The Soul of Abraham Lincoln

by William E. Barton

Lincoln's habit with respect to churchgoing underwent no very marked improvement after his marriage until the year 1850. He came, however, to know a number of ministers[19] and to sustain somewhat pleasant relations with some of them.

Mary Todd had been reared a Presbyterian. For a time after her marriage she attended and was a member of the Episcopal Church. On February 1, 1850,[20] their second son, Edward Baker Lincoln, died. The little boy was between three and four years old. The rector of the Episcopal Church was absent from the city and the funeral service was conducted by Rev. James Smith, D.D., of the First Presbyterian Church. A friendship was established between them, and Mr. Lincoln took a pew in Dr. Smith's church and he and Mrs. Lincoln attended there regularly.

In a later chapter we shall have occasion to consider more directly and at length the influence of Dr. Smith upon Mr. Lincoln. We now confine ourselves to the fact that Lincoln now became a church attendant under the ministry of a preacher quite different from any he had previously known.

James Smith was a large and stalwart Scotchman. He is described as Websterian in appearance and in the strength of logical argument. Lamon speaks of him in contemptuous phrase which reflects little credit upon Lamon, describing him as a man of slender ability. Whatever Dr. Smith was, he was not a man of meager intellectual power. He had a massive mind and one well trained. He had a voice of great carrying power and was accustomed to speaking to large congregations both indoors and out. He was a wide reader and a skilled controversialist. In his own young manhood he had been a deist, and when he was converted he entered with great ardor into various discussions with men who opposed the Christian faith. One such discussion he had engaged in with a widely known infidel author. The debate had continued evening after evening in a Southern city for nearly three weeks and Dr. Smith had emerged from it triumphant.

Dr. Smith was just the kind of man to win the admiration of Lincoln at that time. There is some reason to believe that Dr. Smith's three weeks' debate with C. G. Olmsted at Columbus, Mississippi, suggested to Lincoln the idea of his debate with Stephen A. Douglas.

That Lincoln's views underwent some change at this time there is the best reason to believe. Lincoln himself declared to his brother-in-law, Ninian W. Edwards, that his views had been modified.

Lamon and Herndon both seek to represent Dr. Smith as an officious, self-advertising meddler, who sought to win renown for himself by proclaiming Mr. Lincoln's conversion through his personal influence. The claims and conduct of Dr. Smith do not seem to merit any such rebuke. Whatever Dr. Smith claimed, Mr. Lincoln knew about it and was not offended by it. Subsequently he appointed Dr. Smith's son United States Consul to Dundee, Scotland, and on the son's return to the United States Mr. Lincoln appointed his father, who by that time had retired from the ministry, to succeed him in that position. Even Lamon is compelled to admit that Dr. Smith's claims were made with Mr. Lincoln's knowledge, and says:

"Mr. Lincoln permitted himself to be misunderstood and misrepresented by some enthusiastic ministers and exhorters with whom he came in contact. Among these was the Rev. Mr. Smith, then pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Springfield, and afterward consul at Dundee, in Scotland, under Mr. Lincoln's appointment."—Lamon, Life of Lincoln, p. 498.

This statement is thoroughly discreditable, and that which follows in Lamon's account of Mr. Lincoln's relations with Dr. Smith is a thorough misrepresentation, as we shall later discover. Lamon was not a deliberate liar; neither was he in this matter free from prejudice; and he wrote with reckless disregard of some facts which he did not know but ought to have known, and which the reader of this book shall know.

About this time Mr. Lincoln received word that his own father was dying, and was prevented from making him a personal visit, which, apparently, he was not wholly sorry for. On January 12, 1851, he wrote to his stepbrother, John D. Johnson: