[2] The habit of studying aloud, learned in the "blab-school," remained with him. Lamon says he read aloud and "couldn't read otherwise." Whitney tells of his writing a ruling one time when he was sitting (illegally) for Judge Davis, and he pronounced each word aloud as he wrote it. This was not his invariable custom, but it was a common one with him.

[3] Hodgenville was a Baptist settlement from its foundation. Robert Hodgen, for whom the settlement was named, and John Larue, his brother-in-law, for whom the county was named, were both Baptists, and among the first settlers was a Baptist minister, Rev. Benjamin Lyon.

[4] Baptisms of this noisy character were familiar to Lincoln in his boyhood and certainly as late as the period of his residence in New Salem. Henry Onstott, at whose tavern Lincoln boarded, tells of such baptisms performed by Rev. Abraham Bale, including one at which the husband of the lady who was being baptized called out to the preacher to hold her, as he valued her more highly than the best cow and calf in the county (Lincoln and Salem, p. 122).

[5] While the statements of Dennis Hanks are often colored by his imagination, he is, after all, our best witness concerning Lincoln's boyhood.

[6] Some writers have spoken of Mr. Elkin as a Methodist circuit rider. Mrs. Lucinda Boyd, in a book which might better not have been published and which I will not name, but which is correct in some local matters, speaks of Rev. Robert Elkin, the minister who preached the funeral sermon of Mrs. Lincoln, as belonging to the "Traveling Baptist Church." She says: "His grave is in the open field, and soon the traces of it will be lost." Apparently this grave was in Clark County, Kentucky. I think, however, that she is in error as to the name Robert. It was David.

[7] The latest writer to lend to the incident of Nancy Lincoln's funeral the aid of a vivid imagination and a versatile pen is Rose Strunsky. Discarding the theory that Abraham wrote his first letter to invite a minister to come from Kentucky to preach his mother's funeral, she sends him on foot to a nearer settlement:

"The boy Abraham had his standards of life. There were things of too much meaning to let pass without some gesture. And the unceremonious burial in the forest haunted him. When he heard that a wandering preacher had reached the neighborhood, he tramped many miles in the snow to bring him to the spot where the dead body lay, so that a funeral sermon might be delivered over the now white grave" (Abraham Lincoln, p. 6).

There was nothing unusual about the burial. Nor was there anything unusual about the deferred funeral. These writers simply do not know the conditions of life in which the boy Lincoln lived.

[8] While this manuscript was in process of writing, Professor Raymond, of Berea College, Kentucky, enumerating his summer engagements for the season of 1919, informed me of a funeral he was engaged to preach in August of a boy who died ten years ago. The boy's companions have by this time grown to manhood, but the service will be held: and before this book is published doubtless will have been held according to immemorial custom in that region. This is not because there has been no preacher in its vicinity within ten years; nor is there any reason to suppose that the delay in the case of Lincoln's mother was due to the utter absence of ministers. They were not abundant, certainly; but there is no reason whatever to suppose that in the interval between the death and funeral of Nancy Hanks no preacher had been in the neighborhood of Pigeon Creek.

[9] I have often been deeply impressed by the charity of primitive preachers for dead people, and their ingenuity in inventing possible opportunities for repentance where no outward sign was given or apparently possible. There was something impressive in their manner of doing it, as well as an exhibition of fine tenderness for the feelings of friends and of generosity toward the dead.

is a very precious article of faith in the creed of men who have to preach a stern doctrine to the living, with warning of a hell that yawns for all impenitent sinners.

[10] In my own judgment, it would have been better to have let the first edition stand. It ought not to have included these vulgarities; but they are not so bad as the impression which is created by the knowledge that a new edition had to be made on their account. They are coarse bits of rustic buffoonery.

[11] I do not forget that Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were married by Rev. Jesse Head, who was a Methodist preacher. But I do not find evidence that Mr. Head exerted any marked influence over them. Mr. Head was not only a minister, but a justice of the peace, an anti-slavery man, and a person of strong and righteous character. I am not sure whether the fact that he performed this marriage is not due in some measure to the fact that he was about the court house, and a convenient minister to find.

