Project Gutenberg's The Soul of Abraham Lincoln, by William Eleazar Barton This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Soul of Abraham Lincoln Author: William Eleazar Barton Release Date: December 22, 2019 [EBook #60996] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUL OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN *** Produced by MFR, Alan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) THE SOUL OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN BY WILLIAM E. BARTON AUTHOR OF "A HERO IN HOMESPUN," "THE PRAIRIE SCHOONER," "PINE KNOT," ETC. NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO MY FOUR SONS BRUCE, CHARLES, FREDERICK, ROBERT AND MY SON-IN-LAW, CLYDE [Pg vii] PREFACE The author is aware that he is dipping his net into a stream already darkened by too much ink. The fact that there are so many books on the religion of Abraham Lincoln is a chief reason why there should be one more. Books on this subject are largely polemic works which followed the publication of Holland's biography in 1865, and multiplied in the controversies growing out of that and the Lamon and Herndon biographies in 1872 and 1889 respectively. Within that period and until the death of Mr. Herndon in 1892 and the publication of his revised biography of Lincoln in 1893, there was little opportunity for a work on this subject that was not distinctively controversial. The time has come for a more dispassionate view. Of the large number of other books dealing with this topic, nearly or quite all had their origin in patriotic or religious addresses, which, meeting with favor when orally delivered, were more or less superficially revised and printed, in most instances for audiences not greatly larger than those that heard them spoken. Many of these are excellent little books, though making no pretense of original and thorough investigation. Of larger and more comprehensive works there are a few, but they do not attempt the difficult and necessary task of critical analysis. So much has been said, and much of it with such intensity of feeling, on the subject of Lincoln's religion, that a number of the more important biographies, including the great work of Nicolay and Hay, say as little on the subject as possible. The author of this volume brings no sweeping criticism against those who have preceded him in the same field. He has eagerly sought out the books and speeches of all such within his reach, and is indebted to many of them for valuable suggestions. A Bibliography at the end of this volume contains a list of those to whom the author knows himself to be chiefly indebted, but his obligation goes much farther than he can hope to acknowledge in print. With all due regard for these earlier authors, the present writer justifies himself in the publication of this volume by the following considerations, which seems to him to differ in important respects from earlier works in the same field: (1) He has made an effort to provide an adequate historical background for the study of the religious life of Abraham Lincoln in the successive periods of his life; and without immediately going too deeply into the material of the main subject, to relate the man to his environment. In this the author has been aided not only by books and interviews with men who knew Lincoln, but by some years of personal experience in communities where the social, educational, and religious conditions were in all essential respects similar to those in which Mr. Lincoln lived during two important epochs of his career. The author was not born in this environment, but he spent seven years of his youth and young manhood as a teacher and preacher in a region which give him somewhat exceptional opportunities for a discriminating judgment. (2) The author has assembled what is, so far as he knows, all the essential evidence that has appeared in print concerning the religious life and opinions of Mr. Lincoln, a larger body, as he believes, than any previous writer has compiled. He has added to this all evidence available to him from written and personal testimony. He has subjected this evidence to a critical analysis, in an effort to determine the degree of credibility with which its several portions may reasonably be received. The author is not unaware that this is the most disputable, as it is the most difficult part of his task, and, as he believes, the most valuable part of it. Unless some such analysis is made, the evidence resolves itself into chaos. (3) Several entirely new avenues of investigation have been opened and lines of evidence adduced which find no place in any previous book on Mr. Lincoln's religious life, and very scant reference, and that without investigation, in one or two of the biographies. (4) The book also contains a constructive argument, setting forth the conviction to which the author has come with regard to the faith of Abraham Lincoln. It is entirely possible that some readers will find themselves in essential agreement with the author in the earlier parts of the book, but will dissent in whole or in part from his own inferences. Whether the reader agrees or disagrees with the author in his conclusions, he will find in this book some material not elsewhere available for the formation of an independent judgment. Nevertheless the author counts himself justified not only in adducing the evidence but in stating frankly the conclusion which to his mind this evidence supports. This book treats of the religion of Abraham Lincoln; but it does not consider his religion as wholly expressed in his theological opinions. Important as it is that a man should think correctly on all subjects, and especially on a subject of such transcendent value, religion is more than a matter of opinion. We cannot adequately consider religion apart from life. Abraham Lincoln's life was an evolution, and so was his religion. In a way which this volume will seek to set forth, Lincoln was himself a believer in evolution, and his life and religion were in accord with this process as he held it. This book is, therefore, more than an essay on the religion of Lincoln, unless