Abraham 
 Lincoln's 
 Religion 
 
 DR. Q. QEORQE FOX 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnsrOOfoxg 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
Abraham Lincoln's 
 Religion 
 
 SOURCES OF THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR'S 
 RELIGIOUS INSPIRATION 
 
 by 
 Dr. G. George Fox 
 
 An Exposition-Banner Book 
 
 EXPOSITION PRESS NEW YORK 
 
Exposition Press Inc., 386 Fourth Avenue, New York 16, N.Y. 
 
 FIRST EDITION 
 
 © 1959 by Dr. G. George Fox. All rights reserved, including the 
 right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form, except for 
 brief quotations in reviews and critical essays. Manufactured in 
 the United States of America. 
 

 Dedicated 
 
 to the memory of the late 
 
 Jacob Logan Fox, Sr 
 
 Lover of Abraham Lincoln 
 
 and to 
 
 Nathan H. Schwartz 
 
 Civic and Religious Leader 
 
 and Lincoln Student 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This study, Abraham Lincoln's Religion, was undertaken 
 several years ago. It was first intended as a magazine article; 
 but as I continued to assemble the data, it gradually reached 
 its present length. 
 
 No extended work on this subject has been done of late, 
 though Lincoln's religion is a subject of deep interest to 
 many people. This study is largely the result of the encour- 
 agement given me by Mr. Ralph G. Newman, the founder 
 of the famous Lincoln Book Shop of Chicago and a widely 
 recognized authority on the life and times of the martyred 
 President. I hereby publicly acknowledge my obligation to 
 him. 
 
 I want also to express my thanks to Dr. Samuel Schwartz, 
 Mr. Lawrence Levin, and to Mr. Nathan R. Levin, the As- 
 sistant Librarian of the Chicago Public Library. Mr. Nathan 
 R. Levin was especially helpful because of his careful read- 
 ing of the manuscript and the many valuable suggestions he 
 made. 
 
 G.G.F. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 As we are celebrating the one hundred and fiftieth year of 
 the birth of Abraham Lincoln, interest in his life becomes 
 deeper and more intensive. Further research and study have 
 brought about some changes in our former knowledge of 
 his times and of his life. His habits, his attitudes, his beliefs 
 and even his personal relations with friend and foe, have 
 been scrutinized under the impact of new knowledge, and 
 there is a renewed and vivid interest in his personality as 
 well as in the evaluation of Iris contributions to our nation's 
 history. There are some who speak of the "real" Lincoln in 
 not very respectful terms, but there are few who deny his 
 part in saving the nation; no one can take this immortal role 
 from him. Though some of the romance of his early life has 
 been dispelled, historical material gathered and processed 
 by such students of Lincoln as Albert J. Beveridge, J. G. 
 Randall, Benjamin P. Thomas, William E. Barton, Carl Sand- 
 burg, Roy P. Basler, Paul M. Angle and others, still bears 
 witness to the fact that Abraham Lincoln, without any sem- 
 blance of a doubt, played the major role in saving our Union. 
 
 These, and other students of Lincoln, his times and his 
 activities, do not always write about him in a vein of fanatic 
 admiration. They were interested in giving his countrymen 
 as true an evaluation of his services as he was entitled to 
 have. Their aim was to present him as they believed he 
 actually lived and acted; and to ascertain, if possible, his 
 place in the history of our country, the value of his contribu- 
 tions to it, and the effect of his life on human history. 
 
 A number of biographies of Lincoln followed his death. 
 As early as 1865, Henry Raymond and }. G. Holland had 
 written their histories of him. Holland had called Lincoln a 
 
12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 "great Christian," and devoted four pages of his book to 
 showing that he was just that. Later came the histories of the 
 life of the martyr by William Herndon and his great friend, 
 Ward Hill Lamon. That of William Herndon, the law partner 
 of Lincoln for twenty years, was the most popular. But 
 both Herndon and Lamon disagreed with Holland regarding 
 Lincoln's religion. They labelled Lincoln an "unbeliever." 
 Readers of the books by these authors began to battle over 
 the "religion" of Lincoln. Lamon repeated the position of 
 Herndon who had called him a "deist" and an "infidel," and 
 sometimes an "atheist," and insisted that "he had held many 
 of the Christian beliefs in derision," and that he "never used 
 the name Jesus but to confute the idea that he was Christ." 
 These allegations outraged the feelings of many good 
 Christians who refused to believe that the savior of the 
 Union was not a pious, professing Christian. 
 
 The discussions about the religion of Lincoln grew very 
 heated at times and lasted for many years. Few authorita- 
 tive books have been written about it; the best reason per- 
 haps being, that the great President himself vouchsafed to 
 few what his real religion was, if indeed he had ever formu- 
 lated it. There are a number of volumes published with 
 accounts of some of his religious beliefs. Most are written 
 from a biased point of view. The one considered best is 
 that of William E. Barton, the Soul of Lincoln, published 
 in 1920. In spite of the fact that Barton tried desperately to 
 make a "Christian" out of Lincoln, it is, by and large, the 
 most authoritative study of the religion of the Emancipator. 
 
 It is easy to understand why the discussion about Lin- 
 coln's religion waxed so hot. Herndon, Lincoln's partner, and 
 Lamon, his friend, who were closer to him than any of the 
 early biographers, both regarded him as an agnostic. Another 
 close friend and fellow worker who made the rounds of the 
 eighth judicial circuit with him, Judge Henry C. Whitney, 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 13 
 
 speaks of Lincoln's utter disregard for those ritualistic ob- 
 servances and ceremonial symbols which are characteristic 
 of traditional Christianity. Joshua Speed, James Matheny and 
 John Todd Stuart, his early friends in Springfield, considered 
 him an infidel. Jesse W. Fell, an intimate friend from Bloom- 
 ington, believed that if he were not an outright infidel, he 
 was pretty close to it. These friends made no attempt to 
 place Lincoln in the category of professing Christians. There 
 is enough historical evidence to show that, at times, he did 
 attend church both in Springfield and in Washington. But 
 we have learned that not all who attend church believe 
 what the church teaches. There is no doubt about the fact 
 that Lincoln was not a church affiliate. But that does not 
 prove that he may not have been sympathetic toward some 
 things the church taught, or that he was an agnostic, which 
 I definitely believe he was not. 
 
 Because we lived in that part of Illinois where Lincoln 
 spent his later youth, I became interested in him. Later I 
 became interested in his religion or what I believed to be 
 his religion. I came to understand that while he was not a 
 dogmatic Christian, he was still a deeply religious man, in 
 the broader sense of the word. This seems to be particularly 
 true of his later years. I do not believe that any student of 
 the President's recorded writings— if he accepted a liberal 
 interpretation of the word "religion"— would doubt this state- 
 ment. About the fact that he leaned heavily upon his inter- 
 pretation of religion, there can be no quibbling. He felt 
 keenly that the lives and destinies of nations and men were 
 directed by God Almighty. He believed that God guided, 
 inspired and directed him, and that the means of communi- 
 cation between God -and man was prayer. He was certain 
 that the Maker was always near him; and he had an inerad- 
 icable will to be on the side of God who, to him, was always 
 in the right. He believed that God was the Father of all 
 
14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
 men and therefore, all men were brothers. Out of this con- 
 cept of equality flowed his faith in the final triumph of jus- 
 tice: justice with mercy, nationally and individually. 
 
 Lincoln had many enemies who believed that he was a 
 son of the devil, rather than a son of God. But what they 
 never gave him credit for and could not understand was 
 that, where to them he was guilty of evil, for him, what they 
 considered bad, was the processing of the will of his Father. 
 He was carrying out the command of the Almighty; and 
 God could not be wrong or be on the unrighteous, evil side. 
 
 His deep and sometimes naive faith in prayer, which was 
 born of his feeling of nearness to God, his profound sense of 
 justice, and his immeasurable trust in the ultimate victory of 
 righteousness, were the three religious essentials, which 
 armed him with an unflinching faith that the nation which 
 was on the side of God— and he believed this nation was— 
 would ultimately be victorious. 
 
 To disclose the sources of Lincoln's religion and religious 
 inspiration is the purpose of this work. To confirm the prop- 
 osition that Abraham Lincoln was a religious man, par ex- 
 cellence, is the aim of this work. 
 
 My fervent wish, of course, is that I have contributed 
 some light to the study of the religion of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
I 
 
 In a recent newspaper article, a history professor in a 
 well-known western university, published the information 
 that the Pilgrims did not come to America for religious free- 
 dom; that they did not land at Plymouth Rock; and that 
 they did not live in log cabins. He is alleged to have said that 
 all of these are "incorrect stories about the Pilgrim Fathers" 
 and are genuine examples of "folk myths." The Pilgrims, he 
 maintained, came to the New World for the economic op- 
 portunities that it offered, and because they feared that a 
 long stay in Holland— though they had religious freedom 
 there— would rob their children of their English nationality 
 and their English culture, and so they contemplated mov- 
 ing. As for Plymouth Rock, "the first mention of that famous 
 landmark was made 100 years after their arrival in 1620." 
 
 The professor was partly right and partly wrong. Those 
 heroic souls who came in the Mayflower and reached New 
 England, had been of those non-conformist dissenters who 
 were a part of the Scrooby center of Separatism, who refused 
 to be a part of the Church of England because they wanted 
 freedom to worship according to their consciences. 
 
 In 1593, a group of such Dissenters or Independents fled 
 from London to Amsterdam, because they refused to accept 
 the restrictions and penalties imposed by the Church of 
 England on their mode of church organization and worship. 
 This particular group became known as the "Scrooby Dis- 
 senters." After a few years in Amsterdam, they became un- 
 happy and restless. There was a gradual deterioration of 
 both their religious life and their culture, and they feared 
 
16 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
 that in time they would disappear as a community. They 
 wished to preserve their religious, cultural and national 
 identity. They believed that the social life of the city was 
 shot through with immorality, licentiousness and evil which 
 would ultimately destroy them as a religious communion 
 and as a national entity. 
 
 After the congregation decided to leave, the matter of 
 their destination was considered. Some of their former coun- 
 trymen had crossed the Atlantic and formed a colony at 
 Jamestown, in Virginia. The group now turned their faces 
 toward the West; but there was another matter to be con- 
 sidered. Besides their spiritual needs, there were also the 
 material. Their kinsmen informed them that there was good 
 fishing and that there were good prospects of successful 
 trading in southern Virginia. They decided to try their for- 
 tune in the New World, and left on the Mayflower, landing 
 after a hard trip at the site of Plymouth, Massachusetts, on 
 December 11, 1620. After a few days of rest and discussion, 
 they decided to remain there, and on December 25, they 
 began the erection of their first building. 
 
 We have an interesting and, I believe, authoritative ac- 
 count of the Mayflower group and the expedition written by 
 one of its leaders, Governor William Bradford, in his His- 
 tory of the Plimouth Plantation. I find no statement any- 
 where that the Scrooby contingent at any time since the 
 separation from the Church of England, whether in London, 
 or in Holland, or in the New World, ever made their "eco- 
 nomic possibilities," their first and primary consideration. I 
 do not find that the Pilgrims ever displaced their loyalty to 
 their religion, by the lure of "economic opportunities." Their 
 outstanding interest was in the domain of religious life, 
 even in later years, shaped congregational organization in 
 which, even in later years, shaped congregational organiza- 
 tion in Massachusetts. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 17 
 
 As for the "Plymouth Rock's mention a hundred years 
 after the arrival of the Pilgrims," it is possible that there is 
 some truth in this statement as far as the name of the Rock 
 itself is concerned. But the granite boulder upon which some 
 Pilgrims stepped from their light open boat was there in 
 Plymouth all the time, and in 1920 the Society of Colonial 
 Dames had it placed on the spot it originally occupied when 
 they landed. They may not have called the granite rock on 
 which they stepped, "Plymouth Rock," but to say that the 
 story of Plymouth Rock is a folk myth, is far from the truth. 
 
 The California teacher is following the examples set by 
 modern historians, who hold the view that only that histor- 
 ical information is valuable which has been thoroughly pro- 
 cessed and confirmed by written records and whose historic 
 authenticity is unassailable. 
 
 Lincoln scholars, in the last few years, have taken a sim- 
 ilar position insofar as a record of the life of Lincoln is con- 
 cerned. It is perhaps a reflection of the modern "efficiency" 
 cult which shows itself in art, in letters and particularly in 
 architecture. Even church edifices have come under the sov- 
 ereignty of "efficiency." There are few ornate church struc- 
 tures, apartment or office buildings, or museums. They have 
 to be efficient, even if they look like tremendous boxes; and 
 this applies even to the new type of "efficiency" houses of 
 worship that often remind one of large warehouses. So it is 
 to be supposed that in a life of Abraham Lincoln today only 
 those facts should be used which can be corroborated by 
 authenticated documents. Hence it is, that in the latest and 
 certainly one of the most valuable collections of Lincolniana, 
 we find this statement of the editors: "Utterances recorded 
 only in memoirs, diaries, and reminiscences have been ex- 
 cluded for obvious reasons." 
 
 The collection to which I refer is known as the Collected 
 Works of Abraham Lincoln and was published in 1953. It is 
 
18 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 the product of the Abraham Lincoln Association, which, 
 since 1924, has had as its aim the collection of Lincoln's 
 "unpublished writings and speeches." The present work, 
 consisting of nine volumes, has not gone beyond this goal, 
 confining itself only to authenticated items. The editorial 
 advisers to the Abraham Lincoln Association were Paul M. 
 Angle, the late J. G. Randall and the late Benjamin P. 
 Thomas. The editor was Roy P. Basler. It is impossible to 
 find a quartet of Lincoln scholars to equal this group. Their 
 research and editorial direction have resulted in the most 
 valuable and most authentic collection of Lincoln material 
 in existence, and it is recognized by Lincoln students as the 
 standard work on the life of the Great Emancipator. 
 
 They adopted their criteria because of the personal bias 
 in memoirs, diaries and reminiscences, which may make the 
 particular work that is being used, unreliable and even un- 
 historical. The object of the Collected Works, is to give as 
 factual an account of Lincoln's work as it is possible to get; 
 personal anecdotes, personal reminiscences and personal 
 evaluations by authors may not meet the standards of cor- 
 rectness or historicity. In the attempt to meet the canons of 
 scholarship, rather than those of personal reactions to men 
 and events, the California professor and the editors of the 
 Collected Works agree. 
 
 But just as the professor strays from the complete truth 
 so far as the settlement of Plymouth is concerned, so does 
 the Collected Works omit much about Abraham Lincoln 
 that is contained— and much of it valid— in the various works 
 about Lincoln, that cannot claim complete historical trust- 
 worthiness according to the standards of scholarship that 
 the editors set before them. And it is my feeling that a 
 sketch of Lincoln cannot be complete without the use of 
 some of these sources, which "for obvious reasons" are ex- 
 cluded by the editors. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 19 
 
 I remember distinctly that when I was a boy and lived 
 in Greenview, Illinois, a few miles from Petersburg, near 
 Old Salem, in Menard County, the two elderly Pond Broth- 
 ers who lived near the town, thrilled me with tales about 
 the days when the young Lincoln worked at times on their 
 father's farm; splitting rails during the day, and studying at 
 night. This story is clearly outside of the range of the Col- 
 lected Works, but it is nevertheless a part of the early life 
 of Lincoln; I never had any reason for doubting the words 
 of these two old pioneers— I didn't then and I don't now. 
 
 I know that the custom among students of Lincoln now 
 is to discount any life of Lincoln that has not been scientifi- 
 cally 'processed," and to throw into the historic rubbish 
 heap the many old biographies of the martyred President by 
 those who knew him or were associated with him, particu- 
 larly, if many years had passed between his life and that of 
 the narrators. But I submit that the people who know one 
 best are those associated with one a great deal or have inti- 
 mately known one the longest. Final judgments about indi- 
 viduals need not be made during their lifetime or even by 
 some of their literary remains, but there is no certainty that if 
 the intimate and friendly accounts of their lives are omitted, 
 the residual "historical" matter will be completely full and 
 correct. The Collected Works, wonderful as it is, by its very 
 nature, does not permit a complete inclusion of a study of 
 the religious and spiritual content of Lincoln's life— and who 
 can deny that there was a rich spiritual element in his make- 
 up and in his activities? Much of the knowledge of this 
 phase of his life comes from those very sources which the 
 editors of the Collected Works by-passed. 
 
 In writing this study, therefore, since it deals with Lin- 
 coln's religion, I have availed myself of manv sources that 
 come under the head of "utterances, memoirs, reminiscences, 
 interviews" and so forth. And it may be that some of the 
 
20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 matter that I include comes also from the collections that 
 were withheld from the Collected Works. I have tried in 
 every instance to give accurately the sources of my informa- 
 tion, and have proceeded on the theory that many who knew 
 Lincoln, admired him, and wrote about him, and were to 
 a more or less degree correct, I am not forgetting that time 
 and sentiment play an important part in some of the writ- 
 ings I have used. Nor am I forgetting the variety of the de- 
 scriptions touching on his life, which are exhibited in these 
 works. Depending upon the opinion of the writer, Lincoln 
 was a saint, a sinner, a prophet, a scoundrel, a hypocrite, an 
 ingrate or a liar. Yet most of his biographers agree upon the 
 salient features of his life. Most of them accept certain 
 marked characteristics as having been definitely his. In later 
 research, some of the things that enshrined his name have 
 been found to have been the products of romantic notions 
 and sanctified legends of admiring friends and neighbors. 
 
 Four outstanding investigators of the more recent and 
 more scientific type, like Beveridge, Randall, Angle and 
 Basler, have deflated to a large extent some of the legends 
 that had grown around Lincoln's name and personality. 
 Former United States Senator Albert J. Beveridge, now de- 
 ceased, spent many years in writing a life of Abraham Lin- 
 coln. Two volumes were published. Death cut off the re- 
 mainder. Professor J. G. Randall, also deceased, was a 
 professor of history at the University of Illinois. He wrote 
 The Civil War and Reconstruction and Lincoln, the Presi- 
 dent. Paul M. Angle was, for a long time, the secretary of 
 the Abraham Lincoln Association, and is now director of the 
 Chicago Historical Society. He has written a number of 
 books about Lincoln, among which are Here I Have Lived, 
 a history of Lincoln's Springfield, and A Hundred Years of 
 Law; he is the editor of the Lincoln Reader. Roy P. Basler, 
 formerly Executive Secretary of the Abraham Lincoln Asso- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 21 
 
 ciation, is professor of English at the University of Arkansas, 
 and editor of the Collected Works and Abraham Lincoln, 
 His Speeches and Writings. 
 
 Nevertheless, one must, in fairness to the completeness 
 of his life and to the old friends and neighbors who knew 
 him, believe some of the things that are recorded in the 
 older biographies of the martyred President. Speeches and 
 political documents can be believed, but that is not to say 
 that they are infallible, nor need they include all of one's 
 life. Recorded statements that we have of Abraham Lincoln 
 tell their story. But even recorded speeches and statements 
 have the restrictions and limitations that political occasions, 
 the listeners present and circumstances, lay upon them. Lin- 
 coln's statements were invariably subject to these restric- 
 tions. A speech delivered to a religious body can be modi- 
 fied to suit the particular occasion, just as an address deliv- 
 ered at a political meeting can be made to fit a particular 
 situation. Neither statement in spite of some differences, 
 need be untruthful or hypocritical. Tales relating to the 
 early life of Lincoln and repeated later by those who re- 
 member having known or heard him, or discussed things 
 with him, may appear apocryphal or exaggerated or even 
 improbable as a whole, but the kernel of truth can be there; 
 and to throw them out on the historical ash heap is no more 
 correct in one direction, than accepting them without ques- 
 tion is wrong in the other. 
 
II 
 
 In a work called Abraham Lincoln and the Men of His 
 Time, by Robert H. Browne, 1 an alleged old friend of Lin- 
 coln's, the author tells of a visit he made in the autumn of 
 1862, and several times after that, to the birthplace of Mr. 
 Lincoln. He visited Elizabethtown and Hodgenville and the 
 Nolin Creek farm, where Lincoln had roamed as a small lad. 
 He spoke to men and women who knew the Lincolns and 
 who could give him pretty definite information about them. 
 One of the informants showed the Browne party where 
 "Lincoln was born over there on Nolin' s Creek." Some other 
 of the old settlers also pointed out to Browne that Abraham 
 was born on Nolin's Creek. Mr. Browne makes this interest- 
 ing statement: "We found it true in Kentucky, just as it was 
 in Illinois, that those plain people who knew Lincoln or his 
 family and its reputation, were always his most sincere 
 friends." On this trip, the Browne party met an intelligent 
 woman near Elizabethtown who, among other things, said 
 something that may have been a clue to Abraham Lincoln's 
 later behavior: 
 
 Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abraham, was a real nice 
 and agreeable man, who often got the blues, and had some 
 strange sort of spells, and wanted to be alone all he could be, 
 when he had them. He would walk away out on the barrens 
 (barren spots) alone, and stay out sometimes half a day. 
 Once when he was out there, one of my boys whom Thomas 
 did not see, heard him talking all alone to himself about God 
 
 1 Browne, R. H., Abraham Lincoln and the Men of His Time 
 (Chicago: The Blakely-Oswald Ptg. Co., 1907), Vol. I, p. 82. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 23 
 
 and His providence and sacrifices, and how there was a 
 better and a more promised land, and a whole lot of things 
 that my boy knew nothing about, in the Scripture. Some of 
 us feared he was losing his mind. 
 
 Mr. Browne met Lincoln while he was studying at col- 
 lege in Bloomington, Illinois. Whenever Mr. Lincoln came 
 to the city they shared a room in the establishment of Mr. 
 Asahel Gridley, a banker-lawyer in that city. Browne claims 
 to have gotten very friendly with Lincoln, and though yet in 
 his teens, he followed the older man around whenever Lin- 
 coln was in Bloomington or in some towns near it. Browne 
 apparently listened very attentively to the future president 
 or else made notes of the conversation. He states that he 
 learned from him that "the Bible was his first textbook, and 
 held its place in his mind throughout all his life." We know 
 that Lincoln was a constant and careful reader of the Bible 
 all of his days. Browne remembers Lincoln as saying that he 
 read and relived the Scriptures because "in them are the 
 words of eternal life as well as the foundation of all law, 
 rule and precept, for the welfare of government instituted 
 by men," and he relied perfectly and complacently on the 
 direct help and intervention of God in all human affairs. 
 
