Abraham Lincoln

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

                       Abe Lincoln, b: February 12, 1809;  d: April 15, 1865

               He was born 214 years ago.  As our 16th president, he changed the course of the United States when we underwent a Civil War that caused many a brother to fight his brother.  

Young Abraham Lincoln living in Indiana.  At least he has no egg problems by keeping chickens, and he had a low heating bill by cutting logs for the fireplace.  He sweat more than we do, didn't need a gym to exercise in, and probably had some muscles.  He was said to never tell a lie.  What would he think of our Senators today?  He started with the Republican Party, was a lawyer and could debate and speak very well.  

Whether to give Black people equal rights as any other white man was a serious question.  I might mention that Jews had been going through this same position as the Blacks, never being given any rights in any country until Napoleon (1769-1821) came along.  Napoleon did the unthinkable;  he summoned the Sanhedrin; which met on February 9 to March 9, 1807 and later set up in France in 1808 a central Jewish communal administration. 

View of Frankfurt am Main, including the Alte Brücke (Old Bridge), by Gustave Courbet (1858) 

What Napoleon organized did much to hasten Jewish Emancipation. During the Revolutions of 1848, Jewish emancipation was granted by the Basic Rights of the Frankfurt Parliament (Paragraph 13), which said that civil rights were not to be conditional on religious faith.  Just think!  Then Germany turned on Jews in WWI and turned extremely against them with the Holocaust of WWII. The most exemplary people can become your worst enemy.  

Today is the celebration of our 16th American President, Abraham Lincoln's birthday, February 12th.  He was born in the year of 1809 in Larue County, KY.  He is remembered for not giving into racial discrimination of his Black population which brought on the Civil War of the South against the North.  He died at age 56 years, 2 months and 3 days; too young.   

Becoming President in 1861, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever  to free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863. 

Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you…. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.”

His religious beliefs were pretty open.  On the day Lincoln was assassinated, April 15, 1865,  he reportedly told his wife he desired to visit the Holy Land.

Pres. Lincoln has been called America’s most biblically literate president. He regularly quoted from the Bible in letters, speeches and ordinary conversation. Unlike many American Christians of his time, Lincoln eschewed the habit of focusing primarily on the Christian parts of his Bible, and seemed remarkably comfortable with the Torah (the so-called “Old Testament”).

One example of Lincoln’s familiarity with the Jewish Bible can be seen in his June 29, 1863 letter to General Robert Milroy. Reprimanding the general for his disobedience, Lincoln referenced the Jewish story of Moses, who sinned by losing his temper and struck a rock. “This, my dear general, is I fear, the rock on which you have split”, Lincoln chided the general, vividly drawing on this famous Jewish story.

According to historian Jonathan Sarna, Lincoln quoted from the Old Testament much more often than from the New Testament. In his surviving letters, Lincoln mentions God over 420 times, yet remarkably never refers directly to Jesus.

He had close relationships with some Jewish men that he had met.  The first Jew whom Lincoln might have befriended was Julius Hammerslough, a young store owner in the Illinois state capitol of Springfield.  One of Lincoln’s closest friends was Abraham Jonas, a Kentucky merchant, lawyer and politician who supported and encouraged Lincoln for most of his life.  Some of the most iconic photos of him were taken by Samuel Alschuler, a Jewish photographer in Illinois.

As Civil War raged, Lincoln recruited military and civilian leaders to help lead the fight. He openly appointed Jews, never disparaging them for their religion, as many of his contemporaries routinely did. One of Lincoln’s earliest Jewish wartime appointments was Alfred Mordecai, Jr., whom Lincoln appointed second lieutenant in 1861, after the fall of Fort Sumter. In addition to officers, Pres. Lincoln also appointed about 50 Jews to be Quartermasters, overseeing housing, supplies, transportation and clothing for the troops.

As a young man, Lincoln was a religious skeptic. He was deeply familiar with the Bible, quoting and praising it. He was private about his position on organized religion and respected the beliefs of others. He never made a clear profession of Christian beliefs. Throughout his public career, Lincoln often quoted Scripture. His three most famous speeches—the House Divided Speech, the Gettysburg Address, and his second inaugural—each contain direct allusions to Providence and quotes from Scripture.

In the 1840s, Lincoln subscribed to the Doctrine of Necessity, a belief that the human mind was controlled by a higher power.                            

With the death of his son Edward in 1850 he more frequently expressed a dependence on God. He never joined a church, although he frequently attended First Presbyterian Church with his wife beginning in 1852.  The death of his son Willie in February 1862 may have caused him to look toward religion for solace. After Willie's death, he questioned the divine necessity of the war's severity.

In the 1850s, Lincoln asserted his belief in "providence" in a general way, and rarely used the language or imagery of the evangelicals; he regarded the republicanism of the Founding Fathers with an almost religious reverence.  He wrote at this time that God "could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. 

Lincoln did believe in an all-powerful God that shaped events and by 1865 was expressing that belief in major speeches. By the end of the war, he increasingly appealed to the Almighty for solace and to explain events.

 Lincoln's frequent use of religious imagery and language toward the end of his life may have reflected his own personal beliefs or might have been a device to reach his audiences, who were mostly evangelical Protestants. 

Resource:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/abraham-lincoln/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/09/the-story-of-honest-abes-family-tree/

https://aish.com/abraham-lincoln-and-the-jews-10-fascinating-facts/