>> These "supposed people supposedly said to someone who told Atheist William Herndon;
Herndon, himself a skeptic and agnostic had been a law partner with Lincoln in Illinois from 1852 until 1858, and later was Lincoln's personal bodyguard in Washington.
Rev. James Armstrong Reed, in preparing his 1873 lectures on the religion of Lincoln, asked a number of people if there was any evidence of Lincoln being an infidel in his later life. The reply from Phineas Gurley, pastor of the same New York Avenue Presbyterian Church while Lincoln was an attender, to Reed's question was:
I do not believe a word of it. It could not have been true of him while here, for I have had frequent and intimate conversations with him on the subject of the Bible and the Christian religion, when he could have had no motive to deceive me, and I considered him sound not only on the truth of the Christian religion but on all its fundamental doctrines and teaching.
And more than that:
in the latter days of his chastened and weary life, after the death of his son Willie, and his visit to the battle-field of Gettysburg, he said, with tears in his eyes, that he had lost confidence in everything but God, and that he now believed his heart was changed, and that he loved the Saviour, and, if he was not deceived in himself, it was his intention soon to make a profession of religion.[37]
Noah Brooks, a newspaperman, and a friend and biographer of Lincoln's, in reply to Reed's inquiry if there was any truth to claims that Lincoln was an infidel, stated:
In addition to what has appeared from my pen, I will state that I have had many conversations with Mr. Lincoln, which were more or less of a religious character, and while I never tried to draw anything like a statement of his views from him, yet he freely expressed himself to me as having 'a hope of blessed immortality through Jesus Christ.'
His views seemed to settle so naturally around that statement, that I considered no other necessary. His language seemed not that of an inquirer, but of one who had a prior settled belief in the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion.
Once or twice, speaking to me of the change which had come upon him, he said, while he could not fix any definite time, yet it was after he came here, and I am very positive that in his own mind he identified it with about the time of Willie's death.
He said, too, that after he went to the White House he kept up the habit of daily prayer. Sometimes he said it was only ten minutes, but those ten minutes with God he had. There is no possible reason to suppose that Mr. Lincoln would ever deceive me as to his religious sentiments.
In many conversations with him, I absorbed the firm conviction that Mr. Lincoln was at heart a Christian man, believed in the Savior, and was seriously considering the step which would formally connect him with the visible church on earth. Certainly, any suggestion as to Mr. Lincoln's skepticism or Infidelity, to me who knew him intimately from 1862 till the time of his death, is a monstrous fiction -- a shocking perversion.[38]
According to an affidavit signed under oath in Essex County, New Jersey, February 15, 1928, by Mrs. Sidney I. Lauck: "After Mr. Lincoln's death, Dr. Gurley told me that Mr. Lincoln had made all the necessary arrangements with him and the Session of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church to be received into the membership of the said church, by confession of his faith in Christ, on the Easter Sunday following the Friday night when Mr. Lincoln was assassinated." Mrs. Lauck was, she said, about thirty years of age at the time of the assassination.[39]
Though this is possible, Dr. Gurley did not mention anything about Lincoln's impending membership at the funeral in the White House, in which he delivered the sermon which has been preserved,[40] nor in his reply to Reed (above).
Francis Bicknell Carpenter, the author of Six Months in the White House, told Reed that he "believed Mr. Lincoln to be a sincere Christian" and reported that Lincoln had told a woman from Brooklyn in the United States Christian Commission that he had had "a change of heart" and intended "at some suitable opportunity to make a profession of religion"[41]
Rev. Madison Clinton Peters, in his 1909 biography wrote, "That he was a true and sincere Christian, in fact, if not in form, is fully proved by many extracts from his letters and public utterances." [42]
However, Mary Lincoln utterly denied these quotes, insisting that Herndon had "put those words in her mouth." She wrote,
With very great sorrow & natural indignation have I read of Mr Herndon, placing words in my mouth--never once uttered. I remember the call he made on me for a few minutes at the [St. Nicholas] hotel as he mentions, your welcome entrance a quarter of an hour afterward, naturally prevented a further interview with him. Mr Herndon, had always been an utter stranger to me, he was not considered an habitué, at our house.[46]
Herndon never answered Mrs. Lincoln's sharp rebuke![47]
John Remsburg (1848–1919), atheist, Christ-hater, and President of the American Secular Union in 1897, argued against claims of Lincoln's conversion in his book Six Historic Americans (1906). He cites several of Lincoln's close associates:[48]
* The man who stood nearest to President Lincoln at Washington—nearer than any clergyman or newspaper correspondent—was his private secretary, Col. John G. Nicolay. In a letter dated May 27, 1865, Colonel Nicolay says: "Mr. Lincoln did not, to my knowledge, in any way change his religious ideas, opinions, or beliefs from the time he left Springfield to the day of his death."
