1861-1865
Born to a Kentucky frontiersman and his wife, Abraham Lincoln was raised in his parents' Baptist faith, where evangelistic fervor combined with a stern Calvinist theology of predestination -- the belief that man's fate had been predetermined by God. Lincoln rejected this Calvinist view and shunned emotional excess, but the Calvinism of his youth left him with a lifetime lingering sense of fatalism.
The toll of the Civil War led Lincoln to undergo a profound spiritual journey; before the war, Lincoln had imagined Providence, the power sustaining and guiding human destiny, as a remote and mechanistic force. "Man is simply a simple tool, a mere cog in the wheel, a part, a small part, of this vast iron machine, that strikes and cuts, grinds and mashes, all things, including man, that resist it," he wrote.
When he was president, however, Providence began to emerge in his mind as an active and more personal God, a mysterious presence whose purpose eluded human understanding. Lincoln received the casualty lists and toured military hospitals. In February 1862, his son Willie died of typhoid fever.
In September 1862, one of the darkest moments of the conflict, Lincoln committed his thoughts about God on a small piece of paper that his secretary later titled "Meditation on the Divine Will":
"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 cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. ... 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 began to search for signs of God's will on the question of emancipation. In September 1862, Union forces drove Southern rebels from Antietam Creek in Maryland. It was not a rousing victory for the Union, but Lincoln gathered his Cabinet. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles recorded Lincoln's startling announcement: "God had decided this question in favor of the slaves. He was satisfied that it was right, was confirmed and strengthened this action by the vow and the results."
Lincoln had taken the victory at Antietam as the divine signal he'd been looking for. On New Year's Day 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the Confederacy.
On March 4, 1865, Lincoln once again took the oath of office. In his second Inaugural Address, which would be his final address to the American people, Lincoln endowed the Civil War with sacred meaning, creating an American Scripture and articulating an American civil religion that still suffuses the idea of the nation with religious significance.
Lincoln himself became a casualty of the conflict. Slain on Good Friday, he died the day before Easter Sunday. Some ministers privately lamented the fact that he had never formally joined a church. Yet Lincoln has become one of America's most theological presidents
Born to a Kentucky frontiersman and his wife, Abraham Lincoln was raised in his parents' Baptist faith, where evangelistic fervor combined with a stern Calvinist theology of predestination -- the belief that man's fate had been predetermined by God. Lincoln rejected this Calvinist view and shunned emotional excess, but the Calvinism of his youth left him with a lifetime lingering sense of fatalism.
The toll of the Civil War led Lincoln to undergo a profound spiritual journey; before the war, Lincoln had imagined Providence, the power sustaining and guiding human destiny, as a remote and mechanistic force. "Man is simply a simple tool, a mere cog in the wheel, a part, a small part, of this vast iron machine, that strikes and cuts, grinds and mashes, all things, including man, that resist it," he wrote.
When he was president, however, Providence began to emerge in his mind as an active and more personal God, a mysterious presence whose purpose eluded human understanding. Lincoln received the casualty lists and toured military hospitals. In February 1862, his son Willie died of typhoid fever.
In September 1862, one of the darkest moments of the conflict, Lincoln committed his thoughts about God on a small piece of paper that his secretary later titled "Meditation on the Divine Will":
"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 cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. ... 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 began to search for signs of God's will on the question of emancipation. In September 1862, Union forces drove Southern rebels from Antietam Creek in Maryland. It was not a rousing victory for the Union, but Lincoln gathered his Cabinet. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles recorded Lincoln's startling announcement: "God had decided this question in favor of the slaves. He was satisfied that it was right, was confirmed and strengthened this action by the vow and the results."
Lincoln had taken the victory at Antietam as the divine signal he'd been looking for. On New Year's Day 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the Confederacy.
On March 4, 1865, Lincoln once again took the oath of office. In his second Inaugural Address, which would be his final address to the American people, Lincoln endowed the Civil War with sacred meaning, creating an American Scripture and articulating an American civil religion that still suffuses the idea of the nation with religious significance.
Lincoln himself became a casualty of the conflict. Slain on Good Friday, he died the day before Easter Sunday. Some ministers privately lamented the fact that he had never formally joined a church. Yet Lincoln has become one of America's most theological presidents
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