So far as our present inquiry is concerned, we have only to ask and answer the question. Mr. Lincoln was not in any period of his life affiliated in any way with the Roman Catholic Church.
Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist?
During Mr. Lincoln's occupancy of the White House, there were several rumors to the effect that President and Mrs. Lincoln were both Spiritualists. A definite claim that Mr. Lincoln fully believed in Spiritualism was set forth in 1891 by a medium named Mrs. Nettie Colburn Maynard. She wrote a book relating in detail almost innumerable sittings which she alleged were attended by Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. According to her story her mediumship began in her childhood in 1845. At the outbreak of the war she was lecturing and giving public séances and went to Washington to gain a furlough for her brother. She learned of Mr. Lincoln's interest in Spiritualism, and of the visits to the White House of two mediums, Charles Colchester and Charles Foster. She was invited to the White House, where, if we are to credit her story, she imparted to Mr. Lincoln very nearly all the wisdom which he possessed during the period of the Civil War.
We learn from other sources that Lincoln permitted two or three mediums to come to the White House and to tell him what the spirits said he ought to know; but Lincoln said of them that the advice of the spirits, as thus received, was as contradictory as the voices of his own Cabinet, of whose meetings the séances reminded him.
The last attempt to make Mr. Lincoln out a Spiritualist is by Mrs. Grace Garrett Durand, in a privately printed book issued since Sir Oliver Lodge's Raymond. She claims to have talked with Raymond, with William T. Stead, and other people, as well as with Mrs. Eddy, from whom she expects to receive additional material supplementary to her Science and Health, and Key to the Scriptures. She is, however, according to her own account, especially intimate with Mr. Lincoln. She says:
"President Lincoln has himself told me in many conversations I have had with him from the spirit world that he was directed in his great work during the Civil War by his mother and others in the spirit world. Mr. Lincoln, or 'Uncle Abe,' as he has lovingly asked me to call him, said that had he respected his mother's advice the day of his assassination he would not have gone to the theater the fateful night, as his mother had that day warned him not to go."
If Mr. Lincoln's spirit has indeed requested this lady to call him "Uncle Abe" he has accorded her a liberty which was infrequent during his lifetime. Near neighbors of Mr. Lincoln during his years in Springfield inform me that no one called him "Abe" to his face, and that very few even of his political opponents thus spoke of him. He habitually addressed his partner as "Billy," but Mr. Herndon uniformly called him "Mr. Lincoln." One could wish that Abraham Lincoln in heaven might be at least as dignified as Abraham Lincoln was on earth.[52]
Was Abraham Lincoln superstitious?
Both President and Mrs. Lincoln were superstitious. They believed in dreams and signs, he more in dreams and she more in signs. When Mrs. Lincoln was away from him for a little time, visiting in Philadelphia in 1863, and Tad with her, Lincoln thought it sufficiently important to telegraph, lest the mail should be too slow, and sent her this message: