Presidents and Faith: Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky and raised in his parents' Baptist faith, preached with an evangelistic fervor accompanied by a stern Calvinist theology of predestination. Lincoln never fully adopted his parents' beliefs, and while he read and quoted from the bible regularly, he was never a member of any church.
Lincoln's parents, who moved from Kentucky, were members of the Little Pigeon Church of Christ near Lincoln City, Indiana, in 1823. In 1831, Lincoln moved to New Salem, Illinois, a community which had no churches. At least historian has written that Lincoln never joined a church and never made a clear profession of Christian belief. According to Lincoln's friend Jesse Fell, Lincoln never really talked about his religious beliefs, and what he did say was largely critical of organized religion.
Accusations of hostility to Christianity almost cost him his congressional bid, and it is said that this experience taught him to keep his beliefs private. In 1834, according to Lincoln's friend, law partner and biographer Billy Herndon, Lincoln wrote an essay that challenged orthodox Christianity modeled after Thomas Paine's book The Age of Reason. The essay was never published. It is said that a friend of Lincoln's burned it to protect him from public attack and ridicule.
In 1846, Lincoln ran for congress against Peter Cartwright, the noted evangelist who I referred to in the last article in this series. Cartwright tried to make Lincoln's lack of faith a major issue of the campaign. Cartwright called Lincoln an "infidel" and in response, Lincoln defended himself, publishing a hand-bill to "directly contradict" the charge made against him. Published on July 31, 1846, Lincoln said:
"A charge having got into circulation in some of the neighborhoods of this District, in substance that I am an open scoffer at Christianity, I have by the advice of some friends concluded to notice the subject in this form. That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular. It is true that in early life I was inclined to believe in what I understand is called the "Doctrine of Necessity"—that is, that the human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control; and I have sometimes (with one, two or three, but never publicly) tried to maintain this opinion in argument. The habit of arguing thus however, I have, entirely left off for more than five years. And I add here, I have always understood this same opinion to be held by several of the Christian denominations. The foregoing, is the whole truth, briefly stated, in relation to myself, upon this subject.
"I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter of eternal consequences, between him and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live. If, then, I was guilty of such conduct, I should blame no man who should condemn me for it; but I do blame those, whoever they may be, who falsely put such a charge in circulation against me."
Herndon wrote that Lincoln admired Thomas Paine and Voltaire. Herndon said that Lincoln thought the works of authors like Darwin and Spencer "entirely too heavy for an ordinary mind to digest" even though the ideas intrigued him.
In his first inaugural address, spoke about the notion that God was on the side of north or south in the struggle over secession. He said:
"Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of 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 of the American people... 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 difficulty."
During the most difficult days of the Civil War and his presidency, Lincoln's words often contained spiritual themes. On Thursday, February 20, 1862, at 5:00 p.m., Lincoln's eleven-year-old son, William Wallace Lincoln (called "Willie"), died at the White House. Lincoln's grief was intense. It was said that he isolated himself in his office and wept all day. Several people reported that Lincoln told them that his feelings about religion changed at this time. When his son died, Lincoln reportedly said, "May God live in all. He was too good for this earth. The good Lord has called him home. I know that he is much better off in Heaven."
In response to her grief, Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, turned to spiritualism, a popular past-time during this era. She used the services of mediums and spiritualists to try to contact Willie. Lincoln is alleged to have attended at least one seance at the White House at this time with his wife.
Lincoln is reported to have asked a soldier, following Willie's death, "Do you ever find yourself talking with the dead? Since Willie's death, I catch myself every day, involuntarily talking with him as if he were with me."
At this time, the war was not going well for the Union. General George McClellan's failure in the Peninsula Campaign came about within months after Willie's death, followed by Robert E. Lee's impressive victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run. According to Salmon Chase, as Lincoln was preparing to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln said, "I made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee was driven back from Maryland I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves." It was at this time that 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 purpose of either party -- and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true -- that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.
In the fall of 1863, after the Union victory at Gettysburg, Lincoln issued the first Federally mandated Thanksgiving Day to be kept on the last Thursday in November. Commenting on the successes of the past year, Lincoln said:
"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."
On March 4, 1865, Lincoln once again took the oath of office. In his second Inaugural Address, Lincoln spoke about the war, referring to how both sides called on God's help. He concluded his address with these words:
"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?
"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
A month later, Lincoln was shot on Good Friday, and died the day before Easter Sunday. Some ministers privately lamented the fact that he had never formally joined a church. Following Lincoln's assassination, there were competing biographies on the subject of whether or not Lincoln was a Christian. Noah Brooks, a newspaperman, and a friend and biographer of Lincoln's, stated:
"I have had many conversations with Mr. Lincoln, which were more or less of a religious character, and while I never tried to draw anything like a statement of his views from him, yet he freely expressed himself to me as having 'a hope of blessed immortality through Jesus Christ.' His views seemed to settle so naturally around that statement, that I considered no other necessary. His language seemed not that of an inquirer, but of one who had a prior settled belief in the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion.
"Once or twice, speaking to me of the change which had come upon him, he said, while he could not fix any definite time, yet it was after he came here, and I am very positive that in his own mind he identified it with about the time of Willie's death. He said, too, that after he went to the White House he kept up the habit of daily prayer. Sometimes he said it was only ten words, but those ten words he had. There is no possible reason to suppose that Mr. Lincoln would ever deceive me as to his religious sentiments. In many conversations with him, I absorbed the firm conviction that Mr. Lincoln was at heart a Christian man, believed in the Savior, and was seriously considering the step which would formally connect him with the visible church on earth.
