Honest Abe

On this Presidents' Day I'm thinking about Abraham Lincoln, one of the last casualties and certainly the most celebrated of the Civil War. We occasionally hear references to our own era as "a hinge of history," meaning that we have moved from Modernity to Postmodernity. Surely the Civil War period represented a societal sea change as well for the United States. President Lincoln was at the center of the maelstrom. He was a person of such character and wisdom that even his detractors (of whom there were many) revered his memory.

Lincoln was a devout man, but so far as I know, he never officially aligned with any church. He worshiped, at times, in congregations of my own denomination on the Illinois prairie. I have a book on my shelf entitled Lincoln's Devotional. It cites religious readings that he was known to have favored.

Sometimes politicians vaunt their religiosity. But I think Lincoln was not like that. He practiced a quiet faith, one that sustained him through the ordeal of a nation torn apart in war, through bereavement at the deaths of two beloved sons and other family members, through the political gauntlet that he ran each day of his public life. It was said of Churchill that he conscripted the English language and sent it into war to protect the Empire. It would not be too much to say that Lincoln did much the same to preserve the Union. From the humblest beginnings and the merest formal education, Lincoln became, at least to my mind, the premier statesman and champion of the cause of human liberty in U.S. history. And, I am persuaded, he was a man of unstinting faith in God.