The Soul of Abraham Lincoln

by William E. Barton

"Abraham Lincoln was the drollest man I ever saw.

"He could make a cat laugh. Never was another man so vivacious; never have I seen another who provoked so much mirth, and who entered into rollicking fun with such glee. He was the most comical and jocose of human beings, laughing with the same zest at his own jokes as at those of others. I did not wonder that, while actively engaged in party politics, his opponents who had seen him in these moods called Abraham Lincoln a clown and an ape.

"Abraham Lincoln was the most serious man I ever saw.

"When I heard him protest against blighting our new territories with the curse of human slavery, in his debates with Senator Douglas, no man could have been more in earnest, none more serious. In his analysis of legal problems, whether in the practice of his profession or in the consideration of State papers, he became wholly absorbed in his subject. Sometimes he lapsed into reverie and communed with his own thoughts, noting nothing that was going on about him until aroused, when perhaps he would enter into a discussion of the subject that had occupied his mind, or perhaps break out into laughter and tell a joke or story that set the table in a roar.

"When I saw him at Gettysburg as he exclaimed, 'That we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth!'—when I heard him declare in his second inaugural address, 'Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years, so still it must be said, "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."... With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right,'—as I looked upon him and heard him utter these sentiments, upon these occasions, Abraham Lincoln was the most solemn, the most dignified, the most majestic, and at the same time the most benignant human being I ever saw.

"Rochefoucauld says that 'Gravity is a mystery of the body invented to conceal defects of the mind.' Lord Shaftesbury says that 'Gravity is the very essence of imposture.' Abraham Lincoln had none of this.

"Man is the most serious of animals. Man is the most frivolous of animals. It is said that man is the only animal that can both laugh and cry. Abraham Lincoln gave full vent to his emotions. He went through life with no restraints nor manacles upon his human nature. He was honest in the expression of his feelings, whether serious or otherwise, honest in their manifestation, honest with himself.

"It was because Abraham Lincoln was the most human of human beings that he is loved as has never been any other man that ever lived."—Clark E. Carr: My Day and Generation, pp. 107-9.

There was much reason for this wide disparity of opinion in the varying moods of Lincoln himself, and the contrary aspects of his personality. But this was not the sole reason. Springfield itself was greatly divided concerning Mr. Lincoln. There were lawyers who had been on opposing sides of cases against him and had sometimes won them. There were all the petty animosities which grow up in a small city. Furthermore, Springfield was moderately full of disappointed people who had expected that their friendship for Lincoln would have procured for them some political appointment. Any political aspirant living in Maine or Missouri who had a fourth cousin living in Springfield and possessed of a speaking acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln, felt that he and his kinsfolk suffered an unmerited discourtesy if Mr. Lincoln through such influence did not produce on application a commission as Major-General or an appointment as Ambassador to some foreign court.

We have a yet further difficulty to face in the conflict of testimony of habitually truthful people. If it were becoming in the author of a book such as this to pass any general criticism upon those authors who have preceded him in the same field, it might, perhaps, be counted not invidious to say that for the most part writers on the religion of Lincoln have been content to adduce the testimony of a limited number of apparently truthful witnesses in support of their theory, but have not given the evidence very much examination beyond the general fact that the witnesses were habitually truthful people. We shall not arrive at the truth in this fashion.