religion be understood as inclusive of all that is normal in life. It deals, therefore, with the life, as well as with the opinions, of Lincoln; and it considers both life and opinion as in process of development in each of the successive stages of his career. In this respect the present book may claim some distinctive place in the literature of this subject. Other books have drawn sharp contrasts between the supposed religious opinions of Lincoln's youth and those which he is believed to have cherished later. This book undertakes what may be termed a study of the evolution of the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln. The author is not aware that this has been done before in quite this way. The author acknowledges his obligations to many friends for their assistance in the preparation of this volume. Mr. Jesse [Pg viii] [Pg ix] [Pg x] W. Weik, of Greencastle, Indiana, associate of Mr. Herndon in the preparation of his Life of Lincoln, and owner of the Herndon manuscripts, has been generous to me. Mrs. Clark E. Carr, of Galesburg, Illinois, widow of my honored friend, and the friend of Lincoln, Colonel Carr, author of "Lincoln at Gettysburg," has placed at my disposal all her husband's books and papers. Mr. Judd Stewart, of New York City, owner of one of the largest collections of Lincolniana, has assisted me. President John W. Cook of the Northern Illinois State Normal School has suggested important lines of research. Mr. John E. Burton, of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, whose collection of Lincoln books was once the largest in America, has sold me some of his chief treasures, and imparted to me much of the fruit of his experience. Mr. O. H. Oldroyd, of Washington, owner of the famous Lincoln Collection, and custodian of the house where Lincoln died, has, on two visits, placed all that he has within my reach. To these, and to a considerable number of men and women who knew Lincoln while he was yet living, and to many others whom I cannot name, my thanks are due. I regret that one great collection, consisting, however, more largely of relics than of manuscripts, is so largely packed away that it has not been of much use to me. Mr. Charles F. Gunther of Chicago has, however, produced for me such Lincoln material as seemed to him to bear upon my quest, and I acknowledge his courtesy. Mr. Oliver P. Barrett of Chicago has given me great joy in the examination of his fine collection of Lincoln manuscripts. I have spent a few pleasant and profitable hours in the collection of Honorable Daniel Fish, the noted Lincoln bibliographer, of Minneapolis, and thank him for his friendly interest in this undertaking. Among libraries, my largest debt is to those of the Chicago Historical Society, the Illinois State Historical Society at Springfield, and the Library of Congress in Washington. In each of these I have had not only unrestricted access to the whole Lincoln material possessed by them, but the most generous and courteous assistance. I have examined every rare Lincoln book, and many manuscripts, in these three collections. I have had occasion also to use the Chicago Public Library, the Newberry Library, and the Library of the University of Chicago, as well as those of Chicago Theological Seminary and McCormick Theological Seminary. In certain important local matters, I have been assisted by the libraries of Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois, the Public Library of Peoria, Illinois, and the library of Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky. I also visited the Public Library of Louisville, with its historical collections, but most that I found there I had already consulted elsewhere. The New York Public Library and the Library of Columbia University supplemented my research at a few important points. The Oak Park Public Library has been constantly at my service. The Library of Berea College, Kentucky, has given me very valuable assistance in finding for me a large amount of periodical literature bearing on my study. The five great Boston libraries would have yielded me much had I come to them earlier. While the book was undergoing revision, I visited the Athenaeum, the Massachusetts State, the Boston Public, the Massachusetts Historical, and the Harvard University libraries. It was gratifying to discover that even in the last named of these, enriched as it is with the collections of Charles Sumner, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and the Lincoln collection of my friend Alonzo Rothschild, author of "Lincoln, Master of Men," there was practically nothing relating to this subject which I had not already seen and examined. In the Massachusetts Historical Library, however, I discovered some manuscripts, and that quite unexpectedly, which afford me much aid in a collateral study. In addition to the foregoing, I have my own Lincoln library, which, while a working collection rather than one of incunabula, and modest in size as compared with some that I have used, is still not small. The Bibliography at the end of the volume is virtually a catalogue of my own Lincoln books. Claims of completeness are dangerous, and I make none. But I have been diligent in pursuit of all probable sources of knowledge of this subject, and I do not now know where to look for any other book of manuscript that would greatly alter or add to the material which this book contains. I am glad, therefore, at this stage, to share the fruits of my investigations with the reader. W. E. B. The First Church Study Oak Park, Illinois [Pg xi] [Pg xii] [Pg xiii] CONTENTS PART I: A STUDY OF RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTS CHAPTER PAGE I The Conflict of Testimony 19 II Why the Biographies Differ 24 III The Environment of Lincoln's Boyhood 29 IV The Environments of Lincoln's Young Manhood 51 V The Environment of Lincoln's Life in Springfield 71 VI The Environment of Lincoln's Life in Washington 86 PART II: AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVIDENCE VII The Rules of Evidence 101 VIII The Bateman Incident 114 IX The Lamon Biography 128 X The Reed Lecture 135 XI The Herndon Lectures, Letters, and Biography 140 XII Lincoln's Burnt Book 146 XIII "The Christian's Defence" 156 XIV"Vestiges of Creation" 166 XV Other Formative Books 172 XVI Chittenden and Chiniquy 188 XVII The Beecher and Sickles Incidents 198 XVIII "Behind the Scenes" 203 XIX From the Housetops and in the Closet 210 PART III: THE RELIGION OF LINCOLN XX What Lincoln Was Not 225 XXI Why Did Lincoln Never Join a Church? 