William H. Herndon
From Philosopedia
Herndon, William H. (25 December 1818 - 1891) Herndon was a friend, law partner, and biographer of Abraham Lincoln. His Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (1889) focused on Lincoln’s personal life and led to distortions, particularly in the case of the Ann Rutledge romance, according to D. H. Donald’s Lincoln’s Herndon (1948).
Of Lincoln, Herndon wrote, • Mr. Lincoln was an infidel, sometimes bordering on atheism. • He never mentioned the name of Jesus, except to scorn and detest the idea of a miraculous conception. • He did write a little work on infidelity in 1835—6, and never recanted. He was an out-and-out- infidel and about that there is no mistake. • In 1834, while still living in New Salem and before he became a lawyer, he was surrounded by a class of people exceedingly liberal in matters of religion.
Volney’s Ruins and Paine’s Age of Reason passed from hand to hand, and furnished food for the evening’s discussion in the tavern and village store. Lincoln read both these books and thus assimilated them into his own being. He prepared an extended essay - called by many a book - in which he made an argument against Christianity, striving to prove that the Bible was not inspired, and therefore not God’s revelation, and that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God. The manuscript containing these audacious and comprehensive propositions he intended to have published or given a wide circulation in some other way. He carried it to the store, where it was read and freely discussed.
His friend and employer, Samuel Hill, was among the listeners and, seriously questioning the propriety of a promising young man like Lincoln fathering such unpopular notions, he snatched the manuscript from his hands and thrust it into the stove. The book went up in flames, and Lincoln’s political future was secure. But his infidelity and his skeptical views were not diminished.
Herndon disagreed at times with Lincoln, for example in regard to his views about the Mexican War. He has been described, however, as a bundle of contradictions - while mayor of Springfield in 1854 - 1856, he favored temperance for others but loved his alcohol. Also, there is no record of his having disagreed about Lincoln's various anti-religious views. Others said he should not have revealed so much about his law partner's sex life and religious skepticism, but in a letter to biographer Jesse W. Weik wrote, "I did much for Lincoln that the world will never know - don't intend to blow my own horn."