We may borrow an illustration from a field which lies just outside the scope of our present inquiry. Even to this day it is possible to start a warm discussion almost anywhere in Springfield over the question of Lincoln's domestic affairs. It is possible to prove on the testimony of unimpeached witnesses that Lincoln loved his wife passionately, and that he did not love her at all; that he married Mary Todd because he loved her and had already answered in his own heart all his previous questions and misgivings, and that he married her because she and her relatives practically compelled him to do so, and that he went to the marriage altar muttering that he was going to hell; that Mary Todd not only admired Abraham Lincoln, but loved him with a beautiful and wifely devotion, and that she hated him and never ceased to wreak revenge upon him for having once deserted her upon the eve of their announced marriage; that Mary Todd wore a white silk dress on the night of her wedding, and that she never owned a white silk dress until she had become a resident of the White House; that the wedding was a gay affair, with a great dinner, and was followed by a reception for which several hundred printed invitations were issued, and that the wedding was hastily performed on a Sunday evening, Mr. Dresser, the minister, cutting short his evening service and dropping in on the way home to solemnize a quickly extemporized marriage contract. It would seem fairly easy to discover from a calendar of the year 1842 at least what day in the week was chosen for the wedding, but few if any of the disputants, or even of the biographers, appear to have taken this pains. If the present writer should ever have occasion to write about Abraham Lincoln's married life, he would not proceed very far without consulting a calendar for that year; and he would hope to settle at least one point in the controversy by telling the world that in 1842 the fourth day of November did not occur on Sunday or Tuesday, but on Friday;[28] Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln both being tinged with superstition, he might raise the question whether the celebration of the wedding upon that date probably was or was not long premeditated. But the present book does not concern itself with these questions, and the matter is here introduced merely to illustrate that no point in controversy in a matter of this character can be definitely settled by the unsupported testimony of a single honest witness relying upon his memory after the lapse of many years.

Evidence such as we are to consider is of two kinds, known in logic as a priori and a posteriori. The first kind is evidence from antecedent probability; the second is evidence relating to matter after the fact. An illustration will serve:

A man is found dead, with a wound in his forehead, and there are no witnesses who can be produced in court who saw the man die. The wound appears to have been produced by a bullet, and, as no weapon is found beside the body, there is a presumption that the man has been murdered. A neighbor is accused of having committed the deed. The a priori evidence is adduced in testimony that the defendant and the deceased had long been on bad terms with each other on account of a line fence between their adjacent properties; that the defendant had threatened to kill the deceased and had recently bought a revolver. The evidence a posteriori is found in the fact that the defendant's revolver on examination shows one empty chamber and that the ball in the deceased man's brain is of the caliber suited to his weapon and of the same manufacture as the unused cartridges in the weapon. To this may be added other incriminating facts, as of measured footprints near the scene of murder which correspond to the size of the defendant's boots, and of possible blood stains upon his clothing.

A very large volume of a priori evidence is sometimes set aside by a single a posteriori fact; for instance, in the foregoing supposititious case it may be entirely possible to prove that the murder was committed by a tramp, and that the defendant was ten miles away at the time the deed was done.

On the other hand, a large volume of a posteriori evidence sometimes disappears in the face of a single a priori consideration. A man is accused of having stolen a sheep. It is shown in evidence that on the evening when the sheep was stolen he walked through his neighbor's pasture and was seen to approach the sheep; that he sold mutton on the day after the loss of the sheep, and that a fresh sheepskin was found nailed to his barn door. All this a posteriori evidence and much more may be completely set aside in the minds of the jury by the single fact that the man accused has lived for forty years in the community and has borne a reputation incompatible with the crime of sheep-stealing.

In the examination of testimony concerning alleged utterances of Abraham Lincoln in matters of religious belief, we must ask such questions as these:

Is the witness credible? Had he opportunity to know what he professes to relate? Were other witnesses present, and if so, do they agree in their recollection of the words spoken? Was the interview published at a time when it could have been denied by those who had knowledge of the incident? Had the witness time to enlarge the incident by frequent telling and by such exaggeration and enlargement of detail as is likely to occur with the lapse of years? Had the witness a probable motive for exaggeration; does he appear to tell what he would presumably have liked Mr. Lincoln to say, and does it sound more like the narrator's own style than it does like Mr. Lincoln? Do the language and the sentiments expressed accord with the published addresses, letters, and authentic documents of Abraham Lincoln, and are the views expressed in accord with the views which he is known to have held? On the other hand, is it possible that in the freedom of personal conversation Mr. Lincoln may have said some things which he would not have been likely to say in formal discourse or to write in official documents?