 I presume that Browne refers here to Lincoln's later 
 years. I do not know of any authentic historical record that 
 indicates that Lincoln "relived" the events of the Bible, 
 particularly in his earlier years. His life in New Salem and 
 in Springfield immediately following, if the memories of his 
 friends that are extant are correct, certainly was far from 
 reliving Biblical events. It may be that he tried in his early 
 youth to imitate Elijah or John the Baptist. However, since 
 author Browne is very proud of his relationship to Lincoln, 
 it is probable that his high esteem exaggerated the account 
 of his intimacy and his imagination about the Emancipator. 
 It is this sort of thing that the editors of the Collected Works 
 
24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
 tried to avoid. Nevertheless, the account does contain a mod- 
 icum of truth. 
 
 Browne tells that Lincoln made the following statement 
 concerning Paine's Age of Reason. It is somewhat difficult 
 to believe it, remembering that Lincoln himself was once 
 considered a skeptic, an infidel, a scoffer, 2 and a follower of 
 Paine. 3 Said Lincoln, according to Browne: 
 
 I have looked through it ( the Age of Reason ) carelessly, it is 
 true; but there is nothing to such books. God rules this world, 
 and out of seeming contradiction that all of these kind of 
 reasoners seem unable to understand, He will develop and 
 disclose this plan for man's welfare in his inscrutable way. 
 Not all of Paine's nor all the French distempered stuff will 
 make a man better, but worse. They might lay down tons and 
 heaps of their reasonings alongside a few of Christ's sayings 
 and parables, to find that he had said more for the benefit 
 of our race in one of them, than there is in all they have 
 written. They might read his Sermon on the Mount to learn 
 that there is more of justice, righteousness, kindness and 
 mercy in it than in the minds and books of all the ignorant 
 doubters from the beginning of human knowledge. 4 
 
 I cannot help believing that this alleged statement of Lin- 
 coln is pretty deeply dipped in Mr. Browne's own thinking; 
 but that it contains something of the belief of Lincoln, par- 
 ticularly with regard to God's rule and the Sermon on the 
 Mount, is probable. Since this is from an alleged private 
 conversation between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Browne, we have 
 to take it only at its face value, rather than as authenticated 
 record. 
 
 Again an excerpt from Browne, which seems worthy of 
 repetition: "Lincoln was one into whose soul was burned 
 
 2 Basler, Roy. P., (ed.), Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln 
 (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. I, 
 pp. 382-383. 
 
 3 Sandburg, Carl, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (N. Y.: 
 Harcourt Brace & Co., 1926), Vol. I, p. 415. 
 
 4 Browne, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 426. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 25 
 
 the hope that like Moses, who was God's messenger and 
 avenger to deliver his people from grasping and cruel bond- 
 age; he was to be the leader of a greater people from a 
 worse and more galling bondage." 5 Another thought, also 
 alleged to have been given in intimate conversation with 
 General Sickles runs: "I am a full believer that God knows 
 what he wants men to do, that which pleases Him. It is 
 never well with the man who heeds it not. I talk to God. My 
 mind seems relieved when I do, and a way is suggested, that 
 if it is not a supernatural one, it is always one that comes 
 at the time, and accords with a common-sense view of the 
 work/' 6 
 
 Another Lincoln biography which does not receive the 
 approval of the present day Lincoln scholars and has not 
 been used for the "obvious reasons," is Henry E. Rankin's, 
 Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln. This work is by 
 a former alleged law student in the office of Lincoln and 
 Herndon, and has been accepted as worthy of reference by 
 Carl Sandburg, 7 but has been discredited by most Lincoln 
 specialists. 
 
 Rankin's mother had been a dear friend of the young 
 politician when he lived at New Salem, and he had great 
 respect for her. Her son tells of a friendly conversation Lin- 
 coln had with her, when she asked him questions regarding 
 his religion and his opinion of the Bible. Here is his alleged 
 reply: 
 
 At the time you refer to, I was having serious questionings 
 about some portions of my former implicit faith in the Bible. 
 In the midst of these shadows and questionings, before I 
 could see my way clear to decide on them, there came into 
 my life sad events and a loss .that you were close to, and you 
 know a great deal about how hard they were for me, for you 
 
 5 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 37. 
 
 • Ibid., Vol. II, p. 195. 
 
 7 Sandburg, op. cit. t Vol. I, Preface, p. IX; pp. 416, 417. 
 
26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 were at that time, a mutual friend. Those days of trouble 
 found me tossed amidst a sea of questionings. They piled big 
 upon me, experiences that brought with them great strains 
 upon my emotional and mental life. Through all I groped my 
 way until I found a stronger and higher grasp of thought, one 
 that reached beyond this life with a clearness and satisfac- 
 tion I had never known before. The Scriptures unfolded be- 
 fore me with a deeper and more logical appeal, through these 
 new experiences, than anything else I could find to turn to, 
 or ever before I had found in them. The fundamental truths 
 reported in the Four Gospels as from the lips of Jesus Christ 
 and that I first heard from the lips of my mother, are settled 
 and fixed moral precepts with me. I have concluded to dis- 
 miss from my mind the debatable wrangles that once per- 
 plexed me with distractions that stirred up— but never abso- 
 lutely settled anything. I have tossed them aside with the 
 doubtful differences which divide denominations, sweeping 
 them all out of my mind among nonessentials. I cannot with- 
 out mental reservations assent to long and complicated 
 creeds and catechisms. 
 
 Rankin says later that "this private conversation of Lin- 
 coln's as recorded here is not claimed to be in the exact 
 words/' Of course not. According to Mrs. Rankin, this meet- 
 ing took place in 1846 and it was dictated to her son, Henry 
 E. Rankin, in 1889. That is a lapse of some forty- three years 
 and only a genius could remember even the approximately 
 exact words. On the other hand, some of the thoughts Lin- 
 coln expressed, like the disbelief in those important "long 
 and complicated creeds and catechisms" and his attitude to- 
 wards various Christian denominations and churches, must 
 have made an indelible impression upon the mind of a pro- 
 fessing orthodox Christian mother. These statements without 
 doubt contain a kernel of truth that still make sense, and 
 are in substance confirmed by subsequent statements of 
 Lincoln's reverence for the Bible and for religion. 8 
 
 8 Rankin, Henry B., Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln 
 (N. Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916), p. 326. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 27 
 
 This work, though discarded by later Lincoln specialists, 
 confirms my judgment that such personal accounts may con- 
 tain some truth. We know that Lincoln quoted the Bible, 
 more than any President before or after him. We know from 
 the accounts of Herndon, Lamon and Judge Henry C. Whit- 
 ney, who wrote Life on the Circuit with Lincoln and A Life 
 of Lincoln, and who was for months an intimate friend of 
 his, that Lincoln had no use for the nonessentials of religious 
 practice and pietistic ritualism. Joshua Speed, Lincoln's first 
 and best friend throughout his life, even spoke of him as a 
 "skeptic." But no one except his blind and bitter enemies, 
 ever accused him of a wanton violation of those "essentials" 
 of the Bible which are the foundation of western society. He 
 did "dismiss" the debatable wrangles that perplexed him 
 with distractions and never settled anything and tossed aside 
 the "doubtful differences which divide the denominations— 
 the nonessentials." He never did accept "complicated creeds 
 and catechisms." The "fundamental truths were settled and 
 fixed precepts" with him, and this information in the Rankin 
 narrative seems to hold water. 
 
 I think it is quite understandable now that biographical 
 works, like those just noted, contribute to a fuller under- 
 standing of Lincoln's life. Browne and the Rankins knew 
 him, talked with him and were his friends. Young Rankin, 
 as has been noted, was allegedly a clerk in his office. The 
 impression he made on them was ineradicable. Unfortu- 
 nately their conversations were not recorded word by word, 
 either by them or by him. 
 
 Another such personal record that throws some light on 
 the religious attitude of the President, is included in the 
 Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, by Father Chiniquy. 
 This man was a French priest who lived in St. Anne, Illinois, 
 and was involved in a suit with another French Catholic, 
 a famous controversy in its day. One of his lawyers was 
 Abraham Lincoln. The priest and the President maintained 
 
28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 their close friendship after the suit was settled, and Father 
 Chiniquy visited Mr. Lincoln after he became President. 
 The last time he was there was June 9, 1864, when he ear- 
 nestly warned the President about the rumors of his assassi- 
 nation, but which Lincoln discounted. 
 
 The work of Chiniquy, Fifty Years in the Church of 
 Rome, is also discredited by the modern critical school of 
 Lincoln biographers as being in the same class with Rankin s 
 book. In the Collected Works there is no mention of the 
 book so far as I have noted. This ecclesiastic gives us a vivid 
 account of his last interview with the President and except 
 for some statements and phrases which, it seems to me, 
 expressed the thought of the priest rather than that of Lin- 
 coln, mirrors pretty well the ideas that must have been ex- 
 pressed at that sorrowful visit. When Chiniquy says that 
 during the conversation, Lincoln said, quoting Psalm 19, "for 
 the judgments of God are true and righteous"— we are re- 
 minded that he made this statement other times. When he 
 quotes him as saying "is not our Christian religion the high- 
 est expression of the wisdom, mercy and love of God," we 
 know that Lincoln may not have used the exact words, but 
 he had expressed that idea many times. When he made a 
 remark or its equivalent like this: "It seems to me that the 
 Lord wants today, as he wanted in the days of Moses, an- 
 other victim— a victim which He Himself had chosen, 
 anointed and prepared for the sacrifice, by raising if above 
 the rest of His people, I cannot conceal from you that my 
 impression is that I am the victim," we recall from other 
 statements by Lincoln that he looked upon himself as chosen 
 for a divine mission which he felt crystallized itself in the 
 liberation of the slaves. I am sure that unless Father Chini- 
 quy took down what the President said, verbatim, he could 
 not remember exactly what was said— but he could very well 
 remember the tenor of the President's remarks. The visit 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 29 
 
 apparently was a very sorrowful and impressive one and, in 
 general, it was probably fairly well recalled. I can see where 
 the critical historians are correct in feeling that only the 
 actual records which Lincoln left are entitled to complete 
 historical trustworthiness, rather than those which were 
 compiled years afterward and carry with them impressions 
 and memories which, while they have some historical basis, 
 cannot be assumed to be completely authentic. Yet on the 
 other hand, it is not difficult for me to see, that from a 
 deeply serious interview of this sort, which was their last, 
 and which must have become to the priest a tragic mem- 
 ory. Father Chiniquy could have been so overwhelmingly 
 touched, that he could have recalled more than just a hazy 
 memory of the unforgettable meeting. The gist of the con- 
 versation surely remained with him. 
 
 In the same category of historical questionableness is an 
 incident told by General James F. Rusling in his Men and 
 Things in Civil War Days. Though not contained in the 
 Collected Works, this incident is accepted by some Lincoln 
 students, and it throws a strong light upon one of Lincoln's 
 idiosyncrasies, namely the feeling that he had some kind of 
 a mystical relationship with God, through prayer. 
 
 A summary of Rusling's report states: General Sickles 
 was wounded at Gettysburg and after amputation of his leg, 
 he was moved to Washington. When President Lincoln 
 called upon him, General Sickles asked if the President had 
 been anxious about the Battle of Gettysburg, and Lincoln 
 gravely said, "No, I was not; some of my cabinet and many 
 others in Washington were, but I had no fears." 
 
 General Sickles inquired how this was, and seemed curi- 
 ous about it. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln hesitated, but finally replied: 
 
 Well, I will tell you how it was. In a pinch of your campaign 
 up there, when everybody seemed panic-stricken, and no- 
 
30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 body could tell what was going to happen, oppressed by the 
 gravity of our affairs, I went to my room one day, and I 
 locked the door, got down on my knees before Almighty God, 
 and prayed to Him mightily for victory at Gettysburg. I told 
 Him this was His war, and our cause was His cause, but we 
 couldn't stand another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville. 
 And then and there I made a solemn vow to Almighty God, 
 that if He would stand by our boys at Gettysburg, I would 
 stand by Him. And He did stand by you boys, and I will 
 stand by Him. And after that (I don't know how it was, and 
 I can't explain it) a sweet comfort crept into my soul that 
 God Almighty had taken the whole business into His own 
 hands and that things would go all right at Gettysburg. And 
 that is why I had no fears about you. 
 
 Asked concerning Vicksburg, the news of whose victory 
 had not yet reached him, he said: "I have been praying for 
 Vicksburg also and believe our Heavenly Father is going to 
 give us victory there too." 
 
 These statements have been attested to as being true in 
 substance by both Generals Rusling and Sickles. There is 
 no word of this mentioned in the Collected Works, because 
 it would fall under the head of "reminiscences, " and yet it is 
 a vital link in the chain of evidence that Abraham Lincoln 
 was a deeply religious man, and believed thoroughly in 
 prayer. To these instances can be added a degree of mysti- 
 cism attested to by his own words, which is altogether ab- 
 sent in the more scientific works. Whitney 9 cites the whole 
 description of the interesting scene, and other works on 
 Lincoln also accept it as genuine. 
 
 9 Whitney, Henry C., Life on the Circuit with Lincoln (Boston: 
 Estes and Lauriat, 1892), p. 326. 
 
Ill 
 
 A very important element noted in Lincoln's religion was 
 the mystic belief illustrated by his conviction that he was 
 chosen by the Almighty to be His instrumentality in bring- 
 ing His purposes to fruition. 
 
 In a letter to Joshua Speed, his best and most intimate 
 friend dating from the Springfield days, he wrote on July 4, 
 1842: "I was drawn into it [the marriage of the Speeds], as 
 if by fate; if I would, I could not have done less than I did. 
 I always was superstitious; as part of my superstition, I be- 
 lieve that God made me one of the instruments of bringing 
 your family and you together, which union, I have no doubt, 
 he foreordained/' x 
 
 On his way to Washington to assume the Presidency in 
 1861, he delivered an address to the New Jersey Senate, 
 February 21, in which he said, among other things: "I am 
 exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution and 
 the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accord- 
 ance with the original idea for which that struggle was 
 made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be a hum- 
 ble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this his 
 almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that 
 great struggle." 2 
 
 He believed that our country was the chosen 8 example, 
 par excellence, of government given to man; and that he 
 
 1 Basler, Roy P. (ed.), Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New 
 Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. I, p. 289. 
 
 2 Ibid., Vol. IV, pp. 235-238. 
 
 3 Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 235. 
 
32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 was, at this juncture, the divine instrument ordained to carry 
 out the will of God in the preservation of this government. 
 
 We have already learned from Father Chiniquy that 
 Lincoln regarded himself as God's chosen instrument, an- 
 other Moses to free a race. Moses freed white slaves— he was 
 told to free the black race in the United States. He empha- 
 sized the "instrumentality" idea when he wrote to Mrs. 
 Eliza Gurney on October 26, 1862: "We are indeed going 
 through a great trial, a fiery trial. In the very responsible 
 position in which I happen to be placed, being a humble 
 servant in the hands of our heavenly Father, as I am, as we 
 all are, to work out His great purposes, I have desired that 
 all my work and acts may be according to His will, and that 
 it might be so, I have sought His aid." 4 
 
 In a letter to Reverend Byron Sunderland, who called 
 upon the President towards the end of 1862, he said: "I hold 
 myself in my present position and with the authority vested 
 in me, as an instrument of Providence. I am conscious every 
 moment that all I am and all I have, is subject to the control 
 of a Higher Power and that Power can use me or not use me 
 in any manner and at any time as in his wisdom and might 
 may be pleasing to him." 5 
 
 In a conversation with L. E. Chittenden, Lincoln's Regis- 
 ter of the Treasury, as recorded in Chittenden's Recollec- 
 tions of President Lincoln and His Administration, the Pres- 
 ident is reported to have said: 
 
 That the Almighty does make use of human agencies and 
 directly intervenes in human affairs, is one of the plainest 
 evidences of his direction; so many instances when I have 
 been controlled by some power other than my will, that I can- 
 not doubt that this power comes from above. I frequently see 
 my way clear to a decision when I am conscious that I have 
 
 4 Ibid., Vol. V., p. 478. 
 
 5 Oldroyd, O. H., Words of Lincoln (Wash., D. C: 1895), p. 94. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 33 
 
 no sufficient facts upon which to found it. But I cannot recall 
 one instance in which I have followed my own judgment 
 founded upon such a decision, where the results were unsatis- 
 factory; whereas, in almost every instance where I have 
 yielded to the views of others, I have had occasion to regret 
 it. I am satisfied that when the Almighty wants me to do 
 or not to do a particular thing, He finds a way of letting me 
 know it. 
 
 It is only on the basis of a kind of divinely induced stub- 
 bornness that one can explain Lincoln's continued associa- 
 tion with Ward Hill Lamon, who had made himself obnox- 
 ious in the eyes of countless friends and advisers of Lincoln; 
 or on his insistence that he must, under all circumstances, 
 deliver his famous "House Divided Against Itself" address, 
 which brought ultimate results opposite from those pre- 
 dicted by all of his friends, except Herndon. Delivered at 
 Springfield, Illinois, in 1858, "A House Divided Against It- 
 self' was his acceptance speech for his nomination for the 
 United States Senate in opposition to Stephen Douglas. It 
 has been said that this speech cost Lincoln the election. 
 Basler says of this speech: "A greater speech had never be- 
 fore been delivered to an American party political gather- 
 ing." 7 Yet the story is told that before delivering it, he sub- 
 mitted it to a number of his friends who vetoed the idea of 
 presenting it. 8 He did give it, and it is regarded as one of 
 the greatest contributions to American political literature. 
 
 Another instance of this intense faith of which his stub- 
 bornness was a result, was the Emancipation Proclamation, 
 which will be considered later. Much of the material that 
 
 6 Chittenden, L. E., Recollections of President Lincoln and his 
 Administration (N. Y.: Harper & Bros., 1891), p. 446. 
 
 7 Basler, Roy P. (ed.), Abraham Lincoln, His Speeches and Writ- 
 ings (N.Y.: World Pub. Co., 1948), p. 23. 
 
 8 Herndon, Wm. H., History and Personal Recollections of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln (N. Y.: A. & C. Boni, 1930), p. 399. 
 
34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 deals with these matters has not been included in the Col- 
 lected Works, but it helps to give us phases of Lincoln's 
 character. 
 
 In 1866, F. B. Carpenter published his Six Months at the 
 White House with Lincoln, sl more or less intimate account 
 of his stay with Lincoln in 1864. He was an artist who was 
 commissioned to paint the portrait of the President and his 
 Cabinet. Mr. Carpenter states frankly that the book was 
 "written in a spirit of enthusiasm and affection, a record of 
 daily experience and observations, fragmentary, but true in 
 all essential particulars." He describes a scene in which 
 Colonel McKaye of New York reported to the President on 
 his investigation of conditions of freedom in North Caro- 
 lina. Those Negroes called this new leader who had freed 
 them "Massa Linkum." Once, in the excitement of a large 
 meeting at which someone was attempting to explain who 
 "Massa Linkum" was, a white-headed leader arose and com- 
 manded silence. "Now you just listen to me," he said, "Massa 
 Linkum is eberywhar. He know eberyting. He walk de earf 
 like de Lord." Colonel McKaye told Mr. Carpenter that the 
 President got up from his chair, walked in silence across the 
 floor for some time, then sat down and said very impres- 
 sively: "It is a momentous thing to be the instrument, under 
 Providence, of the liberation of a race." 9 
 
 While the President was walking the streets of Rich- 
 mond, April 4, 1865, some Negroes knelt at his feet and 
 thanked him for this deliverance. "Don't kneel to me," he 
 said, "kneel to God only. I am but God's humble instrument; 
 but you may rest assured that as long as I live no one shall 
 put a shackle on your limbs, and you shall have all the rights 
 which God has given to every other free citizen of this re- 
 
 9 Carpenter, F. B., Six Months at the White House with Abraham 
 Lincoln (N, Y; Hurd and Houghton, 1866), p. 209. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 35 
 
 public." 10 None of these incidents are in the Collected 
 Works. 
 
 Lincoln believed himself to be an ordained instrument n 
 of God, and that as God willed, so would the contest go. He 
 believed in prayer and in its efficacy, and that God willed 
 the destruction of slavery through Lincoln's instrumentality. 
 
 Barton, in the Soul of Lincoln writes: "He [Lincoln] pro- 
 foundly believed himself an instrument of the divine will, 
 believing that will to be right, and creation's final law." He 
 believed in predestination and that he was foreordained to 
 carry out that will. 
 
 10 Oldroyd, op. cit., p. 174. 
 
 11 Whitney, Henry C., Life on the Circuit with Lincoln (Boston: 
 Estes and Lauriat, 1892), p. 246. 
 
There was a mystic strain in Lincoln's make-up that made 
 him a victim of dreams, hallucinations and forebodings that 
 bedevilled him. The efforts to account for this aberration 
 have not been successful. Some have traced it to his father, 
 Thomas. Abraham, himself, likewise had "blues" and spells 
 of isolationism. Herndon's biography thus describes the so- 
 cial life of Gentry ville in Abe's youth: 
 
 Although gay, prosperous and lighthearted, these people 
 were brimming over with superstition. It was at once their 
 food and drink. They believed in the baneful influence of 
 witches, pinned their faith to the curative power of wizards 
 in dealing with sick animals, and shot the image of a witch 
 with a silver ball to break the spell she was supposed to 
 have over human beings. They followed with religious 
 minuteness the directions of a water-wizard with his magic 
 divining-rod, and the faith doctor who wrought miraculous 
 cures by strange sounds and signals to some mysterious 
 agency. The flight of a bird in at the window, the breath of a 
 horse on a child's head, the crossing by a dog of a hunter's 
 path, all betokened evil luck in store for someone; . . . fence 
 rails could only be cut in the light of the moon and potatoes 
 planted in the dark of the moon. . . . Surrounded by people 
 who believed in these things ( and many similar ones ) Lin- 
 coln grew to manhood. From them he absorbed whatever of 
 superstition showed itself in him thereafter. His earlier 
 Baptist training made him a fatalist up to the day of his 
 death, and listening in boyish wonder to the legends of some 
 toothless old dame, led him to believe in the significance of 
 dreams and visions. 
 
