The Soul of Abraham Lincoln

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

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: