Bible Underscores Lincoln's Belief He Was to End Slavery

 Bible Underscores Lincoln's Belief He Was to End Slavery

(Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum)

A Bible given to Abraham Lincoln in the final months of the Civil War ties together the 16th president's budding views on spirituality and his belief that God was calling him to end slavery as well as his widow's labors to solidify his religious standing, historians say.

The King James Bible was eventually given by Mary Lincoln to Noyes W. Miner, a beloved Springfield neighbor and a Baptist minister whose descendants donated it to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, which unveiled it to the public on Thursday.

The 18-pound (8-kilogram) volume has a cover of hand-tooled leather and gilt lettering, and is inscribed to the president from "the Ladies of the Citizens Volunteer Hospital of Philadelphia." Historians believe Lincoln received it on June 16, 1864, the day he visited the city for a fundraiser for the U.S. Sanitary Commission, a private agency that raised money and recruited volunteers to care for the Civil War's sick and wounded. Lincoln had donated dozens of autographed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation to the cause.

The gift is a boon for the library and museum, which has been beset in recent years by a political battle for control of the institution and its fundraising foundation's struggle to pay off a debt of $9 million that had gone toward the purchase of Lincoln memorabilia, including a stovepipe hat of dubious authenticity.

State historian Samuel Wheeler said the Bible binds Lincoln's developing spiritual outlook and reliance on scripture to answer the ghastly questions posed by war with his widow's efforts after his April 1865 assassination to have him remembered as spiritual rather than as the religious skeptic he had been earlier in life.

"During the Civil War, there is an evolution that takes place in Mr. Lincoln's religious thoughts. He is searching for God's purpose. He's redefining his relationship with his maker, and he's trying to figure out what is God's purpose in this war," Wheeler said. "He believed that God was using him to end American slavery."

It's unlikely that Lincoln, who is known to have carried a New Testament and kept handy a daily devotional, used the "presentation" Bible for regular meditation, Wheeler said. But multicolored ribbon markers are distributed throughout the book, which Mary Lincoln told Miner her husband had placed when she gave Miner the book in 1872.