thus far we have dealt primarily with the environments of lincoln's religious life. we have not been able to escape the conviction that lincoln's religious life was an evolution, influenced by his environment and experience. we have considered in these successive chapters some matters in detail which seemed to belong particularly to the respective periods of which those chapters have treated; but we have reserved, in general, the evidence that bears upon his religion as a whole for more critical examination. particularly have we reserved those portions of the evidence which, first published after his death, belong to no one epoch of his life and have become the occasion of controversy. what kind of man he was religiously in 1865 we shall hope to know better; indeed, it is not unreasonable to hope that examination may show in part the processes by which his religion found its final form and expression.
we know already that there had been a development. we know that the abraham lincoln who in 1834 delivered his political opinions in labored and florid style and with the logic current in stump oratory had undergone mental development and had emerged into the lincoln who delivered his thoughts in translucent anglo-saxon at gettysburg and the second inaugural. that there had been a moral and spiritual development also we have already been assured. perhaps it was greater than he himself consciously understood. we shall now endeavor to ascertain what it had come to be.
in this inquiry we have no easy task. the mass of evidence is great, and the contradictions are many. there were[pg 102] contradictions in the personality of the man himself, and many contradictions in the views which men, even honest and unprejudiced men, had of him; and not all the testimony is unprejudiced.
lincoln was a man of many moods. he reacted differently to different stimuli, and to the same stimulus at different times. his feelings ran the gamut from abysmal dejection to rollicking gaiety: and he never revealed his whole nature to any one man, nor showed the whole of his nature at any one time. he cannot be judged by the mechanical tests of a rigid consistency: for he was not that kind of man.
when dr. j. g. holland went to springfield immediately after the death of lincoln to gather material for his biography he was surprised beyond measure to find how conflicting were the local judgments of lincoln's character. concerning this he wrote:
"such a nature and character seem full of contradictions; and a man who is subject to such transitions will always be a mystery to those who do not know him wholly. thus no two men among his intimate friends will agree concerning him.
"the writer has conversed with multitudes of men who claimed to know mr. lincoln intimately; yet there are not two of the whole number who agree in their estimate of him. the fact was that he rarely showed more than one aspect of himself to one man. he opened himself to men in different directions. it was rare that he exhibited what was religious in him; and he never did this at all, except when he found just the nature and character that were sympathetic with that aspect and element of his character. a great deal of his best, deepest, largest life he kept almost constantly from view, because he would not expose it to the eyes and apprehension of the careless multitude.
"to illustrate the effect of the peculiarity of mr. lincoln's intercourse with men, it may be said that men who knew him through all his professional and political life have offered opinions as diametrically opposite as these, viz.: that he was a very ambitious man, and that he was without a particle of ambition; that he was one of the saddest men that ever lived, and that he was one of the jolliest men that ever lived; that[pg 103] he was very religious, but that he was not a christian; that he was a christian, but did not know it; that he was so far from being a religious man or a christian that 'the less said upon the subject the better'; that he was the most cunning man in america, and that he had not a particle of cunning in him; that he had the strongest personal attachments, and that he had no personal attachments at all—only a general good feeling toward everybody; that he was a man of indomitable will, and that he was a man almost without a will; that he was a tyrant, and that he was the softest-hearted, most brotherly man that ever lived; that he was remarkable for his pure-mindedness, and that he was the foulest in his jests and stories of any man in the country; that he was a witty man, and that he was only a retailer of the wit of others; that his apparent candor and fairness were only apparent, and that they were as real as his head and his hands; that he was a boor, and that he was in all essential respects a gentleman; that he was a leader of the people, and that he was always led by the people; that he was cool and impassive, and that he was susceptible of the strongest passions. it is only by tracing these separate streams of impression back to their fountain that we are able to arrive at anything like a competent comprehension of the man, or to learn why he came to be held in such various estimation. men caught only separate aspects of his character—only the fragments that were called into exhibition by their own qualities."—holland: life of lincoln, pp. 241-42.
some writers, and more orators, have professed to see in the character of lincoln a perfect balancing of all desirable qualities. bishop fowler, in what was perhaps the most widely popular of all popular orations on lincoln, attributed his own inability to analyze the character of lincoln to its perfect sphericity, a consistency such that any attempt to consider any quality by itself met the counterbalancing consideration of all the other qualities. but the antitheses in lincoln's character were not those of a perfect consistency.[27] they were of a sort[pg 104] which puzzled those who knew him best, and were most easily explained by those who gave least study to the man himself and most to their own theories of what a man like mr. lincoln must have been.
of these sharp antitheses in lincoln's character, col. clark e. carr, who knew him well, said in an address which i heard:
"abraham lincoln was the drollest man i ever saw.