 Growing from boy to man, he was alone a good deal of 
 the time, It was the wilderness loneliness, and he lived with 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 37 
 
 trees, with the open sky, etc. Starting with his eleventh 
 year, he had moments of great loneliness, periods of solitary 
 thoughtfulness, spells of the "blues" and suffered from 
 "melancholia." Among the itinerant frontier priests, who lived 
 as Elijah, in whose exalted narrowness of devotion, all that 
 was stern, dark and foreboding had a voice. 1 
 
 Barton, in his Soul of Abraham Lincoln says: "There was 
 superstition enough in the backwoods religion, and Abraham 
 Lincoln never wholly divested himself of it." 2 
 
 The more deeply one searches into Lincoln's religion, the 
 more can one find that he was anything but logical in his 
 religious thinking. He was, in more than one sense, a mystic. 
 Though completely governed by the idea that God is Su- 
 preme Ruler in every aspect of national and human exist- 
 ence, Lincoln was franklv superstitious and believed in 
 dreams and premonitions. He admitted this in several state- 
 ments that are historic, some of which have been referred to. 
 He never got away fully from his early life and its surround- 
 ings. We know now how greatly our early years influence 
 our lives; and Lincoln got far from, but never entirely out 
 of, his childhood influences. His dreams and presentiments 
 influenced his daily living. When he writes, "I tell you 
 Speed, our forebodings, for which you and I are rather pe- 
 culiar, are all the worst sort of nonsense," 3 he was not tell- 
 ing a fabrication. He was exposing a trait that he had gotten 
 
 1 Sandburg, Carl, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (N. Y.: 
 Harcourt Brace & Co., 1926), Vol. I, p. 47. 
 
 Herndon, Wm. H., Abraham Lincoln (Springfield: Herndon's 
 Lincoln Pub. Co., 1888), pp. 63-66. 
 
 Barton, Wm. E., The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (N. Y.: G. H. 
 Doran Co., 1920), p. 197. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 45. 
 
 Stephenson, N. W., Lincoln (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 
 1922), p. 6. 
 
 3 Basler, Roy P. (ed.), Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New 
 Brunswick, N. J., Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. I, p. 280. 
 
38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 from both his parents and his neighbors. He told Herndon 
 repeatedly that he had a feeling that he was "sure that he 
 would meet some terrible end— that he would rise to great 
 heights and then be dropped to the lowest depths." His wife 
 told Herndon that his philosophy was, "that which is to be, 
 will be," and no prayers of ours can reverse the decree. 4 He 
 took his son Bob to Terre Haute, Indiana, to be cured of the 
 bite of a rabid dog by the "mad-stone" there. At times he 
 thought of his election as President, then became gloomy, 
 when he was possessed by the obsession that he would fall 
 from the heights. On June 9, 1863, while he was in Philadel- 
 phia, he telegraphed his wife that he had "had a disturbing 
 dream about Tad," and asked his wife "to put Tad's pistol 
 away." 5 Some time before this, April 16, 1848, he had writ- 
 ten to his wife that he "did not get rid of the impression of 
 that foolish dream about dear Bobby till I got your letter 
 written the same day." 6 
 
 Lamon tells of Lincoln's recitation "of an ominous inci- 
 dent, of mysterious character" that occurred just after his 
 election in 1860: It was the double image of himself in a 
 looking-glass which he faced while lying on a lounge in 
 Springfield. As he looked into the glass, one of the faces 
 showed him in full health and with happy mien. The other 
 was pale and ghostly. Lincoln was frightened, and tried 
 again and again later to see whether lying on a couch in the 
 same position, he could get a repetition of the double image 
 —one of health and happiness, the other of pallor and ghost- 
 liness. Although he had tried to reproduce this image in his 
 home and succeeded, he never could reproduce it in the 
 White House. It worried him and he began to have the illu- 
 sion that the optimistic image indicated that he would live 
 through the first term, while the other meant that he would 
 
 4 Herndon, op. tit., p. 436. 
 
 5 Basler, op. cit., Vol. VI, p. 256. 
 « Ibid., Vol. I, p. 466. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 39 
 
 not finish the second. 7 Mr. Lincoln believed that this expe- 
 rience in his home was indicative of the fate that awaited 
 him later. 8 
 
 Lamon cites another vision which troubled Lincoln very 
 much. It took place a few days before his assassination. 
 Lamon says that he gives this account "as nearly in his own 
 words as I can from notes which I made immediately after 
 its recital. There were only two or three persons present." 
 Mr. Lincoln, at the time, had been looking very melancholy 
 and had been silent for some time. Mrs. Lincoln remarked 
 about his sad visage and want of spirit. This seemed to 
 arouse him, and without seeming to notice her sally, he said, 
 in slow and measured tones: "It seems strange how much 
 there is in the Bible about dreams. There are, I think, some 
 sixteen chapters in the Old Testament and four or five in 
 the New, in which dreams are mentioned; and there are 
 many other passages scattered throughout the Book which 
 refer to visions. If we believe the Bible, we must accept the 
 fact that in the old days God and His angels came to men 
 in their sleep and made themselves known in dreams. Now- 
 adays dreams are regarded as very foolish, and are seldom 
 told, except by old women and by young men and maidens 
 in love." 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln remarked that Lincoln looked so troubled 
 and asked him whether he believed in dreams. He told her 
 what was perhaps the most horrible dream or vision he had 
 ever had. "I can't say that I do," replied Mr. Lincoln, "but 
 I had one the other night which has haunted me ever since. 
 After it occurred, the first time I opened the Bible, strange 
 as it may appear, it was at the twenty-eighth chapter of 
 Genesis, which relates the wonderful dream Jacob had. I 
 
 7 Lamon, Ward Hill, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865 
 (Wash., D. C, 1911), p. 112. 
 
 8 Ibid., p. 114. 
 
40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
 turned to other passages and seemed to encounter a dream 
 or vision wherever I looked. I kept turning the leaf of the 
 old Book, and everywhere my eye fell upon passages record- 
 ing matters strangely in keeping with my own thoughts- 
 supernatural visitations, dreams, visions, etc." 
 
 He now looked so serious and disturbed that Mrs. Lin- 
 coln exclaimed: "You frighten me! What is the matter?" 
 
 "I am afraid," said Mr. Lincoln, observing the effect his 
 words had upon his wife, "that I have done wrong to men- 
 tion the subject at all; but somehow the thing has got pos- 
 session of me, and, like Banquo's ghost, it will not go down." 
 Mrs. Lincoln then asked him to relate the dream. 
 
 "About ten days ago," said he, according to Lamon, "I 
 retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dis- 
 patches from the front. I could not have been long in bed 
 when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began 
 to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about 
 me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people 
 were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered down- 
 stairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sob- 
 bing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to 
 room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful 
 sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in 
 all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where 
 were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts 
 would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be 
 the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a 
 state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until 
 I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met 
 with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque on 
 which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around 
 it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and 
 there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon 
 the corpse whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 41 
 
 Who is dead in the White House/ I demanded of one of 
 the soldiers. 'The president,' was his answer, 'he was killed 
 by an assassin/ Then came a loud burst of grief from the 
 crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that 
 night; and although it was only a dream, I have been 
 strangely annoyed by it ever since/' He then became serious 
 and said: "Well, let it go— I think the Lord in His own good 
 time will work things out all right. God knows what is best." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had another remarkable dream which he re- 
 lated: he frequently spoke of this one at the White House. 
 It was a pleasing dream and always came to him, he said 
 "as an omen of Union victory; it came with unerring cer- 
 tainty just before every military or naval engagement where 
 our armies were crowned with success." In this dream he 
 saw a ship sailing away rapidly, badly damaged, and our 
 victorious ships in close pursuit. In a battle on land, he saw 
 in this dream the close of a battle, the enemy routed, and 
 our forces in possession of vantage ground of incalculable 
 importance. Lincoln stated it as a fact that he had this dream 
 just before the battles of Antietam, Gettysburg and other 
 single engagements during the war. This was the dream re- 
 ferred to on the morning of Lincoln's assassination. 9 
 
 In a conversation with General Grant, the President 
 asked him if he had any news from General Sherman who 
 was then engaged in battle. Grant said he hadn't, but he 
 expected to hear soon. The President answered, "We shall 
 hear very soon, and the news will be important." 10 General 
 Grant asked him why he thought so. "Because," said Mr. 
 Lincoln, "I had a dream last night and ever since this war 
 began I have had the same dream just before every event 
 of great national importance. It indicates that some impor- 
 tant event will happen very soon." 
 
 • Ibid., p. 118. 
 10 Ibid., p. 119. 
 
42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 On the night of the assassination, April 14, 1865, Mrs. 
 Lincoln's exclamation was: "His dream was prophetic." 
 
 It will be remembered that after the battle of Antietam, 
 when the rebel forces were driven out of Maryland and the 
 Union positions eased considerably, the President called 
 a meeting of the Cabinet on September 22, 1862, and accord- 
 ing to the account of Secretary Welles, 11 the following epi- 
 sode took place. The subject discussed was the proclamation 
 for emancipating the slaves and the discussion was long and 
 earnest. Lincoln had decided to issue the proclamation 
 which he had prepared. He had determined, when the rebel 
 army was at Fredericksburg, to issue the proclamation of 
 emancipation as soon as the rebel army was driven out of 
 Maryland, whether the cabinet agreed or not. The time 
 had now arrived. His mind was made up. The occasion 
 for the enunciation of the policy of emancipation could no 
 longer be delayed. Not only would "public sentiment sustain 
 it but," and then with the certainty that his naive but deep 
 faith inspired, he said, "I made a solemn vow before God that 
 if General Lee was driven back from Pennsylvania, I would 
 crown the result by the declaration of freedom for the 
 slaves." 12 During the discussion in the Cabinet that day, 
 Lincoln said that, "if God gave us victory," he would con- 
 sider it an indication of Divine will, and that, it was his 
 "duty to move forward in the cause of emancipation." 13 In 
 spite of the discouragement and even the opposition of 
 some members of the Cabinet, he did. So far as I can find, 
 Lincoln never broke a vow which he made to God. 
 
 11 "Diary of Gideon Welles," Atlantic Monthly, 1909, p. 369. 
 
 12 Carpenter, F. B., Six Months at the White House with Abraham 
 Lincoln (N. Y.: Hurd and Houghton, 1866), p. 209. 
 
 13 Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (N. Y.: The 
 Century Co., 1890), Vol. VI, p. 160. 
 
 Basler, op. cit. y Vol. V, p. 433. 
 Barton, op. cit., p. 281. 
 
At the age of twenty-eight, Lincoln wrote a letter to Mary 
 Owens in which he said, "I've never been to church yet, nor 
 probably shall not soon. I stay away because I am conscious 
 I should not know how to behave myself." 1 But all of this 
 changed later. After he married, his wife became a church 
 attendant and later affiliated with a church in Springfield 
 which her husband often attended with her, though he never 
 joined himself. 
 
 To many, this nonaffiliation would indicate that Lincoln 
 was not a religious individual. But in the larger and more 
 universal sense, Lincoln was a deeply religious man. He did 
 believe in the Fatherhood of God, in the Brotherhood of 
 Man, in an overruling Providence that directs the destinies 
 of men and nations, and in the efficacy of prayers which do 
 not conflict with the order of natural laws. 2 Lincoln was a 
 fatalist, and believed that since the Almighty controlled the 
 affairs of man, man could succeed only with the help of God, 
 and without this, he would fail. 3 But he always believed 
 in the triumph of right and the conquest over wrong; in the 
 permanence of justice and truth. 4 If anything seemed untrue 
 to him, he simply could not simulate truth. He had a keen 
 
 1 Basler, Roy P. (ed.), Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New 
 Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. I, p. 78. 
 
 2 Herndon, Wm. H., Abraham Lincoln (Springfield: Hemdon's 
 Lincoln Pub. Co., 1888), p. 444. 
 
 3 Whitney, Henry C, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln (Boston: 
 Estes and Lauriat, 1892), p. 245. 
 
 4 Herndon, op. cit., p. 538. 
 
44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
 sense of justice and struggled for it, whether he fought for 
 a client in court or its maintenance during the Presidency. 
 Writing to Joshua Giddings, his friend, May 21, 1860, he 
 said: "May the Almighty grant that the cause of truth, 
 justice and humanity, shall in no wise suffer at my hands." 5 
 He believed in the justice of the American people, and that 
 "God's eternal truth and justice will be on our side." 6 
 
 In a book by R. M. Wanamaker called The Voice of Lin- 
 coin, we find this story: "After Lincoln had written his 
 famous 'A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Endure* 
 speech in June, 1858, he called in a few friends to get 
 their impression of it. Some of them condemned it as an 
 untimely political document and wanted him to wait before 
 he gave it to the world. This is what Lincoln is purported 
 to have said: 'This thing (of slavery) has been retarded 
 long enough. The time has come when these sentiments 
 should be uttered, and if it is decreed that I should go down 
 because of this speech, then let me go down, linked to the 
 truth. Let me die in the advocacy of what is just and 
 right/ " 7 
 
 To Henry L. Pierce of Boston, who had invited him to 
 address a group at a Jefferson anniversary party in Boston, 
 April 6, 1859, he wrote: "Those who deny freedom to others, 
 deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God, cannot 
 long retain it." 8 
 
 He scorned the kind of religion that justified its pro- 
 fessors in piously asking God for blessings for themselves 
 and their land, but withholding them from the colored 
 children of the Almighty. In a reply to the New York Work- 
 ingmen's Association, he did not use the words of the 
 
 5 Basler, op. cit., Vol. IV, p. 51. 
 « Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 260. 
 
 7 Wanamaker, The Voice of Lincoln (N. Y.: C. Scribner's Sons, 
 1918), p. 233. 
 
 8 Basler, op. cit., Vol. Ill, p. 275. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 45 
 
 Prophet Malachi, "Have we not all one Father, hath not one 
 God created us all," but he did say: "The strongest bond of 
 human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be 
 one uniting all working people of all nations, tongues and 
 kindreds." 9 
 
 To a woman who came to ask a favor for her husband 
 who was a prisoner and who emphasized that he was a 
 religious man, the President said: "You say your husband is 
 a religious man? Tell him when you meet him, that I say 
 I am not much of a judge of religion, but in my opinion, the 
 religion that sets men to rebel and fight against their govern- 
 ment, because as they think, that the government does not 
 sufficiently help some men to eat their bread on the sweat 
 of others men's faces, is not the sort of religion upon which 
 people can get to heaven." 10 
 
 In speaking of slavery, one is reminded of the great 
 Peoria Lincoln— Douglas debate on October 16, 1854, when 
 Lincoln answered his opponent in a long speech on the 
 repeal of the Missouri compromise in which, among other 
 things, he said, "I think that I shall try to show that it is 
 wrong; wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas 
 and Nebraska, and wrong in its prospective principle, allow- 
 ing it to spread to every other part of the wide world where 
 men can be found inclined to take it. This declared indif- 
 ference, but as I must think, convert real zeal for the spread 
 of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the 
 monstrous injustice of slavery itself. . . . Slavery is founded 
 in the selfishness of man's nature; opposition to it, is his 
 love for justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; 
 and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery exten- 
 sion brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must 
 ceaselessly follow. 
 
 11 
 
 9 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 259. 
 
 10 Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 154. 
 
 11 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 225, 271, 277. 
 
46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 "I am naturally anti-slavery ," he maintained. "If slavery 
 is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I 
 did not so think and feel. If God now wills the removal of a 
 great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as 
 you of the South shall pay fairly for our complicity in that 
 wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest 
 and revere the justice and goodness of God/' 12 
 
 The severe logic that impelled Lincoln to be an abolition- 
 ist, is shown in the following example of his reasoning: 
 
 If A proves, however conclusively, that he may be of right, 
 enslave B, why may not B snatch the same argument, and 
 prove equally, that he may enslave A? You say A is white 
 and B is black. Is it color, then the lighter, having the right 
 to enslave the darker? By this rule, you are to be slave to the 
 first men you meet with a fairer skin than your own. You do 
 not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellec- 
 tually the superiors of the blacks, and therefore have the 
 right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule you are 
 to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect 
 superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of inter- 
 est; and if you can make it your interest, you have the right 
 to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his 
 interest, he has the right to enslave you. 13 
 
 In the Peoria Lincoln-Douglas debate, held on October 
 18, 1854, Lincoln said in the course of his reply: 
 
 Senator Douglas remarked, in substance, that he had always 
 considered this government was made for the white people 
 and not for the Negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think 
 so too. But in this remark of the Judge's there is a signifi- 
 cance, which I think is the key to the great mistake (if there 
 is any such mistake) which he made in his Nebraska meas- 
 ure. It shows that the Judge has no vivid impression that the 
 Negro is human; and consequently has no idea that there 
 can be any moral question in legislating about him. . . . The 
 
 12 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 282. 
 18 Ifcid, Vol. II, p. 223. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 47 
 
 great mass of mankind take a totally different view. They 
 consider slavery a great moral wrong; and their feeling 
 against it is not evanescent but eternal. It lies at the very 
 foundation of their sense of justice; it cannot be trifled 
 with. 14 
 
 In a speech on March 17, 1865, he said: "I have always 
 thought that all men should be free; but if any should be 
 slaves, it should be first, those who desire it for themselves; 
 and secondly, those who desire it for others. Whenever I 
 hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to 
 see it tried on him personally." 15 
 
 "I hold," said Lincoln in his Quincy debate with Douglas, 
 October 13, 1858, "that there is no reason in the world why 
 the Negro is not entitled to all the rights enumerated in the 
 Declaration of Independence— the right of life, liberty and 
 the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled 
 to these as is the white man; ... in the right to eat the bread 
 without leave of anyone else which his own hand earns, he 
 is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas and the equal 
 of every other man." 16 
 
 14 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 281. 
 
 15 Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 361. 
 
 16 Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 349. 
 
These emotion-laden, heartfelt pleas for justice are not just 
 the superficial sentiments of an advocate of the principle 
 that all men be treated justly. Perhaps a great war had to 
 be fought for these ideas, as of course it was. Much blood 
 would have to be shed— and the shedding of this blood 
 would become the responsibility not only of the South, but 
 also of the North. One can almost feel the intensity of Lin- 
 coln's emotion and pious trust, like that of the prophets, in 
 the justice and mercifulness of God. 
 
 Lincoln could protest more strongly against the outrages 
 heaped upon the Negroes, such as he remembered seeing in 
 New Orleans, because he was familiar with the burning 
 words of Amos, directed against those "who oppress the 
 poor, crush the needy, turn justice into wormwood and cast 
 righteousness to the ground." * 
 
 "What natural right," asks Lincoln, "requires Kansas and 
 Nebraska to be opened to slavery? Is not slavery granted to 
 be, in the abstract, a gross outrage on the law of nature? 
 Have not all civilized nations, our own among them, made 
 the slave trade capital, and classed it with piracy and mur- 
 der? Is it not held to be the great wrong of the world? Shall 
 that institution, which carries a rot and murrain in it, claim 
 any right, by the law of nature to stand by the side of Free- 
 dom, on a soil that is free?" 2 
 
 In the Peoria speech, October 16, 1854, Lincoln asks: "Is 
 
 1 Amos 5:7. 
 
 2 Basler, Roy P. (ed.), Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (N< 
 Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. II, p. 245. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 49 
 
 there not danger to liberty itself, in discarding the earliest 
 practice ( the principles of progress and the noblest political 
 system the world ever saw) and first precept of our ancient 
 faith? In our greedy chase to make profit of the Negro, let 
 us beware, lest we cancel and tear to pieces even the white 
 man's charter of freedom/' 3 It is in this same speech that 
 he announces, ". . . that there can be no moral right in the 
 enslaving of one man by another, without his consent." 4 
 
 To prosper and build "houses of hewn stone, and plant 
 pleasant vineyards and drink wine in them," 5 and enjoy 
 luxury at the expense of human slavery was not, in Lincoln's 
 mind, the goal of our country. Defending his speech of June 
 15, at Springfield, which was criticized by some friends, he 
 said: "If it must be that I must go down because of this 
 speech, then let me go down linked to the truth, and die 
 in the advocacy of what is right and just. This nation cannot 
 live on injustice." 6 
 
 And surely he was in harmony with the sentiment ex- 
 pressed by Prophet Amos 7 when he said: "I hate your feasts 
 and I detest your religious assemblies; I don't want your 
 prayers and sacrifices, your sacred music and your fine 
 choirs, but let justice run as water and righteousness like a 
 mighty stream." This is a slight modernization. The prophet 
 meant that if there were no truth and sincerity at the basis 
 of the ritualistic practices, they had no meaning and were 
 acts of hypocrisy; and Lincoln agreed with this. In reply to 
 a resolution by the American Baptist Home Mission Society 
 he said: "To read in the Bible, as the word of God himself, 
 that 'in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,' and to 
 
 3 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 276. 
 
 4 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 266. 
 
 5 Amos 5:11. 
 
 6 Basler, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 61. 
 
 Oldroyd, O. H., Words of Lincoln (Wash., D.C.: 1895), p. 28. 
 
