The uniqueness of Lincoln's beard

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thanks for your reply. Why is it so impossible for you to consider Lincoln might have developed a kind of believe in whatever God in the course of events, or at least seriously tried to? Even his wife said so, how can you claim to know him better than she did?

Mary's interview with Herndon (from Wilson, Douglas L., ed.; Davis, Rodney O., ed.: "Herndon's Informants..."):

"Mrs Lincoln's Conversation in substance with me at the St Nicholas Hotel — She Said — [...]
...he was [a terribly] firm man when he set his foot down — none of us — no man nor woman Could rule him after he had made up his mind. I told him about Sewards intention to rule him — : he said — 'I shall rule myself — shall obey my own Conscience and follow God in it.' Mr Lincoln had no hope & no faith in the usual acceptation of those words: he never joined a Church: he was a religious man always, as I think: he first thought — to say think — about this subject was when Willie died — never before. he felt religious More than Ever about the time he went to Gettysburg: he was not a technical Christian: he read the bible a good deal about 1864."
(254. Mary Todd Lincoln/William H. Herndon Interview of September 1866)