It is evident that Bateman, crowded by Herndon in repeated cross-examination, came as near to repudiating those parts of the interview to which Herndon objected as he could do without raising publicly the issue of veracity between himself and Holland. The attitude of Dr. Bateman in this matter forbids us to believe that the story as it stands in Holland's book can be true.
Bateman is not mentioned in the index of Nicolay and Hay's Life of Lincoln, and it is practically certain that they did not credit the incident.
What, under these circumstances, shall be our judgment concerning this most hotly contested of all incidents concerning the religious life of Abraham Lincoln?
The incident had a basis of fact. Neither Bateman nor Holland would have created such a story out of whole cloth. But Bateman was under very strong temptation to enlarge upon the incident, and had had five years in which to magnify it in his own mind. The then recent death of Mr. Lincoln and the strong desire of Christian people for a clear statement of his faith, made it easy to color the recollection and sketch in details, which did not seem to be important departures from the truth when related in verbal conversation, but which had a different look when they appeared in cold type. Holland, who was a writer of fiction as well as history, did not fail to embellish the story as Bateman told it to him. He probably did not write it down at the time, but recalled it afterward from memory, and in his final report it underwent additional coloring and the sketching in of detail.
Neither of these two men intentionally falsified, but between the two the story was materially enlarged, and there was an undistributed margin of error between the original event as it occurred in 1860 and the very pretty story which Holland printed in 1865. Neither Holland nor Bateman cared, probably, to face too searching an inquiry as to how that enlargement had come.
Dr. Bateman was a man of probity and upright character. He never willfully misrepresented. But he had a rhetorical mind; not only his style, but his mind, was rhetorical. He embellished his narratives because it was in him to do so. The two reports which he made of Lincoln's farewell address in Springfield[30] showed, both of them, such embellishments,[31] and he was as unconscious that he in later years enlarged upon his own first report as he was that his first report enlarged upon the address itself. These enlargements were slight, and did not destroy nor greatly alter the sense; but his changes never tended to simplicity. He was a master of good English style, but it was a grander, more rhetorical style than that of Lincoln. Lincoln, after receiving his special notice of nomination, submitted his letter of acceptance to Bateman, and at Bateman's suggestion changed a split infinitive. Lincoln knew that Bateman was an authority on good English, and respected his opinion and valued his friendship. Whatever enlargements Bateman's memory made upon his interview with Lincoln were made without intent to deceive; and whatever Holland added was added without intent to deceive. But the interview of 1860 and the story about it in Holland's book five years later have between them a discrepancy which must be distributed in a ratio which we are not able positively to determine between two good and truthful men, each of whom enlarged a little upon the material that was given to him.
A final evidence that Bateman saw no way to remedy the situation by telling the public exactly what occurred in his interview with Lincoln in 1860, is found in the fact that while he was President of Knox College he had occasion to prepare and deliver there and elsewhere a carefully written lecture on "Abraham Lincoln." Every generation of Knox College students heard, at least once, that famous oration. That lecture contains little else than Bateman's own personal reminiscences, and is an interesting and valuable document. For our present purpose it is chiefly valuable in this, that it contains not one word about the interview which had forever associated the name of Newton Bateman with that of Abraham Lincoln. The fact that Bateman felt compelled to omit it altogether from that oft-repeated lecture on Lincoln is a sufficient reason why no one else should ever use it.
Precisely what did Bateman tell Herndon that he had told to Holland, which led Herndon to tell the public that Holland misrepresented Bateman? We do not know precisely. What became of Herndon's carefully cherished notes of his five interviews with Bateman is not known,[32] but we are not left wholly to conjecture. Though Herndon was forbidden to tell what Bateman told to him, he came as near to it as he could do without open violation of his pledge of secrecy. In his own Life of Lincoln, published in 1889, he inserted a footnote in which he said:
"One of what Lincoln regarded as the remarkable features of his canvass for President was the attitude of some of his neighbors in Springfield. A poll of the voters had been made in a little book and given to him. On running over the names he found that the greater part of the clergy of the city—in fact all but three—were against him. This depressed him somewhat, and he called in Dr. Newton Bateman, who as Superintendent of Public Instruction occupied the room adjoining his own in the State House, and whom he habitually addressed as 'Mr. Schoolmaster.' He commented bitterly on the attitude of the preachers and many of their followers, who, pretending to be believers in the Bible and God-fearing Christians, yet by their votes demonstrated that they cared not whether slavery was voted up or down. 'God cares and humanity cares,' he reflected, 'and if they do not they surely have not read their Bible aright.'"—Herndon: Life of Lincoln, III, 466-67.
To accept this as containing the essential part of the interview between Lincoln and Bateman does not involve our preferring the statement of Herndon to that of Bateman, for we have no definite statement of Bateman. Bateman, under close examination, told Herndon what he remembered that Lincoln told him, and Herndon promised not to tell it without Bateman's permission. Herndon did tell, however, that it was very different from Holland's story, and he published this in Lamon's book in 1872 and Bateman did not deny it. He published the above quoted and additional note in his own book in 1889, while Bateman was living, and Bateman did not protest. We cannot, therefore, be far from the truth if we accept the above and stop there.