[12] Dr. Chapman goes even beyond Johnson in his admiration of these youthful lines. He says:

"It is profoundly significant that this child of destiny, at his life's early morning, in clumsy but impressive verse thus reverently coupled his name with that of his Creator.... I am not claiming for this fragment of a Lincoln manuscript any divine inspiration" (Latest Light on Lincoln, p. 315).

But he stops little short of that, and might about as well have claimed it. The simple truth is that the lines have no significance whatever. They were a current bit of schoolboy doggerel, not original with Lincoln, and were scribbled by him as by other boys, with no real purpose beyond that of working his name into a jingle.

[13] I have seen these and other examples of Lincoln's early penmanship in the library of Mr. Jesse W. Weik.

[14] The story of Johnny Kongapod was one which Lincoln often related in after life. It is found in several collections of his stories, and with some variation. The Indian himself has found a place in literature in "In the Boyhood of Lincoln" by my friend, now deceased, Hezekiah Butterworth. The epitaph more nearly in its ancient English form is found in "David Elginbrod," by George Macdonald:

[15] "His early Baptist training made him a fatalist to the day of his death" (Herndon, I, 34).

[16] The story of Lincoln's love affairs lies mostly outside the field of our present inquiry. He had at least one more of them than his biographers have learned about. Those that are best known are the ones with Ann Rutledge, Mary Owens, and Mary Todd. Lamon declares that Lincoln loved Miss Matilda Edwards, sister of Ninian W. Edwards, whose wife was sister to Mary Todd. He gives this as the real reason for the estrangement of Lincoln and his fiancÉe (Lamon's Life of Lincoln, p. 259). This is vigorously denied by members of the Edwards family, and the opinions in Springfield are anything but unanimous. Herndon informs us that in 1840, when Lincoln was thirty-one, and during the period when he was attracted to Mary Todd, he proposed to Sarah Rickard, a girl of sixteen. The present writer has no occasion to go into the discussions attending these several affairs of the heart. Lincoln's unsettled condition of mind on matrimonial and other matters is, however, an important element in any study of his religious life in this period. Herndon, between whom and Mrs. Lincoln little love was lost, was not unwilling to inform her and the world that Lincoln had loved one woman, at least, more than he ever loved her; and that he married her reluctantly. This was not pleasant information for a proud and erratic grief-stricken woman, and it is not certain that Herndon was impartial authority or that he learned the whole truth. Lincoln was not a lady's man, and Mary Owens was quite right in deeming him "deficient in those little links that make up the chain of a woman's happiness."

Students of the Lincoln material are informed by those who suppose themselves to know, that beside the above-mentioned adventures, Lincoln had at least one additional love affair, and one that was not to his credit. They are told that the proof of this exists in an unpublished letter from the hand of Lincoln, a letter sacredly guarded and seldom shown by its owner. If this book had any reason to go at length into the subject of Lincoln's love affairs, I should be glad to consider that matter in detail; for the owner of that letter has permitted me to read and copy it, and I have the copy, which I intend to use in another volume on Lincoln. I wish to say, however, that the letter, which is a free, unguarded note to an intimate friend, does not sustain the impression that Lincoln had any other love affair, or that any wrong act or motive lay behind his words. Lincoln was not a tactful man in his relations with women; but he was a clean man.

[17] "Mr. Lincoln was never agitated by any passion more than by his wonderful thirst for distinction. There is no instance where an important office was within his reach, and he did not try to get it" (Lamon, Life of Lincoln, p. 237). This is a harsh and unfriendly way of stating it, but it is not wholly false.

[18] Mr. John E. Burton has documentary evidence that Lincoln was associated as so-called partner with seven law firms. Mr. Burton has owned the firm signatures in Lincoln's handwriting as follows:

• Stuart and Lincoln 1838
• Ficklin and Lincoln 1842
• Logan and Lincoln 1845
• Harlan and Lincoln 1845
• Goodrich and Lincoln October 1855
• Lincoln and Herndon 1852
• Lincoln and Lamon

But these associates, except Stuart, Logan, and Herndon, were not strictly partnerships. They were local associations with lawyers whose practice he shared.

