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Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865)

Ranking

#3 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

Context: By the time Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated for his second term as president on Saturday, March 4, 1865, the union was nearly restored, slavery essentially destroyed, and high hopes for a better future were widespread. Yet the short, solemn Second Inaugural Address suggest just how exhausted Americans must have felt after the terrible ordeal of their four-year Civil War. Instead of celebration, President Lincoln offered something like a sermon, turning the occasion into a sober reflection on how the conflict over slavery had erupted into an unexpectedly long, hard war, and about how astounding it was to contemplate if that had all been God’s plan. (By Matthew Pinsker)

“Fellow Countrymen….”

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Other Primary Sources

Thurlow Weed letter to Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865

Boston Daily Advertiser, March 6, 1865

Daily National Intelligencer, March 6, 1865

Boston Daily Advertiser, March 7, 1865

Abraham Lincoln letter to Thurlow Weed, March 15, 1865

Frederick Douglass recollection, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, 1881

 

 

How Historians Interpret

“Lincoln then sought, both for himself and for the American people, an explanation of why the war was so protracted.  His answer showed no trace of any late-at-night anguish over his own responsibility for the conflict.  If there was guilt, the burden had been shifted from his shoulders to those of a Higher Power.  The war continued because ‘the Almighty has His own purposes,’ which are different from men’s purposes . . . He might have put his argument in terms of the doctrine of necessity, in which he had long believed; but that was not a dogma accepted by most Americans.  In an earlier private meditation he had concluded that it was ‘probably true—that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end,’ . . . but that was too gnostic a doctrine to gain general credence.  Addressing a devout, Bible-reading public, Lincoln knew he would be understood when he invoked the familiar doctrine of exact retribution, the belief that the punishment for a violation of God’s law would equal the offense itself . . . This was a harsh doctrine, but it was one that absolved both the South and the North of guilt for the never ending bloodshed.”

—David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 566-567

 

“This pronouncement might not have sounded out of place in the mouth of a devout abolitionist or a minister preaching a sermon, but for a president to utter it in such an important state paper was astonishing.  It rested on a proposition that he had articulated before: that both North and South were complicit in the sin of slavery.  But never had he suggested that whites of both sections must suffer death and destruction on a vast scale in order to atone for that sin, and that the war would not end until the scales were evenly balanced.  Lincoln offered this as a hypothesis, not a firm conclusion, but if it were true, then the words of the Nineteenth Psalm would have to be recalled: ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’  A curious feature of this extraordinary analysis, which resembled late seventeenth-century Puritan election-day jeremiads, is the reference to ‘the believers in a Living God.’  It might be inferred that Lincoln did not count himself among those believers, for he did not say ‘we believers in a Living God.’  But the impersonal manner of presenting his argument recalls the impersonal way in which he wrote his autobiographical sketch in 1860, alluding to himself in the third person. He probably did mean to include himself among the believers, but his instinctive modesty and reserve led him to use such impersonal language.  Lincoln blamed white Americans for the war, not God; the Almighty was merely enforcing the elementary rules of righteous justice.”

Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript By Chapters, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 2, Chapter 35 (PDF), pp. 3928-3929

 

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March 4, 1865
Fellow Countrymen:
At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention, and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil-war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. While the inaugeral address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them wouldmake war rather than let the nation survive; and the other wouldaccept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. 
Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. 
The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? 
Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

 

Letter to Albert Hodges (April 4, 1864)

Contributing Editors for this page include Leah Miller

Ranking

#7 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

“You asked me to put in writing….”

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Albert Hodges to Abraham Lincoln, April 22, 1864

From the Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, April 3, 1864

New York Daily Tribune, “Lincoln to Hodges,” April 29, 1864

John Mackenzie to Abraham Lincoln, April 28, 1864

Benjamin B. French to Abraham Lincoln, May 5, 1864

How Historians Interpret 

“In the Civil War, the power to permanently free slaves authorized by the law of war was, as Lincoln recognized in the Hodges letter, augmented by the terms of the United States Constitution. The Constitution gives the president the duty and power to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. The war was being waged to preserve the Constitution. By the time the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, bloody defeats and victories and war weariness had built a case for African-American troops and other steps to weaken the enemy and strengthen the Union. Frémont, Cameron, and Hunter had unwittingly given credibility to Lincoln’s decision to emancipate the slaves by proving that he had refused to take that step until the need was obvious and imperative. The preserve, protect, and defend power was specific, constitutionally conferred, seemingly plenary, and clearly applicable. It created power that embodied, but was not limited to, power arising under the uncertain parameters of the law of war. The grave peril to the Union conferred power akin to the acknowledged power of government to destroy property that imperils the public good, such as an unsafe house or structures or foliage that will kindle or spread a wildfire. Under the circumstances, there was solid legal ground to free the slaves, by decree or otherwise.”

James A. Dueholm, “A Bill of Lading Delivers the Goods: The Constitutionality and Effect of the Emancipation Proclamation,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 31.1 (2010)

 

“Lincoln’s fatalism seemed to his friends to weigh him down in gloom rather than buoy him up in hope. Lincoln’s private predictions of greatness were accompanied by confessions of powerlessness and passivity. In 1864, anxious over his prospects for reelection, he claimed no feeling of having ‘controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.'”

Allen C. Guelzo, “Abraham Lincoln and the Doctrine of Necessity,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 18.1 (1997)

 

“Reading the Bible reinforced Lincoln’s long-held belief in the doctrine of necessity, a belief that admirably fitted the needs of his essentially passive personality.  The idea that the actions of any individual were predetermined and shaped by the unknowable wishes of some Higher Power was not a new one for him, but with the burden of a never-ending war weighing even more heavily on his shoulders, he reverted to it more and more frequently . . . Again and again he reverted to the idea that behind all the struggles and losses of the war a Divine purpose was at work . . . This comforting doctrine allowed the President to live with himself by shifting some of the responsibility for all the suffering.”

—David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 514-515

 

“The secret of Lincoln’s actions was that he had an excellent sense of timing. Using the radicals to spur him on and yielding to the conservatives when necessary, he moved ahead gradually, but ahead nonetheless. And to do so, he needed the radicals’ exhortations. That he welcomed these was not always clear at the time, but there is very little doubt that he was always, and had always been, a convinced opponent of the institution of slavery. If the radicals’ main aim during the Civil War was the extirpation of the ‘peculiar institution,’ Lincoln, too, believed, as he wrote to Albert G. Hodges in 1864, that ‘If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.’ Thus the difference between him and the radicals was not as large as it appeared at first sight.”

Hans L. Trefousse, “Owen Lovejoy and Abraham Lincoln During the Civil War,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 22.1 (2001)

 

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 Searchable Text

A. G. Hodges, Esq Executive Mansion,
Frankfort, Ky. Washington, April 4, 1864. 

My dear Sir: You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Governor Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows: 

“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government—that nation—of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the constitution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together. When, early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When a little later, Gen. Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made earnest, and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation, and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force,—no loss by it any how or any ]where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure. 

[“]And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns. If he can not face his case so stated, it is only because he can not face the truth.[”] 

I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation’s condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God. Yours truly

A. LINCOLN

Letter to Reverdy Johnson (July 26, 1862)

Ranking

#14 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

Context. In this striking note to a Unionist senator from Maryland, Lincoln coolly informed Reverdy Johnson that he would play “any available card” in order to defeat the rebellion. Johnson had traveled to Union-occupied Louisiana and had reported to the president that southern unionists in the state were upset over Union general John W. Phelps’s enticement policies regarding fugitive slaves. Phelps was an abolitionist. Lincoln responded by questioning the “sincerity” of these so-called friends of the government. He was sensitive on this point of Union policy regarding slavery because just a few days earlier, he had announced privately to his cabinet that he planned to emancipate all slaves in Rebel territory after January 1, 1863. (By Matthew Pinsker)

“I am a patient man….”

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Reverdy Johnson to Abraham Lincoln, July 16, 1862

Reverdy Johnson to Abraham Lincoln, September 5, 1862

Abraham Lincoln to George Shepley, November 21, 1862

The Daily Picayune, “Notice of Election,” December 2, 1862

George Shepley to Abraham Lincoln, December 9, 1862

How Historians Interpret

“The failure of the Peninsular campaign marked a key turning point in the war. If McClellan had won, his triumph – combined with other successes of Union arms that spring, including the capture of New Orleans, Memphis, and Nashville – might well have ended the war with slavery virtually untouched. But in the wake of such a major Union defeat, Lincoln decided that the peculiar institution must no longer be treated gently. It was time, the thought, to deal with it head-on. As he told the artist Francis B. Carpenter in 1864, ‘ It had got to be midsummer, 1862. Things had gone from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics, or lose the game! I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy.’ On July 26, the president used similar language in warning Reverdy Johnson that his forbearance was legendary but finite. To New York attorney Edwards Pierrepont, Lincoln similarly explained: ‘It is my last trump card, Judge. If that don’t do, we must give up.’ By playing it he said he hoped to ‘win the trick.’ To pave the way for an emancipation proclamation, Lincoln during the first half of 1862 carefully prepared the public mind with both words and deeds.”

Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript By Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 2, Chapter 27 (PDF), pp. 2982

 

“If Lincoln’s endorsement of [John W.] Phelps indicated the direction the government was taking, an even clearer indication was Lincoln’s response to the Maryland unionist Reverdy Johnson. Back in June, acting on diplomatic complaints about Butler’s treatment of foreign consuls in New Orleans, the State Department had dispatched Johnson to Louisiana to investigate the matter. Overstepping his mission, Johnson reported back to Lincoln on July 16 that Louisiana unionists were becoming alienated by the drift toward emancipation, especially by the policies of General Phelps – which Lincoln had already effectively endorsed. Loyal Louisianans were beginning to worry that it was the ‘purpose of the Govt to force the Emancipation of the slaves.’ Johnson warned Lincoln that if Phelps was allowed to proceed unchecked, ‘this State cannot be, for years, if ever, re-instated in the Union.’ Lincoln’s answer to Johnson was uncharacteristically blunt. He dismissed Johnson’s claim that unionist sentiment in Louisiana was being ‘crushed out’ by Phelp’s policy. All they had to do to stop Phelps was stop the rebellion, he noted … Then he made it unmistakably clear that the time for a more concerted assault on slavery had come. ‘I am a patient man,’ Lincoln told Johnson, ‘but it may as well be understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed.'”

— James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery In The United States, 1861-1865, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013), 249-250

 

“When Reverdy Johnson complained about the abrasive announcements coming from General John W. Phelps, Benjamin Butler’s abolitionist lieutenant who was now overseeing the military occupation of New Orleans, Lincoln snapped back that any Louisianans who were ‘annoyed by the presence of General Phelps’ had only to recall that Phelps was there because of them. And if they thought Phelps was bad, they should consider what Lincoln might do next. ‘If they can conceive of anything worse than General Phelps, within my power, would they not better be looking out for it?’ Wisdom should tell them that ‘the way to avert all this is simply to take their place in the Union upon the old terms.’ If they refused, they shouldn’t be surprised if they ‘receive harder blows than lighter ones.'”

Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 140

 

Further Reading

  •  Matthew Pinsker, “Lincoln’s Summer of Emancipation,” in Harold Holzer and Sarah Vaughn Gabbard, eds., Lincoln and Freedom:  Slavery, Emancipation and the Thirteenth Amendment (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007), 79-99.

 

Searchable Text

PRIVATE
Executive Mansion,  Washington, July 26, 1862.
 
Hon Reverdy Johnson 
My Dear Sir. 
Yours of the 16th. by the hand of Governor Shepley is received. It seems the Union feeling in Louisiana is being crushed out by the course of General Phelps. Please pardon me for believing that is a false pretense. The people of Louisiana—all intelligent people every where—know full well, that I never had a wish to touch the foundations of their society, or any right of theirs. With perfect knowledge of this, they forced a necessity upon me to send armies among them, and it is their own fault, not mine, that they are annoyed by the presence of General Phelps. They also know the remedy—know how to be cured of General Phelps. Remove the necessity of his presence. And might it not be well for them to consider whether they have not already had time enough to do this? If they can conceive of anything worse than General Phelps, within my power, would they not better be looking out for it? They very well know the way to avert all this is simply to take their place in the Union upon the old terms. If they will not do this, should they not receive harder blows rather than lighter ones?
You are ready to say I apply to friends what is due only to enemies. I distrust the wisdom if not the sincerity of friends, who would hold my hands while my enemies stab me. This appeal of professed friends has paralyzed me more in this struggle than any other one thing. You remember telling me the day after the Baltimore mob in April 1861, that it would crush all Union feeling in Maryland for me to attempt bringing troops over Maryland soil to Washington. I brought the troops notwithstanding, and yet there was Union feeling enough left to elect a Legislature the next autumn which in turn elected a very excellent Union U. S. Senator!
I am a patient man—always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance; and also to give ample time for repentance. Still I must save this government if possible. What I cannot do, of course I will not do; but it may as well be understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed. 
Yours truly 
A LINCOLN

 

Handbill on Infidelity (July 31, 1846)

Ranking

#16 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

Context.  In the summer of 1846, Abraham Lincoln was a Whig candidate for a seat in the US Congress. He was competing against Democratic nominee Peter Cartwright, a well-known Methodist minister who had been one of the earlier settlers of Sangamon County. Despite national attention on the Mexican War, this local race seemed to focus on more personal issues, such as Lincoln’s apparently unorthodox religious beliefs. In this handbill, distributed to voters and published in local newspapers (both before and AFTER the election, at Lincoln’s insistence), candidate Lincoln denied that he was an “open scoffer at Christianity” but admitted that he was not a church member and that he had once argued privately for a kind of deistic fatalism, what he called the “Doctrine of Necessity.” The explosive charges did not prevent Lincoln from defeating Cartwright and securing a term in Congress. (By Matthew Pinsker)

“A charge having got into circulation….”

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Abraham Lincoln to Allen N. Ford, Springfield, August 11, 1846

Autobiography of Peter Cartwright (1856)

 

How Historians Interpret

“This statement appeared less than forthcoming to some residents of the Seventh District. One of them said of Lincoln’s ‘lawyer like declaration’ that in ‘war, politics and religion, a ruse is admissible.’  In this document, Lincoln seemed to make two different claims: that he never believed in infidel doctrines, and that he never publicly espoused them. If the former were true, the latter would be superfluous; if the former were untrue, the latter would be irrelevant. Moreover, his reference to the doctrine of necessity was a dodge, for he was accused of infidelity, not fatalism.  In addition, his assertion that he had ‘never denied the truth of the Scriptures’ is belied by the testimony of friends, as is the implication that he was skeptical only in his early years.  After moving to Springfield in 1837, Lincoln continued expressing the unorthodox views he had proclaimed in New Salem.”

Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript By Chapters, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 1, Chapter 7 (PDF),  pp. 705-706

 

“Lincoln’s Democratic opponent was Peter Cartwright, the celebrated Methodist circuit rider, famed alike for his muscular Christianity and for his devotion to Jacksonian principles.  Though Cartwright was personally popular, he was not an effective political campaigner, and his contest with Lincoln stirred little enthusiasm among voters.  Indeed, there was so little interest in the campaign that newspapers only occasionally reported public appearances by either candidate and gave no extended accounts for their speeches. Toward the end of the campaign, growing desperate, Cartwright, in the words of one Whig, ‘sneaked through this part of the district after Lincoln, and grossly misinterpreted him’ by asserting that he was an infidel.  Troubled that this accusation, which was similar to charges that had been raised in previous elections, might succeed in ‘deceiving some honest men,’ especially in the northern counties of the district where he was less well known, Lincoln published a little handbill answering Cartwright’s charges . . . Cartwright’s charge obviously had little effect.  On August 3 the voters of the Seventh District elected Lincoln by an unprecedented majority.”

David Hebert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 114

 

“In all except the most confidential company, Lincoln preferred not to talk about religion at all.  And the more social and political prominence he acquired (or, in less friendly terms, the more he identified with the Whig Junto), the less ‘enthusiastic’ he allowed himself to be ‘in his infidelity.’  James Matheny noted that ‘as he grew older he grew more discrete—didn’t talk much before Strangers about his religion.’  And he would not have in 1846, either, if his Democratic opponent in the Seventh District congressional race had not decided to make an issue of it . . . Nothing better illustrates just how sensitive Lincoln was about discussions of his ‘infidelity’ than his decision on July 31, 1846, less than a week before the election, to issue a public handbill, replying to Cartwright’s charges . . . It [the handbill] was clearly aimed at damping down Cartwright’s ‘whispering’ without trying to pretend that the ‘whispers’ were entirely untrue.”

Allen Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999), 116-7

 

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Searchable Text

 

To the Voters of the Seventh Congressional District.
 
FELLOW CITIZENS:
A charge having got into circulation in some of the neighborhoods of this District, in substance that I am an open scoffer at Christianity,   I have by the advice of some friends concluded to notice the subject in this form. That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular. It is true that in early life I was inclined to believe in what I understand is called the “Doctrine of Necessity” —that is, that the human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control; and I have sometimes (with one, two or three, but never publicly) tried to maintain this opinion in argument. The habit of arguing thus however, I have, entirely left off for more than five years. And I add here, I have always understood this same opinion to be held by several of the Christian denominations. The foregoing, is the whole truth, briefly stated, in relation to myself, upon this subject.
I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter of eternal consequences, between him and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live. If, then, I was guilty of such conduct, I should blame no man who should condemn me for it; but I do blame those, whoever they may be, who falsely put such a charge in circulation against me.
July 31, 1846.  A. LINCOLN.

