Believed President Lincoln in God?

A newly renovated letter raises questions about Abraham Lincoln's views on religion, believe and God. Lincoln was not for most of his life but religious, his faith seems to have developed and progress has been made during his presidency. The letter went up for sale this week for $ 35,000.

Abraham Lincoln is well known for many things. He led the nation through the civil war, emancipated the slaves and delivery eloquent talk about democracy and freedom. But a question of debate are Lincoln's religious views for a long time.

Now, is a newly renovated write from the 19 questions again relation trigger President to the 16th with God. The tripartite letter, which was written by Lincoln's old law partner, William Herndon, and went straight up to the sale at a price of $35,000, claims that honest Abe was driven not by faith, but by the policy.

Slideshow: Faces of the civil war

Lincoln's attitude toward religion was clearly complex, and the discussion is far from over as some notes that Lincoln developed sense of faith and deepened during his presidency. Also, the letters inner life by someone who knew him, before he went to Washington offers a rare look at Lincoln.

"Mr. Lincoln's religion is also known for me also a shadow of a doubt;" He is or was a theist and a rationalist, deny all au?erordentlichen-- supernatural inspiration or revelation, "Herndon wrote in the letter, signed 4 Jan., 1866, one year after the assassination of Lincoln's."

"At once in his life, gentle, he was an increased pantheist, doubt to the Christian world understands this term, the immortality of the soul" continues the letter, Edward McPherson, clerk of the House of representatives. "I love Mr.. Lincoln expensive, worship him almost, but not, can the me blind." He is the purest politician I ever saw, and the justest of man. "

Born in a log cabin in Kentucky in 1809, Lincoln grew as a Baptist but rejected organized religion and never a congregation as an adult associated. After the attempt from a variety of careers, including postmaster and surveyor, he brought to be a lawyer and moved to Illinois, where he finally with Herndon since 1844 a partnership. The two remained close until 1861, as Lincoln, left to begin his presidency.

Twenty years later, immediately after Lincoln's death in 1865, a flood of biographies emerged, many of them trying to christianize Lincoln, historian Ronald white, said author of A. Lincoln: A biography. Herndon wanted to just record.

Slide show: Civil war photography

So he started a journey in the oral sex stories about the real Lincoln, collecting, eventually to an other biography, published years later would lead with the help of an employee. Congress part of this effort was Herndon's letters.

"People today discuss Lincoln's religion." It is often called from the public debate and there are also active debate among scholars, said Nathan Raab, Vice President of the Raab collection, writing a very old private collection acquired and insert for sale this week. "This letter brings this debate to the fore."

Herndon's personal experience with Lincoln limited his pre-presidential period, when religion was completely absent from his life. After Lincoln for the White House, never leave the two met again.

But the challenges of a Presidency which 1862 would his 11-year-old son fear of civil war and the death slide to Lincoln, he had never before God in a way, said White, who added that religion is something that have the most Lincoln biographers of skimmed milk.

Lincoln's second inaugural refers to his subsequent embrace of religion in midlife, White said. The speech, which was only 701 words long, mentioned God 14 times and quotes the Bible four times, with two references to the old testament and two of the New Testament. In comparison quote in all previous inaugural addresses were NULL Biblical references in his first inaugural and only a Bible combined.

After the death of his son, Lincoln named developed a strong relationship with a Presbyterian priest Phineas Densmore Gurley. And after his own death in 1865, Lincoln's Secretary John Hay was an unnamed and o.j. document of Lincoln's desk, the both called into question, the presence of God in the middle of the civil war and reaffirming offered that God was somehow a silent actor in the war. Hay called it: meditation on the divine will.

"I am that Lincoln went on a remarkable journey of believe, quickly advancing argued, and matures during his four years as President,", said White. "He was not only sentences from the Bible drop." "In the second inaugural and the meditation on the divine will he was apart at a very low level with deep religious questions."

The rediscovered letter certainly is an important document of an important historical figure, experts said. It is not necessarily earth shattering, but our knowledge of Lincoln's life style added depth.

All Guelzo, a historian at Gettysburg College in Penn and author of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation said "it confirmed what wrote Herndon in his letters and his essay about Lincoln's religion, so that we not just something new or scandalous, discover": the end of slavery in America. "But it is certainly a great letter and sets much of what Herndon on Lincoln's religion would say in the coming years in a long paragraph."

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