Mormons and Presidents: Lincoln - A. Johnson

#16 Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865)

Winders book contains loads of information regarding Lincoln’s unusually long association with the Saints (see pages 105-109 for a summary there of), an association brought about largely by the fact that Lincoln hailed from Illinois (1). Lincoln wrote of the Mormons arrival in Illinois during the winter of 1838-1839. Sometime prior to March 1st 1840 the future president meet Joseph Smith, most likely on one of the formers trips to the state capital of Springfield, where Abe was a lawyer and sometimes state legislator (2). Lincoln voted for the ratification of the liberal Nauvoo City charter (3) in December of 1840, though according to historian Larry Schweikart in his paper "The Mormon Connection: Lincoln, the Saints, and the Crises of Equality", Lincoln "Helped cites like Nauvoo as a matter of course."(4) John C. Bennett, the first mayor of Nauvoo and one of the more notorious characters in Mormon history (5), wrote the following in the local paper Times and Seasons around the time of the ratification of the charter:

" ... and here I should not forget to mention that Lincoln... had the magnanimity to vote for our act, and came forward after the final vote to the bar of the House and congratulated me on its passage." (6)

Lincoln lived in the same Springfield boarding house that Apostle Willard Richards briefly lived in during the winter of 1842, it is likely that they dinned and conversed together during that time. Mary Todd Lincoln attended an extradition hearing for Joseph Smith during January 1843, it was held in the Tinsley Buildling, the same building were Lincoln’s law office was then housed.

After the Mormons largely evacuated Illinois in the mid 1840's, Lincoln would have little occasion for interaction with, or presumably discussion about, the Mormons until 1857 and his historic run against Stephan Douglas for a seat in the U. S. Senate. Negative feels towards the Latter-day Saints still prevailed among many in the state, and the candidates attitudes towards them undoubtedly became an issue. Douglas had been friendly towards the Mormons during his service as a judge in the 1840's, Joseph Smith even had him as a dinner guest at his private residence and there uttered what Latter-day Saints regard as a prophecy, here paraphrased from memory: "Mr. Douglas, you will one day aspire for high public office, even that of the President of the United States; but if you ever turn your back against this people, the light of the Lord will be withdrawn from you and you will lose." Which of course Douglas did, losing to Lincoln when he ran as the Northern Democratic candidate in the contentious, four way race of 1860. Many Mormons regard Douglas loss of the presidency as being sealed by his criticismof the Saints during the 1857 Senate race, which ironically he won. Lincoln tired to tie his oponite to the Mormons by arguing that if Douglas supported the concept of popular sovergnty in regards to slavery, he should logically do the same in regards to polygamy.

In 1860 Apostle Wilford Woodruff records in his diary Brigham Young mentioning his desire that Lincoln win the election. While President Lincoln would routinely bypass the governor of Utah Territory and deal directly with President Young in regards to affairs related to the region. This included 1862 instructions for Young to raise a small "calvary" to protect the telegraph lines from the Indians after federal troops were withdrawn from the territory to fight in the Civil War. Lincoln would also head the petitions of the Saints, presumably through Young, to remove hostile territorial Governor Stephan S. Harding from office in 1863, he was replaced by the more "discreet" Governor James Duane Doty. After Lincoln’s assassination a day of morning would be declared in Salt Lake City, with local businesses closed and a memorial service held in the "Old Tabernacle" (7).