244 XXII The Constructive Argument 260 XXIII The Creed of Abraham Lincoln 291 APPENDICES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY I Extract from Newton Bateman's Lecture on Lincoln with Variants of the Springfield Farewell Address 303 II "High-Handed Outrage at Utica" By Artemus Ward 307 III "The Conversion of Abraham Lincoln" By the Rev. Edward L. Watson 309 IV The Reed Lecture 314 V Two Herndon Letters Concerning Lincoln's Religion 336 VI The Irwin Article, with Letters 341 VII "The Christian's Defence" With full chapter analysis 358 VIII Lincoln and the Churches By Nicolay and Hay 377 IX"Bound together in Christianity and Patriotism" Hitherto unpublished address of Lincoln 385 Bibliography 387 Index 401 [Pg xiv] [Pg 19] PART I: A STUDY OF RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTS CHAPTER I THE CONFLICT OF TESTIMONY Of no other American have so many biographies been written as of Abraham Lincoln. No other question concerning his life has evoked more interest than that of his religious faith and experience. What Abraham Lincoln believed has been told by many who knew him and whose varied relations to him during his lifetime rendered it not unreasonable to suppose that they could give some assured answer to the question of his belief. The answers are not only varied, but hopelessly contradictory. It is stated on apparently good authority that in his young manhood he read Volney's Ruins and Paine's Age of Reason, and it is affirmed that he accepted their conclusions, and himself wrote what might have been a book or pamphlet denying the essential doctrines of the Christian faith as he understood them. Friends of his who knew him well enough to forbid the throwing of their testimony out of court have affirmed that he continued to hold these convictions; and that, while he became more cautious in the matter of their expression, he carried them through life and that they never underwent any radical change. On the other hand, there are declarations, made by those who also knew Lincoln well, that these views became modified essentially, and that Lincoln accepted practically the whole content of orthodox Christian theology as it was then understood; that he observed daily family worship in his home; that he carried a Bible habitually upon his person; and that he was in short in every essential a professed Christian, though never a member of a Christian church. There is more than a conflict of testimony; there is positive chaos. Every recent biographer has felt the inherent difficulties involved in it. One or two of them have passed it over with practically no mention; others have become fierce partisans of the one extreme or the other. Besides the formal biographies, a literature of this special topic has grown up. Entire books and many pamphlets and magazine articles have been written on this one question. The Chicago Historical Society and the Chicago Public Library have each devoted a principal division in the Lincoln material to the literature relating to his religion. It has been the writer's privilege to examine in both these libraries and in several others the whole known body of literature of the subject. In this investigation the writer came face to face with utterly contradictory testimony from men who had known Abraham Lincoln intimately. Of him Mr. Herndon, for twenty years his law partner, said: "As to Mr. Lincoln's religious views, he was, in short, an infidel.... Mr. Lincoln told me a thousand times that he did not believe the Bible was the revelation of God as the Christian world contends."—Lamon: Life of Lincoln, p. 489. The direct antithesis of this statement is found in a narrative of Hon. Newton Bateman, who knew Mr. Lincoln from 1842 until Mr. Lincoln's death, and whose office was in the State House at Springfield next-door to that which, for a period of eight months from the time of his nomination till his departure for his inauguration, was occupied by Mr. Lincoln. He affirmed (or at least was so quoted by Holland) that Mr. Lincoln said to him: "I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me—and I think He has—I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God."—J. G. Holland: Life of Lincoln, p. 237. Popular oratory has carried even farther these two extremes of irreconcilable contradiction. On the one hand are to be found scurrilous publications, shockingly offensive against all good taste, declaring Lincoln to have been an atheist, a mocker, a hypocrite, a man of unclean mind, and a violator in his speech of all canons of decency. We will not quote from any of these at present; but of the length to which the other extreme can go, has gone, and continues to go, let the following incident, gleaned from a recent English book, serve as an illustration: "In the year 1861 the Southern States of America were filled with slaves and slaveholders. It was proposed to make Abraham Lincoln president. But he had resolved that if he came to that position of power he would do all he could to wipe away the awful scourge from the page of his nation's history. A rebellion soon became imminent, and it was expected that in his inaugural address much would be said respecting it. The time came. The Senate House was packed with people; before him was gathered the business skill and the intellectual power of the States. With one son lying dead in the White House, whom he loved with a fond father's affection; another little boy on the borders of eternity; with his nation's eternal disgrace or everlasting honor resting upon his speech, he speaks distinctly, forcefully, and without fear. Friend and foe marvel at his collected movements. They know of the momentous issues which hang on his address. They know the domestic trials that oppress his heart. But they do not know that, before leaving home that morning, the President had taken down the family Bible and conducted their home worship as [Pg 20] [Pg 21] usual, and then had asked to be left alone. The family withdrawing, they heard his tremulous voice raised in pleadings with God, that He whose shoulder sustains the government of worlds would guide him and overrule his speech for His own glory. Here was the power of this man's strength."