WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Michael Lucchese: God and Mr. Lincoln

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

More than 160 years ago, Abraham Lincoln succumbed to the assassin’s bullet. In Religion & Liberty, Michael Lucchese writers an essay reflecting on that dark hour and on Lincoln’s greatness as a public theologian. More than perhaps anyone else, the Railsplitter articulated a theology of both American liberty and American anguish. The enduring insights he gained from wrestling with God and struggling to maintain the Union can still teach us something today. He discussed with Skye Graham on WRFH.From 05/2025.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Sky Graham and today with me is Michael Lou Casey to discuss his latest article for the Acton Institute titled God and Mr. Lincoln. Thank you so much for coming on today. Thanks for having me on, Sky. So my first question is just how did you get interested in studying Lincoln and his religious trajectory? Yeah, that's a great question. I'm originally from Chicago, the land of Lincoln. I have ancestors who fought for the North in the Civil War. And of course, I went to Hillsdale. I graduated in 2018 and I was an American studies major. And at one point in time, during my major, I don't remember which class it was for. I read a book called God and the American writer by a literary critic called Alfred Kaysen. And he has a chapter on Lincoln's theology. That's really beautiful and reveals things that I think are unexpected about our 16th president. and his religious views. Okay, so then let's just start at the beginning of your article. What religious environment was Lincoln raised in? Yeah, so Lincoln himself was born in a Calvinist Baptist household.

They were pretty strict, actually, as he was growing up. His mother died, so there was a lot of family tragedy. But on the wider frontier, it was a real period of spiritual enthusiasm and revivalism. You have the second great awakening further to the east, but in Kentucky and Indiana and Illinois, where he spent his formative years, it also had an influence. Mormonism, of course, emerges in this period and other kinds of millinarian enthusiasms. Lincoln, however, rejected all of this. He wrote a pamphlet defending what he called the virtue of infidelity. when he was a young man, that later on, he and his friends actually had to suppress for the

sake of his political ambition. So Lincoln starts out as a kind of atheist is probably too strong a word, but skeptic is probably the best word for it. So think of Lincoln as a kind of skeptic in this world of deep religious enthusiasm. So then how would you say his views changed and developed over time? Yeah, I think slavery is really essential to Lincoln's religious development. From the very beginning, Lincoln was an anti-slavery man. At one point in time, as a young man, he was carrying agricultural products up and down the Mississippi River on riverboats. And when he was in New Orleans, he sees a slave auction. And this horrifies him. And there's something about the moral crusade of anti-slavery that draws out a theological side of Lincoln that

that the young skeptic didn't necessarily have. And he becomes especially attached, of course, the Declaration of Independence, which really is a document all about God. And so you start to see as Lincoln grows and matures, it's through this confrontation with slavery as a great moral evil, that he starts searching out for something theological to ground his conception of American liberty. At the same time, being raised in a Calvinist household, and frankly, a religious environment that's highly superstitious, Lincoln never quite abandons, even in his most skeptical period, he never quite abandons the determinism that marked his religious upbringing. And there's always a sort of conviction that there is some sort of divine force that orders the moral universe.

It's complicated and it's not straightforward and it changes over the course of Lincoln's life. But these two things, right, the moral confrontation with slavery and this perception of a divine order. These are the things that I think really fuel Lincoln's religious development. and a lot of his later reflections on what he called the divine will. You talked about how both the pro and anti-slavery factions would use religion to make their arguments. How would each of those factions kind of do that? Of course, famously in Lincoln's second inaugural address, he says that both sides read the same Bible and pray to the same God. And he observes that this is somewhat strange, that you can derive such radically different

opinions from the same sort of religious material. But anti-slavery theologians look at parts of the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, that sort of set up a system for slavery in Israel. And they argue that slavery is natural. There's a lot of the quotation of Aristotle, actually. Slavery is natural and it's good, a positive good, for the slave and for the enslaveer. Lincoln reacts to horror with horror to this. And he became a great opponent of this kind of anti-slavery theology, this idea that slavery is a positive good for society. On the other hand, Lincoln was not quite as radical as the most ardent abolitionists. John Brown is perhaps the best example of this. Lincoln was horrified by Brown. Brown, sort of Osama bin Laden of the 19th century,

as it were. He was convinced that he was a religious prophet. He was convinced that God spoke through him and that God hated slavery. And this leads to John Brown's uprising, the attack, the rate on Harper's Ferry, Virginia. And there are other examples of religious radicalism on the part of the abolitionists. Everybody was sort of convinced that God was on their side. And Lincoln, while, again, being very, very convinced anti-slavery man, he hated the violence of these self-described prophets. And he was very worried that that kind of violence would tear apart the American Constitution. Lincoln tried, to say he charted a middle path is maybe a little bit too simplistic, but he tried to chart a path for American anti-slavery that did not give in to one of these excesses, right?