 7 Amos 9:23-21 
 
50 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 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." 8 
 
 Lincoln's passion for justice to the Negro was not a late 
 acquisition. Though in his earlier political life he was satis- 
 fied with the institution of slavery if it did not spread be- 
 yond the established slave states, he harbored the greatest 
 disgust for the institution. One recalls his visit to New Or- 
 leans as a youth, when he first came in contact with slavery 
 activities. Some later historians have rejected this story, as 
 told by Herndon: In New Orleans, for the first time, Lincoln 
 beheld the true horrors of human slavery. He saw Negroes 
 in chains, whipped and scourged. Against this brutality his 
 sense of right and justice rebelled. One morning in then- 
 rambles over the city, he and his friends passed a slave 
 auction. A vigorous and comely mulatto girl was being sold. 
 She underwent a thorough examination at the hands of the 
 bidders; they pinched her flesh and made her trot up and 
 down the room like a horse, to show how she moved, and 
 in order, as the auctioneer said, "that bidders might satisfy 
 themselves whether the article they were offering to buy, 
 was sound or not." The whole thing was so revolting that 
 Lincoln moved away from the scene with a deep feeling of 
 "unconquerable hate." Bidding his companions follow him, 
 he said, "By God, boys, let's get away from this. If ever I get 
 a chance to hit that thing [meaning slavery] I'll hit it hard." 
 "This incident," says Herndon, "was furnished me in 1865 
 by John Hanks. I have also heard Mr. Lincoln refer to it 
 himself." 9 
 
 In his meanderings in New Orleans, Lincoln saw signs 
 reading, "I will at all times pay the highest cash prices for 
 
 8 Basler, op. cit, Vol. II, p. 368. 
 
 9 Herndon, Wm. H., Abraham Lincoln (Springfield: Herndon's 
 Lincoln Pub, Co., 1888), p. 76. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 51 
 
 Negroes of every description, and will also attend to the sale 
 of Negroes on commission, having a jail and a yard fitted up 
 expressly for boarding them." Another read like this: "For 
 sale, several likely girls from 10 to 18 years old; a woman 24; 
 a very valuable woman 25, with three very likely children/' 
 It was after this visit that he really became embittered at 
 the slave trade. It was some years after that he wrote one of 
 the finest sentiments in the whole range of Lincoln letters. 
 It was in a letter addressed to his old friend Joshua Speed, 
 and bears the date of August 24, 1855. "I am not a Know- 
 Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can anyone 
 who abhors the oppression of Negroes, be in favor of de- 
 grading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy 
 appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by 
 declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practi- 
 cally read it 'all men are created equal except Negroes/ 
 When Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are 
 created equal except Negroes, foreigners and Catholics/ 
 When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some 
 country where they make no pretense of loving liberty— to 
 Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, 
 and without the base alloy of hypocrisy." 10 
 
 10 Basler, op. cit, Vol. II, p. 323. 
 
VII 
 
 In reply to some slanderers Lincoln said: "That I am not a 
 member of any Christian church, is true. But I never denied 
 the truth of the Scriptures." * 
 
 That he was not a Christian in the traditional sense has 
 never been denied, though Barton tried desperately to make 
 him one. Lamon says that Lincoln "never told anyone that 
 he accepted Jesus as the Christ, or as the one who performed 
 a single one of the acts which necessarily follow upon such 
 a conviction. Never in all the time did he let fall from his 
 lips or pen, an expression which remotely implied the slight- 
 est faith in Jesus as the son of God and the Savior of men/' 2 
 Lamon maintained further "that indefinite expressions about 
 'Divine Providence* the 'justice of God/ 'the favor of the 
 Mighty High' were easy, and not inconsistent with his reli- 
 gious notions." In these, accordingly, he indulged freely. 
 
 This statement is borne out by all the authenticated writ- 
 ings of Lincoln. The book of Father Chiniquy, Fifty Years in 
 the Church of Rome, written many years after the interview 
 mentioned in it, and which is not considered authentic, 
 states that among other things, Lincoln said: "But when I 
 consider the law of justice and expiation in the death of 
 the just, Divine Son of Mary on the Mount Calvary, I remain 
 mute in my adoration . . . now would it not be the greatest 
 of honors and privileges bestowed upon me, if God in His 
 
 1 Basler, Roy P. (ed.), Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New 
 Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. I, p. 382. 
 
 2 Lamon, Ward Hill, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Boston: J. R. 
 Osgood & Co., 1872), p. 502. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 53 
 
 infinite love, mercy and wisdom would put me between His 
 faithful servant Moses, and His Eternal Son, Jesus, that I 
 might die as they did, for my nation's sake." 
 
 This statement is in the same class with that of Professor 
 Newton Bateman of Springfield, Illinois, who averred that 
 Lincoln told him in an intimate conversation: "I am noth- 
 ing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I 
 know liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is 
 God." When William Herndon challenged the truthfulness 
 of this statement by Lincoln, Bateman did not accept the 
 challenge. 
 
 Students of Lincoln accept neither Chiniquy nor Bate- 
 man as reliable sources of Lincoln's religion. In none of his 
 talks, not even to the church commissions which he ad- 
 dressed, nor in the various proclamations that he issued, does 
 he mention "Christ the Son of God" and "the Savior of Man- 
 kind thru His death." In an obscure little volume containing 
 some alleged prayers of Lincoln, I found the phrase "Saviour 
 of mankind," which referred to Jesus. He used the word 
 "Saviour" alone in his reply to Douglas 3 at Chicago, July 
 10, 1858, and several other places. 
 
 William Herndon states unequivocally that Lincoln did 
 not believe in original sin, depravity of man, the Pope, the 
 power of atonement, the infallibility of the written revela- 
 tion or the truth of the miracles. According to Lincoln, 
 everything that happened took place under the order of 
 natural law; even the dreams and visions that he had were 
 orderly events that took place under law. 4 
 
 In his mind he may have undergone some subconscious 
 changes in his religious thinking. This is entirely possible 
 
 8 Basler, Roy P. (ed.), Abraham Lincoln, His Speeches and Writ- 
 ings (N.Y.: World Pub. Co., 1946), pp. 403, 446. 
 
 4 Herndon, Wm. H., Abraham Lincoln (Springfield: Herndon's 
 Lincoln Pub. Co., 1888), p. 443. 
 
54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 and is attested to in a conversation that he is alleged to 
 have had with Mr. F. B. Carpenter, the artist. Carpenter 
 became very friendly with both President and Mrs. Lincoln. 
 In this volume, Six Months at the White House with Abra- 
 ham Lincoln, there appears the record of a conversation be- 
 tween the President and Mr. Noah Brooks, who was to be 
 one of his secretaries, in which Mr. Lincoln said that "his 
 own election to office, and the crisis immediately following, 
 influentially determined him" in what he called a "process of 
 crystallization" then going on in his mind. He probably re- 
 ferred not only to his election, but also to the death of his 
 little son Willie, and to the irritating events going on na- 
 tionally. 5 The "crystallization" might already have been tak- 
 ing place when he made his farewell speech at Springfield, 
 in which he said, among other things: "Without the assist- 
 ance of that Divine Being who ever attended him [Wash- 
 ington] I cannot succeed. Trusting in Him, who can go with 
 me, and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let 
 us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care 
 commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will com- 
 mend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell." 6 
 
 Lincoln believed in the efficacy of prayer. Now and then, 
 he cited instances which proved to him the truth of prayer, 
 and he prayed and asked others to pray for him innumerable 
 times. His childhood and boyhood training that God hears 
 and answers prayers, was probably suppressed in those 
 earlier years to which Herndon, Lamon and other of his 
 friends refer as the years of "skepticism" or even "infidel- 
 ism"; but earnest trust in communion with God came to 
 
 5 Carpenter, F. B., Six Months at the White House with Abraham 
 Lincoln (N.Y.: Hurd and Houghton, 1866), p. 189. 
 
 Sandburg, Carl, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (N.Y.: Har- 
 court Brace & Co., 1939), Vol. Ill, p. 381. 
 
 6 Basler, Collected Works, op. cit., Vol. IV, p. 190. 
 
 Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (N.Y.: The Cen- 
 tury Co., 1890), Vol. Ill, p. 291. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 55 
 
 the fore again later, and remained until the day of his death 
 one of the most important articles of his religion. If for the 
 first five years of the war the prayers of himself and millions 
 seemed to be unanswered, his unshakable trust that God 
 would some day hear and answer, steadied him and gave 
 him strength and courage. In the Lincoln Scrapbook, Li- 
 brary of Congress, Reverend N. W. Miner, of Springfield, 
 Illinois, tells of the following incident: He and his wife had 
 been good friends of President and Mrs. Lincoln, and they 
 made it a point to go to Washington and, of course, visit the 
 Lincolns in April, 1862, after the death of the President's son, 
 Willie, and the Battle of Shiloh, when the President felt 
 greatly depressed and discouraged. Mr. Miner said: "Well, 
 Mr. Lincoln, you have this encouragement: Christian peo- 
 ple all over the country are praying for you as they never 
 prayed for mortal man before." He replied: "I believe that, 
 and this has been the encouraging thought for me. If I were 
 not sustained by the prayers of God's people, I could not 
 endure the constant pressure." If I interpret this remark cor- 
 rectly, Lincoln felt that prayers to God and trust in Him, 
 gave him the strength to carry on. A number of requests for 
 prayers by the President are recorded. No one has ever 
 raised any doubt about his faith in prayers— particularly 
 after his election to the Presidency. 
 
 In May, 1862, he welcomed the representatives of the 
 Lutheran Church and said among other things: "You all 
 may recollect that taking up the sword thus forced into our 
 hands, this government appealed to the prayers of the pious 
 and the good, and declared that it placed its whole de- 
 pendence upon the favor of God. I now, humbly and rever- 
 ently in your presence, reiterate the acknowledgment of that 
 dependence, not doubting that, if it shall please the Divine 
 Being who determines the destinies of nations that this shall 
 remain a united people, they will humbly seek Divine guid- 
 
56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 ance, make their prolonged existence a source of new bene- 
 fits to themselves and their successors, and to all classes and 
 conditions of mankind." 7 
 
 J. G. Holland, who wrote one of the earliest biographies 
 of Lincoln, The Life of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, relates 
 that a group of the Christian Commission, which sponsored 
 religious services in the army, visited the President in Wash- 
 ington, and one of the ministers told how universal were the 
 prayers of the Christian people, that even children were 
 taught to pray for the President in their morning and eve- 
 ning prayers. Mr. Lincoln responded that, "If it were not for 
 my firm belief in an overruling Providence, it would be diffi- 
 cult for me in the midst of such complications of affairs to 
 keep my reason on its seat. But I am confident that the 
 Almighty has His plans and will work them out, and whether 
 we see it or not, they will be the wisest and best for us. I 
 always have taken counsel of Him, and referred to Him my 
 plans, and have never adopted a course of proceeding with- 
 out being assured, as far as I could, of His approbation." 8 
 
 I don't know whether these were the exact words of 
 Mr. Lincoln or not. But that same sentiment had been ex- 
 pressed to Reverend N. W. Miner, as noted above, and no 
 doubt was in the mind of Lincoln. That complete and limit- 
 less faith which he had in Providence was no less intense 
 than that of the greatest prophets and the most pious Psalm- 
 ists. 
 
 In June, 1862, Congressman James F. Wilson of Iowa 
 brought a delegation to the President to ask for a firmer 
 policy in the conduct of the war. In his talk, Mr. Lincoln 
 said, among other things: 
 
 But I also believe that He will compel us to do right in order 
 that He may do these things, not so much because we desire 
 
 7 Basler, op. cit., Vol. V, pp. 212, 213. 
 
 8 Holland, J. G., The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Springfield, Mass. 
 G. Bill, 1866), pp. 400, 440. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 57 
 
 them, as they accord with His plans of dealing with this 
 nation, in the midst of which He means to establish justice. 
 I think He means that we shall do more than we have yet 
 done in furtherance of His plans, and He will open the way 
 for our doing it. I have felt His hand upon me in great trials 
 and submitted to His guidance, and I trust that as He shall 
 further open the way, I will be ready to walk therein, rely- 
 ing on His help and trusting in His goodness and wisdom. 8 
 
 In answer to a letter from the Society of Friends of Iowa, 
 expressing "their solicitude in the present perilous condition 
 of the nation," Lincoln wrote: 
 
 It is most cheering and encouraging for me to know that in 
 the efforts which I have made and am making for the resto- 
 ration of a righteous peace in 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 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 of 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. 10 
 
 In October, 1863, the Baltimore Presbyterian Synod 
 called on the President. The moderator told Lincoln that the 
 Synod wished to pay its respects to him, that each member 
 "belonged to the Kingdom of God and each was loyal to 
 the Government." 
 
 Here is a portion of the President's reply: 
 
 I saw upon taking my position here that I was going to 
 have an administration, if an administration at all, of extra- 
 ordinary difficulty. It was, without exception, a time of the 
 
 9 Sandburg, op. cit., Vol. Ill, p. 380. 
 
 10 Basler, op. cit, Vol. VI, p. 39. 
 
58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 greatest difficulty that this country ever saw. I was early 
 brought to a living reflection that nothing in my power 
 whatever, would succeed without the direct assistance of 
 the Almighty. ... I have often wished that I was a more 
 devout man than I am. 
 
 Nevertheless amid the greatest difficulties of my admin- 
 istration, when I could not see any other resort, I would 
 place my whole reliance in God, knowing that all would 
 go well, and that He would decide for the right. ... I thank 
 you gentlemen, in the name of the common Father for this 
 expression of your respect. I cannot say more. 11 
 
 There are many more examples of this sublime and pro- 
 phetic faith of Lincoln in the righteousness of God. It was 
 out of this supreme righteousness that Lincoln derived the 
 principle of justice for which he so eloquently pleaded 
 throughout his life. As he grew older, this belief in both 
 what he called "righteousness" and "justice" became more 
 and more intense. Even while practicing law, Judge David 
 Davis, who later became a Justice of the United States Su- 
 preme Court, said: "He hated wrong and oppression every- 
 where; and many a man whose fraudulent conduct was 
 undergoing review in a court of justice, has writhed under 
 his terrific indignation and rebuke." 
 
 F. B. Carpenter says: "I believe no man had a more 
 abiding sense of his dependence on God, or faith in the 
 Divine government, and in the power and ultimate triumph 
 of Truth and Right in the world." 12 
 
 In that magnificent Cooper Institute Address in New 
 York February 27, 1860, which won the friendship and ad- 
 miration of a skeptical East for Lincoln, he came to this 
 climax: "Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false 
 accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces 
 of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to our- 
 
 11 Ibid., Vol. VI, p. 535. 
 13 Carpenter, op. cit., p. 186. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 59 
 
 selves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in 
 that faith, let us to the end, dare to do our duty as we 
 understand it." 13 
 
 There are many more examples of the sublime faith that 
 Lincoln had in the righteousness and justice of God, and in 
 the conquest of that kind of conduct which seemed to him 
 to stem from the Divine. He was stubborn about his insist- 
 ence that what was right, was of God, and that human 
 beings were apt to mistake this. To him what man thought 
 was right was not necessarily so. During a conversation with 
 a group of ministers who visited him, one of them said, "Let 
 us have faith, Mr. President, that the Lord is on our side." 
 Whereupon Mr. Lincoln replied, "I am not at all concerned 
 about that, for I know that the Lord is always on the side 
 of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I 
 and this nation may be on the Lord's side." 14 
 
 During the dark days before Chancellorsville in 1863, 
 Mrs. Lincoln arranged some spiritualistic seances in her 
 apartment. According to Mrs. Nettie Colburn Maynard who 
 was the medium, and who later, in 1891, published a book 
 entitled, Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist?, Mrs. Lincoln 
 brought Mr. Lincoln to one of these. During the trance of the 
 medium, the spirit summoned by her informed the President 
 that the battle would not be disastrous to the Union, and 
 that though it might not be a decisive victory, it would be 
 a gain, not a loss to the Union. Mr. Lincoln is alleged to have 
 "brightened visibly under the assurance given." 
 
 Barton mentions another medium, a Mrs. Grace Garrett 
 Durand, who in a privately printed book says: "President 
 Lincoln himself told me in many conversations I had with 
 him from the spirit world, that he was directed in his great 
 
 13 Basler, Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, p. 536. 
 
 14 Lamon, Ward Hill, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847- 
 1865 (Wash., D.C., 1911), p. 91. 
 
60 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
 work during the Civil War by his mother and others in the 
 spirit world." 15 He also states that "during Mr. Lincoln's 
 occupancy of the White House, there were several rumors 
 to the effect that the President and Mrs. Lincoln were both 
 spiritualists." Sandburg mentions the name of another me- 
 dium with whom Mrs. Lincoln was acquainted. There was a 
 feeling that Lincoln was interested in spiritualism because 
 of what Sandburg calls "his own curiosity about the psychic- 
 phenomena manipulators. He was possessed of a curious, in- 
 quiring nature, and according to some reports, he indulged 
 in sportive comments about the spirits." 16 
 
 There was also an attitude of seriousness toward spirtual- 
 ism, especially at times of crises; and when a medium re- 
 ported "that things would be well" Lincoln listened, be- 
 lieved, and supposedly was relieved. That he attended these 
 affairs more than once is pretty good evidence that he had 
 some curiosity about, if not actually faith in, spiritualism. If 
 it is true that Mrs. Lincoln's greatest number of contacts 
 with mediums occurred in 1862-1863, it could be true that 
 Lincoln's feelings about the timeliness of the Emancipation 
 Proclamation, and the "sweet comfort that came into his 
 soul" which he mentioned to General Sickles about the time 
 of Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and Vicksburg— 
 all of which came during or after the spiritualistic assem- 
 blies, had some mystic effect on Lincoln's feelings. Inci- 
 dentally, it was alleged by Mrs. Maynard that General 
 Sickles also attended a seance. This point about the Presi- 
 dent and spiritualism might offer an explanation to those 
 who have wondered about the Sickles story. 
 
 Lincoln sought comfort and peace in prayer, and in the 
 contemplation of the contents of the Scriptures. These he 
 knew well and quoted from them more than any previous 
 
 15 Barton, Wm. E., The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (N.Y.: G.H. 
 Doran Co., 1920), p. 232. 
 
 16 Sandburg, op. cit. y Vol. Ill, p. 345, 346. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 61 
 
 President. In moments of depression he turned to the Bible 
 as his companion and guiding light. 17 He knew the Bible 
 well and must have been familiar with the story of the 
 Witch of Endor, in which King Saul consulted the witch, 
 contrary to biblical law, to inquire about the outcome of 
 the battle with the Philistines. The spirit of Samuel was 
 conjured up and informed King Saul that he would lose 
 both the battle and the crown. Could it possibly have been 
 that Lincoln listened to Mrs. Lincoln's spiritualist medium, 
 just as had Saul in the ancient days? 
 
 Isaac N. Arnold, one of the more reliable biographers of 
 Lincoln, states that there is a traditional story that on a 
 visit to New Orleans Lincoln and his companion John Hanks 
 visited an old fortune teller, a voodoo Negress. Tradition 
 says that during the interview she became very excited, 
 and after various predictions exclaimed: "You will be Presi- 
 dent and all Negroes will be free." 18 Mr. Arnold believed 
 that "the prophecy of the freedom of the slaves requires 
 confirmation." He wrote to Herndon inquiring whether he 
 had heard that story. Here is part of Herndons reply: "It 
 seems to be just now that I once heard of the fortune-telling 
 story, but cannot state when I heard it, nor from whom I 
 heard it. It seems that John Hanks who was with Lincoln 
 at New Orleans in 1831, told me the story. I do not affirm 
 anything or deny anything." 
 
 Lamon makes this interesting observation: "Lincoln 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 Intel- 
 ligence that governs the universe, their process conforming 
 
 « Sandburg, op. cit., Vol. Ill, p. 370. 
 
 18 Arnold, I. N., The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: Jansen, 
 McClurg & Co., 1885), p. 31. 
 
62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
 strictly to natural laws." 19 1 have already called attention to 
 the remark he made to Lamon, "If we believe the Bible, we 
 must accept the fact that in the old days God and his angels 
 came to men in their sleep and made themselves known 
 in their dreams." With an attitude like this towards the 
 Bible, it is not difficult to see that when Lincoln referred to 
 an important passage or an incident in the Scriptures, he did 
 more than just mention it. He believed it! 
 
 I personally am of the belief that our Holy Bible con- 
 tains much that could have been left out without any dam- 
 age to the inspired portions of the great book. It is a lack 
 of critical judgment to put, for instance, the Book of Judges 
 on the same high inspirational plane as the Book of Isaiah; 
 or to place Acts on the same inspirational plane as the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount. There are sixty-six books in Holy Writ, 
 but not all of them have the same value for either religion 
 or life. There are some popular editions of the Bible that 
 omit parts of it, and one British scholar, Claude Montefiore, 
 edited a Bible for Home Reading 20 that left a good deal out, 
 without any damage to those inspirational selections that 
 have made the Great Book the indispensable guide to life. 
 Let me illustrate: I find no reference in the quotations of 
 Lincoln to the story of Judah and his daughter-in-law, to 
 the Benjamite assault, to the ascension of Elijah or Jesus, to 
 the genealogy of Jesus, to belief in the miracle of the fishes, 
 or to other miracles. The quotations that he cites, and the 
 large majority of his references deal with the ethical ideals 
 that form the basis of modern religion, and with the parables 
 that illustrate its ideals. 
 
 No matter what value one puts upon the mystic experi- 
 ences of the over-burdened, superstitious, dream-oppressed, 
 
 19 Lamon, op. cit., p. 121. 
 
 20 Montefiore, Claude, The Bible for Home Reading (London: 
 Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1905). 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 63 
 
 vision-seeing, and praying President, one thing is definitely 
 and completely certain: in his conduct as a person and as 
 head of the nation, he was so possessed with the prophetic 
 faith in God and its application to the United States, that 
 even his mental idiosyncracies were made, wherever at all 
 possible, to serve the higher ethical needs of the individual 
 and nation. The dreams that agitated him most were those 
 that concerned him as President, and the prayers that he 
 uttered and asked for were prayers for the nation and for 
 himself whom God had chosen as His instrumentality in 
 preserving it. Most of his Biblical quotations were chosen 
 to illustrate his faith in God and His justice and righteous- 
 ness, and in the salvation that would finally come to our 
 country, if it be true to the prophetic ideals which were 
 the primary sources of his religious inspiration. 
 
 There was more to the use of the Holy Writ by Lincoln 
 than just quoting it. The essential principles of Lincoln's 
 religious beliefs, his ethical ideals, and his spiritual insights 
 were grounded in the contributions of the great ethical way- 
 showers, and these had an all-powerful influence upon him. 
 Indeed, they were actually the patterns of his social relation- 
 ships, particularly in his later life. His unshakable faith in 
 God, his measureless trust in the Tightness of his cause be- 
 cause he felt that it was God's cause, his complete dedi- 
 cation to that which he believed was God's will, and his 
 all-pervading confidence in the ultimate victory of right and 
 justice— all of these are strikingly reminiscent of the pro- 
 phets. Anyone familiar with the great personalities of the 
 Bible, with their spiritual yearnings, their visions, their 
 aspirations, and their goals, must be struck by the similarity 
 of the President's national aspirations and personal beliefs, 
 and by the prophetic influence upon his great soul. 
 
VIII 
 
 It is not difficult to see how his constant reading and 
 study of the Bible would almost inevitably result in the 
 creation of a way of life or a philosophy of life, best de- 
 scribed by the word "religious." The word itself has no 
 universally accepted definition. One student states that he 
 has counted no less than one hundred and twenty definitions 
 of the word "religion." The Prophet Micah has given us his 
 formula: "It hath been told thee O man, what is good and 
 what the Lord requireth of thee, to do justly, to love mercy 
 and walk humbly with your God." The other was the restate- 
 ment by Jesus of the Old Testament teachings, "Thou shalt 
 love the Lord thy God and thou shalt love thy neighbor 
 as thyself." We have Lincoln's statement that these two 
 ideals— love of God and love of man, were a part of the 
 very foundation of his religion; but they did not encompass 
 all of it. 
 