—G. H. Morgan: Modern Knights-Errant, p. 104; quoted in Hastings' Great Texts of the Bible, volume on "Isaiah," pp. 237-38. This incident is now an integral part of the best and most recent homiletic work in the English language, and will be used in thousands of sermons and addresses. It is a story that carries its own refutation in almost every line. Mr. Lincoln had no son either sick or dead and lying in the White House or anywhere else at the time of his first inaugural, nor had he as yet entered the White House; and the hours of that day are fairly well accounted for; but this and similar incidents illustrate the length to which the oratorical imagination may carry a speaker either in the pulpit or on the platform, and not only be preserved in books but pass the supposedly critical eye of a careful compiler of material for sermons and lectures. If another book is justified, it should be one that does more than compile that part of the evidence which appears to support a particular theory. The compilation should be as nearly complete as is humanely possible. But it must do more than plunge the reader into this swamp of conflicting testimony. It must somehow seek to evaluate the evidence and present a reasonable conclusion. Moreover, in the judgment of the present writer, religion is more than opinion, and cannot be considered as a detachable entity. Lincoln's religion was more than his belief, his conjecture, his logical conclusion concerning particular doctrines. It can only be properly appraised in connection with his life. While, therefore, the writer does not now undertake a complete biography of Lincoln, though cherishing some hope that he may eventually write a book of that character, this present work endeavors to study the religion of Lincoln not in detachment, but as part and parcel of his life. A word may be said concerning the author's point of view and the experience which lies behind it. In his early manhood he had an experience of several years which he considers of value as affording a background for the interpretation of the Lincoln material. For several years the author taught school and afterward preached in the mountain region of Kentucky and Tennessee amid social conditions essentially parallel to those in which Mr. Lincoln was born and amid which he spent his manhood up to the time of his going to Washington. The same kind of preaching that Lincoln heard, not only in Kentucky but in the backwoods of Indiana and the pioneer villages of central and southern Illinois, the present author heard in his own young manhood as a teacher in district schools far back beyond the sound of the locomotive's whistle or the inroads of modern civilization. How that kind of preaching affected the inquiring mind of the young Lincoln, the author is sure he knows better than most of Lincoln's biographers have known. The fierce theological controversies that waged between the old-time Baptists and the itinerant Methodists, together with the emphatic dogmatism of the Southern type of Presbyterianism as it was held and preached in the Kentucky mountains forty years ago and in southern Illinois and Indiana eighty years ago are part of the vivid memory of the present writer. A young man who refused to accept this kind of teaching might be charged with being an infidel, and might easily suppose himself to be one; but whether that would be a just or fair classification depends upon conditions which some of the controversialists appear not to have known or to have been capable of appreciating through lack of experience of their own. This book attempts, therefore, to be a digest of all the available evidence concerning the religious faith of Abraham Lincoln. It undertakes also to weigh that evidence and to pass judgment, the author's own judgment, concerning it. If the reader's judgment agrees with the author's, the author will be glad; but if not at least the facts are here set forth in their full essential content. [Pg 22] [Pg 23] [Pg 24] CHAPTER II WHY THE BIOGRAPHIES DIFFER The many biographies of Abraham Lincoln differ widely in their estimate of his religious opinions and life, partly because the biographers approach the subject from widely differing angles, and some of them are seeking in advance the establishment of particular conclusions. But apart from that personal bias, from which no author can claim to be wholly free, the biographical study of Abraham Lincoln was itself an evolution whose main outlines and processes it will be profitable briefly to consider. The first printed biographies of Mr. Lincoln appeared in 1860. They were the familiar campaign biography, such as is issued for every candidate for the Presidency. The first man who approached Mr. Lincoln with a proposal to write his Life was J. L. Scripps of the Chicago Tribune. Mr. Lincoln deprecated the idea of writing any biography. "Why, Scripps, [said he] it is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of me or my early life. It can all be condensed into a single sentence, and that sentence you will find in Grey's 'Elegy': 'The short and simple annals of the poor.' That's my life, and that's all you or anyone else can make out of it."