Letter to John Johnston (January 12, 1851)

Ranking

#25 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

Context.  Abraham Lincoln grew up in what we call today a blended family. His mother Nancy died when his sister Sarah was eleven and he was only nine. Lincoln’s father Thomas then remarried to a widow named Sarah Bush Johnston who had her own children and the families merged together in on a small farm in southern Indiana. That was how Lincoln grew up until the extended clan relocated to Illinois in the early 1830s. In this letter, Abraham Lincoln explained to his step-brother John Johnston why he had not replied to earlier letters warning of his father’s ill health and why he had decided not to come and visit. The content and tone of the letter suggests that there might have been serious strains in the relationship between father and son. Thomas Lincoln died a week after this letter was written. (By Matthew Pinsker)

“I sincerely hope Father may yet recover his health….”

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John Johnston
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Abraham Lincoln letter to John Johnston and Thomas Lincoln, December 24, 1848

John Johnston letter to Abraham Lincoln, May 25, 1849

Matilda Johnston Moore, “Interview with William H. Herndon,” September 8, 1865

Sarah Bush Lincoln, “Interview with William H. Herndon,” September 8, 1865

A. H Chapman to William H. Herndon, Charleston, Illinois, September 28, 1865

 

How Historians Interpret

“When Lincoln finally replied to Johnston on January 12, 1851, it was to express a polite but firm unwillingness to make the trip down to Coles County. Mary was still unwell from the birth of William Wallace Lincoln, and, even more to the point, the distance between father and son had simply grown too great to be reconciled, even if the old man was at death’s door. ‘If we could meet now,’ Lincoln told Johnston, ‘it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant.’ And almost as if this mysterious inability to find reconciliation with his father reminded Lincoln of another equally painful inability, he dropped back into language from his boyhood which he must have known would be the substance of his father’s religious hopes but which he could only acknowledge as a distant impossibility for himself:… It is hard to imagine the ‘infidel’ of the 1830’s writing such advice, even if it was (as Herndon insisted it only was) designed largely as the dutiful sentiment a tactful but distant son might be expected to offer a dying father. Mixed up together with the sentimentality are all the old echoes of the Lincoln family’s unbending Calvinism; and of Christian redemption. What he was willing to acknowledge as grace for others he could not acknowledge for himself. It was ‘the help of God’ the predestinating Father, not the mediation of Christ the redeeming Son, which was the best Lincoln could offer.”

AllenC. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, (Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999), 159-160

 

 

“The following year, Lincoln’s father passed away. As Thomas lay dying in Charleston, a day’s journey from Springfield, Lincoln rejected his deathbed appeal for a visit. Coldly Lincoln wrote his stepbrother, John D. Johnston, to tell their father ‘that if we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant.’ Lincoln neither attended Thomas’s funeral nor arranged for a tombstone to mark his grave. In some men, the painful questioning that often occurs at midlife can lead to despair; in others it produces stagnation. But it can also be a creative if turbulent period in which inner psychological growth takes place and leads to profound self-realization. Out of the crucible of midlife introspection can emerge an awareness of one’s own identity and uniqueness that breeds self-confidence and inspires confidence in others. A hallmark of such pyschologically maturity is an ability to overcome egotism, to avoid taking things personally, to accept one’s shortcomings and those of others with equanimity, to let go of things appropriate for youth and accept gladly the advantages and disadvantages of age. People able to meet these challenges successfully radiate a kind of pyschological wholeness and rootedness that commands respect. They evolve into the unique individuals that they were meant to be. Clearly Lincoln became such a person.”

Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript By Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 1, Chapter 9 (PDF), pp. 1040-1042

 

“The next winter, when John D. Johnston wrote him two more letters about Thomas Lincoln’s declining health, Abraham Lincoln did not respond. He thought his stepbrother was again crying wolf. Only after he heard independently from Harriet Chapman did he take the news seriously. Repeating his ‘desire that neither Father or Mother shall be in want of any comfort either in health or sickness,’ he explained why he could not come to his father’s sickbed. ‘My business is such that I could hardly leave home now,’ he wrote; besides, his wife was ‘sick-abed’ with ‘baby-sickness.’ Both excuses had some plausibility … The rest of Lincoln’s letter, urging his father to ‘call upon, and confide in, our great, and good, and merciful Maker; who…notes the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads,’ was in unconvincing and strained language, really addressed to his backwoods relatives who thought in the cliches of Primitive Baptists … Unable to simulate a grief that he did not feel or an affection that he did not bear, Lincoln did not attend his father’s funeral. He was not heartless, but Thomas Lincoln represented a world that his son had long ago left behind him.”

— David H. Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 153

 Further Reading

  • Richard Hart, “Thomas Lincoln Reconsidered,” For the People (Springfield: Abraham Lincoln Association), 2017 [PDF]

 

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Springfield, Jany. 12. 1851—
Dear Brother: 
On the day before yesterday I received a letter from Harriett, written at Greenup. She says she has just returned from your house; and that Father is very low, and will hardly recover. She also says you have written me two letters; and that although you do not expect me to come now, you wonder that I do not write. I received both your letters, and although I have not answered them, it is not because I have forgotten them, or been uninterested about them—but because it appeared to me I could write nothing which could do any good. You already know I desire that neither Father or Mother shall be in want of any comfort either in health or sickness while they live; and I feel sure you have not failed to use my name, if necessary, to procure a doctor, or any thing else for Father in his present sickness. My business is such that I could hardly leave home now, if it were not, as it is, that my own wife is sick-abed. (It is a case of baby-sickness, and I suppose is not dangerous.) I sincerely hope Father may yet recover his health; but at all events tell him to remember to call upon, and confide in, our great, and good, and merciful Maker; who will not turn away from him in any extremity. He notes the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads; and He will not forget the dying man, who puts his trust in Him. Say to him that if we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant; but that if it be his lot to go now, he will soon have a joyous [meeting] with many loved ones gone before; and where the rest of us, through the help of God, hope ere-long to join them.
Write me again when you receive this. 
Affectionately
A. LINCOLN

Meditation on Divine Will (September 2, 1862)

Contributing Editors for this page include Mary Beth Donnelly, Michelle Grasso, Marsha Greco and Adam Sonstroem

Ranking

#35 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.”

Audio Version

On This Date

[Editorial Note: this undated fragment has traditionally been attributed to September 1862]

HD Daily Report, September 2, 1862

The Lincoln Log, September, 1862

Close Readings

Mary Beth Donnelly, “Understanding Lincoln” blog post (via Quora), September 2, 2013

Michelle Grasso, “Understanding Lincoln” blog post (via Quora), October 1, 2013

Marsha Greco, “Understanding Lincoln” blog post (via Quora), October 1, 2013

Lincoln Meditation Close Reading from Adam Sonstroem on Vimeo.

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How Historians Interpret

“In a private memo for himself, probably written in the summer of 1864, Lincoln ruminated on the Lord’s intentions. Dismayed by the terrible bloodshed of the spring campaigns, he asked why a benevolent deity would allow it: ‘The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party – and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true – that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.’ Lincoln had long been pondering the will of God, which was not clear to him.”

–Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 2, Chapter 34 (PDF), 3798-3799.

 

“An officer confessed that ‘our men are sick of war. They fight without an aim and without enthusiasm.’ Lincoln fell into depression. Edward Bates described him as ‘wrung by the bitterest anguish – said he felt almost ready to hang himself.’ Gideon Welles said the president was ‘sadly perplexed and distressed by events.’ If so, it’s no wonder he thought more than ever about divine providence. In a fragment on divine will he wondered which side God truly favored, because ‘God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest,’ thought Lincoln, ‘yet the contest began. And having begun he could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceed.’”

–Louis P. Masur, Lincoln’s Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 93.

 

“In September 1862, Lincoln penned his ‘Meditation on the Divine Will,’ which clearly foreshadows the later speech.He leaves no doubt whatever as to God’s complete sovereignty: ‘The will of God prevails.’ The war exists, leading to Lincoln’s humble supposition concerning God’s will: ‘I am almost ready to say this is probably true—that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet.’ Moreover, the God whose will Lincoln contemplates is a personal God, actively involved in human affairs: ‘By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. . . . And . . . He could give the final victory to either side any day.’ We agree with Michael Nelson that ‘clearer evidence would be hard to find demonstrating not only that Lincoln’s religious views had changed over the years but also how they had changed. In his 1846 election handbill Lincoln had written that the human mind is governed by ‘some power, over which the mind itself has no control.’ Sometime between then and 1862, he had identified to his own satisfaction its source—no longer ‘some power,’ but rather ‘his mere quiet power.’’ Lincoln no longer believes in a mere abstract force, but in divine agency, a being with an independent will and the power to implement it. Beyond the content of the Meditation, it is important to emphasize that the document was not intended for publication but rather reflected Lincoln’s private thoughts. John Nicolay and John Hay, Lincoln’s private secretaries, state that Lincoln wrote it ‘absolutely detached from any earthly considerations . . . It was not written to be seen of men. It was penned in the awful sincerity of a perfectly honest soul trying to bring itself into closer communion with its Maker.’ Consequently, as Ronald White notes, the Meditation ‘becomes a primary resource in answering the question of the integrity of Lincoln’s ideas in the Second Inaugural.’ As ‘an authentic expression of his innermost views,’ this document in itself undermines the please-the-public dismissal of the Second Inaugural.”

