Abraham Lincoln: Was He A Christian? Part 18

"But Almighty G.o.d has granted to him that clearness of vision which he gives to the true-hearted, and enabled him to set his honest foot in that promised land of freedom which is to be the patrimony of all men, black and white; and from henceforth nations shall rise up and call him blessed. _We believe he has never made any religions profession_, but we see evidence that in pa.s.sing through this dreadful national crisis, he has been forced by the very anguish of the struggle to look upward, where any rational creature must look for support. No man in this agony has suffered more and deeper, albeit with a dry, weary, patient pain, that seemed to some like insensibility. 'Whichever way it ends,' he said to the writer, 'I have the impression that I shan't last long after it's over'" (Every-Day Life of Lincoln, pp. 575, 576).

Mrs. Stowe was herself an orthodox Christian communicant, but her store of good sense was too great to allow her to inflict her religious notions upon the unbelieving President, and, as a consequence, she did not see him rush out of the room with a Bible under his arm to--I was going to say--pray G.o.d to deliver him from an intolerable nuisance.

That the mighty burden which pressed upon Lincoln made him a sadder and more serious man at Was.h.i.+ngton than he had been before is true.

Christians are always mistaking sadness for penitence and seriousness for piety, and so they claim that he experienced a change of heart.

HON. JOHN P. USHER.

Christians and Theists are wont to speak of Lincoln's constant and firm reliance upon G.o.d. But it is a little remarkable that in the preparation of his greatest work he did not rely upon G.o.d. In the supreme moments of his life he forgot G.o.d. Dr. Barrows says: "When he wrote his immortal Proclamation, he invoked upon it... 'the gracious favor of Almighty G.o.d.'"

When he wrote his immortal Proclamation he had no thought of G.o.d. Judge Usher, a member of his Cabinet, tells us how G.o.d came to be invoked: "In the preparation of the final Proclamation of Emanc.i.p.ation, of January 1, 1863, Mr. Lincoln manifested great solicitude. He had his original draft printed and furnished each member of his Cabinet with a copy, with the request that each should examine, criticise, and suggest any amendments that occurred to them. At the next meeting of the Cabinet Mr. Chase said: 'This paper is of the utmost importance--greater than any state paper ever made by this Government. A paper of so much importance, and involving the liberties of so many people, ought, I think, to make some reference to Deity. I do not observe anything of the kind in it.' Mr.

Lincoln said: 'No; I overlooked it. Some reference to Deity must be inserted. Mr. Chase, won't you make a draft of what you think ought to be inserted?' Mr. Chase promised to do so, and at the next meeting presented the following: 'And upon this Act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice warranted by the Const.i.tution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty G.o.d'" (Reminiscences of Lincoln, pp. 91, 92).

HON. SALMON P. CHASE.

In the New York _Tribune_ of Feb. 22d, 1893, appeared an article on "How the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation was made," written by Mrs. Janet Chase Hoyt, daughter of Salmon P. Chase. In this article Mrs. Hoyt gives the following extract from a letter written to her by her father in 1867: "Looking over old papers, I found many of my memoranda, etc., of the war, and among them my draft of a proclamation of emanc.i.p.ation submitted to Mr. Lincoln the day before his own was issued. He asked all of us for suggestions in regard to its form and I submitted mine in writing, and among other sentences the close as it now stands, which he adopted from my draft with a modification. It may be interesting to you to see precisely what I said, and I copy it. You must remember that in the original draft there was no reference whatever to Divine or human sanction of the act. What I said was this at the conclusion of my letter: 'Finally, I respectfully suggest that on an occasion of such interest there can be no imputation of affectation against a solemn recognition of responsibility before men and before G.o.d, and that some such close as this will be proper: "And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice warranted by the Const.i.tution (and of duty demanded by the circ.u.mstances of the country), I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty G.o.d.'" Mr. Lincoln adopted this close, subst.i.tuting only for the words inclosed in parentheses these words: 'upon military necessity,' which I think was not an improvement.'"

MR. DEFREES.

During his Presidency the clergy pet.i.tioned him to recommend in his message to Congress an amendment to the Const.i.tution recognizing the existence of G.o.d. In preparing his message it seems that he inserted the request. Referring to this, Mr. Defrees, Superintendent of Public Printing during Lincoln's administration, says: "When I a.s.sisted him in reading the proof he struck it out, remarking that he had not made up his mind as to its propriety" (_Westminster Review_, Sept. 1891).

HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

In his "Travels Around the World," Seward records one of Lincoln's sarcastic hits at the doctrine of endless punishment. Speaking of England's jealousy of the United States in certain matters, Seward says:

"That hesitation and refusal recall President Lincoln's story of the intrusion of the Universalists into the town of Springfield. The several orthodox churches agreed that their pastors should preach down the heresy. One of them began his discourse with these emphatic words: 'My Brethren, there is a dangerous doctrine creeping in among us. There are those who are teaching that all men will be saved; but my dear brethren, _we_ hope for better things'" (Travels Around the World, p. 513).

JUDGE AARON GOODRICH.

