Not the Sort of Religion: An Abraham Lincoln Moment

President Abraham Lincoln (inset)
and his Bible

December 1864

In the final winter of the Civil War, two women from Tennessee came to plead with President Abraham Lincoln. Their husbands were prisoners of war, held at Johnson’s Island Prison Camp in Ohio. They asked for mercy. Lincoln, ever deliberate, put them off—Thursday, then Friday, then Saturday.

Finally, on Saturday, the President granted them an audience. One of the women pressed her case by invoking religion. Her husband, she said, was a religious man.

That day, Lincoln granted the release. But he didn’t let the moment pass without a word. He turned to the woman and said:

“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 on the sweat of other men's faces, is not the sort of religion upon which people can get to heaven!” [1]

Lincoln was referencing the Biblical idea from Genesis 3:19: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.” That verse affirms the dignity of labor—each person earning their bread through their own work.

But slavery flipped that: enslaved people labored, and enslavers profited. So Lincoln’s critique is that any religion which defends that system has forgotten the slaves' humanity, their labor, their suffering.

It’s vintage Lincoln:

• Patient mercy—he grants the release.

• Moral clarity—he names the injustice.

• Gentle rebuke—he doesn’t shame the woman, but he doesn’t let the ideology slide by quoting .

Lincoln wasn’t just fighting a war of armies. He was fighting a war of ideas—against a theology that sanctified owning human beings, against a patriotism that justified rebellion, and against a religion that forgot the sweat of the enslaved.

It’s Lincoln’s way of saying: If your faith blesses exploitation, it’s not a faith worth following.

This wasn’t a speech. It was a moment. But it tells us everything about the man.

Another glimpse into the archives of Abraham Lincoln, Storyteller.

Mac

FYI: According to Noah Brooks, Lincoln wrote the above statement on a piece of box-board with a pencil, read it aloud, and jokingly titled it “The President’s Last, Shortest, and Best Speech.” It was published the next day in the Washington Daily Chronicle. Lincoln may have laughed—but he meant every word.

📚 Works Cited

[1] 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.

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