–Samuel W. Calhoun and Lucas E. Morel, “Abraham Lincoln’s Religion: The Case for his Ultimate Belief in a Personal, Sovereign God,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 33, no. 1 (2012): 38-74.

NOTE TO READERS

This page is under construction and will be developed further by students in the new “Understanding Lincoln” online course sponsored by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. To find out more about the course and to see some of our videotaped class sessions, including virtual field trips to Ford’s Theatre and Gettysburg, please visit our Livestream page at http://new.livestream.com/gilderlehrman/lincoln

 

 

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The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party—and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true—that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.

Reply to Emancipation Memorial (September 13, 1862)

Contributing Editors for this page include Jamie Sharpe

Ranking

#49 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

“What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope’s bull against the comet!”

Audio Version

On This Date

HD Daily Report, September 13, 1862

The Lincoln Log, September 13, 1862

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Close Readings

Jamie Sharp, “Understanding Lincoln” blog post (via Quora), July 15, 2014

NOTE TO READERS

This page is under construction and will be developed further by students in the new “Understanding Lincoln” online course sponsored by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.  If you would like to register for this free, open online experience and help contribute to the construction of the Lincoln Writings website, please sign up here before July 19, 2013.  There is also a tuition-based, full graduate credit section of this unique online course available here.

 

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September 13, 1862
“The subject presented in the memorial is one upon which I have thought much for weeks past, and I may even say for months. I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will. I am sure that either the one or the other class is mistaken in that belief, and perhaps in some respects both. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me; for, unless I am more deceived in myself than I often am, it is my earnest desire to know the will of Providence in this matter. And if I can learn what it is I will do it! These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible and learn what appears to be wise and right. The subject is difficult, and good men do not agree. For instance, the other day four gentlemen of standing and intelligence (naming one or two of the number) from New York called, as a delegation, on business connected with the war; but, before leaving, two of them earnestly beset me to proclaim general emancipation, upon which the other two at once attacked them! You know, also, that the last session of Congress had a decided majority of anti-slavery men, yet they could not unite on this policy. And the same is true of the religious people. Why, the rebel soldiers are praying with a great deal more earnestness, I fear, than our own troops, and expecting God to favor their side; for one of our soldiers, who had been taken prisoner, told Senator Wilson, a few days since, that he met with nothing so discouraging as the evident sincerity of those he was among in their prayers. But we will talk over the merits of the case.
 
“What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope’s bull against the comet! Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the Constitution in the rebel States? Is there a single court, or magistrate, or individual that would be influenced by it there? And what reason is there to think it would have any greater effect upon the slaves than the late law of Congress, which I approved, and which offers protection and freedom to the slaves of rebel masters who come within our lines? Yet I cannot learn that that law has caused a single slave to come over to us. And suppose they could be induced by a proclamation of freedom from me to throw themselves upon us, what should we do with them? How can we feed and care for such a multitude? Gen. Butler wrote me a few days since that he was issuing more rations to the slaves who have rushed to him than to all the white troops under his command. They eat, and that is all, though it is true Gen. Butler is feeding the whites also by the thousand; for it nearly amounts to a famine there. If, now, the pressure of the war should call off our forces from New Orleans to defend some other point, what is to prevent the masters from reducing the blacks to slavery again; for I am told that whenever the rebels take any black prisoners, free or slave, they immediately auction them off! They did so with those they took from a boat that was aground in the Tennessee river a few days ago. And then I am very ungenerously attacked for it! For instance, when, after the late battles at and near Bull Run, an expedition went out from Washington under a flag of truce to bury the dead and bring in the wounded, and the rebels seized the blacks who went along to help and sent them into slavery, Horace Greeley said in his paper that the Government would probably do nothing about it. What could I do? [Here your delegation suggested that this was a gross outrage on a flag of truce, which covers and protects all over which it waves, and that whatever he could do if white men had been similarly detained he could do in this case.]
 
“Now, then, tell me, if you please, what possible result of good would follow the issuing of such a proclamation as you desire? Understand, I raise no objections against it on legal or constitutional grounds; for, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, in time of war, I suppose I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy. Nor do I urge objections of a moral nature, in view of possible consequences of insurrection and massacre at the South. I view the matter as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.”
 
…“I admit that slavery is the root of the rebellion, or at least its sine qua non. The ambition of politicians may have instigated them to act, but they would have been impotent without slavery as their instrument. I will also concede that emancipation would help us in Europe, and convince them that we are incited by something more than ambition. I grant further that it would help somewhat at the North, though not so much, I fear, as you and those you represent imagine. Still, some additional strength would be added in that way to the war. And then unquestionably it would weaken the rebels by drawing off their laborers, which is of great importance. But I am not so sure we could do much with the blacks. If we were to arm them, I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hands of the rebels; and indeed thus far we have not had arms enough to equip our white troops. I will mention another thing, though it meet only your scorn and contempt: There are fifty thousand bayonets in the Union armies from the Border Slave States. It would be a serious matter if, in consequence of a proclamation such as you desire, they should go over to the rebels. I do not think they all would—not so many indeed as a year ago, or as six months ago—not so many to-day as yesterday. Every day increases their Union feeling. They are also getting their pride enlisted, and want to beat the rebels. Let me say one thing more: I think you should admit that we already have an important principle to rally and unite the people in the fact that constitutional government is at stake. This is a fundamental idea, going down about as deep as any thing….”

Proclamation of Thanksgiving (October 3, 1863)

Ranking

#69 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.”

On This Date

HD Daily Report, October 3, 1863

The Lincoln Log, October 3, 1863

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How Historians Interpret

 

“A central claim of the American regime, of course, is that its separation of church and state promoted both civil and religious liberty – a claim Lincoln would defend throughout his political career. It is no surprise, then, that Lincoln’s proclamations of thanksgiving days promote both civil and revealed religion. He uses these occasions to foster civil religion, for the sake of preserving the Union, while he encourages citizens toe exercise their respective faith in revealed religion.”

–Lucas E. Morel, Lincoln’s Sacred Effort (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2000), 108-109.

NOTE TO READERS

This page is under construction and will be developed further by students in the new “Understanding Lincoln” online course sponsored by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. To find out more about the course and to see some of our videotaped class sessions, including virtual field trips to Ford’s Theatre and Gettysburg, please visit our Livestream page at http://new.livestream.com/gilderlehrman/lincoln

 

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October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States of America.
 
A Proclamation.
 
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
 
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Letter to Thurlow Weed (March 15, 1865)

Contributing Editors for this page include Patrick Culhane

Ranking

#74 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

“Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told…”

On This Date

HD Daily Report, March 15, 1865

The Lincoln Log, March 15, 1865

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Posted at YouTube by “Understanding Lincoln” course participant Patrick Culhane, August 2014

How Historians Interpret

“Lincoln was pleased with his inaugural. A week before delivering it, he said there was ‘[l]ots of wisdom in that document, I suspect.’ A woman who admired the religious tone of the address asked a friend in Congress to obtain for her a presidential autograph written with the pen used to compose the inaugural. With emotion, Lincoln replied to the request: “She shall have my signature, and with it she shall have that paragraph. It comforts me to know that my sentiments are supported by the Christian ladies of our country.’ When Thurlow Weed praised the inaugural, Lincoln responded: ‘Every one likes a compliment. Thank you for yours on my little notification speech, and on the recent Inaugeral Address. I expect the latter to wear as well as – perhaps better than – any thing I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever of humiliation there is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it.’”

— Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 2, Chapter 35 (PDF), 3933.

 

“In understanding what Lincoln does claim to know about the purposes of God, we have the testimony of Lincoln upon the precise point in a letter to Thurlow Weed written shortly after the inaugural. Lincoln wrote that he expected the Second Inaugural to wear as well and perhaps better than anything he had written However, it was not immediately popular: “Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever of humiliation there is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it.’ Lincoln perceives a gulf between human purposes and God’s and comes to this perception by seeing the imperfection of human purpose. What becomes clear is not the content of God’s purposes, but that they differ from ours. “

— Glen E. Thurow, “Lincoln and American Political Religion,” in The Historian’s Lincoln: Pseudohistory, Psychohistory, and History ed. Gabor S. Boritt (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 136.