[19] Mr. Barker, the bookseller and publisher of Springfield, has or had an interesting item in a volume which Mr. Lincoln presented to Rev. William A. Chapin, a returned missionary, who lived with the family of his relative, Albert Hale. Mr. Lincoln was on close terms with "Father Hale" and a friend of Mr. Chapin. The book is one volume, the others being lost, of a set entitled "Horae Solitariae, or, Essays on Some Remarkable Names and Titles of the Holy Spirit. First American from the Second London Edition. Philadelphia: Cochran & McLoughlan, 1801." The book bears no name of author. Upon the flyleaf is the autograph of Mr. Chapin in these words, "William A. Chapin, 1844. A present from Abr. Lincoln." How Lincoln obtained the book is not known; nor is it one for which he would have been likely to care. But he cared enough for the book or for the missionary or for both to present the one to the other. His aversion to ministers, which Lamon portrays, may have had some reason in certain cases; but it was not inclusive of all ministers nor of ministers as a class.

[20] I have been at much trouble to get the exact name and dates of this little boy. He was called Eddie, and the name is sometimes given Edwin and sometimes Edward, and I did not find it easy to learn, even at the monument at Springfield, the exact date of his death. He was named for his father's friend, and associate in the Legislature, Edward Baker. He was born March 10, 1846, and died February 1, 1850. Lincoln's children were: Robert Todd, born August 1, 1843, still living; Edward Baker, born March 10, 1846, died in Springfield February 1, 1850; William Wallace, born December 21, 1850, died in the White House February 20, 1862; Thomas or "Tad," born April 4, 1853; died in Chicago, July 15, 1871. Mary Todd Lincoln, their mother, was born in Lexington, Kentucky, December 13, 1818; married Abraham Lincoln, November 4, 1842, and died in Springfield July 16, 1882.

The date of the death of Eddie is important, because it gives us a terminus a quem for Lincoln's acquaintance with Rev. James Smith. Dr. Smith gives the date as "in the latter part of 1849." I sought in vain not only in published Lives of Lincoln but in the material on file with the State Historical Society for the precise date. What is more surprising, Colonel Johnson, custodian of the Lincoln tomb, has made diligent search for me and cannot find the date. In an article, prepared for the Lincoln Centenary in 1909, Rev. Thomas D. Logan, D.D., then pastor of the church in Springfield which Lincoln attended and successor of Dr. Smith, said it was "about 1848 or 1849"; but in working over the material, as he manifestly did, after furnishing it to The Interior, in which it was printed, and delivering the substance of it as a centenary address, he gives the date as February 1, 1850. This I judge to be correct, and it is upon his authority I have given that date above. The other dates of the Lincoln family's relation to this church support this statement.

[21] Governor Ford uses this term as inclusive of the "Long Nine" and their associates who voted for the combination of evils which brought financial disaster to Illinois in that early day. Among them were Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, John A. McClernand, and James Shields—"all of them spared monuments of popular wrath, evincing how safe it is to be a politician, but how disastrous it may be to the country to keep along with the present fervor of the people." Ford: History of Illinois.

[22] A careful reading of Mr. Lincoln's speeches while en route for Washington will reveal, I think, that Mr. Lincoln was confident there would be no war. A much more solemn note was in his First Inaugural, a few days later.

[23] Even Herndon commends Dr. Gurley and Bishop Simpson for their very conservative claims concerning the religion of Lincoln.

[24] Carpenter says that these were the negroes of Baltimore, and is probably correct.

[25] This curious passage, which is very nearly meaningless if read apart from its context, has to do with the appointment of the priestly families that furnished the porters, or guards, for the approaches to the temple in Jerusalem. It is found in I Chronicles 26:17-18.

[26] This well-known and picturesque passage describes the army of David when he was an outlaw and half a freebooter, fleeing from the fury of Saul and hiding in the cave of Adullam. I Samuel 22:2.