"he could make a cat laugh. never was another man so vivacious; never have i seen another who provoked so much mirth, and who entered into rollicking fun with such glee. he was the most comical and jocose of human beings, laughing with the same zest at his own jokes as at those of others. i did not wonder that, while actively engaged in party politics, his opponents who had seen him in these moods called abraham lincoln a clown and an ape.
"abraham lincoln was the most serious man i ever saw.
"when i heard him protest against blighting our new territories with the curse of human slavery, in his debates with senator douglas, no man could have been more in earnest, none more serious. in his analysis of legal problems, whether in the practice of his profession or in the consideration of state papers, he became wholly absorbed in his subject. sometimes he lapsed into reverie and communed with his own thoughts, noting nothing that was going on about him until aroused, when perhaps he would enter into a discussion of the subject that had occupied his mind, or perhaps break out into laughter and tell a joke or story that set the table in a roar.
"when i saw him at gettysburg as he exclaimed, 'that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under god, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth!'—when i heard him declare in his second inaugural address, 'fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of[pg 105] war may speedily pass away. yet if god wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondman'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, 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,'—as i looked upon him and heard him utter these sentiments, upon these occasions, abraham lincoln was the most solemn, the most dignified, the most majestic, and at the same time the most benignant human being i ever saw.
"rochefoucauld says that 'gravity is a mystery of the body invented to conceal defects of the mind.' lord shaftesbury says that 'gravity is the very essence of imposture.' abraham lincoln had none of this.
"man is the most serious of animals. man is the most frivolous of animals. it is said that man is the only animal that can both laugh and cry. abraham lincoln gave full vent to his emotions. he went through life with no restraints nor manacles upon his human nature. he was honest in the expression of his feelings, whether serious or otherwise, honest in their manifestation, honest with himself.
"it was because abraham lincoln was the most human of human beings that he is loved as has never been any other man that ever lived."—clark e. carr: my day and generation, pp. 107-9.
there was much reason for this wide disparity of opinion in the varying moods of lincoln himself, and the contrary aspects of his personality. but this was not the sole reason. springfield itself was greatly divided concerning mr. lincoln. there were lawyers who had been on opposing sides of cases against him and had sometimes won them. there were all the petty animosities which grow up in a small city. furthermore, springfield was moderately full of disappointed people who had expected that their friendship for lincoln would have procured for them some political appointment. any political aspirant living in maine or missouri who had a fourth cousin[pg 106] living in springfield and possessed of a speaking acquaintance with mr. lincoln, felt that he and his kinsfolk suffered an unmerited discourtesy if mr. lincoln through such influence did not produce on application a commission as major-general or an appointment as ambassador to some foreign court.
we have a yet further difficulty to face in the conflict of testimony of habitually truthful people. if it were becoming in the author of a book such as this to pass any general criticism upon those authors who have preceded him in the same field, it might, perhaps, be counted not invidious to say that for the most part writers on the religion of lincoln have been content to adduce the testimony of a limited number of apparently truthful witnesses in support of their theory, but have not given the evidence very much examination beyond the general fact that the witnesses were habitually truthful people. we shall not arrive at the truth in this fashion.
we may borrow an illustration from a field which lies just outside the scope of our present inquiry. even to this day it is possible to start a warm discussion almost anywhere in springfield over the question of lincoln's domestic affairs. it is possible to prove on the testimony of unimpeached witnesses that lincoln loved his wife passionately, and that he did not love her at all; that he married mary todd because he loved her and had already answered in his own heart all his previous questions and misgivings, and that he married her because she and her relatives practically compelled him to do so, and that he went to the marriage altar muttering that he was going to hell; that mary todd not only admired abraham lincoln, but loved him with a beautiful and wifely devotion, and that she hated him and never ceased to wreak revenge upon him for having once deserted her upon the eve of their announced marriage; that mary todd wore a white silk dress on the night of her wedding, and that she never owned a white silk dress until she had become a resident of the white house; that the wedding was a gay affair, with a great dinner, and was followed by a reception for which several hundred printed invitations were issued, and that the wedding was hastily performed on a sunday evening, mr. dresser, the minister, cut[pg 107]ting short his evening service and dropping in on the way home to solemnize a quickly extemporized marriage contract. it would seem fairly easy to discover from a calendar of the year 1842 at least what day in the week was chosen for the wedding, but few if any of the disputants, or even of the biographers, appear to have taken this pains. if the present writer should ever have occasion to write about abraham lincoln's married life, he would not proceed very far without consulting a calendar for that year; and he would hope to settle at least one point in the controversy by telling the world that in 1842 the fourth day of november did not occur on sunday or tuesday, but on friday;[28] mr. and mrs. lincoln both being tinged with superstition, he might raise the question whether the celebration of the wedding upon that date probably was or was not long premeditated. but the present book does not concern itself with these questions, and the matter is here introduced merely to illustrate that no point in controversy in a matter of this character can be definitely settled by the unsupported testimony of a single honest witness relying upon his memory after the lapse of many years.