Lincoln’s policy however were not abashidly "pro-Mormon" though by any means. He refused to take a strong position on Utah statehood, and signed into law America’s first major piece of anti-polygamy legislation, The Morrill Act of 1862, though he generally declined to actively enforce it (8). Lincoln’s policy toward the Mormons was however largely well received by the group. It was sometimes dubbed Lincoln’s "Three Word Policy": "Let Them Alone". The socially prominent Mormon T. B. H. Stenhouse records in a letter to Brigham Young, Lincoln’ sharing the following, oft quoted anticdot with him during a meeting in 1863:

"Stenhouse, when I was a boy on the farm in Illinois there was a great deal of timber on the farm which we had to clear away. Occasionally we would come to a log which had fallen down. It was too hard to split, too wet to burn, and too heavy to move, so we plowed around it. You go back and tell Brigham Young that if he will let me alone I will let him alone." (9)

In closing Apostle George Q. Cannon offers the following observations on Lincoln, with whom he had an audience (as a representative of the Utah territory) in Washington D.C. in 1862:

"The President has a plain, but shrewd and rather pleasant face. He is very tall, probably 6 feet 4 inches high, and is rather awkwardly built, heightened by this want of flesh. He looks much better than I had expected he would do from my knowledge of the cares and labors of his position, and is quite humorous, scarcely permitting a visit to pass without uttering some joke. He received us very kindly and without formality. Conversed some little upon Utah affairs and other matters." (10)

In short, Mormons pretty much like Lincoln, like most Americans. (11)

Fun Facts:

Lincoln once checked out a copy The Book of Mormon from the Library of Congress.

The President has been cited over 200 times in General Conference Addresses.

During the nations bicentennial in 1976 the LDS First Presidency encouraged Church members
to read Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation: "God Rules in the Affairs of Men".

On what would have been his 100th Birthday in 1909, President Lincoln had the sealing ordinance performed for him by former Apostle Matthias Cowley, he was sealed both to his wife Mary Todd, and in a node to Mormon polygamy, his "former sweetheart" Ann Mayes Rutledge, who had died before the two could get married. (12)

Andrew Johnson (1865-1869)

This President had virtually no interaction with the Mormons while in office, though he received some as visitors (including John W. Young, a son of Brigham’ and future councilor in the First Presidency), and was regarded by Utah’s territorial representative at the time, William H. Hooper, as of a friendly disposition towards the saints. (13)

1. President Lincoln was born in Kentucky but spent much of his life in Illinois.

2. Lincoln mentions this in a letter to a political associate, in which he advocates courting the Mormon vote.

3. The Nauvoo City character of 1840 gave the Mormon dominated local government sweeping powers and a great deal of autonomy, to the point that the city during Joseph’s life time has been compared to a veritable city state.

4. Winder pg. 110.

5. Bennett was the Church’s chief lobbyist on the matter of the Nauvoo charter. An outsider who quickly gained the trust of Joseph Smith and rose to prominence in the local community both civically and ecclesasticly. Bennett would later be involved in an apparent assassination attempt on Joseph Smith. He is also credited with introducing the term "spiritual wifery" in Mormon discourse, as a kind of code for his understanding of polygamy, and was accused of, among other things, being a bisexual and abandoning a wife and child back east. Bennett would turn against the Mormons and write and lecture against them, though for a brief time he reassociated himself with the movement, in the form of James Strang’s splinter sect which arouse, and briefly flourished, following the martyrdom of Joseph Smith in 1844.

6. Cited in Winder page 110, from Times and Seasons 2:267, in turn quoted from Nibley’s Brigham Young: The Man and His Work.

7. Predecessor to the famed domed tabernacle of today, which was completed a short time later.
8. I think it safe to say Lincoln had bigger things on his plate.

9. This quote can be found in Arrington and Bitton’s The Mormon Experience, the Ostlings Mormon America, and various other places.

10. Found in Bitton’s biography George Q. Cannon.

11. To find ‘modern’ Americans who don’t much care for Lincoln, simply flip through the pages of Southern Partisan Magazine.

12. This is ironic because the whole reason Cowley was a "former Apostle" was his dogmatic insistence on the centrality of polygamy in Mormon doctrine and practice, at a time when the Church was trying to move beyond much of its "19th Century Weirdness", into something more compatible with the American mainstream.

13. On my LDS mission to eastern Tennessee I once visited the Andrew Johnson historical park in Greenville, listened to a short Fred Thompson narrated documentary and visited the Presidents grave.