Ruler, he
was taught to believe by all the forms of Calvinism to which throughout
his life he listened, and it was in full essential accord with his
own native tendency. His supernaturalism was not only ultra-orthodox;
it went the full length of current superstition. The frontiersman of
that day had superstition wrought into him by the vastness of the
wilderness, the solemnity of the immeasurable forest and plain, and the
insignificance of man; the haunting tales of savagery and witchcraft;
the presence in every frontier community of some person supposed to
be possessed of second sight or other supernatural qualities. The
rationalism of his mature years modified but did not in any degree
eradicate his supernaturalism.
It must be remembered that Paine and Volney, whose works he read, were
far from being atheists. Thomas Paine, whatever he denied, believed as
strongly as Peter Cartwright or James Smith in a personal God. So far
as we know, Lincoln was never under any strong influence that might
have made him an atheist, his doubts and questionings were all within
the sphere of an expressed or implicit theism.
The names by which Lincoln referred to God are many and suggestive. The
following is a partial list:[68]
Almighty, Almighty Architect, Almighty Arm, Almighty Father, Almighty
God, Almighty Hand, Almighty Power, Almighty Ruler of Nations,
Creator, Disposer, Divine Author, Divine Being, Divine Majesty, Divine
Providence, Divine Will, Eternal God, Father, Father in Heaven, Father
of Mercies, God, God Almighty, God of Battles, God of Hosts, God
of Nations, Governor, Heavenly Father, Higher Being, Higher Power,
Holy Spirit, Judge, Lord, Maker, Maker of the Universe, Master, Most
High, Most High God, Omniscient Mind, Power, Providence, Ruler of the
Universe, Supreme Being.