Abraham Lincoln: Was He A Christian? Part 22

The most highly aristocratic church in Was.h.i.+ngton is St John's Episcopal church. So very aristocratic is it that applicants for members.h.i.+p deem it necessary to give references respecting their social standing in the community. The New York _Star_ relates the following joke which Lincoln once perpetrated at the expense of this church: "One day during the war a young officer called on him to secure an appointment in the army, and brought with him letters of recommendation signed by the F. E. V.'s in the District of Columbia. There had been no application for office before President Lincoln so strongly supported by the aristocracy, and, turning to the young man, he said he would give him the appointment and handed him back the papers. 'Don't you want to place the papers on file?' asked the office-seeker. 'I supposed that was the custom.' 'Yes, that is the custom,' said President Lincoln, 'but you had better take them with you, as you might want to join St. John's church.'"

Did Lincoln ever use profane language? If he did, this fact will afford no evidence to Freethinkers that he was a disbeliever in Christianity.

Freethinkers are as free from this vice, if vice it be, as Christians.

Very pious persons, however, such as Lincoln is represented to have been by his Christian biographers, are very careful about their use of profane words. Christ commanded his followers to pray in private, and bade them swear not at all. Devout Christians usually pray in public and swear in private. Lincoln was but little addicted to profanity, but if he had occasion to use a word of this character he did not go to his closet to use it. In a business letter to a friend, he said:

"A d------d hawk-billed Yankee is here besetting me at every turn"

(Lamon's Life of Lincoln, p. 316).

In a letter to Speed, concerning an alleged murder case, he wrote:

"Hart, the little drayman that hauled Molly home once, said it was too _d.a.m.ned_ bad to have so much trouble and no hanging" (Ibid, p. 321).

For the sake of pleasing the "fools," he attached his signature to "the pious nonsense of Seward," With equal readiness he indorsed the profane nonsense (?) of Stanton. During the war the patriotic Lovejoy had devised a military scheme which he believed would prove beneficial to the Union cause, and obtained an order from the President for its execution. He took the order to Stanton, but all that ever resulted from it was the following spirited colloquy:

"'Did Lincoln give you an order of that kind?' said Stanton. 'He did, sir.' 'Then he is a d------d fool,' said the irate Secretary. 'Do you mean to say the President is a d------d fool?' asked Lovejoy, in amazement. 'Yes, sir, if he gave you such an order as that.' The bewildered Illinoisan betook himself at once to the President, and related the result of his conference. "Did Stanton say I was a d------d fool?' asked Lincoln at the close of the recital. 'He did, sir, and repeated it.' After a moment's pause, and looking up, the President said:

'If Stanton said I was a d------d fool, then _I must be one_, for he is nearly always right, and generally says what he means'" (Every-Day Life of Lincoln, pp. 483, 484).

At a Cabinet meeting, in 1863, when a conflict between the President and Congress regarding the admission of certain representatives from loyal districts of the South, which he favored, was threatened, he turned to Secretary Chase, and exclaimed: "There it is, sir. I am to be bullied by Congress, am I? If I do I'll be d------d!"

When Lincoln visited New Orleans he attended a slave sale. A beautiful girl, almost white, was placed upon the auction block and exposed to the grossest indignities. As he turned to leave, boiling with indignation, he exclaimed:

"By G.o.d, if I ever get a chance to hit that inst.i.tution, I will hit it hard" (Arnold's Life of Lincoln, Note).

Thirty years later the chance came. He struck the blow--a mortal one.

The following is a prayer which Lincoln, while at the White House, put into the mouth of a belated traveler who was caught in a violent thunderstorm:

"O Lord, if it is all the same to you, give us a little more light and a little less noise!" (Six Months at the White House, p. 49).

Is it possible that a Christian and a Calvinist would repeat such an irreverent, not to say blasphemous, supplication? According to the Brooklyn Calvinist, G.o.d visits such supplicants with paralysis and petrifaction.

