After all the pomp and ceremony of Inauguration Day, and its accompanying activity and busyness, the inactivity of Sunday, March 5, came as a welcome relief. The president desperately needed some time off, time to recover and to collect himself. He had clearly been overworking—everyone close to him, including his wife, could see that. The war may have been winding down, but nobody could say how many battles still had to be fought before the Confederates decided to give up. The coming weeks would be wearing, and Lincoln needed to conserve his strength. Taking Sunday off, especially after the pressure of the previous day, would not only be welcome but necessary.

The president and Mrs. Lincoln attended religious services that Sunday morning at the Methodist Episcopal Church. Bishop Matthew Simpson delivered the sermon—“a masterly effort and very touching.”1 Bishop Simpson made a point of mentioning the sudden burst of sunshine that occurred just as Lincoln stepped forward to begin his inauguration address on the previous day. Just as the sun had broken through the overcast, Bishop Simpson told the “large and attentive” congregation, peace would burst upon the divided country and dispel the clouds of war. It was a very nice allusion, but Lincoln was well aware that peace was not going to come that quickly or easily.

Abraham Lincoln was not a religious man. He never gave any indication that he ever belonged to any particular church or denomination, although he attended the local Baptist church when he lived with his parents in Pigeon Creek, Indiana. But young Abe never actually joined the church, in spite of his father's urging—“nagging” is probably a more accurate word—and he acquired a reputation as a rebel and a religious dissenter. One account said that he was considered “a village atheist” by his neighbors.2

Being an atheist, or a dissenter, or anything resembling a freethinker was a liability to anyone with any political ambitions in the orthodox Midwest, as Abraham Lincoln found out the hard way. In 1846, he ran for a seat in Congress against a Methodist preacher named Peter Cartwright. Cartwright accused Lincoln of ridiculing and looking down at Christianity, a charge that Lincoln considered serious enough to answer with a formal denial. “That I am not a member of any Christian church is true,” he said, “but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christianity in particular.”³ Lincoln's defense must have been effective enough to satisfy the voters—he was elected to Congress by a considerable margin.

Even though Lincoln did not belong to any church and did not seem to have very much interest in organized religion in general, he did have an in-depth knowledge of the Bible. Along with most other families in that part of the country, the Bible would have been one of the few books the Lincolns had in their household, and it was read thoroughly and avidly by young Abraham. He seems to have compensated for his lack of interest in religion with an intense interest in the Bible. “In regard to the Great Book, I have but to say. It is the best gift God has given to man,” he would write. “All things desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.”⁴

Over the years, Lincoln read and re-read the Bible many times over. This gave him the depth of knowledge and the ability to quote from scripture whenever he wanted to emphasize a subject or a remark, either in a debate or in one of his speeches—he made a point of using Bible quotes in his second inaugural address. He could also use a biblical quotation as a joke when the situation presented itself.

The British ambassador, Lord Lyons, once made an official visit to the White House to deliver a handwritten message from Queen Victoria. The queen sent the note to inform the president that her son, the Prince of Wales, was betrothed to the Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Lord Lyons was a stuffy and pompous old bachelor who tended to take himself too seriously. He made a formal speech “appropriate to the occasion;” Lincoln replied in the “usual conventional manner.”5 When the requisite formalities were safely out of the way, and the impending marriage had been announced, Lincoln took the ambassador by the hand and said, “And now, Lord Lyons, go thou and do likewise.”

Lyons did not have a very high opinion of Lincoln to begin with—in 1860, he reported to London that Lincoln was a rough farmer of low origins, which was probably putting his thoughts politely. The joke did not improve his opinion, especially since it had been made at his expense. But Lincoln would have had a good laugh over the incident, and from sticking a pin in the ambassador's overdeveloped sense of self-importance.

After church services were over, the president and Mrs. Lincoln were driven back to the White House. Lincoln had several administrative chores to attend to, including inviting Congressman Schuyler Colfax to accompany his family to the Inauguration Ball, which would be held on the following evening. Lincoln was on the verge of exhaustion, but he still had to attend to his official duties and responsibilities. Sunday was another working day, just as Inauguration Day had been. And he still had to get ready for the Inauguration Ball, which was another chore for him to deal with.