Judge Goodrich, of Minnesota, Lincoln's minister to Belgium, who was one of the most accomplished scholars in the West, and an author of note, and who was on terms of close intimacy with Lincoln, both before and after he became President, says:

"He [Lincoln] believed in a G.o.d, i.e., Nature; but he did not believe in the Christ, nor did he ever affiliate with any church."

FREDERICK DOUGLAS.

Abraham Lincoln believed in a Supreme Being, but he did not believe in the G.o.d of Christians. The G.o.d of Christians was to him the most hideous monster that the imagination of man had ever conceived. There were two doctrines taught in connection with this deity which he especially abhorred--the doctrine of endless punishment, and the doctrine of vicarious atonement. That the innocent should suffer for the guilty--that G.o.d should permit his sinless son to be put to a cruel death to atone for the sins of wicked men--was to him an act of the most infamous injustice. His whole nature rebelled against the idea.

Frederick Douglas narrates an incident which, while it has no direct reference to this theological doctrine, yet tends to disclose his abhorrence of the idea. Mr. Douglas was engaged in recruiting colored troops and visited the President for the purpose of securing from him a pledge that colored soldiers would be allowed the same privileges accorded white soldiers. As the Confederate Government had declared that they would be treated as insurgents, he also urged upon him the necessity of retaliating, if colored prisoners were put to death. But to the latter proposition Lincoln would not listen. Mr. Douglas says:

"I shall never forget the benignant expression of his face, the tearful look of his eye and the quiver of his voice, when he deprecated a resort to retaliatory measures. He said he could not take men out and kill them in cold blood for what was done by others. If he could get hold of the persons who were guilty of killing the colored prisoners in cold blood, the case would be different, but _he could not kill the innocent for the guilty_" (Reminiscences of Lincoln, pp. 188, 189).

NICOLAY AND HAY'S "LIFE OF LINCOLN."

Of the numerous biographies of Lincoln that have been published, the authors of three, above all others, were specially qualified and possessed the necessary materials for a reliable biography of him--Herndon, Lamon, and Nicolay and Hay.

As Colonel Lamon's "Life" covers but a part of Lincoln's career, and as Mr. Herndon's "Life" deals more with his private life than with his public history, the biography of Lincoln that is likely to be accepted as the standard authority, is the work written by his private secretaries, Col. John G. Nicolay and Col. John Hay, which originally appeared in the _Century Magazine_. In the chapter on "Lincoln and the Churches," the religious phase of Lincoln's character is presented. In dealing with this question the authors have carefully avoided the rock upon which Lamon's "Life" was wrecked, and at the same time have refrained from repeating the misrepresentations of Holland and Arnold.

They do not offend the church by openly declaring that Lincoln was an Infidel; neither do they outrage truth by a.s.serting that he was a Christian. They affirm that during the latter years of his life he recognized a "superior power," but they do not intimate that he recognized Jesus Christ as this power, or any part of it, nor that he accepted the Bible as a special revelation of this power. In the following pa.s.sage they impliedly deny both his alleged Atheism and his alleged orthodoxy: "We have no purpose of attempting to formulate his creed; we question if he himself ever did so. There have been swift witnesses who, judging from expressions uttered in his callow youth, have called him an Atheist, and others who, with the most laudable intentions, have remembered improbable conversations which they bring forward to prove at once his orthodoxy and their own intimacy with him."

As it is not claimed that Lincoln was an Atheist, especially during the last years of his life, the above can very properly be brought forward in support of the negative of this question. In the last clause it is intended by the authors to administer a sarcastic rebuke to such witnesses as Brooks, Willets and Vinton, as well as deny the truthfulness of their statements.

In regard to Lincoln's youth, the following from Nicolay and Hay's work corroborates Lamon's statements and refutes those of Holland: "We are making no claim of early saints.h.i.+p for him. He was merely a good boy, with sufficient wickedness to prove his humanity.... It is also reported that he sometimes impeded the celerity of harvest operations by making burlesque speeches, or worse than that, comic sermons, from the top of some tempting stump, to the delight of the hired hands and the exasperation of the farmer."

HON. WARREN CHASE.

In 1888, I received a brief letter from Warren Chase pertaining to Lincoln's religious belief. Mr. Chase was acquainted with Lincoln in Was.h.i.+ngton. His letter has been mislaid, but I recall the princ.i.p.al points in it, which are as follows: 1. Lincoln was not a believer in Christianity; 2. He was much interested in the phenomena of Spiritualism.

HON. A. J. GROVER.

A. J. Grover, a life-long reformer, an old-time Abolitionist, an able advocate of human liberty, and a personal friend and admirer of Lincoln, in a letter written April 13, 1888, sends me the following as his testimony:

"Mr. Lincoln was not a religious man in the church sense. He was an Agnostic. He did not believe in the Bible as the infallible word of G.o.d.