—Herndon, I, 2. Lincoln felt the meagerness of his biographical material, but the biographers succeeded in making books about him, Scripps wrote his booklet, and it appeared in thirty-two closely printed double-column pages, and sold at twenty-five cents. It is now excessively rare. Lincoln read the proof and approved it. The "Wigwam" Life of Lincoln appeared simultaneously with the Scripps booklet, and it is not quite certain which of the two emerged first from the press. It contained 117 pages, of which the last seven were devoted to Hannibal Hamlin, Republican candidate for Vice- President. This also had a wide sale, and is now very rare. That Lincoln did not read the proofs of this book is evidenced by the name "Abram" instead of "Abraham" on its title page and throughout the book. It relates that "when he was six years old, his father died, leaving a widow and several children, poor and almost friendless"; and in other respects shows that Lincoln did not furnish the data of it, and also indicates how meager was the biographical material at hand outside the little sketch which Lincoln prepared for Scripps. Another pamphlet, containing 216 pages, was "The Authentic Edition" by J. H. Barrett, and still another, the "Authorized" edition by D. W. Bartlett, which extended to 354 pages and was bound in cloth. Perhaps the best of these campaign biographies of 1860 was that written by William Dean Howells, then a young man and unknown to fame. Apparently Lincoln furnished to each of these writers—except the Wigwam edition—essentially the same material which he had given to Scripps, or else they borrowed from Scripps, with permission, and to this extent they were "authorized" or "authentic." But there is no indication that Lincoln read any of them except that of Scripps. Even this must have surprised him when he beheld how his little sketch could be spread out over as many as thirty-two pages. The campaign of 1864 brought out a new crop of campaign biographies, and these used essentially the same material up to 1860, and found their new matter in the history of the Civil War up to the date of their publication. This campaign material still stood in type or stereotyped pages when Lincoln was killed, and was hastily used again. The author, who owns all the books cited above, has also others which came from the press in May or June of 1865, whose main part was taken over bodily from the campaign biographies of 1864 and speaks of Lincoln as still living, while the back part is made up of material concerning the assassination, the funeral, and the trial of the conspirators. These called themselves "Complete" biographies, but they were merely revamped campaign booklets of 1864 with appended matter and virtually no revision. These works represent the first stage of the attempt to make books out of the life of Abraham Lincoln. The outline of the life itself is meager in all of them, and they are well padded with campaign speeches; and the last of them, with full and interesting details of the funeral services of Lincoln, the death of Booth, and other matter lifted from the newspapers of the period. The second epoch began with the publication of the Life of Abraham Lincoln by John G. Holland in 1865. It was by all odds the best of the books that undertook within a few years after his death to tell the story of the life of Lincoln, with some estimate of his place in history. It is also the book which began the controversy concerning Lincoln's religion. The third period was introduced by the biography of Abraham Lincoln by Ward Hill Lamon, which was issued in 1872. It was based upon manuscripts that had been collected by William H. Herndon, who was supposed to have had a considerable share in the work of its preparation. Herndon emphatically denied writing any part of it, and said in a letter to Mr. Horace White that it was written for Lamon by Chauncey F. Black, son of J. S. Black, a member of Buchanan's cabinet and a political enemy of Lincoln (Newton: Lincoln and Herndon, p. 307). This valuable but unwisely written book, containing many things offensive to good taste, occasioned much controversy for its stark realism and what seemed to many of Lincoln's friends misrepresentations. Some of the intimate friends of Lincoln are alleged to have bought a considerable part of the edition and destroyed the books, but copies are in the principal libraries and in the best private collections. [Pg 25] [Pg 26] Unterrified by the reception which had been accorded Lamon's work, William H. Herndon, for twenty years Lincoln's law partner, assisted by Jesse W. Weik, published in 1889 a Life of Lincoln, in three volumes.[1] The storm of denunciation that beat upon Herndon's head was fierce and long. The greater part of the edition disappeared. Libraries that contain it keep it under lock and key, and the prices bid for it at occasional book auctions contrast strikingly with those for which it went begging immediately after it was issued. Four years later, assisted by Mr. Horace White, Mr. Herndon reissued the book in two volumes, with those passages elided which had given greatest offense. These two biographies mark the rise and high-water mark of the demand for "the real Lincoln"; and nobody can deny that they were quite sufficiently realistic. The next stage in the Lincoln biography was the ten-volume Life of Lincoln by his former secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay. It was issued in 1890, and called itself "a history." It is a history rather than a biography; the biographical material in it was condensed into a single volume by Mr. Nicolay in 1904. This work is monumental, and may be said to attempt the giving of materials for the complete Lincoln rather than to be in itself an effort within the proper limits of biography. The two-volume biography by John T. Morse, Jr., issued in 1893, was the first constructive piece of work in this field after the Nicolay and Hay material had become available; and it remains in some respects the best short Life of Abraham Lincoln; though the author's New England viewpoint militates against his correct appraisal of many features of the life of Lincoln. The next period may be said to be the period of the magazine Lincoln, and to be represented at its best by the work of Ida M. Tarbell, which first appeared in McClure's Magazine, beginning in 1895, and was subsequently issued in book form in several editions beginning in 1900. This was a pictorial biography, with much new illustrative and documentary material, and is of