[27] "Mr. Lincoln had no method, system, or order in his exterior affairs; he had no library, no clerk, no stenographer; he had no common-place-book, no index rerum, no diary. Even when he was President and wanted to preserve a memorandum of anything, he noted it down on a card and stuck it into a drawer or in his vest pocket. But in his mental processes and operations, he had the most complete system and order. While outside of his mind all was anarchy and confusion, inside all was symmetry and method." Whitney: Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, p. 110.

[28] Mrs. Edwards, Mrs. Lincoln's sister, in a published interview which Barker of Springfield has reprinted in a limited edition, gives a circumstantial account of the wedding, which, she affirms, occurred on Sunday night. The calendar contradicts her. Nor would the court house have been open for the issue of the license on Sunday; its date is the date of the wedding. The license was procured, and the marriage was solemnized, on Friday.

[29] Newton Bateman was born at Fairfield, New York, July 27, 1822, and migrated with his parents to Illinois in his boyhood. He was graduated from Illinois College, in Jacksonville, in 1843, and was honored as one of the ablest men in the alumni of that institution. He first knew Abraham Lincoln in 1847, and knew him with increasing intimacy during the years of 1859 and 1860 when Mr. Bateman was in Springfield. Mr. Bateman served as Superintendent of Schools of the State of Illinois continuously from 1859 to 1875, except for the single term 1863-65. During his administration the school system of Illinois made notable progress, and he is remembered as having done large things for the educational system of his State. He was the author of the plan for the education of all the children of all the people of the State at the expense of all the property of the State. He wrought his system into the new constitution of Illinois, adopted in 1871, while he was at the zenith of his power. He was repeatedly re-elected, his defeat in 1862 being a defeat shared with the whole Republican ticket of the State in an off-year election when nearly the whole North, weary of the war which had scarcely begun, defeated partly by hostility and partly by lethargy the party and the policies that had sent Lincoln to the White House; and Bateman was triumphantly re-elected when Lincoln was re-elected, and for many terms thereafter. He established the Normal School system of the State; and his work was monumental in the life of the State University. Few men deserve so well to be remembered with honor in Illinois.

At the close of his long term of service as Superintendent of Schools, he became President of Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, from 1875 to 1893. He was small in stature, and by his friends was familiarly called "Little Newt," but was held in high regard as a man of honor and an educator of note. Besides his published reports and addresses, he compiled a large encyclopedia of men of Illinois,—a kind of "Who's Who" of much value. His family at one time proposed to gather and issue a memorial volume of his addresses, but the plan appears not to have been carried out. He died of angina pectoris at Galesburg, October 21, 1897.

[30] Bateman's version of the Farewell Address, as reported in the State Journal, was that accepted by Herndon, and, with its more profound recognition of God's providential care, is given in Lamon's Life of Lincoln, p. 506. It is repeated in his Recollections, p. 31.

[31] For these two reports and that of Lincoln and Hay, see the Appendix.

[32] Mr. Jesse W. Weik, who was associated with Herndon in the authorship of his Life of Lincoln, and who has Herndon's papers, has made diligent search for me in the effort to locate the notes of these interviews. Herndon certainly desired to preserve them, and desired that they should be published. But thus far they have not been found, and presumably are not in existence.

[33] Lamon was a Virginian by birth, and was, in many of his habits, a very different man from Lincoln, but Lincoln liked and trusted him.

[34] Black was Lamon's law partner in Washington after the war. The firm of Black, Lamon, and Hovey did a large business in prosecuting claims against the Government.

[35] This lecture is now very rare, and the text is given in the Appendix to this volume.

[36] This important communication containing signed letters from a number of Lincoln's friends is given in full in the Appendix.

[37] Although a number of these letters are quoted in the text, the article as a whole is so important that it is given in full in the Appendix.

[38] Herndon's letter to Dr. Smith was impudent, demanding that he answer as a man, if he could, and if not as a man, then as a Christian—a challenge which the old Scotchman answered in kind.

[39] The Abbott letter is printed in Herndon's Life of Lincoln, pp. 492-497: portions of it have been quoted in this book.

