life lessons and a vision for change, came out in 2012 in march, book one in 2013, been watching in depth on booktv. ... >> one of my, obviously, areas of passion and writing is about

presidential faith, and that's not just because i'm intrigued with how people might believe theologically, it's because i think we've come to the conclusion, i think we've come to understand that religion forms the world view out of which an executive leader leads, the decisions they make, what they choose, what they believe about the middle east, what they believe about morality, what they believe about everything from is sex to education to family to foreign policy. so i don't think this is just a little side study in presidential studies, i don't think it's just a little subfield. i think we're realizing increasingly that the presidential faith is something that's really important. and sometimes i think we probably wish we had known more about a president's faith before he actually got elected or before he ran. so this is just -- not an area of bigotry, it's not trying to figure out, oh, where do i disagree with this person or how can i, you know, how can i oppose them theologically, it's about understanding all we want

to understand about how a man or woman thinks. before i get down into lincoln's life, if you have the book yet, you'll notice that it's dedicated to the faculty and students at berlin american high school. i went there, obviously, in we are lin, germany -- berlin, jerusalemny, one of the few people in the world to go to high school behind the iron curtain. that school no longer exists, but it does in our hearts, go bears. [laughter] and so i wanted to dedicate that book to them, and i just wanted to mention that to you. lincoln is usual amongst all of our presidents. we all know that. he's perhaps in some ways more controversial, he's more beloved than most, he's always ranked at the top of our presidents. it has to do with many, many things. he's personally endearing, his story is moving and inspiring. you want every child to know it, you know, to encourage them to accomplish great things. and also, of course, there are the big, magnificent things he

did in term of freeing slaves and bringing the country together and the magnificent words at a time when presidents wrote their own speeches. unbelievable. the issue of lincoln's faith, though, has always been fascinating to me, because not unlike john kennedy, people tend to put on lincoln and, of course, john kennedy as well, whatever their own views are. if you are a hawk militarily, well, then that's what kennedy was. that's how people present him. whatever you are, whatever the scholar is, that's how the life of a lincoln or a kennedy, they become a repository of those views. and nowhere is this more true than in lincoln's faith. lincoln is portrayed as a billy graham figure of his age on the one hand, a stalwart christian, advocate for christian morality and world view, a man we would use the word born again, the

phrase born again these days -- thank you. but on the other hand, the more scholarly side, the more university-oriented biographies of lincoln and histories would present lincoln as a thorough-going atheist. so you have that complete die dichotomy in presentation, and then you run into just a few facts about lincoln's life. all you have to do is read the second inaugural address which is, you know, right there on the side of the lincoln memorial, and you think to yourself this is, this is like a sermon. this reads like a sermon. it quotes scripture, speaks of god's will for the world and the nation, understands the civil war in a theological framework, how could this man be a thorough-going atheist? so we have two extremes, really, and we have people arrayed all along that spectrum. and for me, the issue is i certainly can have my biases, but the issue is to find what the truth is even if the truth is a journey that is incomplete.

and i think in lincoln's life that journey is incomplete. i think that's part of our problem. his life was cut short, and i think that we have to slow down a bit, not be eager to get him to the altar, not be eager to draw conclusions, but to look at the journey. and that's what i'd like to do with you today. so just so you can feel the pain of lincoln historians, let me tell you a story that you probably have not heard. you saw it alluded to in the recent "lincoln" film by spielberg, beautiful film, but even there it wasn't as we have it in the sources. they took some creative license which is, of course, their right. but when i tell you the story, you're going to see why we are, why those of us -- and i'm certainly not a lincoln scholar -- but why those of us who love lincoln and speak of his faith always have to speak in careful terms.

it's not that we're cowardly about our conclusions, it's that lincoln always defies categories. he's always evading our little, you know, little positioning of him and our little boxes that we have him in. if you saw the lincoln film, you remember that there's a scene in which mary todd lincoln and abraham lincoln at the end of the or war are riding in a carriage one day. and it's, they'll go to ford's theater that night, but finally the war is lifting a bit. they had lost a child during the war, they had suffered horribly, they had fought loudly. lincoln had haunted the white house in the wee hours of the morning unable to sleep out of the burden and grief, and all of this is starting to lift now. it's obvious the war is at an end, basically, there are a few clean-up operations left. and so you have this carriage ride. and normally if you're reading a biography of lincoln, you won't

hear much about that ride. the main quote that comes from it is saying something like we must choose to be happier now that the war is over. we've been so sad because of the loss of our son and the war. the reality is that as the film depicts accurately, lincoln and mary todd, his wife, began to have a conversation during that carriage ride about what they would do after the war. and it was along the lines of we'll not go back to springfield, we'll do something else. now, in the film the whole conversation takes place right there, and the language is changed from the sources that we have. again, creative license. what you have probably heard is that abraham lincoln went to ford's theater that night, sat in the box. he and his wife are in a flirty mood from the day's carriage ride -- we're all for that -- and he turns -- mrs. lincoln