permanent value. Since 1900 the biographies that have been issued have largely been devoted to specialized studies, as of Lincoln as a lawyer, Lincoln as a political leader, Lincoln as a statesman; and there have been innumerable books and articles made up of reminiscences of the men who knew Lincoln more or less intimately. None of the biographies before Holland attempted anything that could be called a critical analysis of Lincoln's character. There is virtually nothing in the earliest Lives of Lincoln concerning his religion or any other important aspect of his private and personal life. In the nature of the case those books were superficial. Furthermore, some of the more important biographies of more recent years have made no attempt at systematic character study. While there is something about Lincoln's religion in almost every one of them, that topic has been quite incidental and subordinate to the main purpose of most of the larger books. The authors have been content to take for the most part the ready-formed judgment of those whose views most nearly accorded with their own. The field of inquiry concerning Lincoln's religion is both more narrow and broader than it would at first appear. Many even of the more important biographical works about Lincoln yield nothing of any real value, so far as this topic is concerned. On the other hand, the subject has been exploited in magazine articles, newspaper contributions, lectures and addresses almost innumerable and by no mean consistent. The task, then, is more and other than that of making a scrapbook of what different authorities have said about Abraham Lincoln's religion. A vast amount has been said by people who had no personal knowledge of the subject they were discussing and no adequate power of historical analysis. The volume of really first-hand evidence is not so vast as at first it appears; and while it cannot all be reconciled nor its direct contradictions eliminated, it is not hopelessly beyond the limits of constructive probability. It is possible to determine some facts about the religion of Abraham Lincoln with reasonable certainty and to interpret others in the light of their probable bearing upon the subject as a whole. [Pg 27] [Pg 28] [Pg 29] CHAPTER III THE ENVIRONMENT OF LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD We have read Buckle's History of Civilization to little effect if we have not learned that the development of an individual or a nation is profoundly influenced by environment. The biographers of Lincoln would appear to have kept this fact carefully in mind, for they have been at great pains to give to us detailed descriptions of the houses in which Lincoln lived and the neighborhoods where from time to time he resided. Although the camera and the descriptive power of the biographers have done much for us, they leave something to be desired in the way of sketching a background from which the Abraham Lincoln of the successive periods emerged into conditions of life and thought that were more or less religious. For the purpose of this present study the life of Lincoln divides itself into four parts. The first is the period of his boyhood, from his birth in Kentucky until his coming of age and the removal of his family from Indiana into Illinois. The second is the period of his early manhood, from the time he left his father's home until he took up his residence in Springfield. The third is the period of his life in Springfield, from his first arrival on April 15, 1837, until his final departure on February 11, 1861, for his inauguration as President. The fourth is the period covered by his presidency, from his inauguration, March 4, 1861, until his death, April 15, 1865. Before considering at length the testimony of the people who knew him, except as that testimony relates to these particular epochs, we will consider the life of Lincoln as it was related to the conditions in which he lived in these successive periods. The first period in the life of Abraham Lincoln includes the twenty-one years from his birth to his majority, and is divided into two parts,—the first seven and one-half years of his life in the backwoods of Kentucky, and the following thirteen years in the wilderness of southern Indiana. Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky, on Sunday, February 12, 1809. He was the second child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who were married near Beechland, Washington County, Kentucky, on June 12, 1806, when Thomas was twenty-eight and Nancy twenty-three. Nine days before the birth of Abraham Lincoln the territory of Illinois was organized by Act of Congress; the boy and the future State were twin-born. For four years the family lived on the Rock Spring farm, three miles from Hodgenville, in Hardin, now Larue County, Kentucky. When he was four years old his parents moved to a better farm on Knob Creek. Here he spent nearly four years more, and he and his sister, Sarah, began going to school. His first teacher was Zachariah Riney; his second, Caleb Hazel. In the autumn of 1816, Thomas Lincoln loaded his household goods upon a small flatboat of his own construction and floated down Knob Creek, Salt River, and the Ohio, and landed on the northern bank of the Ohio River. He thence returned and brought his family, who traveled on horseback. The distance to where the goods had been left was only about fifty miles in a straight line from the old home in Kentucky, but was probably a hundred miles by the roads on which they traveled. Thomas doubtless rode one horse with a child behind him, and Nancy rode the other, also carrying a child behind her saddle. When the family arrived at the point where the goods had been left, a wagon was hired, and Thomas Lincoln, with his wife, his two children, and all his worldly possessions, moved sixteen miles into the wilderness to a place which he had already selected, and there made his home. That winter and the greater part of the following year were spent in a "half- faced camp" from which the family moved in the following autumn to a log cabin, erected by Thomas Lincoln. For more