Just as, over the years, we have all been treated to the ethereal fables of Mr. Lincoln as the "great emancipator" of blacks, so have also been treated to many stories about his supposed Christian faith. The problem with all of this is the most patriotic and conservative folks have bought into this hook, line, and sinker. I talked several years ago with a conservative man who informed me that Lincoln "got saved" in the White House. I asked him for some evidence and then sought to go a little into the true nature of Lincoln's character. At that point, he informed me that he "didn't have time for all this." Conversation ended. He had no evidence to back up what he said and I had just punctured the aura of secular holiness that surrounded his secular saint, and he wasn't happy with that. He really didn't want to be confronted with any facts that might force him to change his opinion. So, in many conservative circles, where the truth is supposed to be sought after and revered, many still refuse to deal with any truth that flies in the face of their preconceived notions. I, too, once thought Lincoln was a good man. I was forced, after considerable research, to change my views. That's life.
For well over a hundred years people have sought to throw the mud of Lincoln's "Christianity" against the wall of unbelief, and, unfortunately, some of the mud has stuck. Some television preachers I've heard, who did really good work in many areas over the years, continued to propagate the myth of Lincoln's Christian faith. Even some providers of home school material have published books dealing with Lincoln's "Christianity." These folks should know better. The home schooling community needs accurate history, not the Lincolnian fables so prevalent in our government indoctrination camps, (er, pardon me, I meant public schools).
In the mid-1860s, Josiah Gilbert Holland, editor of the Springfield, Massachusetts Republican wrote a biography of Lincoln. David Herbert Donald, in his book Lincoln's Herndon wrote that Holland: "...had delivered a tearful eulogy on Lincoln's death, emphasizing the President's 'simple, honest, Christian heart' and portraying 'that toil-worn man, rising long before his household and spending an hour with his Maker and his Bible every morning'." Whatever Holland's motives were, and they were probably sincere, over 100,000 copies of his Lincoln biography were sold. Holland made a brief trip to the Midwest and spent some time with William Herndon, Lincoln's former law partner. Herndon was somewhat disturbed over Holland's constant references to Lincoln's Christian faith. That was most definitely not the Lincoln he remembered. Donald noted in his book, on page 212: "When the Massachusetts editor visited Springfield in the Spring of 1865, he asked Herndon: 'What about Mr. Lincoln's religion.' The less said the better, replied Herndon, well aware of local gossip on the subject. 'Oh never mind' said Holland with a wink. 'I'll fix that'." Donald further noted: "When The Life Of Abraham Lincoln appeared, Herndon learned that Holland had done just that. A sincerely devout man himself, the Massachusetts editor had at the very outset decided that the deified Lincoln must have been a 'true-hearted Christian.' He incorporated into his biography all sorts of improbable anecdotes to emphasize Lincoln's religiosity."
In his book, Holland reported the recollections of one Newton Bateman, Illinois superintendent of education. According to these "recollections" Bateman had talked to Lincoln, who was striving and wanting to become a Christian, a Lincoln who, reportedly, said that Christ was God. Donald then reported that, after the fact, Mr. Bateman was "...not a little surprised to hear such religious sentiments from Lincoln, a man generally reputed in Springfield to be an agnostic."
When Herndon heard about all this he was livid. Herndon, who realized that Mr. Lincoln was no Christian, went to see Bateman, accuding him of making a hypocrite of Lincoln. Donald wrote: "Looking puzzled, or ashamed, the school superintendent backed down from his statement as quoted in Holland's biography. His recollection of Lincoln's words, he confessed, with embarassment, was 'not precise'." So, to put it rather bluntly, we really have no idea what Lincoln said to Bateman regarding the Christian faith. However, we do get some ideas from other people that knew Mr. Lincoln rather well, including his wife. Mary Todd Lincoln herself stated that Lincoln "was not a technical Christian." Can't get much closer to home than that!
Carl Sandburg, in volume one of his six-volume set on Lincoln's life, observed the following: "Close friends of Lincoln, such as his law partner Herndon and Matheny, who stood as best man at his wedding, had a notion that Lincoln was a sort of infidel. They said Lincoln told them he did not believe the Bible was the revelation of God. 'Lincoln did tell me that he did write a little book on infidelity...I got that from Lincoln's mouth' said Matheny. 'An infidel, a theist, a fatalist,' was Herndon's notion...Still others like Jesse W. Fell at Bloomington felt that he held a good deal of the same views as the famous heterodox New England preachers, Theodore Parker and William Ellery Channing." If, at best, even that statement by Fell is accurate, it is worth noting that Parker and Channing were Unitarians! So can we, at best, possibly say that Lincoln might have been some sort of Unitarian? That's a long way from Christian.
William Herndon, himself, wrote a book called Life Of Lincoln and he stated, quite forthrightly, that "Lincoln was a deep-grounded infidel. He disliked and despised churches. He never entered a church except to scoff and ridicule. On coming from a church he would mimic the preacher. Before running for any office he wrote a book against Christianity and the Bible."
According to George Edmonds in Facts And Falsehood, as recorded on page 53 of the book: "A man named Hill was greatly shocked, urged Lincoln not to publish it. Urged it would kill him politically. Hill got the book in his hands, opened the stove door, and it went up in flames and ashes. After that, Lincoln became more discreet..." Lincoln's relatives and friends testified that he "scoffed and derided religion and the Bible."
So, in contrast to the sound testimony of those who knew him personally (and you can't get more primary sources than that) and those who said that Mr. Lincoln was basically an infidel, we get these wonderfully, sunny, "feel good" tales about the glorious faith of the "great emancipator." One can not help but wonder if most of this is not just one more part of the overall program of trying to make the North appear to have taken the moral high ground in the War of Northern Aggression, when, actually, it was the other way around.
Perhaps a well-researched biography of the religious faith of Jefferson Davis might be in order--where the faith of Davis could be contrasted with the "faith" of Lincoln. However, that is probably one contrast the revisionist "historians" of our day would not want to see made for public consumption.
Other Articles In This Series:
Mr. Lincoln The Racist
Mr. Lincoln The Socialist
Mr. Lincoln's Biographer--One More Socialist