turns to him and says what will ms. harris think of me hanging on to you so. ms. harris was the young woman who was part of the couple they were sort of double dating with. and lincoln says, why, she will think nothing of it at all, and then john wilkes booth fired his derringer ball. that's the way it's normally described in history books, but that's not the way mary todd lincoln herself, the only one close enough to know, said it went. she said it was more like this, that they had begun a conversation during the day which they then did not complete in the carriage, but finished in the box at ford's theater that night. and listen to what it was about. i'll tell you where this came from in just a moment, but it's very well established as i'll share with you. mrs. lincoln does say what will ms. harris say of my hanging on to you so, and as those words are being said even then john wilkes booth is working his way into the box.

he had prepared the way earlier in the day. lincoln then says -- this is according to mary todd now -- we will not return immediately to springfield, but we will go abroad among strangers where i can rest. and then there's some more time, and john wilkes booth is making his way further into the box, and lincoln says to her, we will visit the holy land. and that then hangs in the air, and john wilkes booth, you can see the film playing in my brain, john wilkes booth makes further progress into the booth. and then finally towards the, as the drama increases and the play is going on on the stage below, lincoln says we will visit the holy land and see those places hallowed by the footsteps of the savior. and then just before john wilkes booth's derringer ball enters his brain, lincoln is heard to say, "there is no place i so much desire to see as jerusalem." now, i want you to bear in mind

that abraham lincoln never joined a church. as he says these words, he's in a bawdy play on good friday. he was known for a crass sense of humor. he never made any kind of clear affirmation of faith in jesus christ, the central issue of whether you're a christian or not by definition of christianity. he was suspicious of preachers for a good portion of his life. as i'll share in a moment during some years in his life, he was the village atheist where he lived. there's not anything that would lead us to conclude that abraham lincoln, at least as far as the traditional story is told, that abraham lincoln would come to the last moments of his life, and his statement would be i'd very much like to go walk in the steps of the savior. we didn't know he thought of jesus christ as the savior, we didn't know he would want not to go back to springfield, but to go to the holy land. this is a surprise.

now, this is exactly what the problem is for those who are trying to track lincoln's faith, because almost all of the stories that you cherish about lincoln came years after he died from people who were recalling it later. there wasn't that much being written. the nation was in a war. lincoln was not popular with arguably a majority of the united states population. what happened later is that there was a great deal of research and people scouting out stories about lincoln, and there was always the older man sitting on the town square who had a memory, and he's the only person who was there, and it happened 20 years ago, but i'm sure this is what happened with abraham lincoln. he, what, chopped down the cherry tree, or he threw a nickel across the potomac. you understand what i'm saying. well, this has every indication of being true. historians tend to take it fairly seriously.

one of the finest of abraham lincoln scholars takes it seriously. wayne temple, one of the finest scholars, leading scholars on lincoln's faith takes it seriously, it's even quoted in doris kearns goodwin's recent gigantic hit. in fact, anyone who writes about that carriage ride or that discussion or says anything about lincoln wanting to go to the holy land after the war has drawn from this interview, and yet this interview happens almost 17 years after lincoln died. so even now if i stopped and polled everybody, we would have some uncertainty, and this is the nature of it. you can't build on any one thing, but there is a journey that lincoln undergoes that gets us to ford's theater, that maybe makes some sense out of these words that he spoke, and at the very least doesn't leave us with a simplistic kind of conclusion he was a pagan, he was billy graham. there's always gray area,

there's always nuance, there's always a journey that may be more fascinating in some cases than the conclusion. so let me just take you briefly on the religious journey of abraham lincoln. it's important to know that lincoln was born in 809. 1809. february 12, 1809. but what you may not know is that lincoln was born just as a great religious surge in america was happening. it was called the second great awakening. the first great awakening had happened before the american revolution. this great awakening started in places like yale and with preachers like finney, charles finney you might remember from history. but it moved out onto the frontier, and that would have been the version of the revival that lincoln would have known as a young man. and it was upsetting to him. as much, many good social things as we can say that the revival did in some cases, by the time it hit the frontier, it was wild.