* His lifelong friend and executor, Judge David Davis, affirmed the same: "He had no faith in the Christian sense of the term."
* His biographer, Colonel Lamon, intimately acquainted with him in Illinois, and with him during all the years that he lived in Washington, says he never heard him say Jesus was the son of God and the Savior of all men.
Both Lamon and William H. Herndon published biographies of their former colleague after his assassination relating their personal recollections of him. Each denied Lincoln's adherence to Christianity and characterized his religious beliefs as deist or skeptical.
Modern views
Richard Carwardine of Oxford University has recently published Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (2006). Carwardine argues that Lincoln's intense faith permeated everything he did as President.
Allen C. Guelzo, director of Civil War Era studies at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, published Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President in 1999. Guelzo argues that Lincoln's boyhood inculcation of Calvinism was the dominant thread running through his adult life. He characterizes Lincoln's worldview as a kind of "Calvinized Deism".[49]
These recent scholars expand on the mainstream views of the likes of G. Frederick Owen who wrote Abraham Lincoln: The Man and His Faith in 1976, William Wolf who wrote The Religion of Abraham Lincoln in 1963, and William Barton who wrote The Soul of Abraham Lincoln in 1920. These scholars maintain that Lincoln was a man of deep faith.
Notes
1. ^ Eric Foner (2010). The Fiery Trial. Norton. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-393-06618-0. OCLC 601096674. http://books.google.com/books?id=earytjxi6pEC&pg=PA35.
2. ^ Lamon, Ward Hill, "Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865". University of Nebraska Press, 1994 reprint
3. ^ Mary Todd Lincoln letter to Rev. James Smith, June 8, 1870. As reported in Mary Todd Lincoln by Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, pp 567-568.
4. ^ "Says Record Shows Lincoln A Baptist" (PDF). New York Times. October 31, 1921. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9501E1DC103EEE3ABC4950DFB667838A639EDE. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
5. ^ "The Ambiguous Religion of Abraham Lincoln". http://www.adherents.com/people/pl/Abraham_Lincoln.html. Retrieved 2010-04-11.
6. ^ "Mr. Lincoln's White House". http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/inside.asp?ID=189&subjectID=4. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
7. ^ Noll, Mark A. (1992). online version "The Ambiguous Religion of President Abraham Lincoln". http://www.adherents.com/people/pl/Abraham_Lincoln.html online version. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
8. ^ Guelzo, Allen C. (1997). "Abraham Lincoln and the Doctrine of Necessity". Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/18.1/guelzo.html. Retrieved 2010-02-20. 29 pars.
9. ^ Nelson, Michael (Autumn 2003). Fighting for Lincoln's Soul. Virginia Quarterly Review. http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2003/autumn/nelson-fighting-lincolns-soul/. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
10. ^ Barton, William Eleazar (1920). The Soul of Abraham Lincoln. pp. (Chapter XII, page 150. http://books.google.com/books?id=I4LXXmsmdEYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI#v=onepage&q=&f=false. Retrieved 2010-02-20).
11. ^ Nicolay, John G. (2007). Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln. Kessinger Publishing Company.
12. ^ "Abraham Lincoln Online". http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/handbill.htm. Retrieved 2010-05-31.
13. ^ a b Steiner, Franklin (1936). "Abraham Lincoln, Deist, and Admirer of Thomas Paine". Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents. http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/steinlinc.htm.
Retrieved 2010-05-31. 14. ^ "Seances In The White House? Lincoln & The Supernatural". http://www.prairieghosts.com/a_lincoln.html.
