I need only add, that to me these letters carry the conviction of reality. Lincoln had been rooted and grounded in the kind of dogma that began with Adam and related to his fall in vital sort the atonement of Christ. That Lincoln had some doubts concerning the person of Christ is not in point. He believed in God, and he knew the fact of sin, and he was dyed in the wool in arguments concerning the fall of the race in Adam and its redemption in Christ. But he did not dwell as did the preachers on individual forgiveness, which he sometimes doubted, but sought to evolve a legal and moral scheme with a final restoration. I regard these testimonies as essentially true.
CHAPTER XI
THE HERNDON LECTURES, LETTERS, AND
BIOGRAPHY
The name of William H. Herndon finds frequent mention in these pages, as it must in any study of Abraham Lincoln. With all his faults as a biographer, his astigmatism, his anti-religious prejudice, his intolerance, his bad taste, he is an invaluable source of information concerning his partner and friend, Abraham Lincoln.
The publication of the Lamon biography and the Reed lecture brought him into a conflict from which no power on earth could probably have kept him out, and in it he did and said many things which for his own sake and Lincoln's he might better not have said.
But Herndon was no liar. Biased as he was, and himself a free-thinker or perhaps worse, he told the truth in such fashion as to throw it out of perspective, and sometimes told what he believed to be the truth in a passion which compels us to discount some of his testimony. But he did not lie nor intentionally misrepresent.
For twenty years Lincoln and Herndon were law partners, and their partnership was never formally dissolved. Lincoln liked Herndon, but there was no loss of love between Herndon and Mrs. Lincoln. She, if tradition about Springfield is to be believed, disliked him personally for his habits, and possibly also for his politics, for he was an Abolitionist before Lincoln, and a very ardent one at that. Had she known what Herndon was to say about her in later years she might have been more gracious to her husband's junior partner, who had learned some habits at the bar of his father's tavern which he might better not have learned.
Herndon in his later life looked not a little like Lincoln, and showed no disposition by any change of beard or other device to lessen the resemblance; but in other particulars the two men were most unlike. Herndon was five feet nine, Lincoln more than six feet three. Herndon was impetuous, Lincoln extremely deliberate and cautious to a fault. Herndon was a good judge of human nature and excelled in cross-examination, while he failed in the careful preparation of his cases; Lincoln was a very poor judge of human nature, but reduced his cases to simple principles, and carefully worked up his evidence with deliberate care. Herndon was a great reader; Lincoln seldom read a book through. Herndon spent his money for books and had a valuable library; Lincoln seldom wasted a dollar on a book. Herndon was outspoken; Lincoln was secretive. Herndon wanted all the world to know what he thought about everything; Lincoln kept his ear to the ground and chose his own time for the utterance of his convictions.