The excess of complete moral superiority that the anti-slavery theologians have, but also avoiding the frankly, sophisticated use of scripture that the anti-slavery side uses. So Lincoln is really trying to find a way to preserve both. the theology of liberty that the Declaration of Independence gives us, and also the kind of social stability that the U.S. Constitution gives us. And that's sort of his great task in the 1850s and 1860. You said in the article that Lincoln held that the remedy for slavery must be constitutional rather than revolutionary. How was he able to find that constitutional way to handle the slavery question, keep the union together at the same time, and also remain theological and

morally sound. Absolutely. Yeah. So I think we have to acknowledge up front that in some ways, Lincoln actually failed, right? He did not prevent the coming of the civil war, as he puts it in the second inaugural, and the war came. So in some ways, Lincoln's attempt to do this failed because the two forms of extremism, the anti-slavery radicalism and the pro-slavery theology, that they had gotten, they had become so powerful. But during the war itself, Lincoln is able to, provide what a Quaker theologian, Elton Trueblood, describes as spiritual leadership for the nation. And he is able to articulate a moral vision for American freedom that is simultaneously constitutional and anti-slavery that avoids all of these excesses and provides a sound basis

for the eventual reconstruction of the union. He refuses to violate the Constitution as the executive and provides lengthy and powerful defenses of his own executive action in explicitly constitutional terms. He does not take the revolutionary path that's offered that the abolitionists would prefer. And actually, as a matter of fact, members of Lincoln's own Republican Party hated him for this. The radical Republicans in Congress, especially on the committee on the conduct of the war, they wanted Lincoln to pursue this sort of John Brown-style revolutionizing. of Southern society. But Lincoln said, no, absolutely not. That would be a violation of the Constitution, which ultimately is a violation of the principles of the Declaration. And Lincoln agonizes

over this question. He really is really quite worried that in some way, shape, or form he bears some of the guilt for the civil war. And it's something that comes out in a lot of his war writings. But I think ultimately what rescues Lincoln from an overwhelming extent of despair or depression or guilt is his fundamental conviction that the union is worth saving and can be made even more worth saving by the emancipation of enslaved people. You said that for Lincoln, the war was kind of a punishment upon America as a whole. Can you explain kind of what that means? Absolutely. So I think that some of the abolitionists are looking in the 1850s and 1860s, especially, they're looking for a kind of moral purity. They want to think of themselves as better than the South somehow as morally superior. And so that's part of why they urge sort of revolutionary action as opposed to constitutional action. But Lincoln always has this real perception that slavery is a sin not just of the South, but of the whole American nation. The North bears some of the guilt for this as well as the South.

And it would be too simplistic to say that the hundreds of thousands of men who died during the Civil War were a kind of sacrifice for that sin of American slavery. But Lincoln, in some sense, sees the war as a manifestation of God's wrath against the entire American nation. And so what I think this ultimately leads him to is a position of sort of theological humility, where the point, of the war is not per se to punish the South. The North is not what's punishing the South. God is punishing America. And so this, I think, theological insight manifests itself as a kind of political moderation on Lincoln's part. Ultimately, he does want to reconstruct the South. And he does think that the slave power needs to be uprooted and destroyed. But he also thinks that this needs, this needs to happen from a position of humility rather than moral superiority. Then you kind of go on to

talk about how Lincoln felt that the rebels, there were enemies in need of forgiveness. Could you maybe discuss how he, you know, understood that this was a punishment towards America as a whole, but also extended grace towards his enemies as well? How did that, how did that play out throughout the course of the war? What of my big intellectual influences, Russell Kirk, who taught at the college and who's real intellectual inspiration for a lot of people at Hillsdale, In one essay on Abraham Lincoln, he writes that the Old Testament shown forth in his conduct of the war, but the New Testament shown forth in his ability to forgive the South. And by that, I think what Dr. Kirk meant and what Lincoln understood was the South truly, the Confederacy truly was an enemy.

These were people who wished to destroy the American nation, the Union, as Lincoln understood it. And so he conducts the war with all the fury of the God of the Old Testament, right? He sends Grant and Sherman to the South and wreaks havoc on Southern society because Lincoln is always clear about the fundamental evil of slavery and the fundamental illegality of secession. At the same time, though, our Lord in the New Testament instructs us to forgive our enemy. But I think, and I think Lincoln does that in the second inaugural. And in his plans, nascent as they were, for reconstruction. But I think you have to understand that these people are enemies, and what they need most of all is forgiveness, is this sort of common humanity. So Lincoln is never, he's never going to abandon this position that slavery is the ultimate evil that that needs to be driven to extinction.

But he's also not going to say that we need to completely sweep away the entire. South. He wants to reintegrate the union, not not, not, uh, uh, uh, uh, leave the South as a, as a sort of conquered people in perpetuity. A lot of people talk about how Lincoln kind of became anti-slavery over time. His anti-slavery opinions, sentiments developed throughout his life. Would you agree with that? Um, or would you, would you say that he always held those beliefs? So what, what's your perspective on that? Yeah, I think it depends on what we mean by anti-slavery. I think he was always hostile to the institution of chattel slavery as it existed in the American South. But in terms of what ought to be done about that institution, his views, I think, do shift quite a bit.

