12. More on Lincoln’s religious beliefs and positions
Following Lincoln’s murder in April 1865 he became a secular martyr almost immediately, one of the last casualties of the American Civil War. In the years since many Christian groups have tried to make him into a Christian martyr as well, noting, among other things, his death on Good Friday (it was actually the following day) and the many professions to God and Providence in his speeches and writings. Decades after his death many Christian ministers wrote of meetings with Lincoln as president in which he confessed to a conversion to Christianity, cited without evidence other than anecdotal commentary, often in meetings which could not be documented as having taken place. Those who knew Lincoln best during his lifetime before and during his presidency denied that he accepted Christian doctrine, and the divinity of Christ.
Judge David Davis, one of Lincoln’s closest friends and the executor of his estate, said of him, “He had no faith in the Christian sense of the term”. Colonel Ward Lamon, a friend from Illinois who was with Lincoln throughout his presidency, often as his personal bodyguard, wrote, “Never in all that time did he let fall from his lips or his pen an expression which remotely implied the slightest faith in Jesus as the son of God and the Savior of men”. Though many claimed otherwise, arguing that Lincoln was a pious Christian, nothing in his voluminous writings indicates that he was, and much indicates that he wasn’t. The argument over Lincoln’s religious beliefs has continued since his death and will no doubt continue for decades more, fed by the desire to adopt him as a member of a sect, rather than the desire to understand his true faith and its application to his life.