CHAPTER VII. TESTIMONY OF COL. WARD H. LAMON
Lamon's "Life of Lincoln"—Lincoln's Early Skepticism—His
Investigations at New Salem—His Book on Infidelity—His
Religious Opinions Remain Unchanged—Holland's Condemnation
of Lamon's Work—Holland's and Lamon's Works Compared.
In 1872, seven years after the President's assassination, appeared the "Life of Abraham Lincoln," written by Col. Ward H. Lamon. As a faithful record of the life of one of the most sublime characters in the world's history, this work stands unrivaled. More accomplished writers have written biography—have written the biography of Lincoln. But no writer has ever been more thoroughly informed respecting his subject, and no writer has ever made a more conscientious use of the information in his possession than has Colonel Lamon in his "Life of Lincoln." In Illinois he was the friend and confidant of Lincoln. When the time approached for Lincoln to take the Executive chair, and the journey from Springfield to Washington was deemed a dangerous undertaking, to Colonel Lamon was intrusted the responsible duty of conducting him to the national capital. During the eventful years that followed, he remained at the President's side, holding an important official position in the District of Columbia. When Lincoln died, at the great funeral pageant in Washington, he led the civic procession, and was, with Major General Hunter and Judge David Davis, selected to convey the remains to their final resting-place at Springfield.
The following extract, from the preface to his work, shows what an inexhaustible mine of materials he had with which to prepare a full and authentic record of Lincoln's life and character:
"At the time of Mr. Lincoln's death, I determined to write his history, as I had in my possession much valuable material for such a purpose.... Early in 1869, Mr. Herndon placed at my disposal his remarkable collection of materials—the richest, rarest, and fullest collection it was possible to conceive.... Mr. Herndon had been the partner in business and the intimate personal associate of Mr. Lincoln for something like a quarter of a century; and Mr. Lincoln had lived familiarly with several members of his family long before their individual acquaintance began. New Salem, Springfield, the old judicial circuit, the habits and friends of Mr. Lincoln, were as well known to Mr. Herndon as to himself. With these advantages, and from the numberless facts and hints which had dropped from Mr. Lincoln during the confidential intercourse of an ordinary lifetime, Mr. Herndon was able to institute a thorough system of inquiry for every noteworthy circumstance and every incident of value in Mr. Lincoln's career. The fruits of Mr. Herndon's labors are garnered in three enormous volumes of original manuscripts and a mass of unarranged letters and papers. They comprise the recollections of Mr. Lincoln's nearest friends; of the surviving members of his family and his family-connections; of the men still living who knew him and his parents in Kentucky; of his schoolfellows, neighbors, and acquaintances in Indiana; of the better part of the whole population of New Salem; of his associates and relatives at Springfield; and of lawyers, judges, politicians, and statesmen everywhere, who had anything of interest or moment to relate. They were collected at vast expense of time, labor, and money, involving the employment of many agents, long journeys, tedious examinations, and voluminous correspondence. Upon the value of these materials it would be impossible to place an estimate. That I have used them conscientiously and justly is the only merit to which I lay claim."
Lamon's evidence concerning Lincoln's unbelief is complete and unanswerable. He did not present it because he was himself an unbeliever and wished to support his views with the prestige of Lincoln's great name. While the Freethinker regards Lincoln's rejection of Christianity as in the highest degree meritorious—a proof of his strong logical acumen, his sterling common sense, and his broad humanity—Lamon considered it a grave defect in his character. He states the fact because it is a fact, and because the purpose of his work is to disclose and not conceal the facts of Lincoln's life. If he devotes considerable space to the subject, and exhibits a special earnestness in its presentation, the misrepresentations of Lincoln's Christian biographers have furnished a reasonable pretext for it.
In the pages immediately following will be given the individual testimony of Colonel Lamon:
"Any analysis of Mr. Lincoln's character would be defective that did not include his religious opinions. On such matters he thought deeply, and his opinions were positive. But perhaps no phase of his character has been more persistently misrepresented and variously misunderstood, than this of his religious belief. Not that the conclusive testimony of many of his intimate associates relative to his frequent expressions on such subjects has ever been wanting; but his great prominence in the world's history, and his identification with some of the great questions of our time, which, by their moral import, were held to be eminently religious in their character, have led many good people to trace in his motives and actions similar convictions to those held by themselves. His extremely general expressions of religious faith called forth by the grave exigencies of his public life, or indulged in on occasions of private condolence, have too often been distorted out of relation to their real significance or meaning to suit the opinions or tickle the fancies of individuals or parties.
"Mr. Lincoln was never a member of any church, nor did he believe in the divinity of Christ, or the inspiration of the Scriptures in the sense understood by evangelical Christians" (Life of Lincoln, p. 486).