The Remsburg letter and the broadside above referred to are printed in full in the Appendix to this book.

[40] Statements of this nature show, what we know without them, that Herndon had never seen the "book" nor heard it described by anyone who actually saw it.

[41] We may note in passing that it is not in "Tam o' Shanter" but in "Holy Willie's Prayer" that Burns uses the line quoted by Matheny.

[42] I am informed that this is a slight error. Dr. Smith had another son, still younger.

[43] There are three copies in Chicago, one in the library of the University of Chicago, one in the library of McCormick Theological Seminary, and one in my own library. There are copies also in the libraries of Union Theological Seminary, New York; Center College, Danville, Kentucky; the College of the Bible, Lexington, Kentucky; the Library of Congress, and Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati. These, and the one owned by Miss Smith, are the only copies of which I have learned thus far; though doubtless there are others in dusty attics.

[44] This date is wrong. The book was not published until 1844.

[45] Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, by Robert Chambers, is published still by E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, and sold at 75 cents. This is an excellent reprint of the first Edinburgh edition, which Lincoln first read.

[46] It is now known that it was through the influence of Robert Chambers that T. H. Huxley was present and made his famous reply to Bishop Wilberforce at Oxford in 1860. Huxley was in Oxford, but intended to have left that morning because he believed that the discussion would take a theological, or other than a scientific turn, and would be unprofitable, but "on the Friday afternoon he chanced to meet Robert Chambers, the reputed author of the Vestiges of Creation, who begged him not to desert them, accordingly he postponed his departure" (Life and Letters of Thomas H. Huxley, by his Son, I, 193). In this discussion Bishop Wilberforce, in closing a half-hour's clever, but unfair speech, turned to Huxley and asked him whether it was on the side of Huxley's grandfather or grandmother that he claimed his own descent from a monkey? Huxley endured the laughter and applause which followed this personal sally with something more than good nature. He turned to Sir Benjamin Brodie, who sat beside him, and slapping his knee, exclaimed: "The Lord hath delivered him into my hands!" It was even so. Huxley rose to reply, and said that he would not be ashamed of having a monkey as an ancestor, but he would be ashamed of any relationship to a gifted man, who, not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunged into a discussion of matters of which he had no real acquaintance "only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions, and skilled appeals to religious prejudice."

In its way that speech established the popularity of Huxley as a debator, and effectually punctured one argument then coming into use in the discussion of evolution. It also was an incident never forgotten concerning Bishop Wilberforce. Huxley afterward wrote, "In justice to the Bishop, I am bound to say he bore me no malice, but was always courtesy itself when we met in after years." In the same letter Huxley says, "The odd part of the business is, that I should not have been present except for Robert Chambers."

[47] I have communicated with Mr. Burton and he agrees with me in the opinion that the inscription from Professor Anthon is not genuine. He thinks it may have been added by Dr. English, not with intent to deceive, but as giving his impression of the manner in which Lincoln acquired the book. Whoever wrote it I think was in error.

[48] This book had been written and was in course of revision when I procured Dr. Chapman's Latest Light on Lincoln. It is a book by one who loved Lincoln sincerely, and can discover in him no lack of any desirable quality; even physical beauty and grace of movement are here attributed to Lincoln, as well as the acceptance of all the fundamental articles of the creeds. He accepts the Beecher incident, declaring that Dr. Johnson informed him that "after thorough investigation he fully believed it to be truthful and authentic," and affirming that "upon the scene of this unique event there rests a halo of celestial beauty too sacred to be regarded with indifference or doubt." The halo may be there, but is it true? Was there any period of twenty-four hours while Lincoln was in the White House when this could have occurred, and the fact concealed from the public? It is altogether less improbable that Mrs. Beecher in her extreme old age and failing mentality was mistaken about the identity of one of Mr. Beecher's callers.

[49] Dr. Johnson quotes this in his Abraham Lincoln the Christian, and with it gives a photo reproduction of this page of his manuscript, bearing in the margin the attestation of both Generals Sickles and Rusling:

"I certify that this statement of a conversation between President Lincoln and General Sickles, in my presence, at Washington, D. C., July 5, 1863, relating to Gettysburg, is correct and true. James F. Rusling, Trenton, N. J., Feb. 17, 1910."