evidence such as we are to consider is of two kinds, known in logic as a priori and a posteriori. the first kind is evidence from antecedent probability; the second is evidence relating to matter after the fact. an illustration will serve:
a man is found dead, with a wound in his forehead, and there are no witnesses who can be produced in court who saw the man die. the wound appears to have been produced by a bullet, and, as no weapon is found beside the body, there is a presumption that the man has been murdered. a neighbor is accused of having committed the deed. the a priori evidence is adduced in testimony that the defendant and the deceased had long been on bad terms with each other on account of a line fence between their adjacent properties; that the de[pg 108]fendant had threatened to kill the deceased and had recently bought a revolver. the evidence a posteriori is found in the fact that the defendant's revolver on examination shows one empty chamber and that the ball in the deceased man's brain is of the caliber suited to his weapon and of the same manufacture as the unused cartridges in the weapon. to this may be added other incriminating facts, as of measured footprints near the scene of murder which correspond to the size of the defendant's boots, and of possible blood stains upon his clothing.
a very large volume of a priori evidence is sometimes set aside by a single a posteriori fact; for instance, in the foregoing supposititious case it may be entirely possible to prove that the murder was committed by a tramp, and that the defendant was ten miles away at the time the deed was done.
on the other hand, a large volume of a posteriori evidence sometimes disappears in the face of a single a priori consideration. a man is accused of having stolen a sheep. it is shown in evidence that on the evening when the sheep was stolen he walked through his neighbor's pasture and was seen to approach the sheep; that he sold mutton on the day after the loss of the sheep, and that a fresh sheepskin was found nailed to his barn door. all this a posteriori evidence and much more may be completely set aside in the minds of the jury by the single fact that the man accused has lived for forty years in the community and has borne a reputation incompatible with the crime of sheep-stealing.
in the examination of testimony concerning alleged utterances of abraham lincoln in matters of religious belief, we must ask such questions as these:
is the witness credible? had he opportunity to know what he professes to relate? were other witnesses present, and if so, do they agree in their recollection of the words spoken? was the interview published at a time when it could have been denied by those who had knowledge of the incident? had the witness time to enlarge the incident by frequent telling and by such exaggeration and enlargement of detail as is likely to occur with the lapse of years? had the witness a probable[pg 109] motive for exaggeration; does he appear to tell what he would presumably have liked mr. lincoln to say, and does it sound more like the narrator's own style than it does like mr. lincoln? do the language and the sentiments expressed accord with the published addresses, letters, and authentic documents of abraham lincoln, and are the views expressed in accord with the views which he is known to have held? on the other hand, is it possible that in the freedom of personal conversation mr. lincoln may have said some things which he would not have been likely to say in formal discourse or to write in official documents?
it is not necessary that we formally ask these and only these questions; but these are the kinds of sieve through which oral testimony must be passed if we are to learn the truth.
particular care needs to be exercised in the application of these tests, and especially in the employment of all a priori methods. the author of this volume is a christian minister, and would be heartily glad to find in mr. lincoln's authentic utterances indubitable evidence that mr. lincoln was essentially a christian; there is need that he take especial care not to apply these discriminating tests in such fashion as to sustain his own prejudices. nor must he magnify his caution until it becomes an inverted prejudice.
on the other hand, the a priori method must on no account be ruled out. mr. lincoln left a great quantity of authentic material. his speeches, letters, and state papers fill twelve volumes, and even these do not contain all of his signed material. we are compelled to judge alleged utterances of his somewhat in the light of our certain knowledge of what he wrote and said. let us illustrate the application of this principle:
if an aged man living in central illinois were now to arise and say: "i knew abraham lincoln, and he said to me one day in private conversation, 'there is no god,'" we should be justified in discrediting that man's testimony, even though he bore a good reputation for veracity. the antecedent improbability of such a declaration on the part of mr. lincoln is too great for us to accept it on the basis of one man's recol[pg 110]lection of a private and unwitnessed conversation fifty years after mr. lincoln's death.
we should be equally justified in rejecting the testimony at this late date of one of mr. lincoln's old-time neighbors who would say that mr. lincoln told him that he believed the whole of the athanasian creed.