people, you have a great, big, huge open spaces cut out in the woods and the prairie, as many as 10-20,000 people assembled in kentucky for these huge preaching times. it was a powerful force in american history, and yet again by the time it reached the frontier, you had people getting the spirit and running around the whole camp, you had people barking, some people tried to catalog these exercises that they would call it the tree exercise because the guy would get the spirit and run up a tree, you know? and people would bring their lawn chairs and a jug and come and watch what the crazy revivalists were going to do. there were extremes, there were excesses, and you can imagine that if this was the kind of faith, this was the kind of theological and religious emphasis that abraham lincoln was growing up in, given that he was a sensitive soul, given that he was an intelligent young man,

a bookish young man, this would not have captured him. and yet this was the majority of faith, kind of faith offered to him at the time. it wasn't the only kind of faith or religious expression offered in the country at the time, not at all, but it definitely what was around him. and you can understand a young, sensitive man recoiling from it. the other issue that sort of starts him in a slightly negative direction about some of these issues is that abraham lincoln and his father had a horrible relationship. now, many famous men and women have had a negative relationship with a parent, and it's defined them. but the problem with lincoln's father is that he was both a harsh man who thought nothing about beating his son to make him work, but then he would be weepy about jesus and about sir chul things at dinner -- spiritual things at dinner. so you'd just taken a beating, you'd just worked hard, the money you earned has been taken from you, but then you listen to your father weep about mercy and

grace. whatever truth there was in it, it wasn't building a connection between father and son. and there's, historians often point at the fact that lincoln never even went to his own father's pubal. once when his fathering was dying, a relative wrote him and said you should come see him, and he said i think it'd be too painful for both of us. in his life his father represented this bombastic, weepy kind of faith that just wouldn't have appealed to abraham lincoln. and yet he had a deep love of scripture and poetry, a deep love of spiritual things that came from his mother. his mother was a remarkable woman. she her name was nancy, of course, you remember from school. she was a woman who was largely illiterate, she was a woman -- one of my favorite truths about the lincoln family is that abraham lincoln's mother was known to be the best wrestler in kentucky. and it was at a time when men and women wrestled together.

so later this history you have a kentucky supreme court justice who goes, yeah, mrs. lincoln threw me, yeah, absolutely. not something you'd hear on the campaign trail today. [laughter] so there are hilarious things about her. but she was a mystical woman, she had a good memory. he quoted verses she knew that had come down through the family line and she was a woman also with a mystical cast. and so she brought abraham into a love of scripture, she brought him into a love of words, she brought him into a sense that there's a god, and he reveals himself in nature, some kind of a religious and theological orientation which he definitely leaned to more than he leaned to his father's kind of revivalistic faith. what's important about all that is that while lincoln had a definite religious turning, a definite mystical cast to his soul and his mind because of his mother's influence, when he turned 21, he got away -- which

was the first time legally he could have done it. according to the laws of the time, he owed his father service until he was 21. at the age of 21, he split. he left. and what's surprising to us is where he went and how, the religious influence that it had upon him. we all remember the name of the town salem in connection with abe amylin con. abraham lincoln. at 21 he went to salem. now, you would think this would be a little outpost out there in illinois, maybe most of the people would be illiterate, and it would just be typical of what we think of as sort of the small town ruins we see in movies and so on. the reality is that because of the great passion for self-education in america, the great belief that if there aren't schools, we should all be reading and talking to each over and helping ourselves learn so we don't become barbarians in the wilderness. the fact is that when lincoln landed in salem, he landed in a

very intellectual town, a town, by the way, that was decidedly theologically liberal with many smart people who talked theology all the time. well, this is out in the boondocks. again, this is american self-taught, self-education theme that's so huge. jefferson teaches himself, what, ten languages, one of them arabic? this is just the theme we have in the history. william herndon said in 1834 he was surrounded by a class of people exceedingly liberal in matters of religion, ruins and pains age of reason passed from hand to hand and furnished food for the evening's discussion in the tavern and the village store. lincoln read both these books and thus assimilated hem into his thinking. -- them into his thinking. although the american revolution was conducted in kind of a high religious surge in the american colonies, after the war the churches had been destroyed, pastors had been killed, bibles and hymnals burned, and so as a result of that and also the

enlightenment influence, you have a great turning against traditional christianity. thomas paine, war hero on the one hand for writing, as he did, and inciting with "common sense" much of the war, he then writes a book called "the age of reason" which just trashes traditional christianity. lincoln loves it. there's a french scholar who writes about the nations and how silly religion is and how it ought to be cast out. lincoln love ares it. lincoln can also, because he had a sarcastic orientation loves robert burns and apparently could do the ideal scottish rogue to bring all this to the fore and do it for the entertainment of his friends. and he also read the decline and fall of a roman empire which blamed christianity, of course. so lincoln's intellectual diet, this great gift that he had that we hear about from early age where he's walking five miles a day to borrow a book,