"I hereby certify that the foregoing statement by General Rusling is true in substance. I know from my intimate acquaintance with President Lincoln that he was a religious man—God-fearing and God-loving ruler. D. E. Sickles, Major General U. S. Army, Ret'd, New York, Feb. 11, 1911."

[50] The Library of Congress has a scurilous pamphlet entitled Behind the Seams; by a Nigger Woman, who took in work for Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Davis, New York: The National News Company, 21 and 23 Ann Street, 1868. The preface is signed, "Betsy X (her mark) Kickley, a Nigger." It is a coarse parody on the above, but would appear sometimes to have been mistaken for the original work.

[51] This incident must have appeared in print immediately after Lincoln's death, for I find it quoted in memorial addresses of May, 1865. Mr. Oldroyd has endeavored to learn for me in what paper he found it and on whose authority it rests, but without result. He does not remember where he found it. It is inherently improbable, and rests on no adequate testimony. It ought to be wholly disregarded. The earliest reference I have found to the story in which Lincoln is alleged to have said to an unnamed Illinois minister "I do love Jesus" is in a sermon preached in the Baptist Church of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, April 19, 1865, by Rev. W. W. Whitcomb, which was published in the Oshkosh Northwestern, April 21, 1865, and in 1907 issued in pamphlet form, by John E. Burton. The form of quotation is indefinite, but I judge that the incident was current in the papers of that week, as it is quoted as something with which the congregation was assumed to be familiar. I judge, therefore, that this was a story that found currency immediately after Lincoln's death, running the round of the newspapers with no one's name attached.

[52] Lincoln addressed most of his friends by their family name, seldom prefixing "Mr." A few he called by their first name. Herndon he called "Billy." Ward Hill Lamon he addressed as "Hill." Some of his friends called him "Lincoln," but most of them, "Mr. Lincoln." If any habitually addressed him as "Abe," the author has been unable to learn the fact.

"Although I have heard of cheap fellows, professing that they were wont to address him as 'Abe,' I never knew any one who did it in his presence. Lincoln disdained ceremony, but he gave no license for being called 'Abe'." Whitney: Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, p. 53.

[53] Dr. Chapman, who appears to have permitted no improbable story of Lincoln's orthodoxy to escape him, records this incident with complete assurance of its correctness; but it is a story which it is impossible to fit into the life of Lincoln.

In Latest Light on Lincoln, p. 396, Chapman says, "There is every reason for giving this remarkable story unquestioning credence." On the contrary, there is every good reason for questioning it at every essential point, and the questions do not evoke satisfactory answers.

[54] Whitney affirms that Lincoln was never a member of any secret society. If he had been, that society would certainly have produced a record of his membership.

[55] Whitney tells us of this in his With Lincoln on the Circuit, describing the instrument as a "French harp." This term has given rise to some ludicrous mistakes on the part of those who have quoted it In Kentucky and in "Egypt" a French harp is a harmonica.

[56]

"Of dress, food, and the ordinary comforts and luxuries of life, he was an incompetent judge. He could not discern between well and ill-cooked and served food. He did not know whether or not clothes fitted. He did not know whether music was artistic or in bad taste." Whitney: Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, p. 52.

[57]

"I repeat that his was one of the most uneven, eccentric, and heterogeneous characters, probably, that ever played a part in the great drama of history; and it was for that reason that he was so greatly misjudged and misunderstood; that he was on the one hand described as a mere humorist—a sort of Artemus Ward or Mark Twain—that it was thought that by some irony of fate a low comedian had got into the Presidential chair by mistake and that the nation was being delivered over to conflagration, while this modern Nero fiddled upon its ruins; or that, on the other hand, he should have been thus sketched by as high authority as Ralph Waldo Emerson: 'He is the true history of the American people to his time. Step by step he walks beside them, quickening his march by theirs, the true representative of this continent, an entirely public man, Father of his Country, the pulse of twenty millions throbbing through his heart, the thought of their minds articulated by his tongue. His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.'" Whitney: Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, p. 147.