He believed that Nature is G.o.d's word, given to all men in a universal language which is equally accessible to all, if all are equally intelligent. That this great lesson, G.o.d's word in his works, is infinite, and that men have only learned a very little of it, and have yet the most to learn. That the religions of all ages and peoples are only very feeble and imperfect attempts to solve the great problems involved in nature and her laws. Mr. Lincoln heartily disliked the narrow and silly pretensions of the church and priesthood who now falsely claim him, as they do Was.h.i.+ngton, Franklin and others.

"I knew Mr. Lincoln from the Douglas campaign in Illinois in 1858 until his death, and I never heard him on any occasion use a single pious expression in the sense of the church--not a word that indicated that he believed in the church theology. But I have heard him use many expressions that indicated that he did not know much, or pretend to know much, and had no settled convictions concerning the great questions that theology deals so flippantly with, and pretends to know all about. And I know to my own knowledge that the claim the church now sets up that he was a Christian is false--as false as it is in regard to Was.h.i.+ngton."

Writing to me again under date of Jan. 12, 1889, Mr. Grover says: "I knew Mr. Lincoln in Illinois and in Was.h.i.+ngton. I was in the War office, for a time, in a department which had charge of the President's books, so-called. I met him in pa.s.sing between the White House and the buildings then occupied by the War Department, almost every day. I often had to go to Mr. Stanton's office, and have often seen Mr. Lincoln there. I frequently had to go to the White House to see him. It was known to all of his acquaintances that he was a Liberal or nationalist."

JUDGE JAMES M. NELSON.

The last, and in some respects the most important, of our Was.h.i.+ngton witnesses is Judge James M. Nelson. Judge Nelson for many years has been a resident of New York, but he formerly lived in Kentucky and Illinois, Lincoln's native and adopted states. He is a son of Thomas Pope Nelson, a distinguished member of Congress from Kentucky, and the first United States Minister to Turkey. His great grandfather was Thomas Nelson, Jr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Virginia. He was long and intimately acquainted with Lincoln both in Illinois and Was.h.i.+ngton.

About the close of 1886, or early in 1887, Judge Nelson published his "Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln" in the Louisville, Ky., _Times_.

In reference to Lincoln's religious opinions he says: "In religion, Mr.

Lincoln was about of the same belief as Bob Ingersoll, and there is no account of his ever having changed. He went to church a few times with his family while he was President, but so far as I have been able to find out he remained an unbeliever." "Mr. Lincoln in his younger days wrote a book," says Judge Nelson, "in which he endeavored to prove the fallacy of the plan of salvation and the divinity of Christ."

I have yet another pa.s.sage from Judge Nelson's "Reminiscences" to present, a pa.s.sage which, more than anything else in this volume, perhaps, is calculated to provoke the wrath of Christian claimants.

To lend an air of plausibility to their claims these claimants are continually citing expressions of a seemingly semi-pious character occasionally to be met with in his speeches and state papers. These expressions, in a measure accounted for by Mr. Herndon, Colonel Lamon, and others, are still further explained by a revelation from his own lips. Judge Nelson says: "I asked him once about his fervent Thanksgiving Message and twitted him with being an unbeliever in what was published.

'Oh,' said he, 'that is some of Seward's nonsense, and it pleases the fools.'"

CHAPTER XIII. OTHER TESTIMONY AND OPINIONS

New York World--Boston Globe--Chicago Herald--Manford's Magazine--Herald and Review--Chambers's Encyclopedia-- Encyclopedia Britannica--People's Library of Information-- The World's Sages--Every-Day Life of Lincoln--Hon. Jesse W.

Weik--Chas. W. French--Cyrus O. Poole--A Citizen of Springfield--Henry Walker--Win. Bissett--Frederick Heath-- Rev. Edward Eggleston--Rev. Robert Collyer--Allen Thorndike Rice--Robert C. Adams--Theodore Stanton-Geo. M. McCrie--Gen.

M. M. Trumbull--Rev. David Swing, D.D.--Rev. J. Lloyd Jones-- Rev. John W. Chadwick.

The matter selected for this chapter is of a miscellaneous nature, consisting of the statements of those who, for the most part, are not known to have been personally acquainted with Lincoln. It embraces the opinions of journalists, encyclopedists, biographers, and others. If their words cannot be accepted as the testimony of competent witnesses, they may at least be regarded as the verdict of honest jurors.

NEW YORK WORLD.

In the New York _World_, fifteen years ago, appeared the following: "While it may fairly be said that Mr. Lincoln entertained many Christian sentiments, it cannot be said that he was himself a Christian in faith or practice. He was no disciple of Jesus of Nazareth. He did not believe in his divinity and was not a member of his church. He was at first a writing Infidel of the school of Paine and Volney, and afterward a talking Infidel of the school of Parker and Channing."

Alluding to the friendly att.i.tude he a.s.sumed toward the church and Christianity during the war, this article concludes:

"If the churches had grown cold--if the Christians had taken a stand aloof--that instant the Union would have perished; Mr. Lincoln regulated his religious manifestations accordingly. He declared frequently that he would do _anything_ to save the Union, and among the many things he did was the partial concealment of his individual religious opinions.

Is this a blot upon his fame? Or shall we all agree that it was a conscientious and patriotic sacrifice?"

BOSTON GLOBE.