-By Warner Todd Huston
Here we go again. This sort of nonsense that passes for journalism rehashing our history, and badly at that, always comes up when there’s some sort of anniversary in the offing. This time it is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War which gave Discovery News an excuse to cast Lincoln as the new atheist hero all based on a “rediscovered letter.”
This “rediscovered letter” is, as Discovery News and Emily Sohn claim, “raises questions about Abraham Lincoln’s views on religion.” Sohn tries to lead readers into imagining that Lincoln was a closet atheist because the letter claims that Lincoln’s religious views were “driven not by faith, but by politics.”
The letter in question was written by Lincoln’s law partner and close friend — at least a close friend before he became president — William Herndon. Herndon made a cottage industry for himself out of being Lincoln’s close friend after the president’s assassination styling himself as Lincoln’s official biographer. He spent years traveling around the country talking to people who knew Lincoln in order to write the definitive biography of the president.
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Was Lincoln REALLY a Secret Atheist?”
CUNY Graduate Center professor David S. Reynolds has an idea. He wants to pardon an American criminal that is a known murderer and fanatic and who led a life that was steadily radicalized by an extreme religious ideology. This domestic terrorist even went so far as to attempt to start a war inside the USA and advocated for American citizens to be killed in their homes for not seeing things his way.