We shall never have another as good description of Abraham Lincoln's appearance and manner as that which comes from the pen of Herndon, nor shall we ever obtain better pen pictures of many of the incidents in his career. But Herndon was too good a witness to be a good judge, and he lived too near the stump to behold the tree.
Herndon had already attempted to catechize Dr. Smith,[38] Mr. Lincoln's pastor, concerning his relations with Lincoln, and Smith had replied that he was willing to tell what he knew about Lincoln's faith, but did not choose to make Mr. Herndon his vehicle of communication to the public. This did not tend to increase Herndon's love for the clergy: and when Dr. Holland printed Dr. Reed's lecture, with its letters in which several of the men whom Lamon, on Herndon's authority, had quoted in support of Lamon's declaration, Herndon quickly replied and Holland refused to print his article.
Herndon spilled much ink through a New York newspaper whose editor later was sent to prison for the circulation of obscene literature, and wrote a number of letters, in each of which he tended to become a little more pronounced.
He scorned the idea that Lincoln had taken strangers into his confidence concerning his faith. He said in a letter to J. E. Remsburg, under date of September 10, 1887, "He was the most secretive, reticent, shut-mouthed man that ever existed."
The Reed lecture infuriated him. He denounced Dr. Reed publicly as a liar, and said many things which a more prudent man would not have said. On November 9, 1882, he issued a broadside, entitled "A Card and a Correction," beginning:
"I wish to say a few short words to the public and private ear. About the year 1870 I wrote a letter to Mr. F. E. Abbott, then of Ohio, touching Mr. Lincoln's religion.[39] In that letter I stated that Mr. Lincoln was an infidel, sometimes bordering on atheism, and I now repeat the same. In the year 1873, the Right Rev. James A. Reed, pastor and liar of this city, gave a lecture on Mr. Lincoln's religion, in which he tried to answer me,—" and more to the same purport.
While Herndon and Lamon were men of quite different, mind and ability, the two men used essentially the same body of material for the making of their books about Lincoln, Herndon having sold copies of all his Lincoln manuscripts to Lamon.
Herndon delivered at least three lectures on Lincoln. The first, and most popular and valuable, was on the "Life and Character of Lincoln." It was first delivered to a Springfield audience in 1866, was repeated many times, and it forms the substance of the twentieth chapter of his book, as it appeared in the first edition, and the eleventh chapter in the second. It contains the incomparable description of Lincoln's personal appearance which must stand to all time as the best and final pen-picture of the man.