Abraham Lincoln: Was He A Christian? Part 11

I have thus far a.s.sumed that Stuart and Matheny really wrote the letters of disclaimer addressed to Reed. Mr. Reed states that he is "amazed to find" that they did not write the statements attributed to them by Lamon. The reader is by this time sufficiently familiar with this reverend gentleman's methods that he will _not_ be "amazed to find" that Stuart and Matheny did not write these disclaimers. I now affirm that James H. Matheny did not write a word of the letter purporting to have been written by him. _It was written by the Rev. J. A. Reed!_ We have not the expressed declaration of Mr. Stuart that this is true of the letter imputed to him, but there is other evidence which makes it clearly apparent that this letter was also written by Mr. Reed.

Nor is this all. I shall now endeavor to show that the greater part of the evidence presented by Reed, in his lecture, was composed and written by himself. Let us take the four letters credited respectively to Edwards, Lewis, Stuart, and Matheny. I shall attempt to demonstrate the common origin of these letters, first, by their form; secondly, by the language of their contents.

The different forms employed in epistolary correspondence are numerous, far more numerous than generally supposed. To ill.u.s.trate: four hundred letters, written by as many different persons, and all addressed to the same person, were, without examination, divided into one hundred parcels of four letters each. They were then examined in regard to the form employed by the writer. The heading, the address, the introduction, and the subscription were noted--no attention being paid to the body of the letter, or the signature. In not one of these one hundred parcels were found four letters having the same form. The heading of these letters exhibited nine different forms; the address, fourteen; the introduction, eight; and the subscription, eleven.

Again, nearly every writer employs certain idioms of language that are peculiar to him, and which reveal his ident.i.ty, even though he tries to conceal it.

Let us now inst.i.tute a brief a.n.a.lysis of the four letters under consideration. Errors will be noticed, not for the purpose of reflecting upon the literary attainments of the writer, but solely with a view of discovering his ident.i.ty. These are mostly of a trivial character, confined to marks of punctuation, etc.; and it is a recognized fact that a majority of educated persons, including many professional writers, are more or less deficient in the art of punctuation. In proof of the common authors.h.i.+p of these four letters, the following reasons are submitted:

1. In all of them we recognize a stiff formality--a studied effort to conform to one ideal standard.

2. All of them were written at Springfield, Ill., and all omit the name of the state.

3. In each of them, the day of the month is followed by the suffix, "th." This, if not wholly improper, is not common usage. Had these letters been written by the four persons to whom they are ascribed, at least three of them would have omitted it.

4 In all, but one, the address is "Rev. J. A. Reed," and in the exception the writer merely subst.i.tutes "Jas." for "J."

5. In each of them the address is followed by a colon instead of a comma, the proper mark to use. Had they been written by four persons, it is possible that a part, or even all, would have made an error, but it is highly improbable that all would have made the _same_ error.

6. In these letters, the introductory words are uniformly "Dear Sir"--the most common form of introduction, and the one that a writer, in drafting a letter addressed to himself, would most naturally employ.

7. In every instance, the introduction is followed by a dash instead of a colon--a uniformity of error, again.

8. In the subscription, the term, "Yours truly," is invariably used, except in the Lewis letter, which concludes with "Yours, etc."

9. The Edwards letter and the Lewis letter begin with the same idea, expressed in nearly the same words. Edwards is made to say, "A short time after the Rev. Dr. Smith," etc.; and Lewis--"Not long after Dr.

Smith."

10. Omitting the introductory sentence in the Stuart letter, which is merely the expansion of an idea used in writing the Matheny letter on the preceding day, the Stuart and Matheny letters begin with the same idea. Stuart says: "The language of that statement is not mine; it was not written by me." Matheny says: "The language attributed to me... is not from my pen. I did not write it." Reed himself uses substantially the same language that is ascribed to them. Had their statements, as published in Lamon's work, been forgeries, or grossly inaccurate, they might have used the language quoted above. Under the circ.u.mstances they would not have used it. Major Stuart and Colonel Matheny were lawyers, not pettifoggers.