In the early part of his political career, he was anti-slavery, but I don't think that it was the major focus of his politics, right? And it shifts and it shifts. And it changes. changes over time. And so one criticism that you sometimes hear about Lincoln is that he would rather save the union than free the slaves. That was a criticism lodged by the radical Republicans I was mentioning earlier. And later day historians of both the left and the right make this accusation oftentimes. And there is a letter where he says exactly that. But he also wrote this letter on the eve of issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. And so I think a lot of this is bound up with not just his position on the moral question of slavery, but also his view of what the

union was. What is the union? And in one fragment, he says that the union has a philosophical cause. And that is the Declaration of Independence's assertion that all men are created equal. This kind of idea of human dignity is what is always inspiring his politics. And Lincoln's struggle in a lot of ways is to take that moral clarity and put it into action in extremely unclear political circumstances. And so I think it would be wrong to say that that Lincoln didn't hold consistent views on the slavery question. But I do think we have to acknowledge that the precise policies that he endorsed that that he thought were prudent, that changed and depended a lot on the given circumstances

of the time period that we're discussing in question. In the article, you discuss how the radicals kind of appropriated Lincoln's views after his death. Can you explain how they did that and how that kind of came about? Yeah. So Lincoln, of course, was assassinated 160 years ago this year. And he was assassinated on a Good Friday, actually. And immediately after his assassination, he's elevated to a kind of secular sainthood.

Kaysen in God and the American writer, describes him as the pinnacle of American civil religion. Another historian, Clinton Rossiter, referred to this version of Lincoln, this sort of presentation of his image as Lincoln being turned into the Christ of democracy's passion play. And so the radical Republicans, who again, were very opposed to Lincoln when he was alive, tried to use his image to justify and advance their own views for reconstruction. And I actually think, I mean, It's impossible to know what Lincoln would say about this, this use of his image. But I think that he would have a lot of problems with it, actually.

That's not to say that he wouldn't necessarily support some of the reconstruction policies advanced by the Republicans after his death. What I mean is it seems to me that Lincoln's great insight was that statesmanship requires the practice of the virtue. of prudence and humility. And those are exactly the virtues that the radical Republicans were seeking to banish from American politics by using this religious image of Lincoln. They were trying to inspire a kind of political enthusiasm. Exactly the kind of enthusiasm. Lincoln was skeptical about his entire life.

I didn't mention this in the article, but there's this great anecdote. Lincoln was speaking to a group of reporters once during the war. And one reporter asks him, Mr. Lincoln, do you think God is on the north side or the south side? And Lincoln replies, I do not know if God is on the north side or the south side, but I hope that I am on God's side. And I think that really characterizes Lincoln's mature religious outlook. There's a kind of fundamental humility kneeling before the division. divine will, that I think political radicals of any, of any description, right, left, whatever. I think that they lack that kind of humility that that is Lincoln's greatest teaching.

And finally, for the final question, I guess I'm just kind of going back to this, going back to this question about the, you know, the radicals appropriating, appropriating what Lincoln believed. What was their view for reconstruction? And how was that, how did they, how specifically did they use Lincoln to to further their narrative? Yeah. So, so, so they would plaster Lincoln's image on everything, right? And they really tried to make people see the Republican Party as the party of Abraham Lincoln. Eventually they would impeach the Lincoln's vice president who became president upon his death, Andrew Johnson.

and basically the radical plan for reconstruction was to totally revolutionized the South. They wanted to redistribute land. They wanted to destroy the old plantations completely. And I think the problem here is not so much this idea that the South needed to rebuild along anti-slavery lines. That seems very clear to me. That's just a question of justice. But what I think is really complicated about all of this is they, of course, did not succeed in doing this.

They met with immense resistance, the formation of the Ku Klux Klan being a prominent example of the kind of resistance that the radical reconstruction met. And they handled it quite poorly, such that by 1876, just 11 years after Lincoln's death, a deal was struck between Democratic. Democrats and Republicans to end reconstruction. And it was just a question of political will. The North did not have the political will to continue the radical plans for reconstruction. And so and that leads to, I think, immense racial injustices such as Jim Crow, segregation. And American society, it seems to me, is not, the scars are still there. These problems have not gone away.

And I'm not trying to say that if Lincoln had lived, if he wasn't assassinated, that things would have gone differently. We cannot know that. That is an entirely unknowable question. But what I think is true is that this revolutionary as opposed to a constitutional approach to solving this agonizing political problem, both was not in Lincoln's spirit fundamentally. And it did not actually address the real fundamental racial injustices in a way that truly erased the sin of slavery from American life. I think Lincoln would realize, and he would say today, that we are still confronting the fundamental sin that is the institution of chattel slavery. It is America's original sin. And I don't think that we can ever quite fully, fully purge it from our national consciousness.

And that's why I think the example of Lincoln is so important, because Lincoln shows us how we can, we can approach that original sin with both a sense of justice and a sense of humility so that we can, we can better realize the promises of the American founding. All right. Well, that's all we have time for today. But thank you so much for coming on. This has been Michael Lucchasey on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.1.7 FM. Thank you so much, Scott.