NOTE TO READERS

This page is under construction and will be developed further by students in the new “Understanding Lincoln” online course sponsored by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. To find out more about the course and to see some of our videotaped class sessions, including virtual field trips to Ford’s Theatre and Gettysburg, please visit our Livestream page at http://new.livestream.com/gilderlehrman/lincoln

 

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Executive Mansion,Washington,
March 15, 1865
 
Thurlow Weed, Esq 
My dear Sir. .
Every one likes a compliment. Thank you for yours on my little notification speech, and on the recent Inaugeral Address. I expect the latter to wear as well as—perhaps better than—any thing I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever of humiliation there is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it.
Yours truly
A. LINCOLN

First Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions (April 6, 1858)

Ranking

#80 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

“Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and Inventions.”

On This Date

HD Daily Report, April 6, 1858

The Lincoln Log, April 6, 1858

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How Historians Interpret

“Many have dismissed the ‘First Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions,’ which is a historical ode to human ingenuity since Adam invented the fig-leaf apron. Many have explained it away as a caprice, an indulgence of Lincoln’s zany, nonconformist streak. But one distinguished biographer, J.G. Randall, in his Lincoln the President, decided the speech deserved a closer look. ‘In its of flow of sentences it marks Lincoln as something of a stylist, but that is secondary,’ according to Randall. ‘The main point is that in lecturing on discoveries and inventions he was thinking of enlightenment, of progress, down the centuries, of the emancipation of the mind . . .’ In a footnote, Randall adds, ‘Despite its unfavorable reception the lecture has meaning to one who would study the trends of Lincoln’s thought on the eve of his nomination to the presidency.’ Indeed, for anyone interested in Lincoln’s intellectual progress, all three of these speeches—the speech answering Douglas on June 26, 1857; the ‘First Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions,’ delivered on April 6, 1858; and finally the ‘House Divided’ speech on June 16, 1858—are crucial. For nearly two years the intriguing orator gave only these few addresses, and each shows us a different aspect of his mind.”

—Daniel Mark Epstein, Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington, (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2007), 30-31

NOTE TO READERS

This page is under construction and will be developed further by students in the new “Understanding Lincoln” online course sponsored by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. To find out more about the course and to see some of our videotaped class sessions, including virtual field trips to Ford’s Theatre and Gettysburg, please visit our Livestream page at http://new.livestream.com/gilderlehrman/lincoln

 

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All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner.
 
The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and intellectual nature, and his susceptabilities, are the infinitely various “leads” from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny.
 
In the beginning, the mine was unopened, and the miner stood naked, and knowledgeless, upon it.
 
Fishes, birds, beasts, and creeping things, are not miners, but feeders and lodgers, merely. Beavers build houses; but they build them in nowise differently, or better now, than they did, five thousand years ago. Ants, and honey-bees, provide food for winter; but just in the same way they did, when Solomon refered the sluggard to them as patterns of prudence.
 
Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and Inventions. His first important discovery was the fact that he was naked; and his first invention was the fig-leaf-apron. This simple article—the apron—made of leaves, seems to have been the origin of clothing—the one thing for which nearly half of the toil and care of the human race has ever since been expended. The most important improvement ever made in connection with clothing, was the invention of spinning and weaving. The spinning jenny, and power-loom, invented in modern times, though great improvements, do not, as inventions, rank with the ancient arts of spinning and weaving. Spinning and weaving brought into the department of clothing such abundance and variety of material. Wool, the hair of several species of animals, hemp, flax, cotten, silk, and perhaps other articles, were all suited to it, affording garments not only adapted to wet and dry, heat and cold, but also susceptable of high degrees of ornamental finish. Exactly when, or where, spinning and weaving originated is not known. At the first interview of the Almighty with Adam and Eve, after the fall, He made “coats of skins, and clothed them” Gen: 3-21.
 
The Bible makes no other alusion to clothing, before the flood. Soon after the deluge Noah’s two sons covered him with a garment; but of what material the garment was made is not mentioned. Gen. 9-23.
 
Abraham mentions “thread” in such connection as to indicate that spinning and weaving were in use in his day—Gen. 14.23— and soon after, reference to the art is frequently made. “Linen breeches, [”] are mentioned,—Exod. 28.42—and it is said “all the women that were wise hearted, did spin with their hands” (35-25) and, “all the women whose hearts stirred them up in wisdom, spun goat’s hair” (35-26). The work of the “weaver” is mentioned— (35-35). In the book of Job, a very old book, date not exactly known, the “weavers shuttle” is mentioned.
 
The above mention of “thread” by Abraham is the oldest recorded alusion to spinning and weaving; and it was made about two thousand years after the creation of man, and now, near four thousand years ago. Profane authors think these arts originated in Egypt; and this is not contradicted, or made improbable, by any thing in the Bible; for the alusion of Abraham, mentioned, was not made until after he had sojourned in Egypt.
 
The discovery of the properties of iron, and the making of iron tools, must have been among the earliest of important discoveries and inventions. We can scarcely conceive the possibility of making much of anything else, without the use of iron tools. Indeed, an iron hammer must have been very much needed to make the first iron hammer with. A stone probably served as a substitute. How could the “gopher wood” for the Ark, have been gotten out without an axe? It seems to me an axe, or a miracle, was indispensable. Corresponding with the prime necessity for iron, we find at least one very early notice of it. Tubal-cain was “an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron[”]—Gen: 4-22. Tubal-cain was the seventh in decent from Adam; and his birth was about one thousand years before the flood. After the flood, frequent mention is made of iron, and instruments made of iron. Thus “instrument of iron” at Num: 35-16; “bed-stead of iron” at Deut. 3-11—- “the iron furnace [”] at 4-20— and “iron tool” at 27-5. At 19-5— very distinct mention of “the ax to cut down the tree” is made; and also at 8-9, the promised land is described as “a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.” From the somewhat frequent mention of brass in connection with iron, it is not improbable that brass—perhaps what we now call copper—was used by the ancients for some of the same purposes as iron.
 
Transportation—the removal of person, and goods—from place to place—would be an early object, if not a necessity, with man. By his natural powers of locomotion, and without much assistance from Discovery and invention, he could move himself about with considerable facility; and even, could carry small burthens with him. But very soon he would wish to lessen the labor, while he might, at the same time, extend, and expedite the business. For this object, wheel-carriages, and water-crafts—wagons and boats—are the most important inventions. The use of the wheel & axle, has been so long known, that it is difficult, without reflection, to estimate it at it’s true value.
 
The oldest recorded allusion to the wheel and axle is the mention of a “chariot” Gen: 41-43. This was in Egypt, upon the occasion of Joseph being made Governor by Pharaoh. It was about twentyfive hundred years after the creation of Adam. That the chariot then mentioned was a wheel-carriage drawn by animals, is sufficiently evidenced by the mention of chariot-wheels, at Exod. 14-25, and the mention of chariots in connection with horses, in the same chapter, verses 9 & 23. So much, at present, for land-transportation.
 
Now, as to transportation by water, I have concluded, without sufficient authority perhaps, to use the term “boat” as a general name for all water-craft. The boat is indispensable to navigation. It is not probable that the philosophical principle upon which the use of the boat primarily depends—towit, the principle, that any thing will float, which can not sink without displacing more than it’s own weight of water—was known, or even thought of, before the first boats were made. The sight of a crow standing on a piece of drift-wood floating down the swolen current of a creek or river, might well enough suggest the specific idea to a savage, that he could himself get upon a log, or on two logs tied together, and somehow work his way to the opposite shore of the same stream. Such a suggestion, so taken, would be the birth of navigation; and such, not improbably, it really was. The leading idea was thus caught; and whatever came afterwards, were but improvements upon, and auxiliaries to, it.
 
As man is a land animal, it might be expected he would learn to travel by land somewhat earlier than he would by water. Still the crossing of streams, somewhat too deep for wading, would be an early necessity with him. If we pass by the Ark, which may be regarded as belonging rather to the miracalous, than to human invention the first notice we have of water-craft, is the mention of “ships” by Jacob—Gen: 49-13. It is not till we reach the book of Isaiah that we meet with the mention of “oars” and “sails.”
 
As mans food—his first necessity—was to be derived from the vegitation of the earth, it was natural that his first care should be directed to the assistance of that vegitation. And accordingly we find that, even before the fall, the man was put into the garden of Eden “to dress it, and to keep it.” And when afterwards, in consequence of the first transgression, labor was imposed on the race, as a penalty—a curse—we find the first born man—the first heir of the curse—was “a tiller of the ground.” This was the beginning of agriculture; and although, both in point of time, and of importance, it stands at the head of all branches of human industry, it has derived less direct advantage from Discovery and Invention, than almost any other. The plow, of very early origin; and reaping, and threshing, machines, of modern invention are, at this day, the principle improvements in agriculture. And even the oldest of these, the plow, could not have been conceived of, until a precedent conception had been caught, and put into practice—I mean the conception, or idea, of substituting other forces in nature, for man’s own muscular power. These other forces, as now used, are principally, the strength of animals, and the power of the wind, of running streams, and of steam.
 