 In discussing the religion of Lincoln, one must exclude 
 the area of ritualism and pageantry. He simply would not 
 accept ritualistic regimentation. This was no doubt due to 
 the influence of his early training in the backwoods of 
 Kentucky and Indiana. In addition to this early influence, his 
 very disposition and temperament operated to exclude the 
 esthetic, ritually mystical, formal, ceremonial, and some- 
 times romantic trimmings that form so important a part of 
 ritualistic religions. In his Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 
 Henry Clay Whitney, the lawyer from Urbana, Illinois, who 
 traveled the Eighth Judicial Circuit with Lincoln, and be- 
 came intimately acquainted with him in the years 1854-1861, 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 65 
 
 has something to say about Lincoln's religion. They had 
 become intimate friends, insofar as Lincoln permitted inti- 
 macy, and Whitney observed Lincoln's habits, thoughts, 
 and behavior. Lincoln was not a man of many words when 
 it came to his private life, but Whitney was able to make 
 some observations which were apparently correct. 
 
 In regard to the religious beliefs of Lawyer Lincoln, Mr. 
 Whitney has this to say: "Lincoln had no regard for mere 
 forms, manners, politeness, etiquette, official formalities, 
 fine clothes, routine or red tape. He condemned all trap- 
 pings, formalities, ceremonies, integuments, preludes and 
 interludes, all of which play important roles in rituals, and 
 drove right straight to the essence and marrow of the sub- 
 ject." 1 His philosophical, logical and pragmatic mind pre- 
 vented him from formulating theological creeds containing 
 elements that seemed to him far-fetched, restricted, unreal- 
 istic and illogical, as theological statements often are. He 
 was born and reared in what to him was a free world, whose 
 inhabitants should be untrammeled by dogmas, by formal 
 theology and creeds, and by that kind of narrowness that 
 would inhibit him from being what he thought he was and 
 what he badly wanted to be, namely, an instrument in the 
 hands of God, to extend His blessings to human beings, 
 even the black ones. This he believed to be his destiny. 
 
 One of the first books that Lincoln was familiar with, if 
 not the very first, was the Bible. He did not, as a matter of 
 fact, have to be able to read in order to know some of it. 
 It is not definitely known whether his mother could read 
 well enough to make her way through the pages of the 
 Bible, but we do know that she learned many biblical verses 
 from the preachers whom she occasionally heard in the 
 monthly religious meetings which the family attended, from 
 
 1 Whitney, Henry C, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln (Boston: 
 Estes and Lauriat, 1892), pp. 126, 248. 
 
66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 the hymns that were sung, and from Biblical texts which 
 were read at the services. Many of these she repeated to her 
 household in the course of domestic duties, and Lincoln 
 learned these, as a child learns from hearing things repeated; 
 and if tradition is to be believed, he used some of them as a 
 youth in imitating the preachers, for the amusement of his 
 friends. 
 
 William Barton informs us that John Hanks, a kinsman 
 and companion of Lincoln, said of him, "He kept the Bible 
 and Aesop's Fables always within reach and read them over 
 and over again." 2 
 
 As he grew older in years and richer in experience, faith 
 in God and attachment to the Bible became more and more 
 a part of his thinking and living. Both were essential to his 
 belief and one did not exist without the other. Both formed 
 the underpinning of his religion. One must be careful in 
 speaking of his "religion." It is not easily definable— and to 
 a logical mind, it presents many phases, some contradictory. 
 But his love for the teachings of the Bible never ceased, and 
 presented no difficulties to him. 
 
 There are a number of statements in his letters, speeches 
 and public documents even before he became President, that 
 testify to this fact. In a letter to Mary Speed, he wrote: 
 "Tell your mother that I have not got her present with me 
 but that I intend to read it regularly when I return home. 
 I doubt that it is really, as she says, the best cure for the 
 'blues,' could one but take it according to the truth." 3 One 
 wonders just what he meant by saying "could one but take 
 it according to the truth"! To me that indicated that Lincoln 
 meant to tell Miss Speed, and incidentally her mother, that 
 
 2 Barton, Wm. E., The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (N.Y.: G.H. 
 Doran Co., 1920), p. 47. 
 
 8 Easier, Roy P. (ed.), Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New 
 Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. I, p. 261. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 67 
 
 what others regarded as the "truth" may not be so regarded 
 by him, and that he does not want to be understood as 
 saying that everything in the Bible is the "truth/* I believe 
 that his language invites this interpretation. 
 
 Joshua Speed cites the following incident in his lecture, 
 "Abraham Lincoln": "I was invited out to the Soldiers' 
 Home to spend the night with Lincoln. As I entered the 
 room near night, he was sitting near a window intently 
 reading the Bible. Approaching him, I said, 'I am glad to 
 see you so profitably engaged.' 'Yes,' said he, 'I am profitably 
 engaged.' Well,' said I, 'if you have recovered from your 
 skepticism, I am sorry to say that I have not.' Looking me 
 earnestly in the face, and placing his hand on my shoulder, 
 he said: 'You are wrong, Speed, take all of this Book upon 
 reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will 
 live and die a happier man.' " 4 
 
 When a committee of colored people from Baltimore 
 presented the President with a Bible, September 7, 1864, he 
 said among other things: "So far as able within my sphere, 
 I have always acted as I believed 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 ex- 
 pressed 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 the 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." 5 
 
 Speaking to C. E. Chittenden, the Register of the Treas- 
 
 4 Speed, Joshua, "Abraham Lincoln" (lecture). 
 Barton, op. cit., p. 93. 
 
 5 Basler, op. cit. y Vol. VII, p. 542. 
 
 Carpenter, F. B., Six Months at the White House with Abraham 
 Lincoln (N.Y.: Hurd and Houghton, 1866), p. 198. 
 
68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
 uiy, Lincoln said: "Now let us treat the Bible fairly. If we 
 had a witness on the stand whose general story we knew 
 was true, we would believe him when he asserted facts of 
 which we had no other evidence. We ought to treat the 
 Bible with equal fairness. I decided a long time ago that 
 it was less difficult to believe that the Bible was what it 
 claimed to be, than to disbelieve it. It is a good Book for 
 us to obey; it contains the Ten Commandments, the Golden 
 Rule, and many other rules which ought to be followed. No 
 man was ever the worse for living according to the direc- 
 tions of the Bible." 6 
 
 These passages show the high regard in which Abraham 
 Lincoln held the Bible, and can well put him in the class 
 of the bibliolaters— those who almost worship the Bible. 
 No doubt, Lincoln had read the whole Bible— but he prob- 
 ably did not know it critically as well as he might have; for 
 if he had, he could not have said what he did, since there 
 are contradictions in the Book in spite of its greatness, and 
 since he had shown in many ways that there were alleged 
 supernatural phenomena in it which he did not accept. 
 
 o Barton, op. cit., p. 195. 
 
IX 
 
 Lincoln, of course, did not know anything about what is 
 called "the higher criticism of the Bible," the scientific study 
 of the Bible and the possibility of making changes in word- 
 age and thought which are the result of what is called 
 "biblical research." It seems certain that if he had been 
 acquainted with the new biblical science he would not have 
 accepted it, or else he would not have made the extravagant 
 statements that he did make concerning the Bible. 
 
 His attitude in regard to his belief in the Book was 
 eclectic. He selected those teachings, doctrines, episodes, 
 and ideals which pleased him and his philosophy. He bor- 
 rowed freely from its various books and teachers. He quoted, 
 to the largest extent, those precepts and doctrines which 
 were friendly to his own concepts of religion, and he left 
 out much that is deemed of greatest importance in the 
 religion of traditional Christianity. 
 
 He knew, no doubt, that the Bible covers a period of 
 more than a thousand years— an era in which there were 
 many changes in the area of human thought and conduct. 
 He realized that apart from all of this, the Bible contains 
 eternal verities— truths which even time cannot change, 
 and these he correctly made the fountain of his religious 
 insights. But they cannot be reduced to a system of the- 
 ology, Christian or any other kind. The best that can be said 
 is that the President found a response to his deepest spiritual 
 yearnings, broadened and intensified by his experience in 
 his relationships with people, and in his dedication to that 
 
70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 cause which he thought best. He found these appeals in the 
 Bible, and unmindful or ignorant of other doctrines, he 
 accepted the part he chose, to represent the whole, and let 
 that part be the Holy Bible. This is the only way that one 
 can accept and implement the biblical content of Lincoln's 
 religion, and its apparent contradictions. It has to be, so to 
 speak, departmentalized; in one compartment he put the 
 superb teachings of Moses, the Prophets and Jesus; in 
 another, his dreams and visions; in another, his superstition, 
 and in still another, his aversion to rituals, religious symbols 
 and ecclesiastical ceremonials though founded on or derived 
 from Scripture. 
 
 They are wrong who maintain that because he did not 
 attach himself to any one of the religious sects that 
 abounded in his day he was without religion, or that as 
 some have said, "He was not a religious man." One of the 
 statements that will be repeated as long as Lincoln's name 
 is heard, is that which he made to Henry C. Deming, a 
 member of Congress from Connecticut, in about 1864. When 
 Deming asked the President why he never affiliated with a 
 church, he received this reply: 
 
 I have never united myself to any church, because I have 
 found difficulty in giving my assent, without mental reserva- 
 tion, to the long complicated statements of Christian dogmas 
 which characterize their articles of belief and confession of 
 faith. When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole 
 qualification for membership, the Savior's condensed state- 
 ment of the substance of both the law and the 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 my soul. 1 
 
 1 Barton, Wm. E., The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (N.Y.: D. Apple- 
 ton and Co., 1896), p. 94. 
 
 Carpenter, F.B., Six Months at the White House with Abraham 
 Lincoln (N.Y.: Hurd and Houghton, 1866), p. 90. 
 
 Deming, H. C, Eulogy of Abraham Lincoln Delivered Before the 
 General Assembly of Connecticut, June 8, 1865. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 71 
 
 Lincoln believed in a righteous, just, all-wise and bene- 
 ficent God, who expects his children to exercise justice and 
 mercy to all men. This sentiment runs through every religious 
 reference that he wrote and uttered and is particularly 
 noticeable in his proclamations, which will be considered 
 later. 
 
 If the younger Lincoln distressed some of his friends 
 because of his lack of enthusiasm for abolition, the older 
 Lincoln made up for it by striking the shackles from the 
 limbs of the black man. The ideal of justice for the oppressed 
 became a most luminous jewel in the breastplate of the 
 Union, and its achievement became the outstanding passion 
 of the President, next to the preservation of the Union. 
 Whatever reasons some may give for the Emancipation 
 Proclamation, its justification on the ground of justice will 
 never be given an inferior place in the religion of Abraham 
 Lincoln. 
 
 The strict abolitionists, those who wanted to abolish 
 slavery at any price, were not happy with Lincoln's early 
 stand on abolition. As a matter of fact they remembered that 
 in March 1837, Lincoln was one of the signers of a resolution 
 that was introduced in the Illinois Legislature, March 3, 
 1837, which read: "They [the signers] believe that the 
 institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad 
 policy; but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines 
 tends rather to increase than to abate its evils. They believe 
 that the Congress of the United States has no power under 
 the constitution, to interfere with the institution of slavery 
 in the different States." 2 On October 3, 1845, Lincoln wrote, 
 in a letter to Williamson Durley, "I hold it to be a paramount 
 duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of States, and 
 perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to 
 
 2 Basler, Roy P. (ed.), Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New 
 Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. I, p. 75. 
 
72 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 let the slavery of other states alone/' 3 There are other 
 similar examples of his earlier stand. But as conditions 
 changed, and the institution of slavery all but split the 
 Union, Lincoln took the stand that resulted in the Emanci- 
 pation Proclamation, that is, that the same justice must be 
 meted to the Negro as to the white man. 
 
 Lincoln's religion was a unique blending of reverence 
 for the Bible, faith in God, belief in prayer, ethical idealism, 
 moral stamina, a mystic approach to dreams and presenti- 
 ments, anti-ritualism, and in the reality of communication 
 with God through prayer. He believed in revelation, in the 
 actuality of a Divine Providence, in the ethics of the pro- 
 phets including Moses and Jesus, and in a fixed Divine 
 purpose. Mankind was the agency which carried out God's 
 purposes, and the best guide for helping man to do so were 
 the Scriptures. In his earlier years he was an unbeliever and 
 at best a doubter, but age and experience replaced these 
 with a deep and an ineradicable faith both in God and in 
 His word. 
 
 Jesse W. Fell was a Bloomington, Illinois, lawyer and 
 a very dear and close friend of Lincoln. He was a chief 
 advocate of Lincoln for the presidency, and a friend in 
 whom Lincoln had utmost confidence. He was one of the 
 few men with whom Abraham Lincoln discussed religion. 
 
 Fell had no ax to grind, but wrote in September 1870, 
 what he believed to be the truth. The most important para- 
 graphs from his statement support the theory set forth in 
 this study: 
 
 On the innate depravity of man, the character and office of 
 the great Head of the Church, the atonement, the infallibility 
 of the written revelation, the performance of miracles, the 
 nature and design of present and future rewards and punish- 
 ments (as they are popularly called) and many other sub- 
 jects, he held opinions utterly at variance with what are 
 
 8 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 47. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 73 
 
 usually taught in the church. I should say that his expressed 
 views on these and kindred topics were such as, in the esti- 
 mation of most believers, would place him entirely outside 
 the Christian pale. Yet, to my mind, such was not the true 
 position, since his principles and practices and the spirit of 
 his whole life were of the very kind we universally agree to 
 call Christian; and I think this conclusion is in no wise 
 affected by the circumstances that he never attached himself 
 to any religious society whatever. His religious views were 
 eminently practical, and are summed up as I think in these 
 two propositions: The Fatherhood of God and the brother- 
 hood of man. He fully believed in a superintending and over- 
 ruling Providence, that guides and controls the operations of 
 the world; but maintained that law and order, and not their 
 violation or suspension, are the appointed means by which 
 this providence was exercised. 4 
 
 Nicolay and Hay, the two top secretaries of Lincoln, 
 found a document which Lincoln had written and put away, 
 and which turned out to be a meditation upon the course 
 of the war, in its relation to the will of God. Up to the time 
 of the publication of the Abraham Lincoln: a History by 
 these officials in 1890, it had not been known, although 
 according to them, it was written near the end of September, 
 1862. His mind was then burdened with the weightiest ques- 
 tions of his life, and the most serious for our country. Nico- 
 lay and Hay wrote: "Wearied with all the considerations of 
 the law and the expediency with which he had been strug- 
 gling 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 
 
 4 Herndon, Wm. H., Abraham Lincoln (Springfield: Herndon's 
 Lincoln Pub. Co., 1888) pp. 442-446. 
 
 Lamon, Ward Hill, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Boston: J. R. 
 Osgood & Co., 1872), p. 490. 
 
 Sandburg, Carl, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (N.Y.: Har- 
 court Brace & Co., 1926), Vol. I, p. 415. 
 
74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 wrote this meditation, which had never been published. It 
 was penned in the awful sincerity of a perfectly honest soul 
 trying to bring itself into closer communion with its 
 Maker." 5 This is the profound foreword to as moving a 
 religious contemplation as one finds in the Bible. Lincoln 
 wrote: 
 
 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 
 purposes of either party;— and yet the human instrumental- 
 ities 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 either have saved or destroyed 
 the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. 
 And having begun, He could give final victory to either side 
 any day. Yet the contest proceeds. 
 
 The meditation evidently was not finished. But one can 
 easily detect in it the innermost thoughts of a deeply reli- 
 gious man torn by doubts, unwilling to succumb to them 
 because of unshaken faith in the God of justice and right- 
 eousness. It is bitter doubting at first, but in the end, victory 
 emerges from the struggle. 
 
 In the same vein of faith which he so often showed, he 
 wrote to Mrs. Eliza P. Gurney on September 4, 1864: "The 
 purposes of the Almighty are perfect and must prevail, 
 though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive 
 them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this 
 terrible war long before this; but God knows best and has 
 ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and 
 
 6 Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (N.Y.: The Cen- 
 tury Co., 1890), Vol. VI, p. 342. 
 Basler, op. cit, Vol. V, p. 403. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 75 
 
 our own error therein. Meanwhile we must work earnestly 
 in the best light He gives us, trusting that so working still 
 conduces to the great ends He ordains." 6 
 
 In acknowledgment of a compliment on his Second 
 Inaugural Address he wrote to Thurlow Weed: "Men are not 
 flattered by being shown that there has been a difference 
 of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, 
 however in this case, is to deny that there is a God govern- 
 ing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be 
 told, and as whatever humiliation there is in it falls most 
 directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to 
 tell it." 7 
 
 Between the years of Jesse Fell's friendship with Lincoln, 
 the meditation which Nicolay and Hay found, and the 
 above sentiments, many events which tried the soul of the 
 President had taken place. They undoubtedly influenced his 
 religious thinking greatly. Yet on May 27, 1865, Nicolay 
 wrote a letter to Lincoln's most intimate biographer and 
 twenty-year law partner, W. H. Herndon, which reads: "Mr. 
 Lincoln did not to my knowledge in any way change his 
 religious ideas, opinions or beliefs from the time he left 
 Springfield to the day of his death. I do not know just what 
 they were, never having heard him explain them in detail; 
 but I am very sure he gave no outward indication of his 
 mind having undergone any change in that regard while 
 here." 8 
 
 Was there really no change? There comes to mind at 
 this point, the statement that the President is alleged to have 
 made to Noah Brooks. Referring to a "change of heart," the 
 President supposedly said that he did not remember any 
 precise time when he passed through any special change 
 of purpose or of heart; but he would say that his own 
 
 6 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 535. 
 * Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 356. 
 8 Herndon, op. cit., p. 442. 
 
76 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 election to office, and the crisis immediately following, 
 "influentially" determined what he called a "process of 
 crystallization" then going on in his mind. 9 It was this 
 process of change, referred to earlier, that Nicolay did not 
 perceive. If the information set forth here is correct, one 
 can understand the basis of the difference between Fell's 
 statement and the meditation, and between Lincoln's letter 
 to Mrs. Gurney and Nicolay 's to Herndon. 
 
 When a comparison between the religion of Lincoln 
 and that of the prophets is made, one must not believe that 
 all the prophets thought alike. There is a difference between 
 the humble law giver Moses, and the crude and curt Elijah 
 who was not afraid to tell his king that he was the "trouble- 
 maker" in Israel; between Amos whose stern sense of justice 
 runs like a silken thread throughout his oracles, and the 
 priestly Ezekiel and the tender-hearted Hosea who reveal 
 that the love of God is eternal, even for the sinner, if he 
 repents and returns to his Maker; between the noble Isaiah 
 who sounded the important principle that sincere godliness 
 is the essence of divine worship, and Jeremiah the Man of 
 Sorrows, who continually pleads for a national revival of 
 right living; between Malachi who pleaded for the Brother- 
 hood of Man in the Fatherhood of God, and Jesus who 
 pleaded for the achievement of personal piety to bring 
 about the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Every single one of these inspired messengers of the 
 Holy One, like their immortal American disciple, felt them- 
 selves divinely appointed to carry out the mission for which 
 they believed God had designated them. It is not to be 
 wondered at then, that Abraham Lincoln, a worshipper of 
 the God of the Bible, a believer in His mysterious ways, 
 convinced that he was an instrument of God Almighty in 
 carrying out certain of His purposes, would so completely 
 
 9 Carpenter, op. cit., p. 189. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 77 
 
 immerse himself in the teachings, ideals and purposes of 
 those others to whom God had revealed Himself, and that 
 these largely become the sources of his religious inspiration. 
 Lincoln believed that God spoke to him, just as he did to 
 the prophets. Lamon says: "Mr. Lincoln was by no means 
 free from a kind of belief in the supernatural. While he 
 rejected the great facts of Christianity, as wanting the sup- 
 port of authentic evidence, his mind was readily impressed 
 with the most absurd superstitions. He lived constantly in 
 the serious conviction that he was himself the subject of 
 a special decree, made by some unknown and mysterious 
 power, for which he had no name. The birth and death of 
 Christ, his wonderful works, and his resurrection, as the 
 'first-fruits of them that slept/ Mr. Lincoln denied, because 
 they seemed naturally improbable, or inconsistent with his 
 philosophy, so called." 10 
 
 That Lincoln believed himself as did the prophets, to be 
 a special instrument to carry out the purpose of God, has 
 been amply proven on these pages. But I am certain that 
 he ascribed this "special decree" to God, and that Lamon 
 was mistaken in his belief that Lincoln had no name for 
 what Lamon calls "an unknown and mysterious power." 
 This might have been so in the New Salem and early Spring- 
 field days of Lincoln's life— but it was definitely not so in 
 his later years. "The effect of Mr. Lincoln's unbelief did 
 not effect his constitutional love of justice. Though he 
 rejected the New Testament as a book of divine authority, 
 he accepted the practical part of its precepts as binding 
 upon him by virtue of natural law. The benevolence of his 
 impulses served to keep him, for the most part, within the 
 limits to which a Christian is confined by the fear of God." n 
 
 10 Lamon, Ward Hill, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847- 
 1865 (Wash., D.C., 1911), p. 115. 
 
 11 Lamon, op. cit., p. 503. 
 
78 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 Lincoln believed in the God of the Prophets including 
 Jesus; in a righteous, just, all- wise and beneficient God, who 
 expects his children to exercise justice and mercy to all 
 men, and will punish those who violate His laws. This 
 sentiment runs through many religious references and is 
 particularly noticeable in his proclamations, which will be 
 considered later. 
 