spiritually, of course, he ended up essentially drinking the waters at salem which were theologically liberal. now, the issue here is that lincoln is, i think, so angry at religion in general that he not only absorbs this, he goes further with it. his friends remembered all of his, all their lives that lincoln would -- hated religion, that lincoln spoke of christ being illegitimate and used the crass word for that. in fact, many times when he was using, when he was -- in a conversation he wouldn't use the name jesus christ, he would just say "the bastard" and people would wince because even if they were moving away there traditional faith, they certainly weren't in any way trying to be, you know, that crass about it. and then during the same salem period, this period where he's becoming the village atheist, lincoln actually writes a little booklet on infidelity that

sounds very much like thomas paine, and he's angry, and he's passionate, and he's writing against christianity, he's calling christ names, and he's talking about the bible being mythology and so on. and some of his friends who knew that he was, had some political aspirations knew that this was dangerous, and one of them one evening snatched it and threw it in the fire while another friend held lincoln from pulling it out. that shows you how passionate he was. but he was the guy who would walk around salem with a bible just to argue against it, just to pick a fight. again, the village atheist. and people often don't know that this was a phase in lincoln's life. this was something that happened to him. this was something that was part of who he was. his friends feared that he would never be successful in politics because still -- though some were moving away from traditional christianity -- christianity shaped the culture, and you weren't going to break into the power zone, the upper crust unless you at least made a nod to the foundation of the country. there's another issue here that

is, for me, these are two of the most fascinating issues in loin con's psychology, and then i'll move on a little more rapidly with the story of his faith. i hope we never lose the memory that lincoln fought horrible depression in his life. friends said he was the saddest man they'd ever seen. one said he dripped melancholy while he walked. his mother had been, quote, possessed of a particular spirit of sadness. and so lincoln welcome, fine, fine books on this subject by joshua -- [inaudible] says we wouldn't have had the lincoln we ultimately had if he hadn't had to battle depression. but this was not just a temporary sadness in his life, this was knot just a small thing. -- not just a small thing. he suffered debilitating depression. and his friends had to go on suicide watch many times. part of it was almost certainly inherited, almost certainly somehow in the genes.

also he suffered horrible deaths in his life. he said to a friend once that he was haunted by the thought of water falling on graves, that he had lost his mother, he had lost his sister, he'd lost an aunt and an uncle. when his mother died at the age of 9, he helped his father make the coffin and buried her. it was a very hands-on experience. the first woman he really ever loved died within a short time and died horribly as his mother did of milk sickness. so death, probably some genetic predisposition. he was depressive, and his friends many times would write and say, put in their journals that was the time he went crazy. that was the time we had to take the razors from the room. this was a serious issue, not just a temporary sadness and kind of a poetic mood. but the thing that i did not know when i began writing this book, that i've never really heard discussed and i found it later hidden in some historian's writings or just mentioned

lightly, is it may very well have been at the heart of lincoln's depression and very much also his rejection of god. for a season anyway. and it is that lincoln was absolutely tortured by the fact this that his mother was illegitimate. and so he again used that b word, the word bastard that he uses of jesus for his own mother. it's hard for us to understand. if i was born without even knowing my parents, you wouldn't think less of me in our generation. we don't pay much attention to that. this was a time when first sons are considered to be morally superior to second sons, and it's a different culture. so lincoln believed that somehow he was cursed because his mother was illegitimate. in fact, even the good things about him he thought were somehow stolen. apparently a virginia aristocrat

had raped his grandmother, and lyndon spoke of his -- lincoln spoke of his good qualities all of his life having been stolen as if he was the thief. it's hard for us to understand, but this is absolutely on the documents. and then, of course, talked about the rest of his family not being very bright as having been what he would have been had he not become the recipient of this aristocrat's intellectual gifts. it's an odd way of thinking. but all of his friends, especially herndon who was maybe the closest observer, said that e thought he was cursed and that this illegitimate si on his mother's part was a mark that god had rejected him. so for many years, many years, lincoln spoke and wrote and his friends recorded that he believed himself cursed by god and often compared himself to job. in fact, one of my, one of my favorite quotes from herndon -- well, first of all, let me just quote to you briefly, this is

lincoln speaking to herndon in a conversation that's well recorded: my mother was a bastard, was the daughter of a nobleman. this is lincoln speaking. so-called of virginia. my mother's mother was poor and credulous, and she was shamefully taken advantage of by the man. my mother inherited his qualities, and i hers. i mean, that's almost laughable in terms of our modern understanding, but the man was tortured by it. and his friend william herndon wrote one of my favorite quotes about this subject. he said, poor, patient, suffering, cross-bearing lincoln did not god roll him through his furnace, take all this and you will perceive lincoln's work on fidelly -- in other words, he's saying the reason he's so angry at god and wrote the little booklet was that out of a great blast job-like of despair. and this is the famous quote, now does not melancholy drip from this poor man. this is lincoln's best friend

