The President Who Died for Us – New York Times

From Richard Wightman Fox, The President Who Died for Us in today’s New York Times:

THIS year, Good Friday, the day commemorating Christ’s crucifixion, falls on April 14, as it did in 1865. On that evening, in the balcony box of Ford’s Theater in Washington, John Wilkes Booth fired a handmade .41-caliber derringer ball into the back of Abraham Lincoln’s head.

In the days that followed Lincoln’s death, his mourning compatriots rushed to compare him to Jesus, Moses and George Washington. 

*  *  *  Nearly everyone joined in heralding Lincoln’s phrase “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” which Christian mourners hailed as the heart of the Gospel. Those words from his second inaugural address, delivered just six weeks before his death, turned up on hand-scrawled banners all over the Union. People mounted them, along with black-bordered flags and photographs of Lincoln, in the windows of their homes and shops.

Thomas Nast’s 1866 painting “President Lincoln Entering Richmond” (commemorating his surprise stroll into the capital of the Confederacy on April 4, 1865, shortly after Robert E. Lee’s retreat) reinforced the sentiment: Lincoln shepherded his people just as Jesus did. The president walked into Richmond before Holy Week the way Jesus rode into Jerusalem before Passover: humbly, not triumphantly. Both men were enveloped by exuberant admirers. 

*  *  *  Many Protestants also displayed a religious motive for emphasizing the resemblance between Lincoln and Christ. They made the president a virtual holy man because they wished retroactively to make him a morally impeccable and believing Christian. They considered theater-going, a favorite pastime of the president, as morally dubious; his choice of the stage for recreation on this day of crucifixion made them sick at heart.

And Lincoln, who after 1862 had spoken repeatedly of his dependence on God and Providence, had never referred much to Jesus. The barrage of Jesus comparisons offered a camouflaging aura of piety for a man who had enjoyed lowbrow, off-color humor as much as play-acting.

Read it all.