Holland and other Christian biographers have represented Lincoln as a youth of extreme piety, whose constant companion was the Bible. The concurrent testimony of the friends of his boyhood compels Colonel Lamon to affirm that the reverse of this is true—that Lincoln, at an early age, was noted for his skepticism. He says:
"When a boy, he showed no sign of that piety which his many biographers ascribe to his manhood.... When he went to church at all, he went to mock, and came away to mimic" (Ibid, pp. 486, 487).
"At an early age he began to attend the 'preachings' roundabout, but principally at the Pigeon Creek church, with a view to catching whatever might be ludicrous in the preacher's air or matter, and making it the subject of mimicry as soon as he could collect an audience of idle boys and men to hear him. A pious stranger, passing that way on a Sunday morning, was invited to preach for the Pigeon Creek congregation; but he banged the boards of the old pulpit, and bellowed and groaned so wonderfully, that Abe could hardly contain his mirth. This memorable sermon was a great favorite with him; and he frequently reproduced it with nasal tones, rolling eyes, and all manner of droll aggravations, to the great delight of Nat Grigsby and the wild fellows whom Nat was able to assemble" (lb., p. 55).
"His chronicles were many, and on a great variety of subjects. They were written, as his early admirers love to tell us, 'in the Scriptural style;' but those we have betray a very limited acquaintance with the model" (Ib., p. 63).
Of his Freethought reading and theological investigations at New Salem, and his book on Infidelity, Lamon says:
"When he came to New Salem, he consorted with Freethinkers, joined with them in deriding the gospel history of Jesus, read Volney and Paine, and then wrote a deliberate and labored essay, wherein he reached conclusions similar to theirs. The essay was burnt, but he never denied or regretted its composition. On the contrary, he made it the subject of free and frequent conversations with his friends at Springfield, and stated, with much particularity and precision, the origin, arguments, and objects of the work" (lb., p. 487).
"The community in which he lived was preeminently a community of Freethinkers in matters of religion; and it was then no secret, nor has it been a secret since, that Mr. Lincoln agreed with the majority of his associates in denying to the Bible the authority of divine revelation. It was his honest belief, a belief which it was no reproach to hold at New Salem, Anno Domini 1834, and one which he never thought of concealing. It was no distinction, either good or bad, no honor, and no shame. But he had made himself thoroughly familiar with the writings of Paine and Volney—the 'Ruins' by the one, and 'The Age of Reason' by the other. His mind was full of the subject, and he felt an itching to write. He did write, and the result was a little book. It was probably merely an extended essay, but it is ambitiously spoken of as 'a book' by himself and by the persons who were made acquainted with its contents. In this work he intended to demonstrate—
"'First, that the Bible was not God's revelation;
"'Secondly, that Jesus was not the son of God.'
"No leaf of this little volume has survived. Mr. Lincoln carried it in manuscript to the store of Mr. Samuel Hill, where it was read and discussed. Hill was himself an unbeliever, but his son considered his book 'infamous.' It is more than probable that Hill, being a warm personal friend of Lincoln feared that the publication of the essay would some day interfere with the political advancement of his favorite. At all events, he snatched it out of his hand, and thrust it into the fire, from which not a shred escaped" (lb., pp. 157, 158).
Colonel Lamon is confident that while Lincoln finally ceased to openly promulgate his Freethought opinions, he never abandoned them. He says:
"As he grew older, he grew more cautious; and as his New Salem associates, and the aggressive Deists with whom he originally united at Springfield, gradually dispersed, or fell away from his side, he appreciated more and more keenly the violence and extent of the religious prejudices which freedom in discussion from his standpoint would be sure to arouse against him. He saw the immense and augmenting power of the churches, and in times past had practically felt it. The imputation of Infidelity had seriously injured him in several of his earlier political contests; and, sobered by age and experience, he was resolved that that same imputation should injure him no more. Aspiring to lead religious communities, he foresaw that he must not appear as an enemy within their gates; aspiring to public honors under the auspices of a political party which persistently summoned religious people to assist in the extirpation of that which is denounced as the 'nation's sin,' he foresaw that he could not ask their suffrages whilst aspersing their faith. He perceived no reason for changing his convictions, but he did perceive many good and cogent reasons for not making them public" (lb., pp. 497, 498).
But he never told anyone that he accepted Jesus as the Christ, or performed a single one of the acts which necessarily follow upon such a conviction.
"At Springfield and at Washington he was beset on the one hand by political priests, and on the other by honest and prayerful Christians. He despised the former, respected the latter, and had use for both. He said with characteristic irreverence that he would not undertake to 'run the churches by military authority;' but he was, nevertheless, alive to the importance of letting the churches 'run' themselves in the interest of his party. Indefinite expressions about 'Divine Providence,' the 'Justice of God,' 'the favor of the Most High,' were easy, and not inconsistent with his religious notions. In this, accordingly, he indulged freely; but never in all that time did he let fall from his lips or his pen an expression which remotely implied the slightest faith in Jesus as the son of God and the Savior of men" (Ib., p. 502).