saying, yeah, god's really put him through it because he's illegitimate. i don't mean to be cutting about this, but you need to understand lincoln's depression, lincoln's anger towards god -- whatever conclusions he may have drawn ultimately theologically have a, some of it at their roots, some of the core of this is from lincoln believing that he is cursed. and it's a serious, serious thing, something we hardly even understand or perceive today. well, things do eventually change. lincoln spends about a decade in salem. he's feeding on this theological liberalism, he's battling his depression, he's continuing to read, read deeply, but he moves to springfield, becomes part of the legislature. and things begin to change there for a number of reasons. first of all, he begins to encounter christians who are articulate, who are upper class or people he admires. those folks had been theological liberals at salem, and that's all lincoln had known. so now he begins to open up to other ideas. we don't have any conclusions from him, but he begins to

change. he begins to make more money. he begins to practice law. he's in the legislature. by the time this period ends, he's married mary todd lincoln who is episcopalian, he's had a child, etc. and by the time this whole period sort of comes to an end, he's already been in congress for just a little bit more than a year. here's the real turning point though. during all this time from the time lincoln went to salem to the time that he returned from congress, he's been a skeptic who knew how to talk the language probably. he's not the raging atheist that he was. part of that's politics probably. you can't, you can't speak that way can and get elected. there's evidence that he, you know, demured a little bit and hid some things that he had done when he spoke publicly. but he said during that -- but he's at least becoming softer, letting his wife go to church, something that had to happen in those days. the man would have to give permission, even though lincoln never went. and he has a few friends who are

ministers, but this is a man who's very cautious and very distant from faith. what changes, and it almost all changes in one year, is that in 1850 lincoln's coming back from congress, 1849 is when it began. his father-in-law has died, a very contested death. the estate's in contest. the family asks lincoln to straighten it out, so they go to robert todd -- this is the father-in-law's home -- in lexington. lincoln is taking weeks to work out all the details of contested -- of this contested estate. and he's finally, probably for some peace from the daughters -- it was all daughters who were just screaming at each other and grabbing portions of the estate and he's having to adjudicate between them -- he goes and sits in his father-in-law's library, reads some book withs, enjoys that time every day. and one day he pulls down a two-volume work that has a title, i'm sure no book titled

this way today would ever do very well, but it's about a four-sentence title. i won't quote the whole thing, but it's called "a christian's defense." and it's written, it turns out, by the presbyterian minister in springfield which is where lincoln's from. and lincoln's not in springfield at this point. pulls it down, reads it, and for the first time he's beginning to read a deeply intellectual, scholarly defense of christianity. he's intrigued, but the time of his legal case goes away, ends, he then goes to springfield. he's so intrigued by this book that he asks a friend to introduce him to this reverend smith who is the pastor of first press by teen there. he gets to meet the man, asks for a copy of these two volumes. they're in his very small book chest for the rest of his life.

the thing that makes it especially of impact in his life is certainly the intellectual side, an intelligence lincoln, but what really presses in this home and causes him to go true a change is that just shortly after his son dies. young eddie dies horribly of what they called consumption, and they called it consumption because it was as though you were being consume. and i won't go into the graphic details, but for almost two months this child suffers and then ultimately dies. well, lincoln, who has already had plenty of death, too much death in his life, already battles depression, already is haunted by rain, the thought of rain falling on graves. he is devastated and in that state reaches out to reverend smith. now, what people want at this moment is the big conversion moment. i want it because it'd be easier

to write the story, and i want it maybe because i'm a christian. i want that closure. it doesn't happen. he moves towards christianity, things definitely change, there's some kind of turning. reverend smith says in his later writings that abraham lincoln becomes a christian believer at that point. i don't think that a historian can draw that conclusion, but an honest historian has to say there's definitely a turn. lincoln begins to support churches locally with money, something he'd not done before. he becomes even closer friends with a large number of ministers. he loans a buggy and two horses to a minister for a year and a half. he occasionally attends church to mary todd who has switched to reverend smith's presbyterian church, and i've heard it referred to as god's chosen frozen, but reverend smith was more the billy graham type of preacher. he was loud and hard-hitting and calling people to -- and lincoln

settled there as mary todd's church, and abraham sometimes attended. something's changed. something's changed. something's shifted. and from 1850 until abraham lincoln enters the white house, i can't put with a scholar's hat on say that lincoln is a map who's pulley -- man who's fully and radically changed to christianity. but there's no question that he's now a believer in god. there's no question he's now a beaver in providence as we'll discuss related to the war briefly. there's no question there's been a turning. his speeches are filled with scripture, he meets with ministers, he funds christian ministries, he speaks positively of the christian gospel as an influence in the world. there's a change of some sort. has he fully embraced christianity, is he five steps shy, is he in favor of a christianity apart from the person of christ on whom we never have a firm and clear proclamation, those are the questions that continue to hang in the air. but what we know is that in 1860

