Abraham Lincoln's Religion

by Madison Clinton Peters

More, perhaps, has been written concerning the illustrious martyr President than of any other national character, and nearly all of this writing has been eulogy approaching almost to deification. We have enshrined Lincoln in a Pantheon of Glory, all by himself, for the praise and emulation of future ages, just as we have placed Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr in a Pillory of Shame to be held up for the scorn, execration, and anathema of all time.

The beatification of Lincoln, especially by Northerners, is due, in a great measure, to his devotion and loyalty to the cause of the Union. The issue of the war was to amalgamate the contending parties into a unified whole under one flag, but Lincoln was not to see the full fruition of his mighty work, the final triumph of his policy. The hand of the assassin fell upon him just at the very zenith of his fame, the meridian of his greatness, a time when public sentiment was at the boiling-point. He had struck the shackles from the limbs of four millions of people, brought order out of chaos, planted the banners of victory on the broken ramparts of defeat, and had done it in such a way that the vanquished almost fancied themselves the conquerors, and willingly, proudly, saluted the flag of a cemented Fatherland.

He had brought together the warring elements into a splendid and invincible Union; he had become the idol of his people as Washington had once been; he had been hailed as the Messiah of the slave and the Saviour of the oppressed, and then, in a moment, his great light was extinguished in the gloom and darkness of universal sorrow. With all that he had accomplished, nevertheless, he went down to the grave, like another Columbus, unconscious of the great work he had consummated.

His Emancipation Proclamation not only melted the manacles of the slaves by its electric touch, but it freed the whole nation from the bondage of years. Free speech had been suppressed, men dared not utter their convictions, the pulpit had been overawed, the press had been shackled, we were being reproached by the nations of the earth for violating the first principles of freedom by holding men in bondage. Europe was in transports of laughter at a country proclaiming human liberty, while clinging to all the traditions of slavery, and her risible faculties were really excusable in face of such a paradox. Lincoln keenly felt the sneers and taunts, and in the indignation of his mighty manhood he arose and freed the nation from its incubus of shame. He made its soil too hot for the feet of slaves; he unshackled the pulpit; he unmuzzled the press; he removed the dark blots from the national honor, and united and free he placed his country greatest among the nations of the earth.

The immortal Proclamation linked his name with the rights of man, the cause of personal liberty, and the progress of humanity. This is why Lincoln is enthroned on so high a pedestal; this is why the great War President is enshrined in the heart of hearts of his countrymen.

Some are of the opinion, that had the illustrious Tribune been spared, his plans of Reconstruction would have antagonized the best men of his party, and instead of coming down to posterity as the most revered and popular President, after Washington, he would have left his name in our annals as probably that of the most unpopular Executive we have had. But such surmise is a piece of far-fetched anticipation very remotely removed from the boundary of probability. Lincoln would not have antagonized, he would have converted and brought men to the same viewpoint as himself.

As it is, he towers so majestically above our horizon, that in his great and commanding national role, we are apt to quite forget his character as an individual, his personality as a man and what it represented in the domain of private life.

That Lincoln was a man of strong character and tenacious purpose, rather than brilliant and intellectual, is a point conceded by all who have studied him in the calm of impartiality and in no sense indulged in hero worship. Despite the claim of his divine mission, his greatness was service in loyalty to an ideal and it was subordination of the personal self to his ideals rather than any extraordinary gifts with which nature had endowed him, which gives glory to him and the men who stood with him.

He has been contrasted with Napoleon, whose star was just sinking below the horizon as his was ascending above it, but it is rather invidious to contrast two so widely divergent actors on the stage of fame. The difference between them is the difference between the iron heel and the helping hand, between tyranny and freedom, between a man living for self and glory, and a man living for the broadest kind of cosmopolitanism and the widest type of humanitarianism.

Lincoln's whole career is a manifestation of his absolute integrity of purpose, of his fearless honesty in all things, of his considerate feeling for others, of his profound respect for conscience, and his reverential fear of God.