While superstition had its part in the life and thought of Lincoln, it was not the most outstanding fact in his thinking or his character. For the most part his thinking was rational and well ordered, but it had in it many elements and some strange survivals—strange until we recognize the many moods of the man and the various conditions of his life and thought in which from time to time he lived.
Was Lincoln a Quaker?
In his autobiographical sketch written for Jesse W. Fell, Mr. Lincoln stated that his paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782; "his ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania." This reference to a remote Quaker ancestry has suggested to some writers the possibility that Mr. Lincoln himself may have been, in conviction, a Quaker.
This suggestion is utilized to its full value and beyond by Henry Bryan Binns, the first English biographer of Lincoln, whose book appeared in 1907, and others have followed his intimations. He says:
"In some brief autobiographical notes, Lincoln remarks that his ancestors, when they left Berks County, Pennsylvania, were Quakers. The allusion has significance, not merely because it is the only reference to any religious body in these notes, but because it suggests an interesting spiritual affiliation to which we shall refer again later."
He fulfills this promise, and refers to it repeatedly. The Quaker ancestry finds reinforcement in his assurance that the Shipley strain in Nancy Hanks was "probably" Quaker. These references occur a number of times in the early part of his book, and recur in the concluding chapter with more than a suggestion that Mr. Lincoln continued to bear some of the inherited spiritual qualities of the Quaker.
These suggestions lack evidential value. Lincoln's grandfather's ancestors were believed by him to have been Quakers in Pennsylvania, and their ancestors are believed to have been Puritans in Massachusetts. But the New Englanders no more surely dropped their Massachusetts Puritanism in Pennsylvania than the Pennsylvania Quakers dropped their Quakerism in Virginia and Kentucky. The Quaker ancestry was not forgotten nor was it a thing to be ashamed of, but the distinctive tenets of the Friends had no large part in the working creed of Abraham Lincoln. He respected the Quakers, and on more than one occasion showed his interest in them; but there is no reason to believe that he shared either their theology or their theory of non-resistance. He was compelled to approve some severe measures against American citizens who refused to fight, and a number of Quakers suffered in consequence. Lincoln saw no way to prevent these sufferings altogether, though he did his best to mitigate them, and he always respected the principles of those who held in sincerity the Quaker faith which he did not share.
Was Lincoln a Unitarian or a Universalist?