when lincoln's running for president and ultimately, of course, wins the presidency, this is a man who discuss believe of in a god, who has spoken often of the god of the nation, spoken often of god's work throughout american history, who somehow has had at least a half turning at that point. now, let me use the bookends of abraham lincoln's two magnificent speeches, the first and the second inaugural, to show you the change that happens to him while he's in office. because this is the next big phase. you have the atheist phase, you have the period of turning in springfield, and then he becomes sort of the loosely-christian statesman and lawyer, and now you have the president. but there's a big change that happens while lincoln is in the white house, and this, i think, so important. if you -- i hope you will read the magnificent first and second inaugural addresses. the language is unbelievable, it's poetic, it's beautiful.

it's hard to believe that the man wrote it himself, but when you understand the influence of his mother and shakespeare and the bible upon him and his amazing intelligence, perhaps then we can see it more clearly. in the first inaugural, you understand the country's coming apart, we're heading towards civil war. this is lincoln's sort of last appeal on a national stage to the south. and it's obvious from his speech which is twice as long, three times as long, i believe, as the second inaugural, many times more words, long, he's reasoning, he's arguing, he's making the lawyer's case for the south, but he believes that human history is in human hands. this is very, very important. he believes that history is basically a product of human decisions. he even says as you head to the last, the last couple of paragraphs, he says in your hands, my dissatisfied fellow

countrymen, and not in mine is the momentous issue of civil war. now remember that when i come the second inaugural. but he believes that these issues are humanly decided, okay? though he's a man who also affirms a belief in god. and, of course, you have to read the last, the last line, the mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield. this is american poetry. but the theology undergirding the first inaugural is, look, we can change this if we want to. we can make decisions that will change this. what changes over the next four years is that lincoln is living through events, and what he comes to conclude is man is not in charge of this. and that comes out of lincoln's almost complete frustration. if you look at the difference between the confederacy and the union right at the beginning of the civil war whether you are talking about number of weapons,

number of bullets, miles of railroad track, uniforms, men erik finish are -- factories, whatever you want to talk about, the union has far and away superior power. and lincoln can't buy a victory. you know this frustration. he puts one of the finest commanders in charge of his army, general mcclelland. one day he says if general mcclelland is not going to use the army, i would like to borrow it. he is so frustrated, he can't stand himself. generals achieve a certain measure of victory, all this they have to do is cross the darn river, and they stop and have coffee and let the sun set. and lincoln will write letters like, general, i don't think you understand what you've just done. he's in the white house, he's absolutely not in control of events. this is what drives him to haunt the white house at night. this is what causes him to walk around in a tortured state.

about two years into the war, you can tell he's wrestling theologically. lincoln believes in a god, he believes in god's ruling work in the earth even though he's still wrestling with his belief that human efforts determine human history. and he often wrote out his wrestling of soul on pieces of paper, and thank god this one was kept by his secretaries. many were lost. but it's come to be known as the meditation on the divine will. i'll read it briefly because it's very, very important about lincoln's state of mind. the will of god prevails. in great contest, each party claims to act in accordance with the will of god. god cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. in the present civil war, it's quite possible that god's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party. here we go. that god's purpose in this war

is something different from north or south. and yet the human instrumentalities working just as they do are of the best adaptation to effect purpose. here's lincoln always debating, i'm 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 con he's about thes, 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, and yet the contest continues. what's he saying? i now understand that god is all powerful. if he wanted to destroy the union, he could have done it. if he wanted to give the confederacy victory, he could have done it. he's not doing any of that. he has some other thing he's after. and what lincoln comes to conclude, and i mean within

weeks, is that god is enraged about slavery. and that's -- he has, as the old preachers used to say in new england in the colonial period, god has a controversy with this nation, meaning god's angry at the nation about slavery and that god has visited in this war upon the nation as judgment. it's one of the few ways he can make sense of the fact that an army five times the size of its enemy can't gain a victory, that the best strategies don't win. within a very short period of time -- and this is something we don't often read -- lincoln decides to issue the emancipation proclamation. he has, it turns out, made a deal with god. he goes into a cabinet meeting in 1862, and he says to his cabinet, you know i've been considering an emancipation order of some sort. i've now decided to do it. why have he done it, he said, because i made a solemn vow before good -- this is an exact