especial care is necessary in dealing with the alleged utterances of deceased persons in matters of religion. the author of this book has conducted a thousand funerals, and has been told every conceivable kind of story concerning some of the persons deceased. to the credit of our frail humanity be it recorded that nine-tenths of this testimony was favorable. there are few finer traits in human nature than those which prompt us to speak only good of the dead. the eagerness of those who have known not only the virtues but the faults of living men to pass lightly over the faults and emphasize the virtues of these same men when they are dead is not only a manifestation of the finest sort of love of fair play in refusing to accuse those who cannot make answer, but is also an exhibition of one of the noblest impulses of the human spirit.
even the tendency of ministers to lie like gentlemen on funeral occasions is not to be too unsparingly condemned. it springs from a belief that the better part of a man's life is the truer part of him, and that a man has a right to be judged by the best that is in him not only of achievement but even of defeated aspiration.
william allen white is fond of relating a story concerning a funeral in kansas. the minister was in the midst of his eulogy when a man who had come in late and had not heard the beginning of the discourse tiptoed down the aisle, took a long look into the coffin, and returned to his seat. the minister, somewhat disconcerted by this proceeding, addressed him, saying, "the opportunity to view the remains will be given later." "i know that," replied the man, "but i had begun to suspect that i had gotten into the wrong funeral."
one who has had much experience with funerals and with attempts to make dead men appear better than the same men living actually were or appeared to be, knows that these efforts[pg 111] are not usually the result of deliberate falsehood. they grow out of generous impulses and an easy tendency to exaggeration. but some people do actually lie, and this fact also is not wholly to be forgotten.
with these reminders of human frailty and human generosity and of the uncertainty of all things human, we proceed to examine in some detail the vast and contradictory mass of evidence which after the death of abraham lincoln was published concerning his faith or the lack of it.
what is in some respects the foremost example of platform and pulpit oratory concerning lincoln is the oration of bishop charles henry fowler, deceased, of the methodist episcopal church. it illustrates at once the excellency and the defects of works of this character. the oration had its beginning in a eulogy delivered in chicago on may 4, 1865, the day of lincoln's burial at springfield. from time to time as years went by, bishop fowler had occasion to deliver other addresses on lincoln, which, in 1904, he reshaped into something like the final form of the oration. first delivered in minneapolis, it was repeated in many cities and before great audiences. it became the bishop's best known and most popular address. it is the first and easily the greatest of the five that make up the volume of his patriotic orations, the others being on grant, mckinley, washington, and the great deeds of great men. of that large book it fills more than a hundred pages. it was too long ever to be delivered at one time, but it was completely written, and fully committed to memory, so that he chose at each delivery what portions he would utter and what he would omit. even with the omissions he rarely spoke less than two and one-half hours, and sometimes occupied three hours, his audiences hearing with sustained interest to the close. of it his son says, that "through its delivery in various parts of the country, and by the natural process of accretion and attraction, new facts were added and others verified, until in 1906 it was put in this final form."
here is an address whose composition occupied a strong and able man for thirty-one years. it thrills with admiration[pg 112] for its subject. it is alive with patriotism and religion. it deserved, in many respects, the attention which it received. men have been known to say that having heard this address they would never spoil the impression by listening to any other address on lincoln.
and yet it would not be safe to quote this lecture in any of its substantial parts without further investigation of the authority on which bishop fowler relied. he was a truthful man, and a man of ability, and if he had been asked what means he took to verify his statements, he would probably have said that he admitted no statement to his lecture which he did not find attested by some competent and truthful witness. doubtless so, and most of the lecture is true, and the impression which it makes as a whole is substantially true, but that is not enough. doubtless bishop fowler read in some book or magazine article by a truthful writer that on the day lincoln submitted the emancipation proclamation to his cabinet, he first read in the presence of the cabinet a chapter in the bible. it would not have required very much of investigation to have convinced bishop fowler that what lincoln really read was not the bible, but artemus ward. he did not intend to lie about it. he picked up the account from some other speaker who had heard or read that lincoln read a chapter from some book, and thought that the bible was the proper book to read on an occasion of that character. neither the speaker nor bishop fowler intended to be untruthful, but neither of them had any training in or inclination toward historical investigation. it would be easy to guess that a thousand methodist preachers and some others have retold the story on the authority of bishop fowler. and that is far from being the only inaccuracy in the lecture. indeed, it shows throughout how much it grew "by the natural process of accretion and attraction" and how little by the verification of the facts.
this lecture is cited because it is in many respects the very best of its type, as it is probably also the most noted, and one that was delivered to more people than any other on abraham lincoln.
it does not suffice to rely upon any second authorities in[pg 113] investigations of this character, nor to accept the statements of even truthful witnesses without some sifting of the evidence.
with this in mind, we come to what is the most crucial and difficult of all the incidents bearing upon our inquiry—the incident reported to dr. holland by president bateman.