Other tenets of Lincoln's religion— reward and punishment, 
 repentance and forgiveness, as well as immortality, were 
 important elements in his belief. But above all, he was a 
 militant ethical monotheist, whose God required of His 
 creatures that they "do justly, love mercy and walk humbly 
 with Him." Lincoln certainly got his ethical teachings from 
 the Bible, particularly from the prophets. His knowledge of 
 them was phenomenal. Age, experience and repetition gal- 
 vanized them into a precious source of idealistic inspiration 
 for his stand that faith in God, justice and righteousness 
 must be the foundation for the preservation of the Union. 
 "Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity and a firm reliance 
 on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are 
 still competent to adjust in the best way all our present 
 difficulties," he said in his first inaugural address. 1 
 
 I would agree with Herndon, Lamon, Matheny, Fell 
 and the others, that Lincoln's religious fervor had not been 
 apparent almost up to the time of his nomination. I would 
 not accept Lamon's or Herndon's thesis as to his high degree 
 of skepticism. This is in speaking of his later years not of his 
 youth. But I am convinced that Lincoln would agree with 
 Fell, that by the time he had to make his farewell address at 
 Springfield, the process of "crystallization" had begun to jell, 
 and Lincoln would willingly have subscribed himself as a 
 "non-ritualistic Christian," with a firm faith in the Creator, 
 
 1 Basler, Roy P. (ed.), Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New 
 Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. IV, p. 271. 
 
80 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 as is so many times indicated in his proclamations and in 
 private interviews and letters. 
 
 It has been asserted in this book that Lincoln made the 
 Prophets the source of his religious inspiration, and accepted 
 their teachings. Who were these ethical giants, and what 
 are some of their ideals that impressed themselves so in- 
 delibly upon the soul of the Emancipator? 
 
 These unique personalities, beginning with Moses and 
 ending with Jesus, were a body of men who, upon the 
 foundation of traditional Mosaic teachings, erected the most 
 effective, dynamically ethical structure known to western 
 civilization. There is no single source of ethical wisdom pos- 
 sessed by the western world that has so influenced and 
 dominated our life, as has the collection of books, the Old 
 and New Testaments, called the Bible. It is by all odds 
 the most important factor in the development of what we 
 call western civilization. Its influence extends into nearly 
 every corner of the world, and more than a third of mankind 
 looks to it as the revealed will of the Creator. If our hopes 
 for a high human goal and the expectation of some day 
 reaching it, are meritorious; if we have a point of view 
 regarding the dignity and value of man that is really 
 superior to that of the non-Christian peoples; if there is 
 in our mode of living, a human welfare concern deeper 
 than that of the peoples who do not direct their lives by 
 the precepts in our Scripture; if all of this is true, then our 
 Bible must be given credit for teaching us this noble view 
 of life. 
 
 These Prophets from Moses to Jesus, like Lincoln, ac- 
 cepted their God intuitively. They did not attempt to reason 
 out his existence philosophically, nor did they try to dis- 
 cover Him by research and experiment. By their testimony, 
 God revealed Himself to them and called them; and in 
 moments of deep thought, of serious meditation and weighty 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 81 
 
 concentration upon important problems, they felt His pres- 
 ence and made it what they regarded as their guide. The 
 deeply spiritual individual gets proof of his God inwardly, 
 emotionally, and mystically, and actually feels His presence. 
 He accepts what he conceives to be his commission because 
 of an ineradicable and inexplicable faith— the indication of 
 God's Providence in the working of the individual's life. 
 The Prophets, and in his later years, Abraham Lincoln, had 
 just such a faith, and all of them believed in it implicitly. 
 In the communications which the President left behind, 
 where this faith played a part, he, like the old Hebrew 
 masters, never tried nor sought to explain it. 
 
 Like his spiritual forbears, Lincoln decried what seemed 
 to him to be injustice, brutality, immorality, greed, false 
 worship, the destruction of human dignity and wrecking 
 the nation. He pleaded for individual righteousness, human 
 justice, national purity, universal peace, and faith in God. 
 For all of them, these were the primary elements in a way 
 of life that would not only preserve national unity, but the 
 peace of mankind as well. Lincoln's philosophy of life can 
 be summed up in ten verses from the Bible, as follows: 
 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself," from the writings of Moses. 1 "Wash 
 you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from 
 before mine eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek 
 justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for 
 the widow," from the writings of Isaiah. 2 Jeremiah says: 
 "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the 
 mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory 
 in his riches, but let him that glorieth, glory in this, that he 
 understands and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord who exer- 
 ciseth justice and righteousness in the earth, for in these 
 
 1 Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18. 
 
 2 Isaiah 2:16-17. 
 
82 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 things do I glory, saith the Lord." 3 From the prophet Ezekiel: 
 "But if a man be just and do that which is lawful and right 
 and hath much withdrawn from iniquity and hath executed 
 true justice between man and man, hath walked in my 
 statutes and kept my ordinances to deal truly, he is just 
 and shall surely live, saith the Lord." 4 In the Book of the 
 Prophet Hosea, we find, "I will betroth thee unto me in 
 righteousness and in justice, in loving-kindness and in 
 mercy." 5 Amos thunders: "Seek ye the Lord and ye shall 
 live; seek good and not evil, that ye may live; hate evil, love 
 good, and establish justice in the gate." 6 In Micah we find: 
 "He hath told thee O man, what is good and what the Lord 
 doth require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and 
 to walk humbly with thy God." 7 In Habakkuk we find: "The 
 just shall live by his faith." 8 Malachi asks: "Have we not 
 all one Father, hath not one God created us all? Why then 
 do we deal treacherously every man against his brother?" 9 
 And from Jesus, we get, "Woe unto the world because of 
 offences, for it needs be that offences come; but woe to that 
 man by whom the offence cometh." 10 The quantity and the 
 quality of Lincoln's quotations from Scripture indicate how 
 deeply he was immersed in the prophetic way of life. 
 
 It is plain to see that he could easily have discovered 
 in these patterns of behavior spiritual giants which appealed 
 strongly to his religious sensibilities and buried themselves 
 deep in his subconscious mind. His early surroundings, 11 the 
 
 3 Jeremiah 9:22-24. 
 
 4 Ezekiel 18:5-9. 
 
 5 Hosea 2:22-23. 
 
 6 Amos 5:14-15. 
 
 7 Micah 6:8. 
 
 8 Habakkuk 2:4. 
 
 9 Malachi 2:10. 
 
 10 Matthew 18:7. 
 
 11 Barton, Wm. E., The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (N.Y.: D. Apple- 
 ton and Co., 1896), Chap. III. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 83 
 
 crude mode of living ,the roughness of daily existence, and 
 an inward urgency that would preserve what to the people 
 at that time were the commands of their religious teachers, 
 could well have united to form a basis for a religious pat- 
 tern for one who possessed a deeper spiritual insight than 
 most of his contemporaries. 
 
 His early indifference to his personal appearance which 
 lasted even to his early mature years; his disregard for the 
 amenities of social usage even after marriage; his habitual 
 retreat from friends and associates which so puzzled them; 
 his habit of deep mental concentration; his quiet aloofness 
 in personal relations; his fearlessness in the face of wrong; 
 his fundamental sense of justice— all of these formed that 
 truly religious core of his character, which though unana- 
 lyzed in his younger years, developed into that dynamic 
 religious quality which later distinguished his activities. 18 
 
 12 Herndon, Wm. H., Abraham Lincoln (Springfield: Herndon's 
 Lincoln Pub. Co., 1888), pp. 309, 401, 425, 427, 433. 
 
 Whitney, Henry C, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln (Boston: 
 Estes and Lauriat, 1892), pp. 123, 126, 251. 
 
Lincoln's youthful mind was an active one. He remem- 
 bered what he had heard at home and what he learned later, 
 whether it was the Bible or some other book that interested 
 him. He lived in a day when stories and superstitions were 
 rife, and when many an Indian tale must have excited him. 
 His own paternal grandfather was killed by Indians, and the 
 boy certainly spun stories about heroes who committed val- 
 iant acts in their attempts to wipe out other evils, as well as 
 the Indians. His imagination must have served him well, as 
 he himself testifies. If he was like other boys in this respect, 
 and there is no reason to doubt it, what fighting hero could 
 better appeal to a young backwoodsman like Abe, than this 
 "hairy individual, wearing a mantle of skin, fed by ravens, 
 wild-looking and girt about his loins with a leather belt," 
 than the mysterious, rugged, picturesquely-garbed, possessor 
 of a deep faith himself, the Prophet Elijah! That Lincoln was 
 impressionable is attested to by his own words. On his way 
 to Washington after the first election, he stopped off to 
 address the New Jersey Senate, and in the course of his 
 remarks, he said: "May I be pardoned if upon this occasion 
 I mention that away back in my childhood, the earliest days 
 of my being able to read, I got hold of a small book such 
 a one as few of the younger members have seen, Weem's 
 Life of Washington. I remember all the accounts there given 
 of the battlefields and struggles for the liberties of the 
 country, and none fixed themselves upon my imagination so 
 deeply as the struggle here in Trenton, New Jersey. You 
 all know for you have all been boys, how those early impres- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 85 
 
 sions last longer than any others." 1 What happened to 
 young Lincoln in the case of Weems, could have happened 
 when he heard his mother or the wandering preachers tell 
 of the strange prophet, or when he himself got older and 
 read about him. There is hardly a story of a hero anywhere, 
 that could appeal more to a rugged, active boy than that 
 of the hairy, raw-boned, desert man who was fed by ravens, 
 dressed in leather pantaloons; who came to "town" to tell 
 the king and the queen "where to get off." This kind of 
 childish enthusiasm was demonstrated in the recent rage 
 that the tales of Davy Crockett created among the young- 
 sters who like to imitate a courageous and romantic hero. 
 In his youth Lincoln cultivated habits of mental concen- 
 tration and quiet stubborness, as well as that of self-isolation 
 in working out his personal problems, and his fearlessness 
 in the face of what he thought was wrong. He retained 
 these habits all of his life, and they could, in part at least, 
 have been derived from the story of the mysterious desert- 
 prophet, who discovered from his own experience that God 
 does not always manifest Himself in the great wind that 
 rends the mountain, or in the earthquake that shakes the 
 earth nor in the fire that consumes what it hits, "but in the 
 still small voice." 2 It was no small thing for Elijah to con- 
 front King Ahab and his wife Jezebel, one of the worst 
 characters in Bible history, and say to him, "Thou art the 
 troubler in Israel." It was also in moments of deep concen- 
 tration and soul-searching that reached the innermost 
 recesses of his being, that Elijah heard the voice of his God, 
 which gave him the strength to cry out to those who were 
 on Mt. Carmel hesitating which way to turn: "How long 
 halt ye between two opinions? If God be the Lord, follow 
 
 1 Basler, Roy P. (ed.), Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New 
 Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. IV, p. 235. 
 
 2 I Kings 17:11-13; 18:16, 20, 21. 
 
86 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 Him; if Baal, follow him." It was this kind of soul-searching 
 and communion with the Almighty, that enabled Lincoln 
 to make the decision to issue his Emancipation Proclamation, 
 in spite of the opinions of some influential leaders, even 
 in his cabinet. 3 
 
 The Emancipator's almost superhuman courage, his con- 
 tinued obstinacy and his final determination that the Union 
 can be saved only if the slaves are freed, not half slave and 
 half free. His unalterable decision to fulfill his promise to 
 God if He gave the Union arms after the Fredericksburg 
 victory; the subsequent issuing of the Emancipation Procla- 
 mation, though incomprehensible to some of his associates- 
 all point to that same high moral grandeur which lifted the 
 prophets to ethical heights never attained before or since 
 except possibly by Gandhi. It was on Monday, September 
 22, 1862, according to Mr. Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of 
 the Treasury, that Lincoln informed the Cabinet that "the 
 time for the annunciation of the emancipation policy could 
 no longer be delayed." 4 "Public sentiment," he thought, 
 "would sustain it— many of his warmest friends and sup- 
 porters demanded it— and he had promised his God that 
 he would do it." The last part of this was uttered in a low 
 tone, and appeared to be heard by no one but Secretary 
 Chase, who was sitting near him. He asked the President if 
 he correctly understood him. Mr. Lincoln replied: "I made a 
 solemn vow before God, that if General Lee was driven 
 back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the 
 declaration of freedom to the slaves. When the Rebel army 
 was at Frederick, I determined as soon as it should be driven 
 
 3 Basler, op. cit, Vol. V, p. 388. 
 
 Carpenter, F. B. Six Months at the White House with Abraham 
 Lincoln (N.Y.: Hurd and Houghton, 1866), p. 86. 
 
 Herndon, Wm. H., Abraham Lincoln (N.Y.: D. Appleton and Co., 
 1896), pp. 547-549. 
 
 4 Basler, op. cit., Vol. V, p. 433. 
 Carpenter, op. cit., p. 90. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 87 
 
 out of Maryland, to issue a Proclamation of Emancipation, 
 such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing 
 to anyone, but I made the promise to myself and [hesitating 
 a little] to my Maker. The Rebel army is now driven out, 
 and I am going to fulfill that promise. I have got you to- 
 gether to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your 
 advice about the main matter for that I have determined 
 myself . . ." Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles gives a 
 similar account of the meeting that day. 5 
 
 Lincoln knew that there was opposition to this action 
 in and out of the Cabinet, and it was an opposition-shatter- 
 ing move. He knew that it might cost his life. But his 
 mentors in the Bible had also taken such chances. Elijah 
 was hunted by Jezebel who would have had him slain had 
 she found him; Isaiah, according to tradition, was entombed 
 in a tree, which was sawed in two; Jeremiah, according to 
 a tradition, was stoned to death by a mob in Egypt because 
 he refused to take orders from it, and Jesus was crucified by 
 Rome, because he preached the coming of the Kingdom! It 
 was from these teachers that Lincoln drew inspiration, 
 courage and strength. On his way to Washington to his first 
 inaugural, he had said: "I have said nothing but what I am 
 willing to live by, and if it be the pleasure of the Almighty 
 to die by." 6 
 
 One who is familiar with the prophetic literature is 
 indelibly impressed by the similar complete prophetic trust 
 and faith which Lincoln had in God. He was as certain that 
 God spoke to him and with him, as were the prophets. As 
 angels came to men in their sleep, and made themselves 
 known in their dreams and visions, as of old, so he believed 
 God may appear to his chosen instruments today, to reveal 
 
 5 Barton, Wm. E., The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (N.Y.: D. Apple- 
 ton and Co., 1896), p. 283. 
 
 "Diary of Gideon Welles", I, 143; Atlantic Monthly, 1909, p. 369. 
 
 6 Basler, op. cit., Vol. IV, p. 241. 
 
88 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 matters of great import; and this belief was a reason for his 
 being so troubled by certain dreams which, to him, had 
 some significance. 7 
 
 Out of the mass of the literary remains of the martyred 
 President, one thing stands out irresistibly impressive, and 
 that is, that he was filled with the prophetic spirit of trust 
 in God Almighty, and the will to practice justice and right- 
 eousness; a reliance upon prayer, repentance and divine 
 forgiveness, and faith in the conservation of the dignity of 
 the individual— all directed towards the preservation of the 
 nation— Judea, for the Old Testament Prophets; the United 
 States, for him. Numerous statements, particularly in the 
 proclamations, recall biblical passages, dealing with the will 
 of God, with national sins, with the ultimate conquest of 
 righteousness, with the victory of justice, the return of the 
 sinners to the Father, and the survival of a God-fearing and 
 God- worshipping nation. 
 
 7 Lamon, Ward Hill, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865 
 (Wash., D.C., 1911) p. 115. 
 
XII 
 
 I have selected a number of State Papers from the Lincoln 
 collections, because from them can one procure the evidence 
 to prove what is claimed, namely, that he got his religious 
 inspiration largely from the great prophetic way-showers of 
 the Bible. In nearly all of these documents, whether letters, 
 addresses, proclamations, or messages, the occasions which 
 inspired their expression somewhere touch the life of the 
 nation. Sometimes there were circumstances that evoked 
 the most serious considerations, sometimes grateful excla- 
 mations, sometimes warnings and sometimes preachments. 
 But wherever there was a possibility of a religious applica- 
 tion, Lincoln emphasized the occasion, and usually, with 
 a formulation that recalls a prophetic parallel. This is so, 
 particularly in the proclamations and the recommendations 
 for days of Thanksgiving, Prayer, Fasting and Repentance. 
 It is less so in the debates and the messages to Congress 
 which concerned general matters. 
 
 The first inaugural address of the President Lincoln, was 
 delivered March 4, 1861. In this address, in the face of 
 ominous shadows of a Civil War, the President sets forth 
 the problems that face the nation, and his own deep desire 
 to avoid any violation of the Constitution of the United 
 States. He pleads with the whole country for the mainte- 
 nance of peace, the observance of the Constitution, and the 
 preservation of the Union. But he takes a firm stand that if 
 there is rebellion, he will take whatever action he deems 
 best for the preservation of the Union. He asks, "Why should 
 
90 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of 
 the people? If the Almighty Ruler of the nations, with His 
 eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on 
 yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely 
 prevail, by the judgment of this great tribunal, the American 
 people." And near the close of the address he says, "If it 
 were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right 
 side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for 
 precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and 
 a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this fa- 
 vored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all 
 our present difficulty." * Throughout this address, as is also 
 the case in all the others and in the proclamations, there 
 runs the steady stream of complete faith in the justice of 
 Almighty God, which the President tried to impress upon 
 his people. 
 
 On July 4, 1861, President Lincoln sent a special message 
 to Congress. 2 Four months earlier, at the beginning of the 
 Presidential term, the functions of the Federal Government 
 were found to be generally suspended in several southern 
 states. After a detailed survey of the whole situation, . . . 
 since the issue embraces more than the fate of the United 
 States"; since it ". . . presents to the whole family of man, 
 the question whether a constitutional republic or a democ- 
 racy, a government of the people, by the same people can 
 or cannot maintain territorial integrity against its own do- 
 mestic foe,"— it was decided to "call out the war power of 
 the Government; and so to resist force employed for its de- 
 struction, by force, for its preservation." It was with the 
 deepest sorrow that the President found it his duty to em- 
 ploy his war-power. He hopes "that the peoples' views will 
 accord with his," and then realizing the tremendous serious- 
 
 1 Basler, Roy P. (ed.), Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New 
 Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. IV, p. 262. 
 
 2 Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 421. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 91 
 
 ness of the action, he ends the message with the prayer: 
 "Having thus chosen our course, without guile and with pure 
 purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward with- 
 out fear and with manly hearts." And this reminds one 
 strongly of the mandate to Joshua in the Book of Joshua, 
 said to have been given by the Almighty, by God Himself, 
 in the words, "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee; 
 I will not fail thee nor forsake thee. Be strong and of good 
 courage for thou shalt cause this people to inherit the land 
 which I swore unto their fathers to give them." 3 
 
 By the summer of 1861, conditions in the land had grown 
 pretty serious. In the words of Bruce Catton in his This Hal- 
 lowed Ground, "There was street fighting in the cities, gov- 
 ernors and legislators had been driven in flight or put under 
 arrest; earnest home guards were tramping clumsily into 
 state capitols, and what it all meant was that secession had 
 been accepted as revolution. There could be no compromise 
 with it; it would be fought whenever necessary with revolu- 
 tionary weapons, which in effect meant with any instrument 
 that came to hand. The South could win its independence 
 only by destroying the government of the United States." 
 Congress became alarmed as did the President. There was 
 going to be a war to the finish. Congress met, and appointed 
 a joint committee to wait on the President. On August 12, 
 1861, he issued a Proclamation for a Fast Day, 4 typical and 
 reminiscent of the appeals of the prophets to their erring 
 countrymen in times of distress. It was in answer to the 
 resolution of Congress, and read: 
 
 Whereas, a joint committee of both houses of Congress has 
 waited on the President of the United States and requested 
 him to recommend a day of public prayer, humiliation, and 
 fasting, to be observed by the people of the United States 
 with religious solemnities, and the offering of fervent sup- 
 
 8 Joshua 1:6. 
 
 4 Basler, op. cit. y Vol. IV, p. 482. 
 
92 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 plications to Almighty God for the safety and welfare of these 
 States, His blessings on their arms and a speedy restoration 
 of peace, and, 
 
 Whereas, it is fit and becoming in all people, at all times, 
 to acknowledge and revere the supreme government of God; 
 to bow in humble submission to his chastisements; to confess 
 and deplore their sins and transgressions, in the full con- 
 viction that the "fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;" 
 and to pray with all fervency and contrition for the pardon 
 of their past offenses, and for a blessing upon their present 
 and prospective action: and, 
 
 Whereas, when our own beloved country, once, by the 
 blessing of God, united and prosperous and happy, is now 
 afficted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us 
 to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and 
 in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a 
 nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him 
 and to pray for His mercy— to pray that we may be spared 
 further punishment, though most justly deserved; that our 
 arms may be blessed and made effectual for the re-establish- 
 ment of law, order and peace throughout the wide extent of 
 our country; ... 
 
 Therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United 
 States, do appoint ... as a day of humiliation, prayer and 
 fasting for all people of the nation ... in all humility and 
 with all religious solemnity, to the end that the united prayer 
 of the nation may ascend to the Throne of Grace, and bring 
 down plentiful blessings upon our country. 
 
 This proclamation is reminiscent of the burdens of Jeremiah 
 and other prophets. 5 
 
 The President begins his message of December 3, 1861, 
 by thanking the Almighty in these words: "In the midst of 
 unprecedented political troubles, we have cause of great 
 gratitude to God for unusual good health, and most abun- 
 dant harvests." He goes on to mention the "disloyal portion 
 of the American people" who have destroyed the Union. He 
 dwells on the "disloyal citizens" who want to ruin the coun- 
 
 5 Jeremiah 2:7-22; Ezekiel 18:30-32; Hosea 14:2-3, 5-8; Matthew 
 9:13; Mark 1:4, 12; Luke 13:3. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 93 
 
 try, and have introduced dangers and difficulties; he men- 
 tions that Congress has failed to provide chaplains for hospi- 
 tals, and calls attention to many matters of deepest concern 
 for the welfare and the preservation of the country, then he 
 ends the address with these pious words: "With a reliance 
 on Providence, all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed 
 in the great task which events have devolved upon us." * 
 Never had he a doubt but that the Almighty would resolve 
 the difficulties favorably! 
 
 On March 6, 1862, President Lincoln sent a message to 
 Congress recommending the adoption of a resolution that 
 the United States ought to cooperate with any state which 
 may adopt the gradual abolition of slavery, giving such a 
 state "pecuniary aid to compensate for such a change of the 
 system." He believed that the leaders of the insurrection 
 might entertain the hope that the Federal government would 
 ultimately have to acknowledge its defeat. He thought that 
 by this offer of help, some of the states would begin to ini- 
 tiate the emancipation of their slaves. He closes this message 
 with these words: "In full view of my great responsibility 
 to my God and to my country, I earnestly beg the attention 
 of Congress and the people to the subject." 7 Completely 
 persuaded that as God had selected him as His instrument, 
 and his country had elected him as its leader, his duty to act 
 was clear. 
 