Retrieved 2010-02-20.
15. ^ "Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House". New York: G. W. Carleton & Co.. 1868. http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/inside.asp?ID=72&subjectID=3. Retrieved 2010-02-20. Lincoln quoted by Elizabeth Keckley
16. ^ This transformation is reported by a considerable number of contemporaries, and a number of scholars agree - though there is less agreement on the nature of this change.
* Pulitzer prize historian David H. Donald, Lincoln (Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 336-337, writes: "After the burial the President repeatedly shut himself in a room so that he could weep alone... During this time he increasingly turned to religion for solace...
During the weeks after Willie's death Lincoln had several long talks with the Rev. Phineas D. Gurley, pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington where the Lincolns rented a pew... [W]hen he looked back on the events of this tragic spring, recognized that he underwent what he called 'a process of crystallization' in his religious beliefs."
* Ronald White, Lincoln's Greatest Speech (Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 134, writes, "Many have pointed to the death of Willie on February 20, 1862, as a critical moment in Lincoln's struggles with faith."
* Stephen Oates, With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln (Harper & Row, 1977), p. 70, writes, "After Willie's death, he talked more frequently about God than he had before."
* Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, III:379-380, recounts a report that "Mr. Lincoln's views in relation to spiritual things seemed changed from that hour [viz., Willie's death]."
17. ^ "Mary Todd Lincoln and Clairvoyance". http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/mary_todd_lincoln.htm. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
18. ^ Reed, James A. (July 1873). "The Later Life and Religious Sentiments of Abraham Lincoln". Scribner's Monthly 6 (3): 340. http://books.google.com/books?id=KOYGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA333&dq=%22Scribner%27s+Monthly%22+%2B1873+%2B%22The+Later+Life+and+Religious+Sentiments+of+Abraham+Lincoln%22&lr=&client=firefox-a#v=onepage&q=&f=false. citing Noah Brooks article in Harper's Monthly, July 1865
19. ^ David H. Donald, Lincoln (Simon & Schuster, 1995), 354, writes, "By the summer of 1862, Lincoln felt especially in need of divine help. Everything, it seemed, was going wrong, and his hope for bringing a speedy end to the war was dashed."
20. ^ Carpenter, Frank B (1866). Six Months at the White House. p. 90. http://books.google.com/books?id=FTsl3N7hDpAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=six+months+at+the+white+house+carpenter&source=bl&ots=bUkvamYWdL&sig=rWzfEd_nifcgEQhd6T3EvRsKPqk&hl=en&ei=gXt_S4fMKIOeswPcq9n8Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=&f=false.
Retrieved 2010-02-20. as reported by Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon Portland Chase, September 22, 1862. Others present used the word resolution instead of vow to God. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911), 1:143, reported that Lincoln made a covenant with God that if God would change the tide of the war, Lincoln would change his policy toward slavery. See also Nicolas Parrillo, "Lincoln's Calvinist Transformation: Emancipation and War," Civil War History (September 1, 2000).
21. ^ "Abraham Lincoln's Meditation on the Divine Will". http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/meditat.htm. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
22. ^ Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1939), Vol. 1, 630.
23. ^ "1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln". http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
24. ^ "NPS Source Book: Abraham Lincoln". http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/source/sb2/sb2w.htm. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
25. ^ According to The Congressional Record (1908, House), p. 3387, the motto was adopted "doubtless with his [Lincoln's] knowledge and approval."
26. ^ Carpenter, F.B. (1866). Six Months at the White House. p. 282. http://books.google.com/books?id=FTsl3N7hDpAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=six+months+at+the+white+house+carpenter&source=bl&ots=bUkvamYWdL&sig=rWzfEd_nifcgEQhd6T3EvRsKPqk&hl=en&ei=gXt_S4fMKIOeswPcq9n8Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=&f=false. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
27. ^ William E. Barton, Lincoln at Gettysburg: What He Intended to Say; What He Said; What he was Reported to have Said; What he Wished he had Said (New York: Peter Smith, 1950), pp. 138-139.
