His jokes.
As to
Lincoln's indecent stories, jokes and behavior, we have testimony as follows, from
Holland (page 83): ‘It is useless for
Mr. Lincoln's biographers to ignore this habit.
The whole
West, if not the whole country (he is writing in 1866) is full of these stories, and there is no doubt at all that he indulged in them with the same freedom that he did in those of a less objectionable character.’
Again he says (page 251): ‘* * men who knew him throughout all his professional and political life * * have said that “he was the foulest in his jests and stories of any man in the country.”
’
As to
Lincoln's attitude towards religion,
Dr. Holland says (page 286), that twenty out of the twenty-three ministers of the different denominations of Christians, and a very large majority of the prominent members of the churches in his home (
Springfield, Ill.), opposed him for
President.
He says (page 241): ‘* * * Men who knew him throughout all his professional and political life’ have said ‘that, so far from being a religious man, or a Christian, the less said about that the better.’
He says of
Lincoln's first recorded religious utterance, used in closing his farewell address to
Springfield, that it ‘was regarded by many as an evidence both of his weakness and of his hypocrisy, * * and was tossed about as a joke, “Old Abe's last.”
’
Colonel Ward H. Lamon published his ‘Life of
Lincoln’ in 1872.
He appears, in the accounts of
Mr. Lincoln's life in the
West, as constantly associated in the most friendly relations with him. He accompanied the family in the journey towards
Washington, and was selected by
Lincoln himself (see
McClure's ‘
Lincoln,’ &c., page 46), as the one protector to accompany and guard him from the assassination that he apprehended so causelessly (
Lamon's ‘Life,’ &c., page 513), in his midnight passage through
Baltimore to his first inauguration.
He was made a United States Marshal of the district, in order (
McClure's ‘
Lincoln,’ &c., page 67) that
Lincoln might have him always at hand.
Though
Lamon recognizes and sets
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forth with great clearness (page 181), his duty to tell the whole truth, good and bad, and especially (page 86,
et seq.), to correct the statements of indiscreet admirers who have tried to make
Lincoln out a religious man, and, though he indignantly remonstrates against such stories, as making his hero a hypocrite, the whole book shows an exceedingly high estimate of the friend of his lifetime.
