Hi Jamie,

You may call me Samuel or Sam, whichever you prefer.

I appreciate your post very much. The field of Lincoln Studies, which my website is named after, is not about making Lincoln into a saint. We absolutely share your view that the saint-like Lincoln is simply not reality. In many respects, my career is devoted to recovering the Lincoln that lived and breathed, joked, and cried. It is difficult to cut through all the distortions, but we owe it to ourselves to confront the past as it was.

Let me put it another way. In the last 20 years, Lincoln scholars have gone out of their way to meet Lincoln as he was. The process has not been easy. Books about Lincoln's childhood, his battle with depression, his sexuality, his wife's mental health, his troubled marriage, his failure as a politician, his alleged racism, and apparent disregard for the Constitution, etc. Lincoln scholars do not reject these authors, they welcome them into the conversation. Their books are published, we buy them and read them. These authors are invited to speak at conferences and their ideas are weighed against the evidence. Ultimately, such books--such conversations--draw us closer to the man himself, not the cartoonish saint-like figure that some may imagine he was.

I really like your statement that, "Lee was a sinner bound for hell except for the saving grace of Jesus Christ." That is true for us all.

And one last thing you said resonated with me. "I have even seen people make the comment that God himself favored the infidel Lincoln over the believer Lee. If that isn't making a religion of Lincoln I don't know what is. Not all idols are made of stone."

I couldn't agree more. Lincoln meditated on the role God played in the American Civil War and he was left with more questions than answers. Here is what he wrote one day in 1862:

"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."

In 1865, Lincoln was still searching for God's role in the contest. During the Second Inaugural he said:

"Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other... The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes."

Best,
Sam.