Like most Freethinkers, Lincoln was a genuine reformer. The Antislavery reform was not the only reform that enlisted his support. At an early day he espoused the Temperance cause. When the church was the ally of intemperance as it was of slavery--when, to use his own words, "From the sideboard of the parson down to the ragged pocket of the houseless loafer intoxicating liquor was constantly found," he was laboring and lecturing in behalf of the Was.h.i.+ngtonian movement. With the fervor of an enthusiast, he exclaims in true Free-thought language: "Happy day, when, all appet.i.tes controlled, all pa.s.sions subdued, all matter subjugated, mind, all-conquering mind, shall live and move, the monarch of the world! Glorious consummation! Hail, fall of fury! _Reign of Reason, all hail!_" (Lincoln Memorial Alb.u.m, p. 96).

To sumptuary laws and to the denunciatory methods so common among orthodox Christians to-day, he was, however, strenuously opposed. He says: "It is not much in the nature of man to be driven to anything; still less to be driven about that which is exclusively his own business" (Ibid, p. 86).

"When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, una.s.suming persuasion, should ever be adopted" (lb., p. 87).

His nephew, Mr. Hall, informed me that Lincoln once made it cost a meddlesome clergyman, of Coles County, eighty dollars for seizing and destroying a quart of whisky, valued at twelve and a half cents, and belonging to a relative of theirs.

In this chapter I wish to present some radical thoughts, not from the pen of Lincoln himself, but which in the work from which they are taken bear unmistakable signs of his approval. Mr. D. W. C. Shattuck, an old and respected merchant of Way-land, Mich., has in his possession a book which belonged to Lincoln. Its history is as follows: Shortly after Lincoln's election to the Presidency a young man from Springfield, Ill., and a relative or intimate acquaintance of Lincoln's, came to board with Mr. Shattuck, who then resided in Kalamazoo. Looking over the contents of his trunk one day the young man picked up a book and at the same time remarked: "That book belongs to Abe Lincoln. I forgot to return it to him before leaving Springfield. It is his favorite book, and I must not fail to return it." Mr. Shattuck expressing a desire to peruse the work, it was handed to him, and the young man being soon after unexpectedly called away, it was forgotten. It proved to be a volume of the writings of Lord Bolingbroke, the great English Infidel. On a fly-leaf was the signature of Abraham Lincoln. In the work certain pa.s.sages which seem to have especially impressed Lincoln are marked with a pencil and in a manner peculiar to him. The following are the pa.s.sages he marked, which I have copied from the book, and which evidently received his unqualified indors.e.m.e.nt:

"Abbadie says in his famous book, that the Gospel of St. Matthew is cited by Clemens Bishop of Borne, a disciple of the Apostles; that Barnabas cites it in his epistle; that Ignatius and Polycarp receive it; and that the same Fathers, that give testimony for Matthew, give it likewise for Mark. Nay, your lords.h.i.+p will find, I believe, that the present Bishop of London, in his third pastoral letter, speaks to the same effect. I will not trouble you nor myself with any more instances of the same kind. Let this, which occurred to me as I was writing, suffice. It may well suffice; for I presume the fact advanced by the minister and the Bishop is a mistake. If the Fathers of the First Century do mention some pa.s.sages that are agreeable to what we read in our Evangelists, will it follow that these Fathers had the same gospels before them? To say so is a manifest abuse of history, and quite inexcusable in writers that knew, or should have known, that these Fathers made use of other gospels, wherein such pa.s.sages might be contained, or they might be preserved in unwritten tradition. Besides which I could almost venture to affirm that these Fathers of the First Century do not expressly name the gospels we have of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John." "Writers of the Roman religion have attempted to show, that the text of the Holy Writ is on many accounts insufficient to be the sole criterion of orthodoxy; I apprehend too that they have shown it. Sure I am that experience, from the first promulgation of Christianity to this hour, shows abundantly with how much ease and success the most opposite, the most extravagant, nay the most impious opinions, and the most contradictory faiths, may be founded on the same text; and plausibly defended by the same authority. Writers of the Reformed religion have erected their batteries against tradition; and the only difficulty they had to encounter in this enterprise lay in leveling and pointing their cannon so as to avoid demolis.h.i.+ng, in one common ruin, the traditions they retain, and those they reject. Each side has been employed to weaken the cause and explode the system of his adversary; and, whilst they have been so employed, they have jointly laid their axes to the root of Christianity; for thus men will be apt to reason upon what they have advanced. 'If the text has not that authenticity, clearness, and precision which are necessary to establish it as a divine and a certain rule of faith and practice; and if the tradition of the church from the first ages of it till the days of Luther and Calvin, has been corrupted itself, and has served to corrupt the faith and practice of Christians; there remains at this time no standard at all of Christianity. By consequence either this religion was not originally of divine inst.i.tution, or else G.o.d has not provided effectually for preserving the genuine purity of it, and the gates of h.e.l.l have prevailed, in contradiction to his promise, against the church.'" "I have read somewhere, perhaps in the works of St. Jerome, that this Father justifies the opinion of those who think it impossible to fix any certain chronology on that of the Bible; and this opinion will be justified still better, to the understanding of every man that considers how grossly the Jews blunder whenever they meddle with chronology." "The resurrection of letters was a fatal period; the Christian system has been attacked, and wounded too, very severely since that time."

