At early candle-lighting on two successive Friday evenings this question was debated. On each night the procedure was the same. Each of the speakers spoke forty-five minutes, and each of the leaders spent a half-hour in rebuttal, a total of four hours each evening of solid oratory. I should like to relate, but it would unduly extend this narrative, the learned arguments of the two college students who stood for the rotundity of the earth, and how those arguments were met. I well remember the closing argument of my chief opponent, not the local preacher but an abler man whom he brought in, the cousin of a Confederate General of the same name (though himself a stanch Union man) who stood beside and above me with long descending gestures that threatened to crush my skull as he shouted:
"He's a college student-ah! And he's come out here to larn us and instruct us about the shape of the yarth-ah! And he knows more'n Joshua-ah! And he'd take Joshua into this here school and tell him he didn't know what he'd ort to pray for-ah! He'd tell Joshua that he hadn't orter said, 'Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon-ah, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon-ah!' He'd tell Joshua that he'd ort to have prayed, 'Yarth, stand thou still upon thine axle-tree-ah!' But I reckon God knowed what Joshua had ort to have prayed for, for it is written in the Word of God that the sun stood still-ah! I tell ye, brethering, hit's the doctrine of infidelity-ah! And any man that teaches it ort to be drove out of the country-ah!"
There is much more of the story, but this must suffice to illustrate an important point. Until he went to live in Springfield, Abraham Lincoln probably never had heard a Baptist preacher, unless it was John Mason Peck on some errand to Vandalia, who did not believe the earth flat, and who would not have classified Abraham Lincoln as an infidel for denying the declaration.
Now, I knew that I was not an infidel, even though I parted company with my friends in the Baptist ministry in my belief that the earth was round, and even though I had a similar debate with a well-informed Methodist preacher on the length of time that was required to make the earth. But Abraham Lincoln did not know. Thomas Paine and the preachers were agreed in their misinformation.
I count it a privilege to have lived with earnest and intelligent people who believed the earth flat, and to whom that belief was an important article of Christian faith. But I saw intelligent young men who had come to another opinion concerning some of these matters who accepted without protest the names that overzealous mountain preachers applied to them, and who, believing themselves to be infidels, in time became so.
Not many of Lincoln's biographers, if indeed any of them, have shared these advantages which for several profitable years I had in the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee; and I am less ready than some of even the most orthodox of them have been to accept the declaration that when Lincoln left New Salem he was an infidel. Even if I knew that he thought himself to be such, I should like before forming my final conclusion to know just what he thought constituted an infidel. I do not think that at this period of his history Abraham Lincoln possessed an adequate knowledge of the subject to have been altogether competent to classify himself.
A few things we know about him. He had established a reputation for courage, for kindness, and for honesty. "Honest Abe" was his sobriquet, and he deserved it. Whatever his opinions, he held them honestly; and neither on earth nor in heaven can any man be rightfully condemned for the holding of an honest opinion.
We shall have occasion later to refer to Mentor Graham, and to quote him. He came into Lincoln's life at this time, and taught him Kirkham's Grammar, and the study of surveying, and assisted him with his literary composition. He knew more of the mind of Abraham Lincoln during this period than any other man, and we shall hear from him in due time.
New Salem "winked out," as Lincoln was accustomed to say. It disappeared from the map. The post-office was discontinued. There was nothing to hold Lincoln there. But the great city of Springfield, with its one thousand inhabitants and its majestic pride in its new State Capitol, which Lincoln had done much to remove thither from Vandalia, beckoned to this ambitious young lawyer and politician, and on March 15, 1837, he borrowed a horse, rode to Springfield with all his worldly goods in his saddlebags, and the saddlebags none too full, and thereafter became a resident of the capital city of Illinois, and a permanent factor in its legal and political life.