The Soul of Abraham Lincoln

by William E. Barton

Herndon did not accept the pork and malaria theories. He said that all such theories must give way to facts, and he dealt with facts. The men of the frontier had the best meat in the world, "venison, bear, turkey, and of course some hog."

"You ask me if I ever saw in this great wild west many men of Lincoln's type, and to which I answer, Yes. The first settlers of central and southern Illinois were men of that type. They came from the limestone regions of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and were men of giant strength, physical force, and by nature mentally strong. They were original, were individualists. The strong alone from 1818 to 1830 could get here, and the strong alone could survive here.... No one was like Lincoln, and yet many were of his type.... He was, as you say, 'a man of extraordinary contrasts.' You would not look for a well-rounded man in such a description."

Lincoln was, then, as Herndon saw him, and as the world must see him, a legitimate product of his environment. Herndon had read Buckle and Spencer and Darwin, and was a thoroughgoing believer in evolution, as was Lincoln, from a far narrower reading, but a very thoughtful study of Vestiges of Creation.

Physically, Lincoln was akin to the strong pioneers of early Illinois, and it was not difficult to find each several trait of Lincoln reduplicated in many of them. But Lincoln himself was never duplicated. He was a product of his environment, but he was also an evolution which in terms of an individual personality went beyond environment, and was still going forward when death came to him.

This evolution of Lincoln, the spiritual Lincoln, as portrayed in these letters to a sculptor, who must not be permitted to forget, if he was in danger of forgetting, that the real man Lincoln had in him more than his bodily measurements could portray, is one of the most suggestive studies disclosed by Herndon, and it is sound, both as approached from the standpoint of science, and as considered in the personal study of Lincoln in his growth from year to year.

Like St. Paul, Lincoln had a warfare in his members. He was an embodiment of forces mutually antagonistic. He would not have been the man he was had either of them been lacking, and the growth of either at the total expense of the other would have given us a man abnormal, which Mr. Lincoln came perilously near to being. But his real development was mental and spiritual.

In another place St. Paul says that "The first man is of the earth, earthy, and the second man is from heaven." It has been assumed without due warrant that what he had in mind was a contrast between Adam and Christ, and this view is strengthened by the intrusion of the words "the Lord" in the authorized English text. But it is quite possible that St. Paul, even if Adam and Christ were a part of his contrast, had really in mind the evolution of any man's life; he being himself in his bodily nature the first man and in the birth and growth of his higher nature the second and contrasting man. "First is that which is natural, and after, that which is spiritual."

This was Herndon's thought of Lincoln, as disclosed in these letters,[63] and it is true of Lincoln. Lincoln was more than an embodiment of contrasts; the solar system is that, and it is more. In the solar system the opposing forces do not neutralize each other, but together hold the earth and planets in their orbits. So it was with Lincoln. But with him the higher and nobler forces became increasingly dominant.

Herndon resented it when anyone said that Lincoln had died at the right time. He believed that, great as Lincoln was, his nobler qualities had not yet come to their full maturity, and that a longer-lived Lincoln would have been an even nobler Lincoln. Here are some of the things he says of him in these letters:

"I said to you once that Mr. Lincoln had not arrived at maturity in 1865, and I say so now. His blood ran slowly—had low or slow circulation and consequently a slow build-up. As he had a slow build-up, so he had a slow development; he grew up like the forest oak, tough, solid, knotty, gnarled, standing out with power against the storm, and almost defying the lightning. Hence I conclude that he had not arrived at his highest development in 1865.... The convolutions of his brain were long; they did not snap off quickly like a short, thick man's brain.... The enduring power of Mr. Lincoln's thought and brain was wonderful. He could sit and think without food or rest longer than any man I ever saw."