When interrogated as to why he had never united with any church, Lincoln replied: "When you show me a church based on the Golden Rule as its only creed, then I will unite with it."

He never joined a church, because of all the Christian sects, not one could show such a creed. The Golden Rule--conceding to others the same rights he claimed for himself--was, however, the very cornerstone of Freethought, and hence he remained a Freethinker.

CHAPTER XV. RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION

Character of Christian Testimony--Summary of Evidence Adduced in Proof of Lincoln's Unbelief--Douglas an Unbeliever--Theodore Parker's Theology--Fallacy of Claims Respecting Lincoln's Reputed Conversion--His Invocations of Deity--His Alleged Regard for the Sabbath--The Church and Hypocrisy--Lincoln's Religion.

In the prosecution of this inquiry, the testimony of one hundred and twenty witnesses has been presented. The testimony of twenty of these witnesses is to the effect that Lincoln was a Christian; the testimony of one hundred is to the effect that he was not.

Of those who have testified in support of the claim that Lincoln was a Christian, ten admit that during a part of his life he was a disbeliever in Christianity, while not one of the remaining ten disputes the fact.

If he never changed his belief then he died an unbeliever. Did he change his belief and become a convert to Christianity? It devolves upon those who affirm that he did to prove it. Have they done this? They have not. Their attempts have been in every instance pitiable failures. The unreasonable and conflicting character of the testimony adduced refutes itself. When was he converted? No less than five different dates have been a.s.signed. One witness states that it was in 1848; one, that it was in 1858; another, that it was in 1862; another, that it was in July, 1863; and still another, that it was in November, 1863.

The remarkable character of the statements recorded in Chapter I.--remarkable when compared with the statements given in the preceding ten chapters, and not less remarkable when compared with each other--may be variously accounted for. A part of them are based upon a false premise, an erroneous conception of what the term _Christian_ means; a portion of them are merely the expressions of beliefs unsupported by actual knowledge; while a not inconsiderable share of them are the statements of those who have knowingly and deliberately borne false witness. These witnesses comprise: 1. Those who do not know what const.i.tutes a Christian--who confound Christianity with morality--who affirm that he was a Christian simply because he was a moral man. 2.

Those who do not know what his religious views were, but who infer that he was a Christian because others have declared that he was, and because of the frequent allusions to Deity that occur in his speeches and state papers. 3. Those who know that he was not a Christian, but who believe it to be right and proper to lie for the glory of Christianity and the profit of its priests.

The testimony advanced in support of the claim of Lincoln's Christianity is, for the most part, the testimony of orthodox Christians--a majority of them orthodox clergymen. Dr. Holland, the chief of these Christian claimants, says: "The fact is a matter of history that he never exposed his own religious life to those who had no sympathy with it." This, so far as the later years of his life are concerned, is substantially true; and this very fact precludes the possibility of these orthodox witnesses being able to state from personal knowledge what his religious views were.

In refutation of this claim, I have presented the testimony of those who were nearest to Lincoln, in the confidential relations of life. I have presented the testimony of his wife, the testimony of his stepmother, the testimony of his step-sister, the testimony of his cousin, the testimony of his nephew, the testimony of his three law partners, the testimony of four members of his Cabinet, the testimony of his private secretary, the testimony of his executor, the testimony of seven of his biographers, and the testimony of many more of his most intimate friends both in Illinois and at Was.h.i.+ngton.