Climbing upon the back of an animal, and making it carry us, might not, occur very readily. I think the back of the camel would never have suggested it. It was, however, a matter of vast importance.
 
The earliest instance of it mentioned, is when “Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass,[”] Gen. 22-3 preparatory to sacraficing Isaac as a burnt-offering; but the allusion to the saddle indicates that riding had been in use some time; for it is quite probable they rode bare-backed awhile, at least, before they invented saddles.
 
The idea, being once conceived, of riding one species of animals, would soon be extended to others. Accordingly we find that when the servant of Abraham went in search of a wife for Isaac, he took ten camels with him; and, on his return trip, “Rebekah arose, and her damsels, and they rode upon the camels, and followed the man” Gen 24-61[.]
 
The horse, too, as a riding animal, is mentioned early. The Redsea being safely passed, Moses and the children of Israel sang to the Lord “the horse, and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.” Exo. 15-1.
 
Seeing that animals could bear man upon their backs, it would soon occur that they could also bear other burthens. Accordingly we find that Joseph’s bretheren, on their first visit to Egypt, “laded their asses with the corn, and departed thence” Gen. 42-26.
 
Also it would occur that animals could be made to draw burthens after them, as well as to bear them upon their backs; and hence plows and chariots came into use early enough to be often mentioned in the books of Moses—Deut. 22-10. Gen. 41-43. Gen. 46-29. Exo. 14-25[.]
 
Of all the forces of nature, I should think the wind contains the largest amount of motive power—that is, power to move things. Take any given space of the earth’s surface—for instance, Illinois—- and all the power exerted by all the men, and beasts, and running-water, and steam, over and upon it, shall not equal the one hundredth part of what is exerted by the blowing of the wind over and upon the same space. And yet it has not, so far in the world’s history, become proportionably valuable as a motive power. It is applied extensively, and advantageously, to sail-vessels in navigation. Add to this a few wind-mills, and pumps, and you have about all. That, as yet, no very successful mode of controlling, and directing the wind, has been discovered; and that, naturally, it moves by fits and starts—now so gently as to scarcely stir a leaf, and now so roughly as to level a forest—doubtless have been the insurmountable difficulties. As yet, the wind is an untamed, and unharnessed force; and quite possibly one of the greatest discoveries hereafter to be made, will be the taming, and harnessing of the wind. That the difficulties of controlling this power are very great is quite evident by the fact that they have already been perceived, and struggled with more than three thousand years; for that power was applied to sail-vessels, at least as early as the time of the prophet Isaiah.
 
In speaking of running streams, as a motive power, I mean it’s application to mills and other machinery by means of the “water wheel”—a thing now well known, and extensively used; but, of which, no mention is made in the bible, though it is thought to have been in use among the romans—(Am. Ency. tit—Mill) [.] The language of the Saviour “Two women shall be grinding at the mill &c” indicates that, even in the populous city of Jerusalem, at that day, mills were operated by hand—having, as yet had no other than human power applied to them.
 
The advantageous use of Steam-power is, unquestionably, a modern discovery.
 
And yet, as much as two thousand years ago the power of steam was not only observed, but an ingenius toy was actually made and put in motion by it, at Alexandria in Egypt.
 
What appears strange is, that neither the inventor of the toy, nor any one else, for so long a time afterwards, should perceive that steam would move useful machinery as well as a toy.

Fragment on Niagara Falls (September 25, 1848)

Contributing Editors for this page include Bob Frey

Ranking

#102 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

“Niagara-Falls! By what mysterious power is it that millions and millions, are drawn from all parts of the world, to gaze upon Niagara Falls? There is no mystery about the thing itself.”

On This Date

[Editorial Note:  This undated fragment is typically attributed to the period during Lincoln’s journey home from his first session in Congress, sometime between September 25-30, 1848.]

HD Daily Report, September 25, 1848

The Lincoln Log, September 28, 1848

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Bob Frey, “Understanding Lincoln” blog post (via Quora), September 30, 2013

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How Historians Interpret

“. . .They briefly visited Niagara Falls, which inspired Lincoln to momentarily rhapsody: ‘Niagara is strong, and fresh to-day as ten thousand years ago.  The Mammoth and the Mastadon—now so long dead, that fragments of their monstrous bones, alone testify, that they ever lived, have gazed on Niagara.  In that long—long time, never still for a single moment.  Never dried, never froze, never slept, never rested’—and here his pen stopped as he recognized that he was not good at this sort of thing.  Later, when Herndon asked him what reflections he had when he saw the falls, he remarked solemnly that he wondered where all that water came from.”

—David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 132

“Herndon told a story that illustrated Lincoln’s remarkable capacity to focus on what he considered the essentials of any matter. Herndon visited Niagara Falls some time after Lincoln had seen the falls in 1849. Telling Lincoln his impressions of this wonder of nature, Herndon waxed eloquent in typical nineteenth-century romantic fashion, declaiming of rush and roar and brilliant rainbows. Exhausting his adjectives, he asked Lincoln what had made the deepest impression on him when he saw the falls. ‘The thing that struck me most forcibly,’ Lincoln replied, ‘was, where in the world did all that water come from?’ Herndon recalled this remark after nearly forty years as an example of how Lincoln ‘looked at everything…. His mind, heedless of beauty or awe, followed irresistibly back to the first cause…. If there was any secret in his power this surely was it.'”

James M. McPherson, “The Hedgehog and the Foxes,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 12.1 (1991)

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Niagara-Falls! By what mysterious power is it that millions and millions, are drawn from all parts of the world, to gaze upon ← Niagara Falls → ? There is no mystery about the thing itself. Every effect is just such as any inteligent man knowing the causes, would anticipate, without [seeing] it. If the water moving onward in a great river, reaches a point where there is a perpendicular jog, of a hundred feet in descent, in the bottom of the river,—it is plain the water will have a violent and continuous plunge at that point. It is also plain the water, thus plunging, will foam, and roar, and send up a mist, continuously, in which last, during sunshine, there will be perpetual rain-bows. The mere physical of ← Niagara Falls → is only this. Yet this is really a very small part of that world’s wonder. It’s power to excite reflection, and emotion, is it’s great charm. The geologist will demonstrate that the plunge, or fall, was once at Lake Ontario, and has worn it’s way back to it’s present position; he will ascertain how fast it is wearing now, and so get a basis for determining how long it has been wearing back from Lake Ontario, and finally demonstrate by it that this world is at least fourteen thousand years old. A philosopher of a slightly different turn will say ← Niagara Falls → is only the lip of the basin out of which pours all the surplus water which rains down on two or three hundred thousand square miles of the earth’s surface. He will estim[ate with] approximate accuracy, that five hundred thousand [to]ns of water, falls with it’s full weight, a distance of a hundred feet each minute—thus exerting a force equal to the lifting of the same weight, through the same space, in the same time. And then the further reflection comes that this vast amount of water, constantly pouring down, is supplied by an equal amount constantly lifted up, by the sun; and still he says, “If this much is lifted up, for this one space of two or three hundred thousand square miles, an equal amount must be lifted for every other equal space, and he is overwhelmed in the contemplation of the vast power the sun is constantly exerting in quiet, noiseless opperation of lifting water up to be rained downagain.
 
But still there is more. It calls up the indefinite past. When Columbus first sought this continent—when Christ suffered on the cross—when Moses led Israel through the Red-Sea—nay, even, when Adam first came from the hand of his Maker—then as now, Niagara was roaring here. The eyes of that species of extinct giants, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now. Co[n]temporary with the whole race of men, and older than the first man, Niagara is strong, and fresh to-day as ten thousand years ago. The Mammoth and Mastadon—now so long dead, that fragments of their monstrous bones, alone testify, that they ever lived, have gazed on Niagara. In that long—long time, never still for a single moment. Never dried, never froze, never slept, never rested,

Letter to Arnold Fischel (December 14, 1861)

Contributing Editors for this page include Jonas Sherr

Ranking

#111 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

“I find that there are several particulars in which the present law in regard to Chaplains is supposed to be deficient, all of which I now design presenting to the appropriate Committee of Congress. I shall try to have a new law broad enough to cover what is desired by you in behalf of the Israelites.” 

