Abraham Lincoln

by William Eleroy Curtis

"These remarks were quoted widely and misrepresented to Lincoln's injury. In those days people were not so liberal as now, and any one who criticised a parson was considered a sceptic."

The refusal of the Springfield clergy to support him for President, to which Mr. Nicolay refers, gave him great concern, and he expressed himself on that subject quite freely to Mr. Newton Bateman, Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Illinois, who occupied a room adjoining and opening into the Executive Chamber at Springfield, which Lincoln used as an office during the Presidential campaign.

"Here are twenty-three ministers of different denominations," he said to Mr. Bateman, showing a polling list, "and all of them are against me but three, and here are a great many prominent members of churches; a very large majority are against me. Mr. Bateman, I am not a Christian,—God knows I would be one,—but I have carefully read the Bible and I do not so understand this book," and he drew forth a pocket New Testament. "These men well know," he continued, "that I am for freedom in the Territories, freedom everywhere as free as the Constitution and the laws will permit, and that my opponents are for slavery. They know this, and yet, with this book in their hands, in the light of which human bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote against me; I do not understand it at all.

"I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me, and I think He has, I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but Truth is everything; I know I am right, because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and Christ and reason say the same, and they will find it so.

"Douglas don't care whether slavery is voted up or down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care, and with God's help I shall not fail. I may not see the end; but it will come, and I shall be vindicated, and these men will find they have not read their Bible right."

The influence of the Springfield clergy was, however, scarcely noticeable. Here and there throughout the country some religious newspaper, minister, or bigoted layman opposed his election on that pretext, but the numerical strength of this class of his opponents was very small; and after the inauguration and the development of the secession conspiracy the Springfield preachers, like other Christian people from one end of the North to the other, displayed their patriotism. As the war progressed the influence of the entire church, Protestant and Catholic, was given to the support of the President, except occasionally when some extreme antislavery community would condemn what they considered the procrastination of the President concerning the emancipation of the slaves. Scarcely a religious body ever met without adopting resolutions of sympathy and support, and no manifestations of loyalty and approval throughout the entire war gave him greater gratification. His response in each case was a confession of human weakness and his reliance upon Divine Power.

In 1863, when the New School Presbyterians embodied their sentiments of loyalty to the Union in an eloquent memorial to the President, he replied, "From the beginning I saw that the issues of our great struggle depended upon Divine interposition and favor.... Relying as I do upon the Almighty power, and encouraged as I am by these resolutions that you have just read," etc.

To a committee of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal church in 1864 he said, "It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospitals, more prayers to heaven than any other. God bless the Methodist Church! Bless all the churches; blessed be God who in this great trial giveth us the churches."

To the Quakers of Iowa, who had sent him an address through Senator Harlan, he wrote, "It is most cheering and encouraging for me to know that, in the efforts which I have made, and am making, for the restoration of a righteous peace to our country, I am upheld and sustained by the good wishes and prayers of God's people. No one is more deeply aware than myself that without His favor our highest wisdom is but as foolishness, and that our most strenuous efforts would avail nothing in the shadow of His displeasure."

One of the most significant of the President's letters, in which he expresses himself with less than his usual reserve, was written to Mrs. Gurney, wife of an eminent preacher of the English Society of Friends, in the autumn of 1864: "I am much indebted to the good Christian people of the country for their constant prayers and consolations, and to no one of them more than to yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein. Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best lights He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains."