A nice review of US presidential invocations of Providence:
http://www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?articleId=154
A survey of Lincoln’s views on this and other religious themes:
http://www.slate.com/id/2134450/
Lincoln’s short “Meditation on God’s Will,” a theological fragment that Lincoln wrote for his own edification, probably in 1862 (the title was later supplied by his secretary, John Nicolay). In this private document Lincoln applied his famous logical rigor to the issue of God’s purposes in permitting a gruesome Civil War. Had God’s reasons matched those of the North—extinguishing the rebellion and restoring the Union, in Lincoln’s view—it would have been easy for God to enlist his “human instrumentalities” (like the president) to defeat the Southern armies. But God obviously desired that the war “shall not end yet.” He plainly had his reasons for letting the butchery continue, but he kept those reasons hidden. As the war dragged on Lincoln appears to have concluded that God let the carnage go on so that slavery would crumble along with the rebellion. Never an abolitionist, and forthright in the early years of the war about his willingness to have ended it, if possible, without freeing a single slave, Lincoln now believed that God had effected the emancipation of 4 million African-Americans.
The president’s observation in an 1864 letter that “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me”—a secular-sounding reflection avidly cited by historians over many generations—is followed immediately by the less often quoted comment that “God alone can claim” responsibility for “the nation’s condition.” God seemed to have willed both “the removal of a great wrong” and the punishment of both North and South “for our complicity in that wrong.” If so, future “impartial history” would see in such judgment “new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.”
[snip]
Thanks to Carwardine and Guelzo we can see that Lincoln, by the end of his life, had inverted Thomas Jefferson on the subject of religion. The third president, the great exponent of Enlightenment, had tried to banish mystery from religion while preserving a privileged place for Jesus as the greatest ethical teacher of all time. For his part, the 16th president dropped Jesus by the wayside while rekindling awareness of the unfathomable mysteries of religion. Lincoln resembles the ostensibly secular Benjamin Franklin more than he does the Jesus-infatuated Jefferson. The skeptical Franklin kept a place for Providence in his thinking about the ultimate fate of humanity, while dismissing the pleas of his friend the Rev. George Whitefield that Franklin “close with Christ.” Lincoln transformed Franklin’s Providence into a vigorous historical actor but, like Franklin, he found little use for Jesus.
Carwardine concludes with a brief reflection on the post-assassination “deification” of Lincoln, in which the martyr shot on Good Friday (the anniversary of Christ’s crucifixion) experienced “instant elevation” to the national “pantheon.” This post-mortem career of Lincoln as civic-religious savior lies beyond Carwardine’s scope. But it is relevant to his theme to note that thanks to Booth’s derringer ball, the Lincoln who had let Jesus go became the Lincoln who resembled Jesus. Quickly Lincoln the icon pushed Washington upstairs: The self-made rail-splitter became the self-giving “Son” to whom Americans could attach themselves in warm companionship while the “Father” Washington hovered detachedly like a deist creator beyond the clouds.
One reason why Lincoln has endured as Americans’ prime civic icon (white Southerners having come on board in large numbers even by the late 19th century) is his straddling of the secular-religious boundary line. He can gather disciples on both sides. The 2009 commemorations will surely coincide with attempts to induct Lincoln into the ongoing American cultural tug-of-war by forcing him onto one side or the other. Pundits of faith are liable to pit a secular Darwin against a religious Lincoln. Perhaps Carwardine’s book will help shield him from such treatment. The real Lincoln remains a straddler, too religious for most secularists but too fatalistic for most religionists.
Very interesting and appropos.