quote from notes taken at the cabinet meeting -- that if general lee was driven back from pennsylvania, of course, that's gettysburg, i would crown the result of a declaration of freedom to the slaves. the beginning of that effort. if god gave us victory, i would crown that effort with a declaration of freedom to the slaves. gideon welles and simon chase are -- sir, excuse me, we didn't hear you correctly. he says, no, you did. i made a covenant with god. again, lincoln's not exactly been, you know, your overheated religious figure here. they're all looking at each other. but both gideon welles' personal notes and ask simon chase's, a member of the cabinet, personal notes on that meeting confirm this independently, and it's well established. i just don't want you to think i'm making up the spiritual stuff. so what you have is one of the most important orders of the lincoln presidency is issued out of a covenant with god, number one, and number two, out of a

belief that the war has been visited upon the nation by god. let me just read a few sentences from the second inaugural, and i'll wrap this up, because you see now the journey. you see the journey. here's the famous line in the second inaugural which is very short, almost all one-syllable words. lincoln's given up trying to reason, he's just proclaiming. if we shall suppose that american slavery of one of those offenses which in the providence of gods 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 potential war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came. see, the whole country's under judgment. this didn't make the north happy. shall we discern any departure from those divine attributes which believers in a living god always ascribe to him? in other words, isn't in the god we all know, isn't this the god we talk about who can do whatever he wants whenever he wants? and the second inaugural lincoln

says nobody's in control here. this war is judgment from god. and afterwards a man asked him what he thought of his own speech, and he said i don't think that's going to do very well. and he said, here's the exact quote: men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the almighty and them. you see what he intended in that second inaugural. lincoln in a sense, my words, not his, had ceased to become only president, now he's become prophet too in the sense not that a prophet predicts the future, but in the sense that a prophet speaks god's words, his emotions, his attitudes, his anger, whatever it might be, his reconciling to people at a given time. old testament kind of prophet. lincoln clearly saw himself in a role of speaking god's ways to the nation. first inaugural, this is in your hands, my departed brethren. second inaugural, this is just judgment. nobody's in control of this. so you go from lincoln who is hanging on to his mother's

mysticism, believing in a form of himself but hating his father, hating the revialist culture -- revivalist culture, moving to a solid atheist phase in which he is picking a fight, moving into a tolerant phase that may have been politically motivated to some extent, but there clearly is some absorption of a belief in god, and finally by with the -- by the time you get to the presidency, you have a man who believes in god, believes in some biblical truth, we don't know how much. certainly beliefs in heaven and hell, certainly believes in christian ethics, etc., etc. still isn't clear about who jesus is, never makes a firm statement although he goes to a church from the moment he arrives in d.c. that is strongly we would now call it evangelical, that recites the creed every week. i mean, clearly he's not radically anti-jesus as he once was. and i think the most, the clearest statement that we have of what he believed by the time his presidency was over and about to be interrupted by john

wilkes booth's derringer ball is the second inaugural. god rules, god's hacked off, god's going to heal our nation, but nobody was in control of this, ask i know that better than anybody -- and i know that better than anybody. let me speak god's will to the nation, he says in that last quote, in essence. so the conclusion of the matter is the one that i find frustrates a lot of people who want me to nail it down. what is lincoln religiously? lincoln is a man ever on a religious journey, and that journey is bankrupted by a derringer ball. if i have on my christian hat, i think he had arrived at peace with christianity in at least a broad sense if not christianity -- if i put my scholar's hat, i can't prove what i just said, because we just don't know. so anyone who paints him as the civil war's billy graham is overdoing it. but so anyone who says that abraham lincoln was a

thorough-going atheist. his own speeches that we have chiseled on our monuments doesn't support that. so i've brought you all this way i don't know. [laughter] the journey's the thing, and sometimes that's all we get. all right, it's great being with you. i think we have a few questions, and so i'll yield to those who are going to direct this time. >> okay. so it sounded like his wife was a difficult person, his relationship -- the marriage with the wife was very difficult. have you seen any evidence that he approached it in a biblical or a new testament way, anything he said like either the definition of marriage or constraints of marriage or how you treat your spouse? and also would you, did you find anything to see whether that difficult marriage drove him closer to god or away, like how could you let that happen? >> it's a great question. did you see the movie? you didn't see the moviesome. >> not yet.

>> it's one of the movies you have to see or, you know, you can't move on in life. [laughter] see the "lincoln" movie, and you'll see in almost one of the earliest scenes sally field is mary todd lincoln and, of course, awesome portrayal of lincoln. just mix it up. any couples who have had a knockdown, drag-out felt that one. itit's just raging and furious. so this did not become the james dobson marriage, this did not become what your counselor friends want a marriage to be. they made peace, they loved each other. they screamed a lot, they fought a lot, they blamed each other a lot. i think one of the most beautiful statements in the whole fight is lincoln complaining that barry was so -- mary was so crazed in her grief for so long, there's no room for anyone else's feelings, and even the children get squeezed out. your question is do we have any evidence that lincoln approached it. he did quote scrip cur to mary to comfort her. did he generally believe them?