"One of the most obvious of Mr. Lincoln's peculiarities was his dissimilitude of qualities, or inequality of conduct, his dignity of deportment and action, interspersed with freaks of frivolity and inanity; his high aspiration and achievement, and his descent into the most primitive vales of listlessness, and the most ridiculous buffoonery. He combined the consideration of the movement of armies or grave questions of international concern, with Nasby's feeble jokes or Dan Rice's clownish tricks. In the chief drawer of his cabinet table, all the current joke books of the time were in juxtaposition with official commissions lacking only his final signature, applications for pardons from death penalties, laws awaiting executive action, and orders, which, when issued, would control the fate of a million men and the destinies of unborn generations.... Hence it was that superficial persons, who expected great achievements to be set in a mise en scÉne, and to be ushered in with a prologue, could not understand or appreciate that this wonderful man's administration was a succession of acts of grand and heroic statesmanship, or that he was a prodigy of intellect and moral force, and a genius in administration." Whitney: Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, pp. 147-48-49.

[58] Mr. Jesse W. Weik investigated this report, and told me of it. It comes not through Lewis or other members of the church, but through Lincoln's associates outside the church, who seem to have expected him to unite.

[59]

"He had not then announced himself for freedom, only discussed the inexpediency of repealing the Missouri Compromise line. The Abolitionists that day [the day of Lincoln's State Fair speech] determined to make Lincoln take a stand. I determined he should not at that time, because the time had not yet come when Lincoln should show his hand. When Lovejoy announced the abolition gathering in the evening, I rushed to Lincoln, and said: 'Lincoln, go home, take Bob and the buggy, and leave the country, go quickly, go right off, and never mind the order of your going.' Lincoln took the hint, got his horse and buggy, and did leave quickly, not noting the order of his going. He stayed away till all conventions and fairs were over." Herndon, in Lamon, p. 354.

[60] Lincoln's evasion of an issue which he did not wish to meet was put to a severe test in 1864, when the convention that renominated him for the Presidency had to decide whether to renominate also Vice-President Hamlin. Lincoln liked Hamlin; but, while a Vice-President from Maine had strengthened the ticket in 1860, a war Democrat from one of the border States could help it more in 1864. Lincoln managed never to let it be known whether he favored Hamlin, who greatly desired his support, or whether, as was probably the case, he preferred Johnson. He was skillful in evasion when he chose to be so.

[61] Abraham Lincoln; Evolution of His Literary Style. By Daniel Kilham Dodge. Press of the University of Illinois, 1900.

[62] Few writers who knew Lincoln intimately have given us more detailed accounts of Lincoln's career as a story teller than his friend and associate, Major Henry C. Whitney, who habitually shared his bed in the rounds of the Eighth Judicial Circuit. In his chapter on "Lincoln as a Merry Andrew," in which he tells the undignified length to which these bouts of story telling were wont to go, he says: "But it is a singular fact that Lincoln very rarely told stories in his speeches. In both his forensic and political speeches he got down to serious business, and threw away the mask of Momus altogether. I never heard him narrate but one story in a speech." Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, p. 179.

[63] These letters have lately been presented to the Massachusetts Historical Society.

[64] Abraham Lincoln; The Evolution of His Emancipation Policy. An address delivered before the Chicago Historical Society, February 27, 1906.

[65] See The Evolution of Lincoln's Literary Style, by Prof. Daniel Kilham Dodge. University of Illinois Press, 1900.

[66]

"By reference to Mr. Lincoln's early political and literary performances it will appear that he was more than usually addicted to a florid style, and to greatly exaggerated figures of speech; that the plain, direct, homely, common-sense methods of his later and statesmanlike years were wholly wanting. Rhodomontade was as common in those youthful productions as plain assertion was in his mature life. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that, in the years of his adolescence, he is credited with very decided opinions, radical views, and florid expressions on the subject of religion; but he was forty-five years of age when I first knew him, and his views either underwent a change or else he had grown reticent on that great subject. Certain it is that I never heard Lincoln express himself on the subject of religion at all." Whitney: Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, p. 268.