11. These prefatory sentences of Stuart and Matheny both begin with the same words--"the language."

12. In both the Edwards and Lewis letters, reference is made to a theological work which Dr. Smith is said to have written. The writer of neither letter is able to state the name of the book; Dr. Reed is unable to state the name of it; Dr. Smith himself does not mention the name of it; but he does plainly state that it was a work on the Bible. For "the business he had on hand," however, it suited Reed's purpose better to give a semi-erroneous impression of its character, and so he affirms that it was a work on "the evidences of Christianity." Curiously enough, in the Edwards letter and again in the Lewis letter, the book is described as a work on "the evidences of Christianity."

13. The Edwards letter reports Lincoln as saying: "I have been reading _a work of Dr. Smith on the evidences of Christianity_." The Lewis letter represents him as saying that "He had seen and partially read _a work of Dr. Smith on the evidences of Christianity_" Here are ten consecutive words in the two letters identical.

14. Mr. Reed, in his lecture, never once uses the word "Christianity,"

except as above noticed to describe Dr. Smith's book; he always uses the words "the Christian religion"--employing this term no less than seven times. This usage is not common. An examination of various theological writings shows that "Christianity" is used twenty times where "the Christian religion" is used once. Yet in these letters the word "Christianity" is not to be found, except in the same sense as used by Dr. Reed, while "the Christian religion" occurs in each of the four letters.

15. "The truth of the Christian religion" is a favorite phrase with Reed, occurring three times in his lecture. This phrase also occurs three times in these letters--once in the Edwards letter, and twice in the Stuart letter.

16. Reed has much to say about Lincoln's "life and religious sentiments;" in fact, his lecture is ent.i.tled, "The Later Life and Religious Sentiments of Abraham Lincoln." In the Matheny letter, too, we find "Mr. Lincoln's life and religious sentiments."

17. The words "earlier" and "later" are frequently used by Reed in connection with Lincoln's life. The same words are used in the Stuart and Matheny letters, and in the same connection.

18. The Stuart letter is, for the most part, devoted to the narration of "some facts" which Mr. Stuart is said to have presented to Mr. Herndon, beginning with this: "That Eddie, a child of Mr. Lincoln, died in 1848 or 1849," etc. Now, Mr. Stuart well knew that, during all this time, Mr.

Herndon was the intimate a.s.sociate of Lincoln and thoroughly familiar with every event in his history. The "facts" given in this letter are not such as Mr. Stuart would have communicated to Mr. Herndon, but they are such as Mr. Reed would naturally desire to place before the public.

19. Nothing in Dr. Reed's career has excited his vanity more than the fact that he was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Springfield--the church which Lincoln once attended. Consequently, the "First Presbyterian Church" is a conspicuous object in his lecture, and nowhere is it more conspicuous than in these letters. In the Stuart letter it appears three times, and the writer never fails to state that it was the "First Presbyterian Church"--the church of which Dr. Reed was pastor.

20. According to the principle of accretion, if two articles or letters are written on the same subject, the second will usually be longer than the first. This is true of these letters. The Lewis letter, relating to Smith's reputed conversion of Lincoln, was written after the Edwards letter relative to the same subject, and is longer. The Stuart disclaimer, which is the longer of the two, was written after the Matheny disclaimer.

From the foregoing, is it not clearly evident that these four letters were all written by the same person? If so, then knowing that Dr. Reed wrote one of them, the Matheny letter, does it not necessarily follow that he wrote them all?

In the Gurley testimony, such expressions as "the Christian religion"

and "the truth of the Christian religion," together with the Reed story concerning Lincoln's intention of making a profession of religion, reveal the authors.h.i.+p of this testimony also.

CHAPTER IX. TESTIMONY OF THE REMAINING WITNESSES PRESENTED BY LAMON

Dr. C. H. Ray--Wm. H. Hannah, Esq.--James W. Keys--Hon.

Jesse W. Fell--Col. John G. Nicolay--Hon. David Davis--Mrs.

Mary Lincoln--Injustice to Mrs. Lincoln--Answer to Reed's Pretended Refutation of the Testimony of Lamon's Witnesses.

Seven of Lamon's witnesses--Ray, Hannah, Keys, Fell, Nicolay, Davis, and Mrs. Lincoln--remain to testify. The testimony of these witnesses will now be presented.

DR. C. H. RAY.

