In addition to what Colonel Lamon has presented, Mrs. Lincoln also stated the following:
"Mr. Lincoln's maxim and philosophy were, 'What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.' He never joined any church. He was a religious man always, I think, but was not a technical Christian" (Herndon's "Religion of Lincoln").
It may be charged that Mrs. Lincoln subsequently repudiated a portion of this testimony. In anticipation of such a charge I will here state a few facts. This testimony was given by Mrs. Lincoln in 1865. When it was given, while her heart was pierced by the pangs of her great grief, her mind was sound. About Jan. 1, 1874, a brief article, purporting to come from her pen, appeared, in which the testimony attributed to her was in part denied. At the time this denial was written, Mrs. Lincoln had been for more than two years insane. The chief cause in dethroning her reason was the death of her universally beloved Tad (Thomas), which occurred on July 15, 1871. Referring to this sad event, Mr. Arnold, one of the principal witnesses on the Christian side of this controversy, says: "From this time Mrs. Lincoln, in the judgment of her most intimate friends, was never entirely responsible for her conduct" (Life of Lincoln, p. 439).
The only effect of this denial on the minds of those acquainted with the circumstances, was to excite a mingled feeling of pity and disgust—pity for this unfortunate woman, and disgust for the contemptible methods of those who would take advantage of her demented condition and make her contradict the honest statements of her rational life.
Before dismissing this witness, I wish to advert to a subject with which many of my readers are familiar. For years, both before and after Lincoln's death, the religious press of the country was continually abusing Mrs. Lincoln. If a ball was held at the White House, she became at once the recipient of unlimited abuse. If Lincoln attended the theater, she was accused of having dragged him there against his will. It was almost uniformly asserted that he would not have gone to the theater on that fatal night had it not been for her, and in not a few instances it was infamously hinted that she was cognizant of the plot to murder him. But even the Rev. Dr. Miner, who was acquainted with the facts, is willing to vindicate her from these imputations. He says: "It has been said that Mrs. Lincoln urged her husband to go to the theater against his will. This is not true. On the contrary, she tried to persuade him not to go."
Lincoln's biographers have, for the most part, endeavored to do his wife justice, and have rebuked the insults showered upon her. Alluding to President and Mrs. Lincoln, Mr. Herndon says: "All that I know ennobles both." Colonel Lamon says: "Almost ever since Mr. Lincoln's death a portion of the press has never tired of heaping brutal reproaches upon his wife and widow, whilst a certain class of his friends thought they were honoring his memory by multiplying outrages and indignities upon her at the very moment when she was broken by want and sorrow, defamed, defenseless, in the hands of thieves, and at the mercy of spies." Mr. Arnold says: "There is nothing in American history so unmanly, so devoid of every chivalric impulse as the treatment of this poor, broken-hearted woman."
The evidence of Colonel Lamon's ten witnesses has now been presented. This evidence includes, in addition to the testimony of other intimate friends, the testimony of his wife; the testimony of his first law partner, Hon. John T. Stuart; the testimony of his last law partner, Hon. Win. H. Herndon; the testimony of his friend and political adviser, Col. James H. Matheny; the testimony of his private secretary, Col. John G. Nicolay; and the testimony of his lifelong friend and executor after death, Judge David Davis. No one can read this evidence and then honestly affirm that Abraham Lincoln was a Christian. This is the evidence, the perusal of which so thoroughly enraged that good Christian biographer, Dr. J. G. Holland; this is the evidence, the truthfulness of which the Rev. J. A. Reed, unmindful of the fate of Ananias, attempted to deny.
As a full and just answer to this attempted refutation of Lamon's witnesses by Reed, I quote from the New York World the following:
"This individual testimony is clear and overwhelming, without the documentary and other evidence scattered profusely through the rest of the volume. How does Mr. Reed undertake to refute it? In the first place, firstly, he pronounces it a 'libel,' and in the second place, secondly, he is 'amazed to find'—and he says he has found—that the principal witnesses take exception to Mr. Lamon's report of their evidence. This might have been true of many or all of Mr. Lamon's witnesses without exciting the wonder of a rational man. Few persons, indeed, are willing to endure reproach merely for the truth's sake, and popular opinion in the Republican party of Springfield, Ill., is probably very much against Mr. Lamon. It would, therefore, be quite in the natural order if some of his witnesses who find themselves unexpectedly in print should succumb to the social and political terrorism of their place and time, and attempt to modify or explain their testimony. They zealously assisted Mr. Herndon in ascertaining the truth, and while they wanted him to tell it in full they were prudently resolved to keep their own names snugly out of sight. But Mr. Reed's statement is not true, and his amazement is entirely simulated. Two only out of the ten witnesses have gratified him by inditing, at his request, weak and guarded complaints of unfair treatment. These are John T. Stuart, a relative of the Lincolns and Edwardses, and Jim Matheny, both of Springfield, whom Mr. Lincoln taught his peculiar doctrines, but who may by this time be deacons in Mr. Reed's church. Neither of them helps Mr. Reed's case a particle. Their epistles open, as if by concert, in form and words almost identical. They say they did not write the language attributed to them. The denial is wholly unnecessary, for nobody affirms that they did write it. They talked and Mr. Herndon wrote. His notes were made when the conversation occurred, and probably in their presence. At all events, they are both so conscious of the general accuracy of his report that they do not venture to deny a single word of it, but content themselves with lamenting that something else, which they did not say, was excluded from it. They both, however, in these very letters, repeat emphatically the material part of the statements made by them to Mr. Herndon, namely, that Mr. Lincoln was to their certain knowledge, until a very late period of his life, an 'Infidel,' and neither of them is able to tell when he ceased to be an Infidel and when he began to be a Christian. And this is all Mr. Reed makes by his re-examination of the two persons whom he is pleased to exalt as Mr. Lamon's 'principal witnesses.' They are but two out of the ten. What of the other eight? They have no doubt been tried and plied by Mr. Reed and his friends to no purpose; they stand fast by the record. But Mr. Reed is to be shamed neither by their speech nor their silence."