[67] The Evolution of Lincoln's Literary Style, by Prof. D. K. Dodge.

[68] The foregoing list, together with a number which seem to me less reliably attested, I have taken from Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, the Christian, pp. 215-17.

[69] Dr. Chapman, who is not content with anything less than a complete orthodox system of theology for Lincoln, says:

"In the forefront of Mr. Lincoln's religious thinking was his belief in the Saviour's Deity." His first, and in fact his only proof, is, of course, the Bateman interview. Beyond this he falls into such generalities as his oft repeated mention of Him as "Our Lord," and declares that "again and again does Mr. Lincoln thus speak of the Saviour" (Latest Light on Lincoln, p. 319). If so, I have not found these repeated references in his authentic speeches and papers.

[70] A reference to Christ dying on the cross is in his lecture on Niagara Falls; and there are a few other references.

[71] Dr. Chapman's Latest Light on Lincoln has a few hitherto unprinted things, one of them being some notes by Rev. Dr. Gurley, the beginnings of a contemplated book or pamphlet which he did not complete. The manuscript as produced by Dr. Chapman was furnished by Dr. Gurley's daughter, Mrs. Emma K. Adams, of Washington. The only incident of any considerable value is that Mr. Lincoln one night invited Dr. Gurley, who like himself was an early riser, to come to the White House next morning at seven o'clock for an hour's talk before breakfast. They had the talk and the breakfast. As Dr. Gurley walked away, he was asked whether he and Mr. Lincoln had been talking about the war, and he replied, "Far from it. We have been talking about the state of the soul after death. That is a subject of which Mr. Lincoln never tires. This morning, however, I was a listener, as Mr. Lincoln did all the talking" (Latest Light on Lincoln, p. 500).

There can be, I think, no serious question of Mr. Lincoln's faith in immortality. It was much more easy for a man of his training and temperament to hold that article of faith than some others which might seem to some other men more easily to be accepted.

[72] The chapter, sometimes alleged to have been from the Bible, which Lincoln read to his cabinet before submitting the Emancipation Proclamation.

[73] The accompanying article was originally prepared by its author (the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, in Springfield, Ill.), as a lecture, and has been repeatedly given in that form to various audiences. At the request of the editor of Scribner's Monthly, to whom it seemed that the testimony contained in the lecture was of permanent value, it is here presented with slight alterations, and with no departure from the rhetorical style which was determined by its original purpose.

[74] This is an error doubtless made by Mr. Irwin in copying. It should be June 16, 1858, instead of January. I have printed it as it stands, but the date should be corrected.

[75] March 10, 1864. McPherson, "History of the Rebellion," p. 522.

[76] Report of Judge-Advocate General, April 30, 1864.

[77] March 7, 1864.

[78] Jan. 2, 1863.

[79] Dec. 22, 1863.

[80] "After having made these declarations in good faith and in writing, you can conceive of my embarrassment at now having brought to me what purported to be a formal order of the War Department, bearing date November 30, 1863, giving Bishop Ames control and possession of all the Methodist churches in certain Southern military departments whose pastors have not been appointed by a loyal bishop or bishops, and ordering the military to aid him against any resistance which may be made to his taking such possession and control. What is to be done about it?" [Lincoln to Stanton, MS., Feb. 11, 1864.]

[81] Lincoln to Hogan, Feb. 13, 1864.

[82] Lincoln MS., March 4, 1864.

[83] Lincoln MS., May 13, 1864.

[84] War Records, Vol. XVII, pp. 424, 530.

[85] General McDowell used to tell a story which illustrates Mr. Lincoln's Sabbatarian feeling. The President had ordered a movement which required dispatch, and in his anxiety rode to McDowell's headquarters to inquire how soon he could start. "On Monday morning," said McDowell; "or, by pushing things, perhaps Sunday afternoon." Lincoln, after a moment's thought, said, "McDowell, get a good ready and start Monday." [Herman Haupt, MS. Memoirs.]