The hope is not that suffering will go away, for with Lincoln it did not ever go away. The hope is that suffering, plainly acknowledged and endured, can fit us for the surprising challenges that await.
I grew up on a farm, as I may have mentioned before. And I often got into trouble because I preferred reading books to doing my chores. When I read about a great president who grew up on a farm and also got into trouble for reading when he should have been working, I felt an immediately bond. That president, of course, was Abraham Lincoln.
Later I learned that Lincoln suffered from “melancholy” (the 19th Century term for chronic depression) all his life. This also led me to feel close to him.
I’ve learned more recently that a collateral ancestor of mine, my great-great grandfather’s half-brother, a Norwegian pioneer in Illinois, knew Lincoln through Republican Party activities. This ancestor does not appear in the book, Lincoln’s Melancholy, by Joshua Wolf Shenk (I didn’t expect him to), but I enjoyed imagining him as one of the extras in the background.
Lincoln’s Melancholy is a fascinating book for the history buff and the Lincoln fan. There are plenty of Lincoln haters out there too, and I imagine they can find fuel for their position here too, but for this reader the story was one I can empathize with. And it had a surprisingly faith-friendly conclusion.
It’s common for chronic depression to run in families, and author Shenk documents how the limited information we have on this fairly obscure clan indicates that not only depression, but plain insanity was common among the Lincolns. Young Abraham suffered the traumatic loss of his mother at a young age, but seems to have been a fairly cheerful person until his 30s, when he had two suicidal “breakdowns” in a row in 1840 and 1841. (One of these may or may not have been related to the death of the fabled Ann Rutledge.) After that he withdrew into himself; his closest friends – and certainly his wife – never felt that he entirely opened up to them. But they all agreed that he suffered from long spells of melancholy. Then he would shake himself, so to speak, and start telling jokes. Or go to work. He had found a way to manage his depression; to use it as a spur to achievement. Having given up on personal happiness, he aimed for significance. He came to believe that God had destined him for some great purpose; his challenge in life was to make himself worthy of that purpose.
Which brings us to his religious beliefs. I’ve heard more than one atheist quote Lincoln triumphantly, as a patron saint of their un-faith. But as Shenk documents, it’s more complicated than that. Raised in a fire-and-brimstone sect (unusually condemnatory even among Calvinists), Lincoln abandoned Christianity as he understood it. But years later, after his breakdowns, he went to Louisville to visit the family of his friend Joshua Speed. There Speed’s mother (a Unitarian) placed a Bible in his hands and told him gently that he’d find comfort there if he read it correctly. And by all accounts he did just that. He became a regular reader of the Bible, and it seemed to help him with his depression, though It’s impossible to know exactly what his theological beliefs were:
The Lincolns later rented a pew at Smith’s First Presbyterian Church—which reserved them space for services but did not bind them to accept the church’s creed, as membership would. This arrangement, which Lincoln repeated in Washington, nicely represented his relationship with traditional religion in his mature years. He visited, but he didn’t move in.
I found Lincoln’s Melancholy fascinating, moving, and helpful in my personal situation. I recommend it highly.