28. ^ "Under God". http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/264xqezm.asp?pg=1. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
29. ^ "Abraham Lincoln, quoted in The Washington Daily Morning Chronicle". September 8, 1864. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;rgn=div1;view=text;idno=lincoln7;node=lincoln7%3A1184. Retrieved 2010-02-20. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Rutgers University Press, 1953), Roy P. Basler, editor. Volume, VII, page 542.]
30. ^ :"Six Historic Americans: Abraham Lincoln". http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/john_remsburg/six_historic_americans/chapter_5.html#3. Retrieved 2011-01-02."
31. ^ Donald (1996), pp. 514–515.
32. ^ "Lincoln Memorial Album". p. 508. http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/john_remsburg/six_historic_americans/chapter_5.html#1.18. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
33. ^ Osborn H. Oldroyd, Editor, 1882, New York: G.W. Carleton & Co.The Lincoln Memorial: Album Immortelles, p. 508; From the copy in the U.S. Archivesl online here
34. ^ See a discussion of this story in They Never Said It, by Paul F. Boller & John George (Oxford Univ. Press, 1989, p. 91).
35. ^ Freeport Weekly Journal, December 7, 1864.
36. ^ "Benjamin Talbot to Abraham Lincoln". December 21, 1864. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mal:@field(DOCID+@lit(d3943600)). Retrieved 2010-02-20.
37. ^ Reed, James A. (July 1873). "The Later Life and Religious Sentiments of Abraham Lincoln". Scribner's Monthly 6 (3): 339. http://books.google.com/books?id=KOYGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA333&dq=%22Scribner%27s+Monthly%22+%2B1873+%2B%22The+Later+Life+and+Religious+Sentiments+of+Abraham+Lincoln%22&lr=&client=firefox-a. Retrieved 2010-02-20. quoting Phineas Gurley
38. ^ Reed, James A. (July 1873). The Later Life and Religious Sentiments of Abraham Lincoln. 6. Scribner's Monthly. p. 340. http://books.google.com/books?id=KOYGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA333&dq=%22Scribner%27s+Monthly%22+%2B1873+%2B%22The+Later+Life+and+Religious+Sentiments+of+Abraham+Lincoln%22&lr=&client=firefox-a. Retrieved 2010-02-20. Noah Brooks to J.A. Reed, December 31, 1872
39. ^ D. James Kennedy in his booklet, "What They Believed: The Faith of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln" p. 59, Published by Coral Ridge Ministries, 2003
40. ^ "Abraham Lincoln's White House Funeral Sermon". http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/gurley.htm. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
41. ^ Reed, James A. (July 1873). The Later Life and Religious Sentiments of Abraham Lincoln. 6. Scribner's Monthly. p. 340. http://books.google.com/books?id=KOYGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA333&dq=%22Scribner%27s+Monthly%22+%2B1873+%2B%22The+Later+Life+and+Religious+Sentiments+of+Abraham+Lincoln%22&lr=&client=firefox-a. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
42. ^ Peters, Madison (1909). Abraham Lincoln's Religion. Graham Press. pp. 29. http://libsysdigi.library.uiuc.edu/oca/Books2008-06/abrahamlincolnsr00peter/abrahamlincolnsr00peter.pdf. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
43. ^ Mary T. Lincoln to James Smith, June 8, 1870, in Robert J. Havlik, "Abraham Lincoln and the Reverend Dr. James Smith: Lincoln's Presbyterian experience of Springfield," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (Autumn, 1999) online
44. ^ Ward Hill (Colonel) Lamon, Life of Lincoln p. 489
45. ^ William Herndon Religion of Lincoln
46. ^ Mary Todd Lincoln to John T. Stuart, December 15, 1873, Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters, ed. Justin G. Turner and Linda Leavitt Turner (New York: Knopf, 1972), 603.
47. ^ "Herndon's reply and more on the enmity between himself and Mary Lincoln". http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/22.2/wilson.html. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
48. ^ "Six Historic Americans: Abraham Lincoln". http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/john_remsburg/six_historic_americans/chapter_5.html#3. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
49. ^ p447 Redeemer President
External links
* The Puzzling Faith of Abraham Lincoln - essay by Mark Noll
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