On This Date

HD Daily Report, December 14, 1861

The Lincoln Log, December 14, 1861

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Jonas Sherr, “Understanding Lincoln” blog post (via Quora), September 15, 2013

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How Historians Interpret

“On December 6, 1861, the BODAI [Board of Delegates of the American Israelites] prepared a beautiful ‘Memorial,’ penned with a fair hand, addressed to the Senate and the House of Representatives.  Presumably, Rabbi Fischel would carry this ‘Memorial’ to the nation’s capital.  The tone of the remonstrance was firm.  The document emphasized that the congressional act concerning military chaplains excluded from ‘the Office of Chaplain in the service of the United States ‘regular ordained ministers’ of the Jewish faith.’  The writers insisted that the current law was ‘prejudicial discrimination against a particular class of citizens, on account of their religious belief.’  Moreover, the law established a ‘religious test,’ which manifestly contravened the protections afforded the nation’s citizens by the Constitution. . .Despite reports to the contrary, President Lincoln agreed to see Rabbi Fischel on December 11, 1861.  From Fischel’s perspective, the meeting went quite well.  Lincoln even asked him to return the next day to discuss the matter further. . .On December 15, 1861, Rabbi Fischel received a short but gratifying letter from Abraham Lincoln.  He sat down on the spot and penned a buoyant letter to Henry I. Hart (1816-1863), president of the BODAI.  Fischel wanted Hart and the rest of the BODAI to read Lincoln’s words for themselves, so he quoted the entire text of Lincoln’s letter verbatim.  Had the rabbi not done so, we might never have been able to document Lincoln’s personal involvement in the controversy, since the original of Lincoln’s note appears to have been lost. . .Lincoln kept his word.  Five months later, Congress passed new legislation that would enable ministers of the Jewish faith to serve as chaplains in the U.S. military.”

Gary Phillip Zola, We Called Him Rabbi Abraham: Lincoln and American Jewry, a Documentary History (Illinois: SIU Press, 2014) 82-86

 

“Hoping to create a test case based strictly on a chaplain’s religion and not his lack of ordination [as in the case of Michael Allen, an un-ordained Jewish minister who was fired from his chaplaincy post in 1861], Colonel Max Friedman and the officers of Cameron’s Dragoons then elected an ordained rabbi, the Reverend Arnold Fischel of New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel, to serve as regimental chaplain-designate.  When Fischel, a Dutch immigrant, applied for certification as chaplain, the secretary of war, none other than the Simon Cameron for whom the regiment was named, complied with the law and rejected his application.  The rejection of Fischel finally stimulated American Jewry to action.  The American Jewish press let its readers know that Congress had limited the chaplaincy to Christians and argued for equal treatment for Judaism before the law.  This initiative irritated a handful of Christian organizations, including the YMCA, which resolved to lobby Congress against the appointment of Jewish chaplains.  To counter their efforts, the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, one of the earliest Jewish communal defense agencies, recruited Reverend Fischel to live in Washington, minister to wounded Jewish soldiers in that city’s military hospitals and lobby President Abraham Lincoln to reverse the chaplaincy law. . . Armed with letters of introduction from Jewish and non-Jewish political leaders, Fischel met on December 11, 1861 with President Lincoln to press the case for Jewish chaplains. . . According to Fischel, Lincoln asked several questions about the chaplaincy issue, ‘fully admitted the justice of my remarks. . .and agreed that something ought to be done to meet this case.’  Lincoln promised Fischel that he would submit a new law to Congress ‘broad enough to cover what is desired by you in behalf of the Israelites.'”

Michael Felberg, editor, Blessings of Freedom: Chapters in American Jewish History (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 2002), 95

NOTE TO READERS

This page is under construction and will be developed further by students in the new “Understanding Lincoln” online course sponsored by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. To find out more about the course and to see some of our videotaped class sessions, including virtual field trips to Ford’s Theatre and Gettysburg, please visit our Livestream page at http://new.livestream.com/gilderlehrman/lincoln

 

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Executive Mansion,
December 14, 1861.
 
Rev. Dr. A. Fischel 
My dear Sir: 
I find that there are several particulars in which the present law in regard to Chaplains is supposed to be deficient, all of which I now design presenting to the appropriate Committee of Congress. I shall try to have a new law broad enough to cover what is desired by you in behalf of the Israelites. 
Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.

Reply to Workingmen of Manchester (January 19, 1863)

Ranking

#114 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

“I have understood well that the duty of self-preservation rests solely with the American people. But I have at the same time been aware that favor or disfavor of foreign nations might have a material influence in enlarging and prolonging the struggle with disloyal men in which the country is engaged. A fair examination of history has seemed to authorize a belief that the past action and influences of the United States were generally regarded as having been beneficient towards mankind.”

On This Date

HD Daily Report, January 19, 1863

The Lincoln Log, January 19, 1863

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How Historians Interpret

“Lincoln was keenly conscious of the tides of opinion throughout the world.  He was in full sympathy with liberal thought and he was eager to have the real nature of the cause for which his country was fighting understood by people everywhere.  In England a remarkable division of attitude had occurred.  The aristocracy, as has already been indicated, was in almost complete sympathy with the South, but the British working people were in hearty accord with the aims of the North.  Even the operators in the Lancashire mills, who were being starved as a result of the cotton shortage caused by the blockade, steadfastly supported the Union cause.  The working-men of Manchester addressed a letter to the President at the beginning of the new year 1863, enclosing a resolution of sympathy with the aims of the Northern Government.  On January 19, Lincoln answered them, saying that the example set by the Lancashire mill operators was ‘an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country.’  The people of the Northern states, moved by the plight of the English factory hands, subscribed large sums of money for relief and sent shiploads of wheat to Liverpool.”

Philip Van Doren Stern, editor, The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Random House, 1940)

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This page is under construction and will be developed further by students in the new “Understanding Lincoln” online course sponsored by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. To find out more about the course and to see some of our videotaped class sessions, including virtual field trips to Ford’s Theatre and Gettysburg, please visit our Livestream page at http://new.livestream.com/gilderlehrman/lincoln

 

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Executive Mansion, Washington,
January 19, 1863.
 
To the workingmen of Manchester: 
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the address and resolutions which you sent to me on the eve of the new year.
When I came, on the fourth day of March, 1861, through a free and constitutional election, to preside in the government of the United States, the country was found at the verge of civil war. Whatever might have been the cause, or whosoever the fault, one duty paramount to all others was before me, namely, to maintain and preserve at once the Constitution and the integrity of the federal republic. A conscientious purpose to perform this duty is a key to all the measures of administration which have been, and to all which will hereafter be pursued. Under our form of government, and my official oath, I could not depart from this purpose if I would. It is not always in the power of governments to enlarge or restrict the scope of moral results which follow the policies that they may deem it necessary for the public safety, from time to time, to adopt.
I have understood well that the duty of self-preservation rests solely with the American people. But I have at the same time been aware that favor or disfavor of foreign nations might have a material influence in enlarging and prolonging the struggle with disloyal men in which the country is engaged. A fair examination of history has seemed to authorize a belief that the past action and influences of the United States were generally regarded as having been beneficient towards mankind. I have therefore reckoned upon the forbearance of nations. Circumstances, to some of which you kindly allude, induced me especially to expect that if justice and good faith should be practiced by the United States, they would encounter no hostile influence on the part of Great Britain. It is now a pleasant duty to acknowledge the demonstration you have given of your desire that a spirit of peace and amity towards this country may prevail in the councils of your Queen, who is respected and esteemed in your own country only more than she is by the kindred nation which has its home on this side of the Atlantic.
I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the workingmen at Manchester and in all Europe are called to endure in this crisis. It has been often and studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow this government, which was built upon the foundation of human rights, and to substitute for it one which should rest exclusively on the basis of human slavery, was likely to obtain the favor of Europe. Through the actions of our disloyal citizens the workingmen of Europe have been subjected to a severe trial, for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under these circumstances, I cannot but regard your decisive utterance upon the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is, indeed, an energetic and reinspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity, and freedom. I do not doubt that the sentiments you have expressed will be sustained by your great nation, and, on the other hand, I have no hesitation in assuring you that they will excite admiration, esteem, and the most reciprocal feelings of friendship among the American people. I hail this interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that, whatever else may happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exist between the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual.    
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Address to Washington Temperance Society (February 22, 1842)

Ranking

#121 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

“…Although the Temperance cause has been in progress for near twenty years, it is apparent to all, that it is, just now, being crowned with a degree of success, hitherto unparalleled.”