That he was not an orthodox Christian, as claimed, is attested by nearly all of the one hundred witnesses whose testimony has been given; that he was not in any sense of the term a Christian is proved by the testimony of a majority of them.

I affirmed that he was not religious in his youth--that he was a skeptic in Indiana. In proof of this I have adduced the testimony of his step-mother, Sarah Lincoln; his step-sister, Matilda Moore; his cousin, Dennis F. Hanks; his nephew, John Hall; his law partner, W. H. Herndon, and his biographer, Col. Ward H. Lamon.

I affirmed that he was an Infidel or Freethinker, during the thirty years that he resided in Illinois. In support of this I have given the testimony of Colonel Lamon, W. H. Herndon, Maj. John T. Stuart, Col.

James H. Matheny, Dr. C. H. Ray, W. H. Hannah, James W. Keys, Jesse W.

Fell, Judge David Davis, Wm. McNeely, Mr. Lynan, Wm. G. Green, Joshua F. Speed, Green Caruthers, Squire Perkins, Judge Gillespie, John Decamp, James Gorley, Dr. Wm. Jayne, Jesse K. Dubois, Judge Logan, Leonard Swett, W. H. T. Wakefield, D. W. Wilder, Dr. B. F. Gardner, J. K.

Vandemark, Judge Leachman, Orin B. Gould, Edward Butler, M. S. Go win, J. H. Chenery, J. B. Spalding, Ezra Stringham, Col. R. G. Ingersoll, A.

Jeffrey, Dr. McNeal, Charles McGrew, J. L. Morrell, Judge A. D. Norton, W. W. Perkins, H. K. Magie, James Tuttle, Leonard Volk, Col. F. S.

Rutherford, E. H. Wood, Dr. J. J. Thomson, A. J. Grover, Judge Nelson, and others.

I affirmed that he did not change his belief after leaving Illinois--that he was not converted to Christianity at Was.h.i.+ngton--that he died an unbeliever. In confirmation of this I have presented the testimony of his wife, Mary Lincoln; of his private secretary, Colonel Nicolay; of his executor, Judge Davis; of his biographer, Colonel Lamon; and of his intimate a.s.sociates, Geo. W. Julian, John B. Alley, Schuyler Colfax, Hugh McCulloch, A. J. Grover, Donn Piatt, Judge Nelson, and others.

Many of these witnesses simply testify to his disbelief in the Christian system as a whole without reference to his particular views concerning its individual tenets. Every statement of his unbelief as presented in the introduction has, however, been substantiated by the testimony of one or more witnesses. That he did not believe in the Christian Deity, that he even held Agnostic and Atheistic views, at times, is proved by the testimony of W. H. Herndon, Colonel Matheny, Judge Nelson, Jesse K.

Dubois, and D. W. Wilder

That he was an Agnostic in regard to the immortality of the soul is attested by E. H. Wood, Judge Nelson, and W. H. Herndon.

That he did not believe that the Bible is the word of G.o.d is affirmed by Colonel Lamon, John T. Stuart, Judge Matheny, W. H. Herndon, Jesse W. Fell, Dennis Hanks, W. Perkins, Colonel Rutherford, and Chambers'

Encyclopedia.

That he did not believe that Jesus Christ was the son of G.o.d is affirmed by Colonel Lamon, W. H. Herndon, Jesse W. Fell. Colonel Matheny, John T. Stuart, Jas. W. Keys, Judge Nelson, D. W. Wilder, Green Caruthers, Colonel Rutherford, Rev. J. Lloyd Jones, Chambers' Encyclopedia, and the New York _World_.

That he did not believe in a special creation, the statements of Mr.

Herndon clearly prove.

That he accepted the theory of Evolution, so far as this theory had been developed in the "Vestiges of Creation" and other writings of his day, is attested by the same witness.

That he did not admit the possibility of miracles is confirmed by the statement of Jesse W. Fell, W. Perkins, Dennis Hanks, and Mr. Herndon.

That he rejected the Christian doctrine of total or inherent depravity, William McNeely and Jesse W. Fell affirm.