Lamon was Lincoln's intimate and trusted friend at Washington, and had he changed his belief, his biographer, as well as Noah Brooks and the Illinois clergyman, would have been in possession of the fact.
In 1851 Lincoln wrote a letter of consolation to his dying father, in which he counseled him to "confide in our great and good and merciful Maker." This letter was given to the public by Mr. Herndon, and has been cited by the orthodox to prove that Lincoln was a believer. Adverting to this letter Lamon says:
"If ever there was a moment when Mr. Lincoln might have been expected to express his faith in the atonement, his trust in the merits of a living Redeemer, it was when he undertook to send a composing and comforting message to a dying man.... But he omitted it wholly. He did not even mention the name of Jesus, or intimate the most distant suspicion of the existence of a Christ" (Ibid., p. 497).
Lincoln's mind was not entirely free from superstition, but though born and reared in Christendom, the superstitious element in his nature was not essentially Christian. His fatalistic ideas, so characteristic of the faith of Islam, have already been mentioned by Mr. Herndon, and are thus referred to by Colonel Lamon:
"Mr. Lincoln was by no means free from a kind of belief in the supernatural.... He lived constantly in the serious conviction that he was himself the subject of a special decree, made by some unknown and mysterious power, for which he had no name" (Ibid., p. 503).
"His mind was filled with gloomy forebodings and strong apprehensions of impending evil, mingled with extravagant visions of personal grandeur and power. His imagination painted a scene just beyond the veil of the immediate future, gilded with glory yet tarnished with blood. It was his 'destiny'—splendid but dreadful, fascinating but terrible. His case bore little resemblance to those of religious enthusiasts like Bunyan, Cowper, and others. His was more like the delusion of the fatalist conscious of his star" (Ibid,, p. 475).
When Lamon's work appeared, Holland, backed by the Christian element generally, fell upon it like a savage and sought, as far as possible, to suppress it. Lamon had committed an unpardonable offense. He had declared to the world that Lincoln had died a disbeliever, and, what was worse, he had proved it. Holland's attack was made in an eight-column review of Lamon's "Life," which was published in Scribner's Monthly, for August, 1872. In order to give an air of candor and judicial fairness to his venomous criticisms, he opens with this flattering recognition of its merits: "It is not difficult to see how Colonel Lamon, who during Mr. Lincoln's Presidency held an office in the District of Columbia, which must have brought him into somewhat frequent intercourse with the President, and who, indeed, had come with him from Springfield to the Capital, should feel that there rested on him a certain biographical duty. And certainly he was in possession of a mass of material so voluminous, so original, and so fresh that in this respect at least his fitness for the work was remarkably complete. Moreover, Mr. W. H. Herndon, who was Mr. Lincoln's partner in the practice of the law at Springfield, and was, of course, closely intimate with his partner in a business way,... added to Colonel Lamon's material the valuable documents which he had himself collected, and the memoranda which, with painstaking and lawyer-like ability, he had recorded from the oral testimony of living witnesses.
"As far as the story of Mr. Lincoln's childhood and early life is concerned, down to the time when his political life began, it has never been told so fully, with such spirit and zest, and with such evident accuracy, as by Colonel Lamon."
Nearly the entire review is devoted to a denunciation of Lamon's exposition of Lincoln's religious opinions. He repeatedly pronounces this "an outrage on decency," and characterizes Lincoln's Free-thought companions as "heathen," "barbarians," and "savages." The review concludes as follows:
"The violent and reckless prejudice, and the utter want of delicacy and even of decency by which the book is characterized, in such instances as this, will more than counterbalance the value of its new material, its fresh and vigorous pictures of Western life and manners, and its familiar knowledge of the 'inside politics' of Mr. Lincoln's administration, and will even make its publication (by the famous publishers whose imprint imparts to it a prestige and authority which its authorship would fail to give) something like a national misfortune. In some quarters it will be readily received as the standard life of the good President. It is all the more desirable that the criticism upon it should be prompt and unsparing."
Christianity must have the support of Lincoln's great name. To secure it Holland is willing to misrepresent the honest convictions of Lincoln's lifetime, to traduce the characters of his dearest friends, and to rob a brother author and a publisher of their just reward.
Lamon states that during the last years of Lincoln's life he ceased to proclaim his Infidel opinions because they were unpopular. Referring to this statement, Holland says: "The eagerness with which this volume strives to cover Mr. Lincoln's memory with an imputation so detestable is one of the most pitiable exhibitions which we have lately witnessed."