On This Date

HD Daily Report, February 22, 1842

The Lincoln Log, February 22, 1842

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How Historians Interpret

“On February 22, 1842, Lincoln addressed the Washington Temperance Society of Springfield with a speech that enlarged his discussion of reason and tyranny in the 1838 Lyceum Address.  His presentation was again ostensibly apolitical, though resonant with political implications.  Most notably, it added shadow and light to the portrait of human nature and the task of self-government that he had begun to produce four years before.  The Lyceum Address had sketched the disturbing advances of lawless passions and the arduous means with which their tyranny could be resisted by discovering unused resources of strength within American democracy.  The temperance issue presented the problem in one of its most common, dramatic, and destructive forms.  Alcohol was, after all, the proverbial fuel of anger and licentiousness, a notorious destroyer of self-governing activity.  Habitual drunkenness was therefore a form of slavery, perhaps one of its most damaging forms because it worked to destroy even the free man’s power to love liberty.  The temperance movement was, in Lincoln’s view, an opportunity to resist the encroachment of this broader tyranny—if temperance could be pursued without the movement itself becoming a tyrannical force.  There is much in this 1842 address to suggest that it served several purposes.  The antebellum champions of temperance had a strong philosophical affinity for the work of the antislavery cause.  In the late 1830s and early ’40s, both movement were centered in churches, from which they drew vehement supporters such as Edward Beecher.  In Illinois, the Presbyterians had played a major role in both movements, and it was in a Presbyterian church in Springfield that Lincoln spoke.  Temperance and abolition forces were often entwined up to the mid-1850s, when vote-seeking Republicans began to downplay antidrinking sentiments that had antagonized voters they hoped to recruit to their cause, especially Irish and German immigrants.  In the early 1840s, long before the emergence of the Republican Party, Lincoln’s brand of Whig politics explicitly favored attempts to alleviate the drinker’s plight and emphasized principles he would incorporate into the explicitly antislavery speeches he began to deliver in 1854.  The Temperance Address gave Lincoln an opportunity to venture, in a displaced context, ideas about emancipation and the prospects for a gradual abolition of slavery.”

John Channing Briggs, Lincoln’s Speeches Reconsidered (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 58-59

“Although the speech focuses ostensibly on temperance with regards to liquor, at bottom it is about temperance or moderation in speech—how citizens go about persuading one another on a given social or political issue.  A close reading of the address reveals that the subtext about persuasion, and not the overt teaching about temperance advocacy, is the more serious objective of Lincoln.  This becomes most evident when one looks at Lincoln’s own rhetoric, which fluctuates between plain, unornamented prose and florid, grandiose phrasing.  Curiously enough, his speech takes on its most flowery and exaggerated cast when he uses biblical language.  Lincoln’s Temperance Address, therefore, exhibits bot temperance and intemperance in its argument and leads the attentive listener or reader to draw conclusions about Lincoln’s opinion of the respective temperance reformers and the movement in general that are not obvious on a cursory hearing.”

Lucas E. Morel, Lincoln’s Sacred Effort: Defining Religion’s Role in American Self-Government (Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2000), 128

NOTE TO READERS

This page is under construction and will be developed further by students in the new “Understanding Lincoln” online course sponsored by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. To find out more about the course and to see some of our videotaped class sessions, including virtual field trips to Ford’s Theatre and Gettysburg, please visit our Livestream page at http://new.livestream.com/gilderlehrman/lincoln

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…Although the Temperance cause has been in progress for near twenty years, it is apparent to all, that it is, just now, being crowned with a degree of success, hitherto unparalleled.
The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions of fifties, of hundreds, and of thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly transformed from a cold abstract theory, to a living, breathing, active, and powerful chieftain, going forth “conquering and to conquer.” The citadels of his great adversary are daily being stormed and dismantled; his temples and his altars, where the rites of his idolatrous worship have long been performed, and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be made, are daily desecrated and deserted. The trump of the conqueror’s fame is sounding from hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to land, and calling millions to his standard at a blast.
For this new and splendid success, we heartily rejoice. That that success is so much greater now than heretofore, is doubtless owing to rational causes; and if we would have it to continue, we shall do well to enquire what those causes are. The warfare heretofore waged against the demon of Intemperance, has, some how or other, been erroneous. Either the champions engaged, or the tactics they adopted, have not been the most proper. These champions for the most part, have been Preachers, Lawyers, and hired agents. Between these and the mass of mankind, there is a want ofapproachability, if the term be admissible, partially at least, fatal to their success. They are supposed to have no sympathy of feeling or interest, with those very persons whom it is their object to convince and persuade.
And again, it is so easy and so common to ascribe motives to men of these classes, other than those they profess to act upon. Thepreacher, it is said, advocates temperance because he is a fanatic, and desires a union of Church and State; the lawyer, from his pride and vanity of hearing himself speak; and the hired agent, for his salary. But when one, who has long been known as a victim of intemperance, bursts the fetters that have bound him, and appears before his neighbors “clothed, and in his right mind,” a redeemed specimen of long lost humanity, and stands up with tears of joy trembling in eyes, to tell of the miseries once endured, now to be endured no more forever; of his once naked and starving children, now clad and fed comfortably; of a wife long weighed down with woe, weeping, and a broken heart, now restored to health, happiness, and renewed affection; and how easily it all is done, once it is resolved to be done; however simple his language, there is a logic, and an eloquence in it, that few, with human feelings, can resist. They cannot say that he desires a union of church and state, for he is not a church member; they can not say he is vain of hearing himself speak, for his whole demeanor shows, he would gladly avoid speaking at all; they cannot say he speaks for pay for he receives none, and asks for none. Nor can his sincerity in any way be doubted; or his sympathy for those he would persuade to imitate his example, be denied.
In my judgment, it is to the battles of this new class of champions that our late success is greatly, perhaps chiefly, owing. But, had the old school champions themselves, been of the most wise selecting, was their system of tactics, the most judicious? It seems to me, it was not. Too much denunciation against dram sellers and dram-drinkers was indulged in. This, I think, was both impolitic and unjust. It was impolitic, because, it is not much in the nature of man to be driven to any thing; still less to be driven about that which is exclusively his own business; and least of all, where such driving is to be submitted to, at the expense of pecuniary interest, or burning appetite. When the dram-seller and drinker, were incessantly told, not in the accents of entreaty and persuasion, diffidently addressed by erring man to an erring brother; but in the thundering tones of anathema and denunciation, with which the lordly Judge often groups together all the crimes of the felon’s life, and thrusts them in his face just ere he passes sentence of death upon him, that they were the authors of all the vice and misery and crime in the land; that they were the manufacturers and material of all the thieves and robbers and murderers that infested the earth; that their houses were the workshops of the devil; and that their persons should be shunned by all the good and virtuous, as moral pestilences—I say, when they were told all this, and in this way, it is not wonderful that they were slow, very slow, to acknowledge the truth of such denunciations, and to join the ranks of their denouncers, in a hue and cry against themselves.
To have expected them to do otherwise than as they did—to have expected them not to meet denunciation with denunciation, crimination with crimination, and anathema with anathema, was to expect a reversal of human nature, which is God’s decree, and never can be reversed. When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a “drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.” So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and tho’ your cause be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and tho’ you throw it with more than Herculean force and precision, you shall no more be able to pierce him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw.
Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interest.
On this point, the Washingtonians greatly excel the temperance advocates of former times. Those whom they desire to convince and persuade, are their old friends and companions. They know they are not demons, nor even the worst of men. They know that generally, they are kind, generous and charitable, even beyond the example of their more staid and sober neighbors. They are practical philanthropists; and they glow with a generous and brotherly zeal, that mere theorizers are incapable of feeling. Benevolence and charity possess their hearts entirely; and out of the abundance of their hearts, their tongues give utterance. “Love through all their actions runs, and all their words are mild.”  In this spirit they speak and act, and in the same, they are heard and regarded. And when such is the temper of the advocate, and such of the audience, no good cause can be unsuccessful….
… If the relative grandeur of revolutions shall be estimated by the great amount of human misery they alleviate, and the small amount they inflict, then, indeed, will this be the grandest the world shall ever have seen. Of our political revolution of ’76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other of the nations of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of that long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.
But with all these glorious results, past, present, and to come, it had its evils too. It breathed forth famine, swam in blood and rode on fire; and long, long after, the orphan’s cry, and the widow’s wail, continued to break the sad silence that ensued. These were the price, the inevitable price, paid for the blessings it bought.
Turn now, to the temperance revolution. In it, we shall find a stronger bondage broken; a viler slavery, manumitted; a greater tyrant deposed. In it, more of want supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. By it no orphans starving, no widows weeping. By it, none wounded in feeling, none injured in interest. Even the dram-maker, and dram seller, will have glided into other occupations so gradually, as never to have felt the shock of change; and will stand ready to join all others in the universal song of gladness.
And what a noble ally this, to the cause of political freedom. With such an aid, its march cannot fail to be on and on, till every son of earth shall drink in rich fruition, the sorrow quenching draughts of perfect liberty. Happy day, when, all appetites controled, all passions subdued, all matters subjected, mind, all conqueringmind, shall live and move the monarch of the world. Glorious consummation! Hail fall of Fury! Reign of Reason, all hail!
And when the victory shall be complete—when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth—how proud the title of that Land, which may truly claim to be the birth-place and the cradle of both those revolutions, that shall have ended in that victory. How nobly distinguished that People, who shall have planted, and nurtured to maturity, both the political and moral freedom of their species.
This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birth-day of Washington. We are met to celebrate this day. Washington is the mightiest name of earth—long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name, an eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun, or glory to the name of Washington, is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor, leave it shining on.

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