Abraham Lincoln Freed Her Husband—Then Called Out Her Faith

President Abraham Lincoln (inset)
and his Bible

In December 1864, journalist Noah Brooks walked into the White House library and found Abraham Lincoln at work. The President was sitting back in his armchair, writing with a pencil on a stiff piece of common white box‑board laid across his knee — a favorite habit that let him compose and erase easily.

“Here is one speech of mine which has never been printed,” Lincoln said to Brooks, “and I think it worth printing. Just see what you think.”

He then read aloud what he had just written. Remarkably, Lincoln had drafted the entire encounter himself, describing his own actions in the third person:

“On Thursday of last week two ladies from Tennessee came before the President, asking the release of their husbands, held as prisoners of war at Johnson’s Island. They were put off until Friday, when they came again, and were again put off until Saturday. At each of the interviews one of the ladies urged that her husband was a religious man. On Saturday, when the President ordered the release of the prisoners, he said to this lady:

‘You say your husband is a religious man; tell him when you meet him that I say I am not much of a judge of religion, but that, in my opinion, the religion that sets men to rebel and fight against their Government because, as they think, that Government does not sufficiently help some men to eat their bread in the sweat of other men’s faces, is not the sort of religion upon which people can get to heaven.’” ^[1]

At Brooks’s request, Lincoln signed his name to the cardboard. Then, as a joke, he added a caption to his handiwork: “The President’s Last, Shortest, and Best Speech.” It was published exactly like that the next day in the Washington press. ^[2]

Lincoln may have laughed, but he meant every word. It is a masterful, three‑part maneuver of mercy, moral clarity, and gentle rebuke. He granted the release, but he refused to let a glaring double standard slide.

By targeting “the sweat of other men’s faces,” Lincoln was deliberately invoking the point of Genesis 3:19 — “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.” The verse affirms the dignity of personal labor. But slavery inverted it: one person labored, while another ate the bread.

By using the woman’s own claim of piety, Lincoln exposed a brutal truth: the hypocrisy of any religion that sanctified owning human beings, justified rebellion as patriotism, and blessed exploitation in the name of divine authority.

It wasn’t an official address from a podium; it was a story written on a scrap of pasteboard in a quiet library. Yet it reveals the entire man — his empathy, his restraint, his conviction, and his refusal to let a double standard pass for moral reasoning.

Another glimpse into the archives of Abraham Lincoln, Storyteller.

— Mac

🎩 For a very different kind of Lincoln and religion moment—equal parts revival and ridiculous—don’t miss “Religion By Dummies.”

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📚 Works Cited

[1] Brooks, Noah. “Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, July 1865, p. 230.

[2] Lincoln, Abraham. Story Written for Noah Brooks, ca. December 6, 1864. In Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler, vol. 8, p. 154. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953.