Strangely enough, however, Colonel Lamon and his companion in authorship not only praise Mr. Lincoln's greatness, but laud his singular conscientiousness and integrity of motive almost to perfection. Says Mr. Herndon, "He was justly entitled to the appellation, Honest Abe"; "honesty was his pole star; conscience, the faculty that loves the just and the right, was the second great quality and forte of Mr. Lincoln's character." "He had a deep, broad, living conscience. His great reason told him what was true and good, right and wrong, just or unjust, and his conscience echoed back the decision, and it was from this point he spoke and wove his character and fame among us. His conscience ruled his heart." [See Herndon's letter in Carpenter's Life of Lincoln.]
In confirmation of this, Mr. Lamon goes on to show that Mr. Lincoln scorned everything like hypocrisy or deceit. In fact he makes his hero to be such a paragon of honesty and conscious integrity of motive that he would not undertake to plead a bad cause before a jury if he could possibly shift the responsibility over on to some other lawyer, whose conscience was not quite so tender. He brings in the testimony of a most reputable lawyer of another place in confirmation of this, who states: "That for a man who was for a quarter of a century both a lawyer and a politician, Mr. Lincoln was the most honest man I ever knew. He was not only morally honest but intellectually so. He could not reason falsely; if he attempted it he failed. In politics he never would try to mislead. At the bar, when he thought he was wrong, he was the weakest lawyer I ever saw." "In a closely contested case where Mr. Lincoln had proved an account for a client, who was, though he knew it not, a very slippery fellow, the opposing attorney afterward proved a receipt clearly covering the entire case. By the time he was through Mr. Lincoln was missing. The court sent for him to the hotel. 'Tell the judge,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'that I can't come; my hands are dirty and I came over to clean them.'"
Page after page is thus taken to show Mr. Lincoln's singular conscientiousness and honesty, his incapability of hypocrisy or deceit, as a lawyer, a politician and a gentleman. And yet these consistent biographers go back on all this testimony of their own mouths when they come to explain the admitted change in his life when he began to lean toward the church, and the "aggressive deists" parted company with him. Then they find it convenient to call him a "wily politician," who is "playing a sharp game with the Christians"; "the cautious pretender who does not disdain to regulate his religious manifestations with reference to his political interests." They saddle upon him the vilest hypocrisy and deceit, and make him "act the liar's part," in order to send him down to posterity an infidel. On one page they reason that Mr. Lincoln could not have made any such admissions of his belief in the Christian religion as have been maintained, as such admissions would be contrary to his well-known character; on the next page they affirm that Mr. Lincoln could not act the hypocrite; and on a third they do not hesitate to attribute to him the very grossest duplicity, in their zeal to fasten on him the charge of permanent skepticism. They go back on their own logic, eat their own argument, and give the lie to the very charge they are laboring with such considerable pains to establish.
The book, therefore, I repeat, bears on its own pages the best refutation of the charge it makes against Mr. Lincoln. Surely, such serious inconsistency of statement, such illogical absurdity, even, could hardly have escaped the notice of the biographers if some preconceived opinion had not prejudiced their minds and blinded their eyes. The animus of the book and the purpose for which it was written are only too apparent.
Perhaps it might suffice to rest the refutation of this charge against Mr. Lincoln's religious character on the internal evidence of Colonel Lamon's volume with which I have thus far been occupied. But there is something to be said concerning the authenticity and accuracy of the testimony by which the charge seems to be supported.
I have been amazed to find that the principal persons whose testimony is given in this book to prove that their old friend lived and died an infidel, never wrote a word of it, and never gave it as their opinion or allowed it to be published as covering their estimate of Mr. Lincoln's life and religious views. They were simply familiarly interviewed, and their testimony misrepresented, abridged and distorted to suit the purpose of the interviewer, and the business he had on hand.
The two gentlemen whose names are most relied upon, and who stand first on the list of witnesses to establish the charge these biographers have made, are the Hon. John T. Stuart, and Col. Jas. H. Matheny, of Springfield, old and intimate friends of Mr. Lincoln.
Hon. John T. Stuart is an ex-member of Congress, and was Mr. Lincoln's first law partner,—a gentleman of the highest standing and ability in his profesion, and of unimpeachable integrity. Mr. Lamon has attributed to Mr. Stuart testimony the most disparaging and damaging to Mr. Lincoln's character and opinions,—testimony which Mr. Stuart utterly repudiates, both as to language and sentiment, as the following letter shows:—
Springfield, Dec. 17th, 1872.
Rev. J. A. Reed:
Dear Sir—My attention has been called to a statement in relation to the religious opinions of Mr. Lincoln, purporting to have been made by me and published in Lamon's Life of Lincoln. The language of that statement is not mine; it was not written by me, and I did not see it until it was in print.
I was once interviewed on the subject of Mr. Lincoln's religious opinions, and doubtless said that Mr. Lincoln was in the earlier part of his life an infidel. I could not have said that "Dr. Smith tried to convert Lincoln from infidelity so late as 1858, and couldn't do it." In relation to that point, I stated, in the same conversation, some facts which are omitted in that statement, and which I will briefly repeat. That Eddie, a child of Mr. Lincoln, died in 1848 or 1849, and that he and his wife were in deep grief on that account. That Dr. Smith, then Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Springfield, at the suggestion of a lady friend of theirs, called upon Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, and that first visit resulted in great intimacy and friendship between them, lasting till the death of Mr. Lincoln, and continuing with Mrs. Lincoln till the death of Dr. Smith. I stated that I had heard, at the time, that Dr. Smith and Mr. Lincoln had much discussion in relation to the truth of the Christian religion, and that Dr. Smith had furnished Mr. Lincoln with books to read on that subject, and among others one which had been written by himself, some time previous, on infidelity; and that Dr. Smith claimed that after this investigation Mr. Lincoln had changed his opinion, and become a believer in the truth of the Christian religion: that Mr. Lincoln and myself never conversed upon that subject, and I had no personal knowledge as to his alleged change of opinion. I stated, however, that it was certainly true, that up to that time Mr. Lincoln had never regularly attended any place of religious worship, but that after that time he rented a pew in the First Presbyterian Church, and with his family constantly attended the worship in that church until he went to Washington as President. This much I said at the time, and can now add that the Hon. Ninian W. Edwards, the brother-in-law of Mr. Lincoln, has, within a few days, informed me that when Mr. Lincoln commenced attending the First Presbyterian Church he admitted to him that his views had undergone the change claimed by Dr. Smith.
I would further say that Dr. Smith was a man of very great ability and on theological and metaphysical subjects had few superiors and not many equals.
Truthfulness was a prominent trait in Mr. Lincoln's character, and it would be impossible for any intimate friend of his to believe that he ever aimed to deceive, either by his words or his conduct.
Yours truly,
John T. Stuart.