 The Annual Message of December 1, 1862, to Congress, 
 again thanks God for "a year of health and bountiful har- 
 vests." In spite of the fact that the war is still on, and there 
 is no peace yet, "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 yet be well." He speaks of the conditions 
 that are facing the land, of the disturbed social situation, 
 asks for the adoption of several amendments dealing with 
 
 6 Basler, op. tit., Vol. V, p. 35. 
 
 7 Ibid., Vol. V, p. 144. 
 
94 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
 the abolition of slavery, even touching an appropriation of 
 money for colonizing free colored persons, and a number of 
 other things. It is in this address that Lincoln tells Congress 
 and the American people that he favors the colonization of 
 the freed slaves. Towards the close of the address he makes 
 this remarkable plea, which can take its place by the side of 
 the most appealing passages of any character in the Bible: 
 "In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the 
 free, honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. 
 We shall nobly save or meanly lose, the last best hope of 
 earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The 
 way is plain, peace, generous, and just— a way which if fol- 
 lowed, the world will forever applaud, and God must for- 
 ever bless." 8 Words like these can be spoken only by a 
 saintly soul who has been deeply touched by the presence 
 of his God, in the discharge of his dedicated duties. 
 
 The proclamation for a national Fast Day for March 30, 
 1863, brings out even more clearly the prophetic elements 
 in Lincoln's point of view. A part of it runs thus : "Whereas, 
 it is the duty of nations as well as of men to owe their de- 
 pendence 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 par- 
 don; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the 
 Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those na- 
 tions only are blessed whose God is the Lord, 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 na- 
 tional reformation as a whole people?" 9 This reads like an 
 excerpt from the Prophet Ezekiel and other Prophets. In 
 this call to repentance, Lincoln's belief that it will bring 
 pardon from on high; that ultimately the right will be vic- 
 
 sjbid., Vol. V, p. 518. 
 *Ibid„ Vol. VI, p. 155. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 95 
 
 torious; that God rules in the affairs of men and nations; 
 that only those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord, 
 and that our country has been punished by civil war be- 
 cause of our presumptuous sins, exhibits his indisputable 
 similarity to the teachings of his spiritual ancestors, the 
 Prophets. You have here the same indestructible faith, the 
 same complete trust, the same assurance that the mercy of 
 the Almighty will forgive our sins if we repent. You have 
 the same appeal and hope that made them feel that Almighty 
 God was with them, guided them, used them to carry out 
 His purpose to preserve and redeem just, God-fearing and 
 God-worshipping nations. The proclamations that Lincoln 
 issued regarding Thanksgiving, Prayer, Fasting, Repentance 
 and Forgiveness form a source of splendid evidence of his 
 spiritual relationship to, and dependence on, the biblical 
 teachers. 
 
 The third Annual Message, given December 8, 1863, 
 opens with a statement of gratitude to God: "Another year 
 of health, and of sufficiently abundant harvest has passed. 
 For these, and especially for the improved condition of our 
 national affairs, our renewed and profoundest gratitude." 10 
 The Almighty is thanked for his help in keeping the nation 
 out of the harm that disloyal citizens hoped to bring upon it. 
 With an expression of thanks to the army and navy, he 
 closes the address. The Annual Message of December 6, 
 1864 begins also with the statement of thanks to God for the 
 "blessings of health and abundant harvests" which claim 
 "profoundest gratitude to Almighty God." n Men without 
 faith in God and without religion in their hearts, do not 
 begin messages in this way. Gratitude to God was one of 
 the essentials of the Biblical teachers— more particularly the 
 Psalmists. 
 
 Throughout Lincoln's speeches, letters and other writ- 
 
 ™lbid., Vol. VII, p. 36. 
 11 Ibid., Vol. VIII, p. 136. 
 
96 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 ings, there is a consistent flow of declarations regarding 
 God, right, justice, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, and sim- 
 ilar subjects. In the last five or six years of his life, Lincoln 
 was dominated by a prophetic, religious consciousness that 
 influenced his daily life. He was, as was once said of the 
 philosopher Spinoza, a God-intoxicated man. 
 
 Lincoln issued seven Thanksgiving Proclamations. In 
 each one of these and particularly in the last one, dated 
 October 20, 1864, 12 is there a deep sense of piety and grati- 
 tude to God for the events that had occurred. In all of them 
 there was an expression of thankfulness that one would ex- 
 pect in national Thanksgiving Proclamations. But in the last, 
 there were special circumstances which made the President 
 particularly grateful. The war had been going on for some 
 four years, without the end in sight. Many Northerners had 
 been beginning to lose faith or to wonder whether, after all, 
 the struggle was worth while. Lincoln himself, was losing 
 friends rather than making them. The political situation was 
 such as to make some think that Lincoln would fail to gain 
 the nomination for a second term. The North had lost some- 
 where around one hundred thousand men, and many more 
 were wounded. Conditions were very severe and there was 
 a more than average amount of bitterness because the war 
 had lasted so long. Then things began to happen. Mobile 
 was taken from the Confederates and rendered useless as a 
 seaport for the benefit of the South; Sherman had practically 
 surrounded Atlanta; Sheridan was victorious in the Shenan- 
 doah Valley and Grant was on the march. Lincoln saw the 
 triumphant end of the war and, incidentally, that the 
 grounds for political opposition to him were slipping, and 
 he felt that if he were renominated, he would be re-elected. 
 The last of his Thanksgiving Proclamations was given under 
 these circumstances. I cite it here, because of its detail and 
 
 ™Tbid., Vol. VIII, p. 55. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 97 
 
 because it exhibits just the opposite state of mind that 
 prompted his Fast Day Proclamation. In the latter we saw 
 the grief, the humility and the consciousness of the sinful- 
 ness of the nation, with his deep hope that God will forgive, 
 as indicated in a number of the prophetic writings. In the 
 last Thanksgiving text we get something of the jubilant 
 spirit of the Fortieth Chapter of Isaiah and some of the 
 Psalms; a sense of gratefulness and appreciation from every- 
 one in the land, for the many spiritual and material bless- 
 ings now to become the lot of the United States, and all of 
 these are the gift of the Almighty. Here is the text of the 
 Proclamation written in pure, chaste, remarkably beautiful, 
 and reverent English: 
 
 It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life 
 another year, defending us with His guardian care against 
 unfriendly designs from abroad, and vouchsafing unto us in 
 His mercy, many and signal victories over the enemy, who is 
 of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly 
 Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes, as our 
 soldiers in their camps, and our sailors on the rivers and 
 seas, with unusual health. He has largely augmented our 
 free population by emancipation and immigration, while he 
 has opened to us new sources of wealth, and had crowned 
 the labor of our workingmen in every department of indus- 
 try with abundant rewards. Moreover he has been pleased 
 to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, 
 courage, and resolution, sufficient for the great trial of civil 
 war into which we have been brought by our adherence as 
 a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford 
 to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliver- 
 ance from all our dangers and afflictions. 
 
 Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the 
 United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last 
 Thursday of November next, as a day which I desire to be 
 observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then 
 be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the 
 
98 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 beneficent Creator and Ruler of the universe. And I do 
 further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid, that on 
 that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the 
 dust, and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers 
 and supplications to the great Disposer of events for a return 
 of the inestimable blessings of peace, union and harmony 
 throughout the land which it has pleased him to assign as 
 a dwelling-place for ourselves and for our posterity through- 
 out all generations. 
 
 If one turns to Psalms Nine and Sixty-six, one inevitably gets 
 into the spirit of this Thanksgiving message. 
 
 One notes that the dominant principles that are empha- 
 sized in Lincoln's speeches, debates, and proclamations are 
 the preservation of the Union, the emphasis on religion ex- 
 pressed in terms of merciful justice, and the freedom of the 
 slaves. His concern was nearly always the moral side of a 
 question under consideration, and seldom if ever, the dog- 
 matic or ritualistic. The miracle phase of religion was never 
 touched and Herndon, Fell, Lamon and Whitney were cor- 
 rect. The deprivation of the Negroes' liberty was a moral 
 issue. The preservation of the Constitution was a legal issue 
 and the belief in God was religious, but not ritualistic, and 
 was primary to both. While often the juridical phase of the 
 slave-state was considered, it was never entirely separated 
 from the moral, which had its roots in the religious philos- 
 ophy of Moses, of the Prophets and Jesus. One can detect in 
 Lincoln, an increasing interest in Negro welfare which at 
 first was limited to the territories in which slavery did not 
 exist, which was extended later, and then climaxed by 
 the Emancipation Proclamation. Though the Emancipation 
 Proclamation was a necessary military measure, there is no 
 doubt that in the mind of the Emancipator, there was a driv- 
 ing moral and religious urge to have him do what he felt 
 that the merciful Creator would have him do— liberate a per- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 99 
 
 secuted group of His children. Could it not be that as Lin- 
 coln grew older and read the Bible more, as we are told, 
 the Negro question became more important to him in its 
 relation to the prophetic teachings on social justice and indi- 
 vidual righteousness? 
 
There is no question about the fact that he went to the 
 Bible for inspiration. His faith must, at times, have made 
 his advisors and friends apprehensive— it was so extraordi- 
 narily deep, bordering on the fanatic. His own admissions 
 that without it he might have lost his reason, did not help 
 to allay the apprehensiveness. When once he decided that 
 he was on God's side in any matter, which meant to him 
 that God was with him, he was as immovable as a rock. Evi- 
 dently his faith was well founded, because in the end, it did 
 win. Victory for the Union later confirmed him in his belief 
 that he was right in his following after the Prophets, who, 
 he believed, were nearer to the Almighty than he was; and 
 who, so far as he was concerned, had to some extent pierced 
 the veil which separated mortal man from the Eternal God. 
 He appeared to be completely satisfied to be guided by 
 their words, their trust and God's direction. 
 
 Innumerable times does he assert that it is inhuman in- 
 justice to maintain slavery. He constantly repeats the gist 
 of the prophetic verses which deal with the sanctification 
 of the Almighty through justice. He is acquainted with verses 
 like "The Lord of Hosts is e. i through justice and God 
 the Holy One is sanctified through righteousness." 1 "Justice, 
 justice shalt thou pursue." 2 "Doth the Almighty pervert jus- 
 tice?" 3 "My people hath been lost sheep because they have 
 
 1 Isaiah 5:16. 
 
 2 Deuteronomy 16:19-20. 
 
 3 Job 8:3-7, 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 101 
 
 sinned against the Lord, the habitation of justice." 4 "O prin- 
 cess of Israel, execute justice and righteousness, remove 
 exactions from my people, said the Lord." 5 These are of 
 course, only a few of the very many statements about "jus- 
 tice." In the Lincoln-Douglas debates there are many refer- 
 ences to the injustice of slavery and to the immorality in- 
 volved in the institution. Said Lincoln in the Peoria Speech, 
 October 16, 1854: "Slavery is founded in the selfishness of 
 man's nature; opposition to it, is in the love of justice; these 
 principles are an eternal antagonism, and when brought into 
 collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks 
 and throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow." fl He 
 accused those who did not believe that God was interested 
 in the black man of reading the Bible wrongly. 
 
 To read in 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 man's faces shalt thou 
 eat bread," and to preach therefrom to my mind can scarcely 
 be reconciled with honest sincerity. 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 the earth. The devils at- 
 tempt was no more false, and far less hypocritical. 7 
 
 Lincoln did not believe that there was one Bible for the 
 white people and another for the black. 
 
 William E. Barton, says that Lincoln's "Second Inau- 
 
 4 Jeremiah 7:5; 50:6. 
 
 5 Ezekiel 45:9. 
 
 6 Basler, Roy P. (ed.), Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New 
 Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. II, p. 271. 
 
 7 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 368. 
 
102 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 gural 8 was itself a kind of leaf out of the books of the 
 Prophets." 9 
 
 There is no thought in the presentation of this study to 
 maintain that Abraham Lincoln was accustomed to quote 
 Biblical statements exactly; but anyone who is very familiar 
 with the Scriptures notes frequently the great resemblance 
 to them in structure, words and thought. Very often we find 
 the word "judgment" is translated where the original calls 
 for "justice." Not all the prophets emphasized the same 
 ideal— some paid more attention to social justice and indivi- 
 dual righteousness; some to repentance and return to God; 
 some to universal peace; some to the dignity of the human 
 individual; some to the Fatherhood of God and the Brother- 
 hood of Man; some to individual morality and national 
 purity; some to sincerity of worship and to the beauty of 
 holiness. But all accepted as a fact the authority, the im- 
 manence, and the Providential direction of their God. And 
 all condemned Israel because of its violation of what they 
 considered God's statutes and ordinances, just as Lincoln 
 condemned his countrymen who were guilty of this. 
 
 For many years as I studied the religion of Lincoln; 
 I tried to formulate it into some definite framework of the 
 known western religions. The contrast between its highly 
 ethical and practical content on the one side, and his super- 
 stition and dream-beliefs on the other, made it impossible 
 to fit it into any one of our western classifications. Realistic 
 and applied ethics, and visions and evil omens, just do not 
 fit together into any system, except mysticism— and that is 
 no defined religion. I noticed the almost complete absence of 
 the commonly known dogmas of traditional or historical 
 Christianity. I was impressed by the fact that there are 
 practically no pronouncements or even references to the 
 
 8 Barton, Wm. E., The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (NT.: D. Apple- 
 ton and Co., 1896), p. 262. 
 
 9 Basler, op. cit., Vol. Ill, p. 333. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 103 
 
 Virgin birth, the birth of Jesus, the crucifixion, the resur- 
 rection, the remission of sins through the blood of Jesus, to 
 the infallibility of the Pope and to the sacraments. He was 
 not a Catholic, so he would not be expected to have the 
 same attitude towards the last two items, as Catholic Chris- 
 tians do. I find no reference to either the Nicene or Apostolic 
 Creeds. With the exception of the letter to his half-brother 
 at the approaching death of his father, there is little reference 
 to immortality, though he had a belief in some kind of 
 future life. We have ample evidence, as noted, that he had 
 no use for the accoutrements and the ritualistic instruments 
 of the Christian or any other religion. He did not believe 
 either in the use or the efficacy of ceremonials, and appeared 
 to be completely non-sectarian in his belief. 
 
 I doubt whether Lincoln was familiar with the early 
 Christian theological controversies, the battles between the 
 Arians and the Athanasians— those who believed in the 
 Unity of God, and those who believed in the Trinity. I have 
 never read that he knew anything about the Council of 
 Nicea or the controversies among the early bishops who 
 determined the basis of present-day Christianity. He may 
 have said something about this in that little book which he 
 is alleged to have written against Christianity and which a 
 friend of his is supposed to have burned in order that 
 Lincoln's political career would not be destroyed. I do not 
 recall the phrase "ethical monotheism" anywhere in his 
 writings, and yet he was an avowed ethical monotheist.. I 
 have serious doubts whether Lincoln ever read anything 
 and certainly not much, that deals with theological disputes 
 and theories, or that he knew anything of what we now call 
 "religious philosophy." Herndon 10 tells us that he had read 
 Volney's Ruins and Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, both 
 anti-traditional Christian books, and that he loaned Lincoln 
 
 10 Herndon, Wm. H., History and Personal Recollections of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln (N.Y.: A. & C. Boni, 1930), p. 396. 
 
104 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 a lecture on the "Effects of Slavery on the American people," 
 by Theodore Parker. Lincoln liked this lecture in which 
 Parker was warm in his commendation of Lincoln, and 
 which contained the sentence "democracy is direct self- 
 government over all the people, for all the people, by all 
 the people." The future President marked this passage with 
 a pencil, and "which in substance," says Herndon, "he 
 afterwards used in the Gettysburg address." 
 
 Theodore Parker did not believe in the divinity of Jesus, 
 did not accept the teachings of the Nicene or the Apostolic 
 creeds, and believed in the unity of God as opposed to the 
 Trinitarian Church tradition. He believed in the validity of 
 the moral law, and in some type of immortality, but gave 
 no detailed description of Heaven or Hell as pictured in the 
 Christian tradition. He was an exponent of what is now 
 called Unitarianism, whose fundamental tenets are the 
 Unity and Fatherhood of God, and the Brotherhood of man. 
 These are the same teachings that Lincoln, to all intents and 
 purposes, believed basic to his religion. But Lincoln did 
 not know Parker until some time after his own conception 
 of religion began to develop; but both Parker, who was 
 an Old Testament scholar, and Lincoln, who was a Bible 
 student, got their religious ideals from the same source. 
 
For a reader who is not a student of the Bible, especially 
 the Old Testament, and who has not been particularly 
 interested in the religion of the prophetic teachers, it will 
 be at first difficult to realize, except by further study, to what 
 extent the religious or ethical principles which Lincoln 
 advocated resemble the ethical teachings of a Moses, or an 
 Isaiah, or a Jeremiah or Jesus. The more one investigates 
 and digests these similarities, the truer becomes my conten- 
 tion that Lincoln leaned heavily on the Biblical teachers, 
 and on the ideals as well as on the goals of these great 
 characters who were the source— though Lincoln might have 
 been unconscious of it— of his religious inspiration. 
 
 I have included in this study, a number of passages from 
 the Bible, so those who are curious enough to make the 
 comparisons I suggest, may have the material handy. The 
 number must be limited, but I think that I have enough of 
 them to indicate unmistakably that Lincoln studied the 
 Bible, knew these great verses that have so influenced the 
 western world, and used them as he advanced in age, 
 responsibility and wisdom. 
 
 In the Holiness Code (Chaps. XVII-XXVI) in the Book 
 of Leviticus, one finds the source of the teachings to live 
 righteously, not to rob nor steal and to love one's neighbor 
 as one's self. "Thou shalt not oppress thy neighbor, nor rob 
 him; thou shalt not hate thy neighbor in thy heart; ye shall 
 do no unrighteousness in judgement; thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself, I am the Lord." * In the Book of Deu- 
 
 1 Holiness Code, Leviticus 17-26; 19:12-18. 
 
106 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 teronorny, we read: "God doth execute justice for the father- 
 less and the widow, and loveth the stranger. Love ye 
 therefore the stranger for ye were strangers in the land of 
 Egypt/' "When thou drawest nigh unto a city to fight 
 against it, then proclaim peace unto it." 2 The Ten Com- 
 mandments 8 in Exodus and in Deuteronomy must not be 
 overlooked in the Mosaic contribution. Nor must we forget 
 the grand visions of universal peace in Isaiah and Micah. 4 
 
 In a work of this sort, it is impossible as well as inadvis- 
 able to give more than a few examples of what the prophets 
 taught. But if one is to accept the proposition that Lincoln 
 was deeply indebted to them for his religious point of view, 
 a few more passages illustrating their ideas are not out of 
 place. An attempt to do this and show something of their 
 ethical insights and beliefs, follows. 
 
 In quoting these passages, I do not mean to imply that 
 Lincoln ever used them or quoted them verbatim. I want 
 to indicate what I mean by saying that the teachings of 
 their authors, the points of view in them, the philosophy 
 they inculcate and sometimes the very form and style of 
 their expression, influenced the point of view, the attitude 
 towards life and the ideals which motiviated Lincoln's con- 
 duct. I am convinced that these teachings were the primary 
 sources of Lincoln's religious beliefs. 
 
 This is from Fifth Book of Moses: 
 
 Man doth not live by bread only, but by everything that 
 proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord, doth man live. And 
 thou shalt consider in thy heart, that as a man chasteneth 
 his son, so the Lord chasteneth thee. And thou shalt keep 
 the commandments of the Lord thy God, to walk in his 
 ways and fear Him. For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into 
 a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and 
 depths springing forth in valleys and hills; a land of wheat 
 
 2 Deuteronomy 10:18-19; 20:10. 
 
 3 Exodus 20:1-17; Deuteronomy 5:1-21. 
 
 4 Isaiah 2:2-5; Micah 4:1-4. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 107 
 
 and barley, and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a 
 land of olive trees and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat 
 bread without scarcity, thou shalt not lack anything in it; 
 a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou 
 may est dig brass. And thou shalt eat and be satisfied, and 
 bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath 
 given thee. Beware lest thou forget the Lord thy God, in 
 not keeping his commandments, and his ordinances, and his 
 statutes, which I command thee this day; lest when thou 
 hast eaten and are satisfied and hast built goodly houses, 
 and dwelt therein, and when thy herds and thy flocks 
 multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all 
 that thou hast is multiplied, then thy heart be lifted up, and 
 thou forget the Lord thy God. 5 
 
 These verses are reminiscent of the "fasting" proclamations, 
 both in form and substance. 
 From the Prophet Isaiah: 
 
 Hear ye the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; and give 
 ear to the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah; To what 
 purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith 
 the Lord; I am full of the burnt offering of rams and the fat 
 of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of 
 lambs or of he-goats. Bring no more vain oblations to me; 
 it is an offering of abomination to me. New moon and Sab- 
 bath, the holding of assembly service, I cannot endure 
 iniquity along with the solemn assembly. Your new moons 
 and holydays, my soul hateth; they are a burden to me; . . . 
 when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are 
 full of blood. Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil 
 of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil, learn 
 to do that which is good. Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, 
 judge justly the fatherless, plead for the widow. 
 
 Wherefore saith the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, I will ease 
 me of my adversaries and avenge me of mine enemies, and 
 I will turn my hand upon thee and will purge away thy 
 dross as with lye, and will take away all thine alloy, and I 
 will restore thy judges as at first, and thy counsellors as at 
 the beginning. Afterward thou shalt be called the city of 
 
 B Deuteronomy 8:3-14. 
 
108 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 
 
 righteousness, the faithful city; Zion shall be redeemed with 
 justice, and they that return of her, with righteousness. But 
 the destruction of the transgressors and the sinners shall be 
 together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed. 
 For thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and thou 
 hast not been mindful of the Rock of thy stronghold; at 
 eventide, behold terror, and before the morning, they are 
 not. 
 
