'that is a pretty thick coating' - Abe Lincoln's Two Ministers Story

In 1860, during his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Abraham Lincoln - perhaps somewhat irreverently - used ministers to make a point that slavery, to the slaver, was about money - not morality. Here's how he did it.

The property influences his [the slaver's] mind. Like the dissenting minister, who argued some theological point with [a minister] of the established church, was always met by the reply, 'I can't see it so.' He opened the Bible, and pointed him to a passage, but the orthodox minister replied, 'I can't see it so.' Then he showed him a single word - 'Can you see that?' 'Yes, I see it,' was the reply. The dissenter laid a guinea [old British gold coin] over the word and asked, 'Do you see it now?' So here. Whether the owners [slavers] . . . really see it [slavery] as it is, it is not for me to say, but if they do, they see it as it is through 2,000,000,000 dollars, and that is a pretty thick coating. Certain it is, that they do not see it as we see it . . . this immense pecuniary interest, has its influence upon their minds.

Money or property - especially one's own - often alters a person's tolerance for right and wrong - sometimes, to the point of tolerating gross barbarity or injustice to others.

Unfortunately, we don't seem to have changed very much in the 160-years since Lincoln told that story.

Pity.

This was another tale from Abe Lincoln, Storyteller.

Mac

Works Cited

Lincoln, Abraham. "Speech at New Haven, Connecticut - March 6, 1860". Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. eds Roy Basler, et.al. (1953). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.