The Soul of Abraham Lincoln

by William E. Barton

When on an evening in November, 1866, Mr. Herndon, but lately returned from his visit to the site of New Salem, delivered in the old court house in Springfield before a small and critical audience his lecture on Ann Rutledge, he informed his hearers that in 1834 that sweet young girl of nineteen was simultaneously loved by three men, one of whom was Abraham Lincoln. He omitted the names of the other two, and filled in their place in the manuscript with blanks. The world has long since learned the other two names, of John McNamur and Samuel Hill. Herndon's reason for concealing them at the time was probably the fact that their descendants were living near, but those descendants are well aware of it now, and have been for years.

Hill and McNamur were partners, and Ann loved McNamur and rejected Hill. McNamur went East, and was gone so long that it was believed he was either dead or had proved untrue, and Hill's hope lit up again only to meet a second disappointment. Ann Rutledge still loved McNamur, but, believing him forever lost to her, she had made her second choice, and that choice was not Hill. Hill awoke to the sad discovery that having once been refused for his partner's sake he was refused again for the sake of his clerk. This shy, gawky, lank, and ill-mannered young fellow who was selling goods in Hill's store and studying law and cherishing all manner of ambitions had aspired to the hand of Ann Rutledge and had been accepted.

The truth about it came out in the discovery of a letter which Hill had written to McNamur. Hill was making one last effort to learn whether McNamur was living or dead, and if living whether he still loved Ann; and was reproaching him for his delay and neglect. This letter did not find its way to the post office; in some way it was lost and was picked up by the children who brought it to Lincoln. This was the document which Lincoln held in his hand when he and Hill came to their final reckoning concerning the heart of Ann Rutledge; and the argument between them, while friendly, developed some heat, and that was what Hill snatched from Lincoln's hand and threw into the fire.

As for the book or essay or whatever it may have been in which Lincoln passed on his undigested reading of Volney and Paine, we do not know what became of that, nor need we greatly care. It went the way of a good deal of literature which Lincoln was producing at this time, probably with no dream that any of it would ever see a printing-press. It is hardly credible that Lincoln, who never printed a book even in his maturer years, should have had serious purpose of printing this particular bit of half-fledged philosophy.

But we have knowledge, and very direct knowledge, of something else which Lincoln wrote at this time. We learn of it not by any such circuitous route of hearsay evidence as accompanies the story of the so-called book on infidelity. We learn of it from a man who received it at Lincoln's hands and who read it and remembered its contents and was a competent witness not only as to the production of the book, but also as to its argument. This is none other than Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster of New Salem, who introduced Lincoln to Kirkham's Grammar, who taught Lincoln surveying, who had Lincoln in his home as a lodger, and who knew more about Lincoln's religious views during his years at New Salem than any other man who lived to tell the world about it after Lincoln's death. In Irwin's article, which we have already quoted, is found this letter from Mentor Graham.

Mentor Graham is a much better witness than either Mr. Herndon or Colonel Matheny,—better because equally honest, and a man of less violent prejudices and of more sober habits, and especially because he had direct personal knowledge of the facts. In his letter to Mr. Irwin, under date of March 17, 1874, Mentor Graham relates that when Lincoln was living in Graham's house in New Salem in 1833, studying English grammar and surveying under this good schoolmaster, Lincoln one morning said to him:

"Graham, what do you think of the anger of the Lord?"

Graham replied, "I believe the Lord never was angry or mad, and never will be; that His loving kindness endureth forever, and that He never changes."