February is the month Americans celebrate the birthdays of two unforgettable presidents: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. While we do this officially on President’s Day, many still prefer to do so on the dates they were born: Lincoln on February 12, and Washington on February 22.
Lincoln was a man of many firsts: the first president to be elected without being a native of one of the thirteen original colonies; the first to have a beard; the first to be a Republican; the first to hold a patent; the first to be photographed at his inauguration and sadly, the first to be assassinated.
At the age of nine, Lincoln made a promise to his dying mother that affected him throughout his life: “I want you to live as I have taught you, to love your Heavenly Father and keep His commandments,” she had said. And during Lincoln’s long hard road from poverty to the presidency, he never forgot those words or his promise.
Writing in “The Man and his Faith,” G. Frederick Owen said of Lincoln: God, to him, was not the God of the philosophers, but the God of Nancy Hanks Lincoln and of the Bible. Religion to him was not a philosophy which he was to formulate, but a personal experience into which he was to enter.
In spite of his high standards, his honesty and his regular Bible reading, however, Lincoln seemed to ever be on a search for a relationship with God he had not yet found.
Then came Gettysburg and his entire night of prayer before that bloody battle. According to this praying president, seeing the graves of the soldiers who fell at Gettysburg moved him to absolute faith in his mother’s Lord. No wonder his brief but powerful “Gettysburg Address” has endured. It was delivered by a man who tearfully told his friends that he had now received “the best gift which God has given to men.”
On April 21, 1891, a three day auction began to sell a collection of George Washington relics. Among these was a letter from the former president to his brother, John, dated July 18, 1755. in which he told about his survival of a hail of French musket fire in battle. Describing his peril at that time, he wrote:
“I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets go through my coat and two horses shot under me, yet I escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me.”