 The city with its stir shall be deserted, the mound and 
 the towers shall be dens forever; and joy of wild asses, a 
 pasture of flocks, until the spirit be poured upon us from 
 on high, and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the 
 fruitful field be counted for a forest. Then justice shall dwell 
 in the wilderness, and the righteousness shall abide in the 
 fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be peace, 
 and the effect of righteousness quietness and confidence 
 forever. And my people shall abide in a peaceable habitation. 
 Thus saith the Lord: Keep ye justice and do righteousness. 
 Happy is the man that doeth this and the son of man that 
 holdeth fast by it that keepeth the Sabbath from profaning 
 it; and keepeth his hand from doing any evil.* 
 
 From a Book of Jeremiah, we cull many verses in this 
 mood: "Behold a storm of the Lord is gone forth in fury, 
 a sweeping storm. It shall whirl upon the head of the 
 wicked. The fierce anger of the Lord shall not return, until 
 he have executed and until he have performed the purpose 
 of his heart." 7 
 
 In the mood of thankfulness, akin to that of the last 
 Thanksgiving proclamation, we find: 
 
 Yet again shall there be heard in this place, where of ye say: 
 It is waste without man and without beast, even in the cities 
 of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, that are desolate, 
 without man and without inhabitant and without beast, the 
 voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bride- 
 groom and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that 
 say: Give thanks to the Lord of Hosts, for the Lord is good, 
 
 « Isaiah 1:10-18; 17:10; 32:14-18; 56:1-2. 
 7 Jeremiah 30:23. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 109 
 
 for His mercy endureth forever, of them that bring offerings 
 of thanksgiving into the House of the Lord. For I will cause 
 the captivity of the land to return as at the first, saith the 
 Lord. 
 
 In the mood of promise and redemption and if repentant, 
 we find: 
 
 And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity whereby 
 they have sinned against me: and I will pardon all their 
 iniquities and whereby they have transgressed against me. 
 And the city shall be to me for a name of joy, for a praise 
 and a glory, before all the nations of the earth, which shall 
 hear all the good I do unto them, and shall fear and tremble 
 for all the good and for all the peace that I procure unto it. 8 
 
 Lincoln's plea for the return of the United States to 
 justice and right reminds one of this verse from the Prophet 
 Ezekiel: 
 
 But if the wicked turn from all his sins that he hath com- 
 mitted, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful 
 and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of his 
 transgressions that he hath committed shall be remembered 
 against him; for his righteousness that he hath done, he shall 
 live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, 
 saith the Lord; and not rather that he should turn from his 
 ways and live? 9 
 
 These sections from Amos and Habakkuk recall Lincoln's 
 angry retort to hypocrites who misread the Bible: 
 
 For thus saith the Lord to the House of Israel: Seek ye me 
 and live. Seek the Lord and live. Ye who turn justice to 
 wormwood, and cast righteousness to the ground. They hate 
 him who reproves in the gate (who dispenses justice in the 
 court); and they abhor him who speaketh uprightly. There- 
 fore because ye trample upon the poor and take from him 
 exactions of wheat; ye have built houses of hewn stone, but 
 ye shall not dwell in them. Ye have planted pleasant vine- 
 
 8 Jeremiah 33:8-9. 
 
 9 Ezekiel 18:21-23. 
 
110 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
 yards but ye shall not drink the wine thereof. For I know 
 how manifold are your transgressions and how mighty are 
 your sins. Ye that afflict the just, that take a bribe, and that 
 turn aside the poor in the gate (from their rights ) . Seek good 
 and not evil, so the Lord of God of Hosts will be with you. 
 
 Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his; woe to 
 him that gaineth evil gains for his house that he may set his 
 next on high. Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, 
 and establisheth a city in iniquity. For (in the end) the earth 
 shall be filled with the glory of the knowledge of God, as the 
 waters cover the sea. 10 
 
 From the teachings of Jesus, Lincoln received the picture 
 of that kind of life that could lead to perfection: 
 
 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteous- 
 ness. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. 
 For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall 
 exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall 
 in no case enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Be ye therefore 
 perfect even as your Father which is in heaven, is perfect. 
 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as hypocrites are; 
 for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the 
 corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily 
 I say unto you, they have their reward. For if you forgive 
 men their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive 
 you. No man can serve two masters; you cannot serve God 
 and his Mammon. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His 
 righteousness. Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that 
 men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them, for this 
 is the Law and the Prophets. 11 
 
 10 Amos 5:6-7, 11-14; Habakkuk 2:6,9,12. 
 i 1 Matthew 5:6, 8, 20, 48; 6:5, 14, 24, 33; 7:12. 
 
XV 
 
 While all the great biblical teachers stressed the relation- 
 ship between God and His children and pointed out what 
 this meant, there was one prophet whose life and teachings 
 closely paralleled those of Lincoln. I speak of the Prophet 
 Jeremiah who has also been called the Man of Sorrows. Born 
 and reared in Anathoth, a small town near Jerusalem, of a 
 well to do priestly family, and distressed by the resurgence 
 of the nation back to iniquity, injustice and sin, he gave 
 himself up to preaching those teachings which he knew 
 would save the nation if they were observed. Even his 
 phraseology reminds one of the Lincoln proclamations. He 
 spoke with bitterness of the constant violations of God's 
 commands; he castigated those who believed in the ' right- 
 ness" of the wrongs that were destructive of ethical ideals. 
 He reminded his people that if they exclude the Almighty 
 from their lives, and live only for those things that dazzle 
 the eye and please the ear, the great spiritual heritage of 
 Israel would be destroyed. He felt poignantly as did Lincoln, 
 the truth that without God and His precepts nations must 
 perish! 
 
 Jeremiah was crushed by the conduct of the ruling 
 powers, as was Lincoln pained by Ins predecessor in the 
 White House and his clique. Powerful personalities were 
 on the side of those who opposed Jeremiah, just as there 
 were such in opposition to Lincoln. Judea was steeped in 
 that kind of living that the prophet knew would lead to 
 ultimate destruction. He saw this, and his soul cried out 
 
112 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 in bitterness. But there were influential exhorters who stood 
 out against him; he called them "false" prophets, but they 
 were heeded by the populace and by influential personages, 
 even advisors of the king. They called Jeremiah a traitor, 
 and not only put him in prison twice, but because the king 
 feared to have him put to death, the priests and the false 
 prophets, with the permission of the king, had him thrown 
 into a pit, "and in the pit there was no water, but mire, and 
 Jeremiah sank in the mire." * The king apparently relented, 
 and had Jeremiah removed from the pit. But that did not 
 prevent him from addressing his people. He was deeply dis- 
 tressed but patient and hopeful, but he did not run away 
 from his, as he believed, God-given task. There were times 
 when he rued it. He cursed the day he was born. He had 
 pleaded that he was unfit for the task which the Almighty 
 called him to do. He had been called against his own will to 
 condemn the wrong-doers! 
 
 The word of the Lord came to me saying, Before I formed 
 thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou earnest out 
 of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet 
 unto the nations. But I said, Lord, I cannot speak for I am 
 a child. But the Lord said, Say not I am a child, for thou 
 shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I com- 
 mand thee thou shalt speak; be not afraid of their faces, 
 for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord. Cursed be 
 the day wherein I was born; the day wherein my mother 
 bore me, let it not be blessed. Wherefore came I forth out 
 of the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should 
 be consumed in shame. 2 
 
 In the Lincoln Scrapbook in the Library of Congress, the 
 following statement is recorded as a part of the conversation 
 the President had with an old friend, the Reverend Mr. N. 
 W. Miner of Springfield: "I would gladly if I could/' said 
 Lincoln, "take my neck from under the yoke, and go home 
 
 1 Jeremiah 38:6. 
 
 2 Jeremiah 1:5-8; 20:14-18. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 113 
 
 with you to Springfield, and live as I used, in peace with 
 my friends, rather than to endure this harassing kind of 
 life. But it has pleased Almighty God to place me in my 
 present position and, looking to him for wisdom and divine 
 guidance, I must work out my destiny as best I can." 
 
 The unhappy days of May, 1863, when the Battle of 
 Chancellorsville was lost, were among the worst trials of 
 the President. Carl Sandburg tells how "piteous, broken and 
 ghostlike the President looked, as he clasped his hands be- 
 hind his back, and walking up and down the room cried, 'My 
 God, My God, what will the country say, what will the 
 country say!' " 3 
 
 Colonel W. O. Stoddard who was one of Lincoln's pri- 
 vate secretaries, relates that he was present when word of 
 the defeat of Chancellorsville came, and he heard the 
 President utter the above exclamation. That night Mr. Stod- 
 dard had to work late. His room was opposite Mr. Lincoln's 
 and the door to both rooms was ajar. For hours he heard the 
 footsteps of the distressed President, as he slowly walked 
 across the room. Now and then there was a pause. Stoddard 
 believed that Abraham Lincoln did then what he had done 
 numberless times before. 4 
 
 The President no doubt communed with his God, whom 
 he sought at moments of great disturbance. There is no 
 certainty of this in this case. But if he did, now in throes of 
 deepest grief at the realization of the great amount of sorrow 
 and mourning that would follow upon the knowledge of 
 this new defeat, 11,000 dead on the Union side, one wonders 
 whether he thought of that deeply touching verse in Jere- 
 
 3 Sandburg, Carl, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (N.Y.: Har- 
 court Brace & Co., 1939), Vol. II, p. 97. 
 
 4 This story of the tragic night of Chancellorsville and of Lincoln 
 in the White House, in May of 1863, as told by William O. Stoddard, 
 and retold in the New York Times Magazine June 28, 1942, by his 
 son. "I have written it," he said "as it was told to me by my father, 
 he marching up and down the room, with a fighting fire in his eyes/' 
 
114 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* S RELIGION 
 
 miah: "My bowels, my bowels, I writhe in pain; the cham- 
 bers of my heart, my heart moaneth within me. I cannot 
 hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the 
 sound of the horn, the alarm of the war; destruction fol- 
 loweth upon destruction, for the whole land is spoiled." 5 
 Or whether he thought of that other tragic cry uttered after 
 the destruction of Jerusalem, "Thus saith the Lord: A voice 
 was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping; 
 Rachel weeping for her children, refused to be comforted for 
 her children, for they are not." 6 
 
 Both Jeremiah and Lincoln were unique characters and 
 both lived in the days of their country's greatest peril. Jere- 
 miah well knew that there were other exhorters who called 
 themselves "Prophets"— but to him, they did not represent 
 the will of God. Lincoln recognized the existence as well as 
 the influence of outstanding people who opposed him, but 
 to him, they did not represent the will of God. Jeremiah was 
 persecuted and according to tradition, later killed because 
 he refused to follow the mob. Lincoln suffered the same fate 
 for his stand for what he believed to be the truth. Jeremiah 
 could not run away from his task, though at times he was 
 almost overwhelmed by it, and as we saw, cursed the day he 
 was born. As he carried on and saw that his message was 
 unheeded, his grief made him the "Man of Sorrow." Lincoln 
 saw with crystal-clear vision that the nation must perish if 
 he submitted to those whom he regarded as enemies, and 
 therefore he could not run away from his task. One recalls 
 the conversation of Lincoln with Judge Joseph Gillespie, 
 an old friend in Illinois, which took place in Lincoln's home 
 in January, 1861, in which Lincoln is alleged to have said: 
 "I see the duty devolving upon me. I have read upon 
 my knees, the story of Gethsemane, where the son of God 
 
 5 Jeremiah 4:19. 
 9 Jeremiah 31:15. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 115 
 
 prayed in vain that the cup of bitterness might pass 
 from him. I am in the Garden of Gethsemane now, and 
 my cup of bitterness is full and overflowing." 7 
 
 Both Jeremiah and Lincoln believed that the terrible 
 visitations upon their countries were the results of national 
 sinful living, and both believed that peace would come only 
 when those who strayed would return to the right path and 
 repent of their misdeeds. Said Jeremiah: 
 
 The Lord could no longer bear, because of the evil of your 
 doings and because of the abominations which ye have com- 
 mitted; therefore is your land a desolation, and an astonish- 
 ment, and a curse, without an inhabitant, as at this day. 
 Because ye have burned incense, and because ye have sinned 
 against the Lord and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord, 
 nor walked in His law nor in His statutes nor in His testi- 
 monies; therefore this evil is happened to you this day. 8 
 
 One is reminded of these words by a portion of the National 
 Fast Day Proclamation on March 30, 1863: 
 
 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, to confess our national sins, and 
 to pray for clemency and forgiveness. ... I therefore desig- 
 nate the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humili- 
 ation, fasting and prayer. 9 
 
 7 Johnstone, William J., How Lincoln Prayed. (N.Y.: Abingdon 
 Press, 1931), p. 23. 
 
 8 Jeremiah 44:22-23. 
 
 9 Basler, Roy P. (ed.) , Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New 
 Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. VI, p. 155, 
 
116 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
 If the words and the setting differ in details, there can be 
 no question about the sentiment and the feelings as well as 
 the purpose of the proclamation, being wholly in the pro- 
 phetic mood. 
 
 In Jeremiah we can detect what was almost a pattern for 
 the thinking of Lincoln in the framing of his fasting and 
 repentance proclamations, and in the speeches, where ethi- 
 cal subjects were mentioned. 
 
 Thus saith the Lord: Execute ye justice and righteousness, 
 and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor; 
 and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the father- 
 less nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood, iri this place. 
 For if ye do this thing indeed, then shall there enter in, by 
 the gates of this house, kings sitting upon the throne of 
 David, riding in chariots and on horses, he and his servants 
 and his people. But if ye will not hear these words, I swear 
 by Myself, saith the Lord, that this house shall become a 
 desolation. 10 
 
 We repeat in conclusion, that Lincoln's belief was the 
 same as that of the prophets in its ethical implications. He 
 believed implicitly, as they did, that God alone was the 
 Father and righteous Ruler of the universe, who meted out 
 punishment for sin, but pardon and forgiveness for repen- 
 tance and return to His ways. This process did not include 
 ritual and ceremony, necessarily. His religion was a this- 
 worldly ethical discipline based upon a wholesome relation- 
 ship between God and man, and man and man; in justice, 
 righteousness, mercy and peace as the social instrumentali- 
 ties in a divine moral order, under the governance of the 
 Almighty. One recalls the serious answer of Lincoln to a 
 committee of clergymen, as told by Carpenter. Said one of 
 them: "I hope the Lord is on our side." Replied Lincoln: 
 "I am not at all concerned about that, for I know the Lord is 
 
 i° Jeremiah 7:3-7; 22:3-9. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN' S RELIGION 117 
 
 always on the side of right. But it is my constant anxiety 
 and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's 
 side." 
 
 Lincoln was as certain that God revealed Himself to him, 
 as was Moses; as sure that God was with him in his prayers, 
 as was Jeremiah; as certain that God was right, as was 
 Isaiah; as positive that God was just, as was Amos; as 
 determined in his belief that God would forgive the nation 
 for its sins if it would repent, and return to His laws, as 
 were Ezekiel and Hosea; as conscious of God's perfection 
 as was Jesus, and as certain that God was the "over-ruling 
 Providence," as were all of these. 
 
 In a collection of Words of Lincoln compiled by O. H. 
 Oldroyd, we find the following interview with Reverend J. 
 T. Duryea of New York in 1864. It is reminiscent of a con- 
 versation that the President had with his old Sprinfield 
 friend, Reverend N. W. Miner in Washington in 1862, 
 but is more positive. Lincoln said: "If it were not for my 
 firm belief in an over-ruling Providence, it would be difficult 
 for me in the midst of such complications of affairs, to 
 keep my reason on its seat. But I am confident that the 
 Almighty has His plans and will work them out; and 
 whether we see it or not, they will be the wisest and 
 best for us. ... I have always taken counsel of Him, and 
 refer to Him my plans, and have never adopted a course 
 of proceeding without being assured, as far as I could be, 
 of His approbation." n It sounds very much like a restate- 
 ment of "Thus saith the Lord" to the prophets. 
 
 No Biblical teacher to my knowledge has given us a 
 clearer statement of his own nearness to, and dependence 
 upon God, than Lincoln. The complete, wholehearted sur- 
 render to His will, and the unfathomable faith which under- 
 girded it, were the spiritual forces that gave the harassed 
 
 11 Oldroyd, O. H., Words of Lincoln (Wash., D.C.: 1895), p. 137. 
 
118 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S RELIGION 
 
 President courage to carry on one of the most important 
 struggles in the annals of human history. The survival of 
 Lincoln to the unfortunate day of his death, and with that 
 the preservation of the Union, were due to the influence of 
 religion as it developed in his consciousness through his 
 study of the Bible, and especially through the lives of the 
 immortal prophets; and of all of these, Jeremiah resembled 
 Lincoln most, and I believe, influenced him most. Both 
 feared that they would not live to see their work completed, 
 and both were martyrs to what they believed to be the truth. 
 Jeremiah lived to see his nation conquered and his beloved 
 Jerusalem destroyed; Lincoln lived to see his faith in victory 
 vindicated, but like Moses of old, could see the promise ful- 
 flled onlv from a distance. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abolition, 71 
 Aesop's Fables, 66 
 Amos, 49, 82, 109 
 Angle, Paul M., 11, 18, 20 
 Antietam, 41, 42 
 Arnold, Isaac N., 61 
 
 Baltimore Presbyterian Synod, 57 
 
 Bateman, Newton, 53 
 
 Barton, William S., 11, 12, 35, 
 
 36, 37, 52, 66, 101 
 Basler, Roy P., 11, 18, 20 
 Beveridge, Albert J., 11, 20 
 Bible, 39, 64-69, 72, 74 
 "Bobby" (Lincoln's son), 38 
 Bradford, William, 16 
 Brooks, Noah, 53, 75 
 Browne, Robert H., 22, 23 
 
 Carpenter, F. B., 34, 54, 58 
 Catton, Bruce, 91 
 Chase, Salmon P., 86 
 Chiniquy, Father, 27ff., 32, 52, 
 
 53 
 Chittenden, L. E., 32, 67 
 Congressional Resolution on a 
 
 National Fast Day, 91 
 Collected Works of Abraham 
 
 Lincoln, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 
 24 (fn.),28 
 Colonization of slaves, 94 
 Cooper Institute Address, 58 
 Crockett, Davy, 85 
 
 Davis, Judge David, 58 
 Deming, Henry C, 70 
 Dissenters, 15 
 Douglas, Stephen, 33 
 Durand, Grace Garratt, 59 
 Durley, Williamson, 71 
 Duryea, J. T., 117 
 
 Elijah, 23, 62, 76, 82, 85 
 Elizabethtown, 22 
 Emancipation Proclamation, 33, 
 
 42, 86, 87 
 Emancipation of slaves, 94 
 Ezekiel, 76, 82, 109 
 
 Fell, Jesse W., 13, 72, 75, 79 
 Fredericksburg, 86 
 Friends Society of Iowa, 57 
 
 Gentryville, 36 
 Gettysburg, 29, 41 
 Giddings, Joshua, 44 
 Gillespie, Joseph, 114 
 Golden Rule, 68 
 Grant, Gen. Ulysses S., 96 
 Green view, 111., 19 
 Gridley, Asahel, 23 
 Gurney, Eliza, 32, 74 
 
 Habakkuk, 82, 110 
 
 Hanks, John, 50, 61, 66 
 
 Hay, John M., 73, 75 
 
 Herndon, William H., 12, 36, 50, 
 
 53, 61, 75, 79, 103 
 Hodgenville, 22 
 Holland, J. G., 11, 56 
 Holiness Code, 105 
 Hosea, 76, 82 
 
 Illinois legislature, 71 
 
 Independents, 15 
 
 Isaiah, 76, 81, 87, 105, 106 
 
 Jamestown, Va., 16 
 
 Jeremiah, 76, 81, 87, 105, 108, 
 
 111, 112ff. 
 Jesus, 12, 52, 53, 62, 64, 72, 76, 
 
 80, 82, 98, 103, 105, 110 
 John the Baptist, 23 
 
Lamon, Ward Hill, 12, 33, 
 
 39, 40, 61, 77, 79 
 Lee, Gen. Robert E., 42 
 Lincoln, Thomas, 22, 36 
 Lutheran Church, 55 
 
 Malachi, 45, 82 
 
 Matheny, James, 13, 79 
 
 Mayflower, 15 
 
 Maynard, Mrs. N. C, 59, 60 
 
 Menard County, 19 
 
 Micah, 82 
 
 Miner, Rev. N. W., 55, 56, 112, 
 
 117 
 Mobile, 96 
 
 Moses, 25, 32, 72, 76, 80, 81, 
 98, 105, 106 
 
 New Orleans, 50 
 Nicolay, John G., 73, 75 
 Nolin Creek Farm, 22 
 
 Old Testament, 39 
 Oldroyd, O. H., 117 
 Owens, Mary, 43 
 
 Paine, Thomas (Age of Reason), 
 
 24, 103 
 Parker, Theodore, 104 
 Peoria Lincoln-Douglas debate, 
 
 45, 46, 48, 101 
 Pierce, Henry L., 44 
 Pilgrims, 15 
 Plimouth Plantation, 16 
 Plymouth Rock, 15ff. 
 Pond brothers, 19 
 Premonitions, 37 
 Proclamation for a National Fast 
 
 Day, 91ff., 115 
 Prophets, 70, 80, 81 
 
 38, Quincy speech, 47 
 
 Randall, J. G., 18, 20 
 Rankin, Henry E., 25ff. 
 Raymond, Henry, 11 
 Rusling, Gen. J. F., 28 
 
 Sandburg, Carl, 11, 25, 113 
 Scrooby Dissenters, 15 
 Sheridan, Gen. Philip, in Shenan- 
 doah Valley, 96 
 Sherman, Gen. Wm. P., 41, 96 
 Shiloh, 55 
 Sickles, Gen. Daniel E., 25, 29, 
 
 30, 60 
 Slavery, 45 
 
 Society of Colonial Dames, 17 
 Speed, Joshua, 13, 27, 31, 51, 67 
 Speed, Mary, 66 
 Springfield, 23 
 Stoddard, Wm. O., 101 
 Sunderland, Byron, 32 
 
 "Tad" (Lincoln's son), 38 
 Ten Commandments, 68 
 Terre Haute, 38 
 Thomas, Benjamin P., 18, 20 
 Trenton, New Jersey, 84 
 
 Vicksburg, 30 
 
 Weed, Thurlow, 75 
 Weem's Life of Washington, 84 
 Welles, Gideon, 42, 87 
 Whitney, H. C, 12, 27, 30, 64 
 Wilson, James F., 56 
 
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