than a year he was a squatter on this farm, but subsequently entered it and secured title from the government. Here Nancy Hanks Lincoln died, October 5, 1818, when Abraham was less than ten years old. A year later Thomas Lincoln returned to Kentucky and married Sally Bush Johnson, a widow, with three children. She brought with her better furniture than the cabin afforded, and also brought a higher type of culture than Thomas Lincoln had known. She taught her husband so that he was able with some difficulty to read the Bible and to sign his own name. On this farm in the backwoods in the Pigeon Creek settlement, with eight or ten families as neighbors, and with the primitive village of Gentryville a mile and a half distant, Abraham Lincoln grew to manhood. Excepting for a brief experience as a ferryman on the Ohio River and a trip to New Orleans which he made upon a flatboat, his horizon was bounded by this environment from the time he was eight until he was twenty-one. The cabin in which the Lincoln family lived was a fairly comfortable house. It was eighteen feet square and the logs were hewn. It was high enough to admit a loft, where Abe slept, ascending to it by wooden pins driven into the logs. The furniture, excepting that brought by Sally Bush, was very primitive and made by Thomas Lincoln. Three-legged stools answered for chairs, and the bedsteads had only one leg each, the walls supporting the other three corners. Of the educational advantages, Mr. Lincoln wrote in 1860: "It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools so-called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond readin', writin', and cipherin' to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the [Pg 30] [Pg 31] neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education."—Nicolay, p. 10. Here he attended school for three brief periods. The first school was taught by Azel W. Dorsey, when Abraham was ten years old; the next by Andrew Crawford, when he was fourteen; and the third by a teacher named Swaney, whose first name Mr. Lincoln was unable to recall in later life. His schooling was under five different teachers, two in Kentucky and three in Indiana. It was scattered over nine years and embraced altogether less than twelve months of aggregate attendance. In Kentucky it is probable that his only textbook was Webster's Elementary Speller. It was popularly known as the "Old Blueback." Webster's Speller is a good speller and more. Each section of words to be spelled is followed by short sentences containing those words, and at the end of the book are three illustrated lessons in Natural History—one on The Mastiff, another on The Stag, and the third on The Squirrel. Besides these are seven fables, each with its illustration and its moral lesson. I used this book in teaching school in the backwoods of Kentucky, and still have the teacher's copy which I thus employed. The two Kentucky schools which Lincoln attended were undoubtedly "blab" schools. The children were required to study aloud. Their audible repetition of their lessons was the teacher's only assurance that they were studying;[2] and even while he was hearing a class recite he would spend a portion of his time moving about the room with hickory switch in hand, administering frequent rebuke to those pupils who did not study loud enough to afford proof of their industry. In Indiana, Lincoln came under the influence of men who could cipher as far as the Rule of Three. He also learned to use Lindley Murray's English Reader, which he always believed, and with much reason, to be the most useful textbook ever put into the hands of an American youth (Herndon, I, 37). He also studied Pike's Arithmetic. Grammar he did not study in school, but later learned it under Mentor Graham in Illinois. The first of these schools was only about a mile and a half distant from his home; the last was four miles, and his attendance was irregular. In the second school, taught by Andrew Crawford, he learned whatever he knew of the usages of polite society; for Crawford gave his pupils a kind of drill in social usages (Herndon, I, 37). In Swaney's school he probably learned that the earth was round. A classmate, Katy Roby, afterward Mrs. Allen Gentry, between whom and Abraham a boy-and-girl attachment appears to have existed, and who at the time was fifteen and Abe seventeen, is authority for the statement that as they were sitting together on the bank of the Ohio River near Gentry's landing, wetting their bare feet in the flowing water and watching the sun go down, he told her that it was the revolution of the earth which made the moon and sun appear to rise and set. He exhibited what to her appeared a profound knowledge of astronomy (Herndon, I, 39; Lamon's Life, p. 70). It is not necessary for us to assume that Abraham knew very much more about astronomy than the little which he told to Katy Roby; but it is worth while to note in passing that when Abraham Lincoln learned that the earth was round, he probably learned something which his father did not know and which would have been admitted by no minister whom Abraham had heard preach up to this time. We are ready now to consider the character of the preaching which Abraham Lincoln heard in his boyhood. Direct testimony is fragmentary of necessity; but it is of such character that we are able without difficulty to make a consistent mental picture of the kind of religious service with which he was familiar. A recent author has said that Lincoln never lived in a community having a church building until he went to the legislature in Vandalia in 1834 (Johnson, Lincoln the Christian, p. 31). This is probably true if we insist upon its meaning a house of worship owned exclusively by one denomination, but the same author reminds us that there was a log meeting- house[3] within three miles of Lincoln's childhood home in Kentucky (p. 22). Dr. Peters says: "The prayers that Parson Elkin said above the mound of Nancy Hanks were the first public prayers to which Abraham ever listened"—Abraham Lincoln's Religion, p. 24. This is absurdly incorrect. Abraham Lincoln almost