Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in a simple log cabin three miles south of Hodgenville, Kentucky to Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln. (24) At the time of his birth his parents were members of the Little Mount Baptist Church. As the issue of slavery began to slowly divide the Union, the issue also divided his parents’ church which resulted in their decision to leave and join the Separate Baptists whose members predominately held anti-slavery beliefs. (25) Despite being raised in an evangelical household, Abraham did not embrace the strict faith of his parents. Throughout his life, Lincoln remained, in the words of writer Stephen Mansfield, “a religious oddity.” (26)
Further complicating Abraham Lincoln’s relationship with religion was his culture’s reliance on metaphysical practices. Abraham Lincoln lived in a culture that embraced a number of metaphysical beliefs since the Colonial era. A product of the Renaissance, the European immigrants who flocked to the New World for religious freedom and economic opportunities brought to America their metaphysical beliefs. (27) In a time where health care was virtually non-existent, Abraham’s community practiced folk magic to cure aliments and ward off illness. To conservative Christians, this looked like witchcraft and Lincoln’s biographers struggled with his cultures reliance of magic.
William Herndon, the late President’s law partner, wrote in his biography of Abraham Lincoln, “Although gay, prosperous, and lighthearted, these people were brimming over with superstition. It was at once their food and drink. They believed in the baneful influence of witches, pinned their faith in the curative powers of wizards in dealing with sick animals, and shot the image of a witch with a silver ball to break the spell she was supposed to have over human beings.” (28) John Nicolay, Lincoln’s presidential secretary, also could barely hide his disdain for the culture in which the future president was raised in. Nicolay wrote in his biography of Lincoln, “The belief in witchcraft had long ago passed away with the smoke of the fagots from old and New England, but it survived far into this century in Kentucky and the lower halves of Indiana and Illinois—touched with a peculiar tinge of African magic.” (29)
It was this complexity of beliefs that surrounded Abraham Lincoln during his childhood. This would have a profound impact on the future president for the remainder of his life. While he was able to shake the rigid Christianity of his parents, he would never shake his cultures metaphysical beliefs.
The religious and political issues that were slowly ripping the country apart also influenced where Abraham grew up. Frustrated by the growing power of the slave holder elite and discouraged by the lack of available farm land, Thomas Lincoln decided to move his family to the free state of Indiana in 1816. (30)
In 1828, Abraham Lincoln got a glimpse of the outside world when he was hired to take a flatboat stocked with goods to the market in New Orleans. (31) While in New Orleans, Lincoln was exposed to the vibrant culture of the city, including an introduction to the Voudou religion. Abraham did not stay in the city long, but retuned in 1831 accompanied by his cousin, Dennis Hanks. (32) In the years following President Lincoln’s death, Hanks recalled that while in New Orleans his cousin visited a Voudou fortune teller. (33) According to the story, the Voudou priestess informed Lincoln that he would become the President of the United States. (34) According to Hanks, the Voudou seer exclaimed, “You will be president, and all the Negroes will be free!” (35) Hanks eventually retracted his claim, asserting, “I Don’t [k]Now whether he got his fortune told or Not.” (36)
Upon reaching his maturity, Abraham Lincoln left his family and moved to the Illinois boomtown of New Salem where he abandoned Christianity. Finally, free from his father, Lincoln embraced his independence with a relish. “By the time he ambled into New Salem, he had rejected the wildness of camp meeting religion and found it hard to hide his disdain for most preachers,” historian Steven Mansfield noted. (37) In New Salem, Lincoln found a group of like-minded companions. Like a rebellious teenager, Lincoln seemed to relish in shocking the townspeople with his denunciations of Christianity and the clergy. (38)
Despite his abandonment of his Christian heritage, Lincoln was still surrounded by metaphysical practices. Settled largely by emigrants from Kentucky and Indiana, the residents of New Salem brought with them their metaphysical beliefs. (39) Denton Offutt, who had introduced Lincoln to New Salem, advertised his skills as a “horse whisperer” after leaving the settlement. (40) Though there is little scholarship on the metaphysical practices in New Salem, Offutt likely helped his neighbors’ horses and livestock by treating them with folk cures while he lived in the settlement.
It was in this religious climate that Abraham Lincoln came to maturity. From his birth, Lincoln entered a community that mixed Christianity and metaphysical religion to protect their body and soul. As he entered adulthood, Lincoln developed a firm belief in the power of dreams and omens to tell the future. In 1832, Lincoln admitted to a friend that he, “always was superstitious”. (41) While Lincoln was growing to maturity and developing his metaphysical beliefs, a young woman in Lexington, Kentucky was also developing her own metaphysical beliefs.