i think he didn't towards the beginning, and i think toward the end he did. let's see, she's a christian, maybe this psalm will work. because she's screaming like a wounded animal filling the house and later the white house with her grief. it's horrible. i think later he genuinely believed he was trying to comfort her with their faith. we don't know enough about their private lives and certainly not about any ministry to know if lincoln was doing anything more distinctly biblical in an approach to his marital problems. you have to understand these people are besieged. war's happening, you know? it's like one of the lines out of a tv series that i like very much, "west wing." one of the characters says to his wife this is not more important than you, but it is right now. i mean, he's just in, he's just in, you know, hundreds of thousands of people are dying. and it's on his hands, he thinks. so he eventually turns away from her, and she hates him for it, you know, in that temporary way that spouses can. but we don't know anything more than that.

it's a beautiful and tragic and horrible thing, and she's eventually driven mentally unhinged by all of it. even her own son has her committed to a mental institution and, of course, there are lawsuits to get her out. it's a hard thing to watch. yes, ma'am. >> in what context did mary todd lincoln discuss lincoln's last words to her? >> it's a great question. she's talking, and this is going to, this is the kind of information that makes it better and worse all at the same time. she's talking to a baptist minister in springfield, a man by the name noyes. it's the same baptist minister lincoln had lent the buggy to years before for a year and a half, friend of the family's. it's happening in 1882. and that document is on file at the bringfield library. and by the way -- springfield library. by the way, if you are even

remotely interested in abraham lincoln, you will not believe the springfield library. it's like disneyland collided with the richard byrd library in turn collided with something else. unbelievable. a lehrman film or something. it's amazing. you actually walk through, you know, where the casket's lying in state, you actually walk through debate withs. it's pretty amazing. very disney-esque. it's unbelievable. but there are serious, serious scholars, and some of the best. i ran all my writing and research by them in advance, and they said that the conclusions that i had drawn in the book were all valid. they weren't complimenting me, they were just saying, yes, this document by noyes, we think that's confirmed. this is major lincoln scholars. so the document is confirmed as his to have call. not everything in it can we be 100% sure happened because it's mary todd's lincoln remembrance. the odd thing is we rely on it

for everything else. yes, the carriage ride, yes, the conversation and then when they talk about religion, oh, no, that can't be true. i'm just trying to say let's consider the whole thing. short answer is it's an interview with mary todd lincoln, 1882, what is that -- with my math, did i say 17 years later? but most of what you know about lincoln except for the things he wrote and said and people wrote during his presidency comes sometimes three decades later. so it's a difficult thing to deal with. but it's a substantiated source that most scholars use. they just don't use all of it because they suspect the religious part. people think that during the victorians era there's a sort of religious reworking of lincoln. and there could be some evidence for that in some cases, but we also have a great deal of evidence that i've cited. i'm not trying to make a case, i'm just trying to get it accurate from his life, actual lifetime also confirms some of

this. so it's never going to be pulley resolved, and -- fully resolved, and only those who insist on an absolute conclusion and clarity are wrong. you understand what i'm saying? if you insist on a position other than he was on a constant journey, but wasn't it beautiful and didn't it impact our country. and that's really the conclusion, of course, you can tell that very few presidents' lives, theological lives have impacted our country quite like lincoln's, and yet he's maybe one of of the ones we're least certain about. that's all that we know. it's been great to be with you. thank you very much. please, go to springfield and read a lot on lincoln. he's wonderful. god bless. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs.

weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. on weeknights watch key public policy events, and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our schedules at our web site, and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. >> tom clancy, hour of several best-selling books, died on october 1, 2013. in 2002 mr. clancy was our guest on "in depth." >> guest: there's some magical process the military has. the navy, the marine corps, the coast guard, all of them. they take these amazing -- the guy i used to sell insurance to, and you think can i really trust this kid with the well being of my insurance company, and somehow the military turns them into responsible adults, and it does it almost overnight. almost overnight. they're responsible, serious

adults. and how the military does -- if only they could bottle it, they could make an awful lot of money. because there's just some kind of magical process. at the end of these, at the end of a couple of years, these kids will go out, and they defend our country. they're the defenders of our freedoms. they do it pretty well. >> host: you had said often that you did not join the military because of your eyesight. >> guest: yeah. my -- i used to -- my glasses used to be bulletproof. i just went to johns hopkins and got my eyeballs lazed, and so now i can actually see fairly well. the bad news is i have to wear these to read now. >> host: but if you had joined the military, what branch would you have signed up to? >> guest: i took army rotc in college. i wanted to be a tanker. if you have to fight, you might as well do it sitting down with a five-inch gun. it's just safer that way. >> host: and could you see yourself writing anything else