Dr. Kay, editor of the Chicago Tribune, a prominent figure in Illinois politics thirty years ago, and a personal friend and admirer of Lincoln, testifies as follows:

"You knew Mr. Lincoln far better than I did, though I knew him well; and you have served up his leading characteristics in a way that I should despair of doing, if I should try. I have only one thing to ask: that you do not give Calvinistic theology a chance to claim him as one of its saints and martyrs. He went to the Old School Church; but, in spite of that outward a.s.sent to the horrible dogmas of the sect, I have reason from himself to know that his 'vital purity.' if that means belief in the impossible, was of a negative sort" (Lamon's Life of Lincoln, pp.

489, 490).

Dr. Kay states that Lincoln held substantially the same theological opinions as those held by Theodore Parker.

WILLIAM H. HANNAH.

A leading member of the Bloomington bar, when Lincoln practiced there, was Wm. H. Hannah. He was an honest, truthful man, and knew Lincoln well. Concerning Lincoln's views on the doctrine of endless punishment, Mr. Hannah says:

"Since 1856 Mr. Lincoln told me that he was a kind of immortalist; but that he never could bring himself to believe in eternal punishment; that man lived but a little while here, and that, if eternal punishment were man's doom, he should spend that little life in vigilant and ceaseless preparation by never-ending prayer" (Life of Lincoln, p. 489).

JAMES W. KEYS.

Mr. Jas. W. Keys, an old and respected citizen of Springfield, who became acquainted with Lincoln soon after his removal there, and who had many conversations with him on the subject of theology, says:

"As to the Christian theory, that Christ is G.o.d, or equal to the Creator, he said that it had better be taken for granted; for, by the test of reason, we might become Infidels on that subject, for evidence of Christ's divinity came to us in a somewhat doubtful shape" (Life of Lincoln, p. 490).

HON. JESSE W. FELL.

Jesse W. Fell, who died at Bloomington in the spring of 1887, was one of the best known and most highly respected citizens of Illinois. He was Secretary of the Republican State Central Committee during the memorable Lincoln-Douglas campaign, and was largely instrumental in bringing Lincoln forward as a candidate for the Presidency in 1860. It was for him that Lincoln wrote an autobiographical sketch of his life, which formed the basis of his campaign biographies, the _facsimile_ of which appears in Lamon's "Life of Lincoln," and in the "Lincoln Memorial Alb.u.m." Mr. Fell was a Christian of the Unitarian denomination, and there were few men for whom Lincoln had a more profound respect. The following is his testimony:

"Though everything relating to the character of this extraordinary personage is of interest, and should be fairly stated to the world, I enter upon the performance of this duty--for so I regard it--with some reluctance, arising from the fact that, in stating my convictions on the subject, I must necessarily place myself in opposition to quite a number who have written on this topic before me, and whose views largely pre-occupy the public mind. This latter fact, whilst contributing to my embarra.s.sment on this subject, is, perhaps, the strongest reason, however, why the truth in this matter should be fully disclosed; and I therefore yield to your request. If there were any traits of character that stood out in bold relief in the person of Mr. Lincoln, they were those of truth and candor. He was utterly incapable of insincerity, or professing views on this or any other subject he did not entertain.

Knowing such to be his true character, that insincerity, much more duplicity, were traits wholly foreign to his nature, many of his old friends were not a little surprised at finding, in some of the biographies of this great man, statements concerning his religious opinions so utterly at variance with his known sentiments. True, he may have changed or modified those sentiments after his removal from among us, though this is hardly reconcilable with the history of the man, and his entire devotion to public matters during his four years' residence at the national capital. It is possible, however, that this may be the proper solution of this conflict of opinions; or, it may be, that, with no intention on the part of anyone to mislead the public mind, those who have represented him as believing in the popular theological views of the times may have misapprehended him, as experience shows to be quite common where no special effort has been made to attain critical accuracy on a subject of this nature. This is the more probable from the well-known fact that Mr. Lincoln seldom communicated to anyone his views on this subject. But, be this as it may, I have no hesitation whatever in saying that, whilst he held many opinions in common with the great ma.s.s of Christian believers, he did not believe in what are regarded as the orthodox or evangelical views of Christianity.

"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 punishments (as they are popularly called) and many other subjects, he held opinions utterly at variance with what are usually taught in the church. I should say that his expressed views on these and kindred topics were such as, in the estimation 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 circ.u.mstance 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 G.o.d, and the brotherhood of man.' He fully believed in a superintending and overruling 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 is exercised.