Next to Mr. Herndon, Lincoln's biographer, Colonel Lamon, has made the fullest and fairest presentation of Lincoln's religious opinions. He did not accept them but he was familiar with them and he was honest enough to present them. 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 one, 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 was assassinated, at the great funeral pageant in Washington, he led the civic procession, and was, with Judge David Davis and Major General Hunter, selected to convey the remains to their final resting-place at Springfield. Regarding his friend's religious belief Colonel Lamon says: "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). 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 [1834 to his death] 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 (Ibid, p. 502).
After Lincoln's death Mrs. Lincoln, herself a Christian, made the following statement: "Mr. Lincoln had no hope, and no faith, in the usual acceptation of those words" (Lamon's Life of Lincoln, p. 489).
Judge David Davis, his life-long friend and his executor, says: "He [Lincoln] had no faith, in the Christian sense of the term."
Lincoln did not believe in a personal God. His law partner, W. H. Herndon, relates the following in proof of this: In 1854 he asked me to erase the word God from a speech which I had written and read to him for criticism, because my language indicated a personal God, whereas he insisted that no such personality ever existed."—Lamon's Life of Lincoln, p. 445.
The Gettysburg address, as delivered by Lincoln, contained no mention of Deity. The phrase "under God" was inserted afterward, with Lincoln's consent, at the earnest solicitation of a friend. The recognition of God in the Emancipation Proclamation was inserted at the urgent request of Secretary Chase. The pious phrases to be found in his state papers are mostly the work of his cabinet ministers and secretaries.
Thirty years ago Judge James M. Nelson, a son of Thomas Pope Nelson, a distinguished statesman of Kentucky, and a great-grandson of Thomas Nelson, Jr., signer of the Declaration of Independence, who was intimately acquainted with Lincoln, both in Illinois and at Washington, published in the Louisville Times his "Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln." Concerning Lincoln's religious belief Judge Nelson says:
"In religion Mr. Lincoln was of about the same belief as Colonel Ingersoll, and there is no account of his ever having changed. He went to church a few times with his family while he was President, but so far as I have been able to find he remained an unbeliever.... I asked him once about his fervent Thanksgiving Message and twitted him with being an unbeliever in what was published. 'Oh,' said he, 'that is some of Seward's nonsense, and it pleases the fools!"
Col. Amos C. Babcock, for many years chairman of the Illinois State Republican Committee, and one of Lincoln's confidential agents during the war, in an article published in the Peoria Journal, says: "Lincoln was an Agnostic. During the war he sometimes talked religiously, but it was mere statecraft. He knew that everything depended upon his having the support of the religious people,... but he was for all that an utter disbeliever in the Christian religion."
In Springfield, where he lived, Lincoln's rejection of Christianity was known to every person and while he was very popular and greatly beloved by all who were not dominated by their religious prejudices, the bigots always opposed him. During the presidential campaign of 1860 his friends made a canvass of the voters of Springfield for the purpose of ascertaining how they were going to vote for president. The list was given to Lincoln. With Hon. Newton Bateman, state superintendent of public instruction, he went over it carefully, his principal desire being to know how the clergy were going to vote. When they had finished Lincoln said: "Here are twenty-three ministers, of different denominations, and all of them are against me but three; and here are a great many prominent' members of the churches, a very great majority of whom are against me."—Holland's Life of Lincoln, p. 236.
Why, it may be asked, was Lincoln's Infidelity not used against him everywhere in this campaign? Because the managers of both parties knew that Douglas, also, was a disbeliever in Christianity. An agitation of this question would have weakened the chances of both northern candidates while it would have strengthened the chances of Breckinridge, the southern candidate.