"Certainly, any suggestion as to Mr. Lincoln's skepticism or Infidelity, to me who knew him intimately from 1862 till the time of his death, is a monstrous fiction, a shocking perversion."
Lincoln's parents, who moved from Kentucky, were members of the Little Pigeon Church of Christ near Lincoln City, Indiana, in 1823. In 1831, Lincoln moved to New Salem, Illinois, a community which had no churches. At least historian has written that Lincoln never joined a church and never made a clear profession of Christian belief. According to Lincoln's friend Jesse Fell, Lincoln never really talked about his religious beliefs, and what he did say was largely critical of organized religion.
Accusations of hostility to Christianity almost cost him his congressional bid, and it is said that this experience taught him to keep his beliefs private. In 1834, according to Lincoln's friend, law partner and biographer Billy Herndon, Lincoln wrote an essay that challenged orthodox Christianity modeled after Thomas Paine's book The Age of Reason. The essay was never published. It is said that a friend of Lincoln's burned it to protect him from public attack and ridicule.
In 1846, Lincoln ran for congress against Peter Cartwright, the noted evangelist who I referred to in the last article in this series. Cartwright tried to make Lincoln's lack of faith a major issue of the campaign. Cartwright called Lincoln an "infidel" and in response, Lincoln defended himself, publishing a hand-bill to "directly contradict" the charge made against him. Published on July 31, 1846, Lincoln said:
"A charge having got into circulation in some of the neighborhoods of this District, in substance that I am an open scoffer at Christianity, I have by the advice of some friends concluded to notice the subject in this form. That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular. It is true that in early life I was inclined to believe in what I understand is called the "Doctrine of Necessity"—that is, that the human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control; and I have sometimes (with one, two or three, but never publicly) tried to maintain this opinion in argument. The habit of arguing thus however, I have, entirely left off for more than five years. And I add here, I have always understood this same opinion to be held by several of the Christian denominations. The foregoing, is the whole truth, briefly stated, in relation to myself, upon this subject.
"I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter of eternal consequences, between him and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live. If, then, I was guilty of such conduct, I should blame no man who should condemn me for it; but I do blame those, whoever they may be, who falsely put such a charge in circulation against me."
Herndon wrote that Lincoln admired Thomas Paine and Voltaire. Herndon said that Lincoln thought the works of authors like Darwin and Spencer "entirely too heavy for an ordinary mind to digest" even though the ideas intrigued him.
In his first inaugural address, spoke about the notion that God was on the side of north or south in the struggle over secession. He said:
"Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of 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 of the American people... 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 difficulty."
During the most difficult days of the Civil War and his presidency, Lincoln's words often contained spiritual themes. On Thursday, February 20, 1862, at 5:00 p.m., Lincoln's eleven-year-old son, William Wallace Lincoln (called "Willie"), died at the White House. Lincoln's grief was intense. It was said that he isolated himself in his office and wept all day. Several people reported that Lincoln told them that his feelings about religion changed at this time. When his son died, Lincoln reportedly said, "May God live in all. He was too good for this earth. The good Lord has called him home. I know that he is much better off in Heaven."
In response to her grief, Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, turned to spiritualism, a popular past-time during this era. She used the services of mediums and spiritualists to try to contact Willie. Lincoln is alleged to have attended at least one seance at the White House at this time with his wife.
Lincoln is reported to have asked a soldier, following Willie's death, "Do you ever find yourself talking with the dead? Since Willie's death, I catch myself every day, involuntarily talking with him as if he were with me."
At this time, the war was not going well for the Union. General George McClellan's failure in the Peninsula Campaign came about within months after Willie's death, followed by Robert E. Lee's impressive victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run. According to Salmon Chase, as Lincoln was preparing to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln said, "I made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee was driven back from Maryland I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves." It was at this time that 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 purpose of either party -- and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true -- that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.
In the fall of 1863, after the Union victory at Gettysburg, Lincoln issued the first Federally mandated Thanksgiving Day to be kept on the last Thursday in November. Commenting on the successes of the past year, Lincoln said:
"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."
On March 4, 1865, Lincoln once again took the oath of office. In his second Inaugural Address, Lincoln spoke about the war, referring to how both sides called on God's help. He concluded his address with these words:
"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?
"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
A month later, Lincoln was shot on Good Friday, and died the day before Easter Sunday. Some ministers privately lamented the fact that he had never formally joined a church. Following Lincoln's assassination, there were competing biographies on the subject of whether or not Lincoln was a Christian. Noah Brooks, a newspaperman, and a friend and biographer of Lincoln's, stated:
"I have had many conversations with Mr. Lincoln, which were more or less of a religious character, and while I never tried to draw anything like a statement of his views from him, yet he freely expressed himself to me as having 'a hope of blessed immortality through Jesus Christ.' His views seemed to settle so naturally around that statement, that I considered no other necessary. His language seemed not that of an inquirer, but of one who had a prior settled belief in the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion.
"Once or twice, speaking to me of the change which had come upon him, he said, while he could not fix any definite time, yet it was after he came here, and I am very positive that in his own mind he identified it with about the time of Willie's death. He said, too, that after he went to the White House he kept up the habit of daily prayer. Sometimes he said it was only ten words, but those ten words he had. There is no possible reason to suppose that Mr. Lincoln would ever deceive me as to his religious sentiments. In many conversations with him, I absorbed the firm conviction that Mr. Lincoln was at heart a Christian man, believed in the Savior, and was seriously considering the step which would formally connect him with the visible church on earth.
"Certainly, any suggestion as to Mr. Lincoln's skepticism or Infidelity, to me who knew him intimately from 1862 till the time of his death, is a monstrous fiction, a shocking perversion."