This outburst of righteous indignation, coming from the source it does, is peculiarly refreshing. To appreciate it, we have only to open Holland's work, and read such passages as the following: "I am obliged to appear different to them." "It was one of the peculiarities of Mr. Lincoln to hide these religious [Christian] experiences from the eyes of the world." "Who had never in their whole lives heard from his lips one word of all these religious convictions and experiences." "They [his friends] did not regard him as a religious man." "All this department of his life he had kept carefully hidden from them." "There was much of his conduct that was simply a cover to these thoughts—an effort to conceal them" (Holland's Life of Lincoln, pp. 239, 240).
Consummate hypocrisy in a Christian is all right with this moralist; but for a Freethinker to withhold his views from an intolerant religious world is a detestable crime.
As a biographer of Lincoln, Holland possessed many advantages over Lamon. His work was written and published immediately after the awful tragedy, when almost the entire reading public was deeply interested in everything that pertained to Lincoln's life. So far as Lincoln's religious views are concerned, he advocated the popular side of the question; for while those outside of the church cared but little about the matter, the church desired the influence of his great name, and was ready to reward those who assisted her in obtaining it. Holland, too, had an established reputation as an author—had nearly as large a class of readers as any writer in this country. His name alone was sufficient to guarantee a large circulation to any book he might produce. Lamon, on the other hand, possessed but a single advantage over his rival, that of having the truth on his side. And while "truth is mighty," and will in the end prevail, yet how often is it "crushed to earth" and for the time obscured. In view of all this, it is not strange that the public should be so slow to reject the fictions of Holland and accept the facts of Lamon.
That Lamon's "Life of Lincoln" is wholly undeserving of adverse criticism, is not claimed. He has, perhaps, given undue prominence to some matters connected with Lincoln's private affairs which might with propriety have been consigned to oblivion. A larger manifestation of charity, too, for the imperfections of those with whom Lincoln mingled, especially in the humbler walks of life, would not have detracted from its merit. And yet, those who desire to know Lincoln as he really was, should read Lamon rather than Holland. In Lamon's work, Lincoln's character is a rugged oak, towering above its fellows and clothed in nature's livery; in Holland's work, it is a dead tree with the bark taken off, the knots planed down, and varnished.
In the New York World appeared the following just estimate of these two biographies:
"Mr. Ward H. Lamon is the author of one 'Life of Lincoln,' and Dr. J. G. Holland is the author of another. Mr. Lamon was the intimate personal and political friend of Mr. Lincoln, trusting and trusted, from the time of their joint practice in the Illinois Quarter Sessions to the moment of Mr. Lincoln's death at Washington. Dr. Holland was nothing to Mr. Lincoln—neither known nor knowing. Dr. Holland rushed his 'Life' from the press before the disfigured corpse was fairly out of sight, while the public mind lingered with horror over the details of the tragedy, and, excited by morbid curiosity, was willing to pay for its gratification. Mr. Lamon waited many years, until all adventitious interest had subsided, and then with incredible labor and pains, produced a volume founded upon materials which for their fulness, variety, and seeming authenticity are unrivaled in the history of biographies.
"Dr. Holland's single volume professed to cover the whole of Mr. Lincoln's career. Mr. Lamon's single volume was modestly confined to a part of it. Dr. Holland's was an easy, graceful, off-hand performance, having but the one slight demerit of being in all essential particulars untrue from beginning to end. Mr. Lamon's was a labored, cautious, and carefully verified narrative which seems to have been accepted by disinterested critics as entirely authentic.
"Dr. Holland would probably be very much shocked if anybody should ask him to bear false witness in favor of his neighbor in a court of justice, but he takes up his pen to make a record which he hopes and intends shall endure forever, and in that record deliberately bears false witness in favor of a public man whom he happened to admire, with no kind of offense to his serene and 'cultured' conscience. If this were all—if Dr. Holland merely asserted his own right to compose and publish elaborate fictions on historical subjects—we might comfort ourselves with the reflection that such literature is likely to be as evanescent as it is dishonest, and let him pass in silence. But this is not all. He maintains that it is everybody's duty to help him to deceive the public and to write down his more conscientious competitor. He turns up the nose of 'culture' and curls the lip of 'art' at Mr. Lamon's homely narrative of facts, and gravely insists that all other noses and all other lips shall be turned up and curled because his are. He implores the public, which he insulted and gulled with his own book, to damn Mr. Lamon's, and he puts his request on the very ground that Mr. Lamon has stupidly gone and narrated undeniable truths, whereby he has demolished an empty shrine that was profitable to many, and broken a painted idol that might have served for a god.
"The names of Holland and Lamon are not of themselves and by themselves illustrious; but starting from the title-pages of the two Lives of Lincoln, and representing, as they do, the two schools of biography writers, the one stands for a principle and the other for the want of it."