certainly heard public prayers at intervals, probably from the time he was three months old. Abraham Lincoln was born in February, or his mother probably would have taken him to church earlier; but by May or June, when there was monthly preaching at the log meeting-house three miles away, she mounted a horse and Thomas Lincoln another, he with Sarah sitting before him at the saddlebow and she with Abraham in her arms, and they rode to meeting. If they had had but one horse instead of two they would have gone just the same. She would have sat behind Thomas with Abraham in her arms and Thomas would have had Sarah on the horse before him. Thomas Lincoln was too shiftless to have a horse-block, but Nancy could mount her horse from any one of the numerous stumps in the vicinity of the home. She and every other young mother in the neighborhood knew how to ride and carry a baby, and having once learned the art, the young mother was not permitted to forget it for several years. [Pg 32] [Pg 33] [Pg 34] Arrived at the log meeting-house, they hitched their horses to swinging limbs, where the animals could fight flies without breaking the bridle-reins. Nancy went inside immediately and took her seat on the left side of the room; Thomas remained outside gossiping with his neighbors concerning "craps" and politics, and maybe swapping a horse before the service had gotten fairly under way. After a while he heard the preacher in stentorian tones lining and singing the opening hymn, the thin, high voices of the women joining him feebly at first but growing a little more confident as the hymn proceeded. Then Thomas and his neighbors straggled in and sat on the right side of the house. The floor was puncheon and so were the seats; they were rudely split slabs, roughly hewn, and the second sitting from either end had an added element of discomfort in the projection of the two legs that had been driven in from the under side and were not sawed off flush with the surface of the slab. There were no glass windows. On either side of the house one section of a log may have been sawed out about four feet from the floor; but most of the light of the interior came in through the open door in mild weather, or was afforded by the fireplace in cold weather. On the rude pulpit lay the preacher's Bible and hymn book, if he had a hymn book—no one else had one; and beside these were a bucket of water and a gourd. There was no time in the service when Thomas Lincoln did not feel free to walk up to the pulpit and drink a gourd of water, and the same was true of every other member of the congregation, the preacher included. As for Nancy, she spread her riding-skirt on the seat under her and when her baby grew hungry she nursed him just as the other women nursed their babies. To such congregations the author of this present book preached hundreds of times in the woods of Kentucky; and there is no essential feature of the church services which he does not know. In the autumn, just before fodder-pulling time, there was an occasional camp-meeting or big revival, followed by a baptizing, which brought multitudes of people from long distances. They brought their provisions, or they stayed with friends, one cabin proving elastic enough to accommodate two or three households. Under these conditions the author of this book has slept many nights in houses of one room, with as many beds as the room could well contain, inhabited not only by the family but by visitors of both sexes; and in all that experience he is unable to recall any incident that was immodest. When the converts of the camp-meeting or revival were baptized, they were led into the water with due solemnity; but as each one came to the surface he or she was likely to break forth into shouting, a proceeding which, as the author can testify, was sometimes embarrassing, if not indeed perilous,[4] to the officiating clergyman. Herndon tells us of the fondness of the Hanks girls for camp-meeting and describes one in which Nancy appears to have participated a little time before her marriage (I, 14). We have no reason to believe that that was her last camp- meeting. Thomas Lincoln is alleged by Herndon to have been a Free-will Baptist in Kentucky, a Presbyterian in the latter part of his life in Indiana, and finally a Disciple (I, 11). He does not state where he obtained his information, but it is almost certain that he got it from Sally Bush Lincoln on the occasion of his visit to her in 1865; as she is the accredited source of most of the information of this character. I am more than tempted to believe that either she or Herndon was incorrect in speaking of Thomas Lincoln's earliest affiliation as a Free-will Baptist. There were more kinds of Baptists in heaven and on earth than were understood in her philosophy; and I question whether the Free-will Baptists, who originated in New England, had by this time penetrated to so remote a section of Kentucky. What she probably told Herndon was that he was not of the most reactionary kind —the so-called "Hardshell" or anti-missionary Baptists. Of them we shall have something to say later. The Scripps biography, read and approved by Lincoln, said simply that his parents were consistent members of the Baptist Church. Nicolay and Hay do not record the membership of Thomas Lincoln in the Presbyterian Church, and one is more than tempted to question the accuracy of Herndon at this point. Presbyterianism had at that date very little part in the shaping of the life of the backwoods of Illinois and Indiana, as we shall see when we come to the life of Lincoln in Illinois. Nicolay and Hay tell us that "Thomas Lincoln joined the Baptist church at Little Pigeon in 1823. His oldest child, Sarah, followed his example three years later. They were known as consistent and active members of that communion" (Nicolay and Hay, I, 32-33). If Sarah joined the Baptist church in 1826, and the family was remembered as active in that church, the relation of Thomas Lincoln with the Presbyterians in Indiana must have been brief, for he left that State in 1830. We are assured that he observed religious custo...