Who Was More Important: Lincoln or Darwin?

As delighted as he was with his discovery, Darwin was equally horrified, because he understood the consequences of his theory. Mankind was no longer the culmination of life but merely part of it; creation was mechanistic and purposeless. In a letter to a fellow scientist, Darwin wrote that confiding his theory was "like confessing a murder." Small wonder that instead of rushing to publish his theory, he sat on it—for 20 years. He started a series of notebooks in which he began refining his theory, recording the results of his research in fields as disparate as animal husbandry and barnacles. Over the next five or six years, he went through notebook after notebook, including one in which he began to pose metaphysical questions arising from his research. Do animals have consciences? Where does the idea of God come from?

This questioning spirit is one of the most appealing facets of Darwin's character, particularly where it finds its way into his published work. Reading "The Origin of Species," you feel as though he is addressing you as an equal. He is never autocratic, never bullying. Instead, he is always willing to admit what he does not know or understand, and when he poses a question, he is never rhetorical. He seems genuinely to want to know the answer. He's also a good salesman. He knows that what he has to say will not only be troubling for a general reader to take but difficult to understand—so he works very hard not to lose his customer. The book opens not with theory but in the humblest place imaginable: the barnyard, as Darwin introduces us to the idea of species variation in a way we, or certainly his 19th-century audience, will easily grasp—the breeding of domestic animals. The quality of Darwin's mind is in evidence everywhere in this book, but so is his character—generous, open-minded and always respectful of those who he knew would disagree with him, as you might expect of a man who was, after all, married to a creationist.

Like Darwin, Lincoln was a compulsive scribbler, forever jotting down phrases, notes and ideas on scraps of paper, then squirreling the notes away in a coat pocket, a desk drawer—or sometimes his hat—where they would collect until he found a use for them in a letter, a speech or a document. He was also a compulsive reviser. He knew that words heard are not the same as words read. After delivering his emotional farewell speech in Springfield, Ill., in 1861, he boarded the train for Washington and, if the shakiness of his handwriting is any indication, immediately began revising his remarks prior to publication.

The Gettysburg Address apparently gestated in a somewhat similar fashion. The winter and spring of 1863 were one of the lowest points for the Union. In the West, Grant was bogged down in his protracted siege of Vicksburg. In the East, the South won decisively at Chancellorsville. Since the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued on Jan. 1, people in the North were wondering aloud just what it was they were fighting for. Was it to preserve the Union, or was it to abolish slavery? Lincoln was keenly aware that he needed to clarify the issue. The Northern victory at Gettysburg in early July gave him the occasion he was seeking.

Some witnesses at Gettysburg claimed to recall applause during the speech, but most did not, and Lincoln was already taking his seat before many in the audience realized he had finished. This was a time when speeches could last for four hours. Edward Everett, who preceded the president on the program, had confined his remarks to two hours. Lincoln said what he had to say in two minutes. Brevity is only one of the several noteworthy aspects of what is surely one of the greatest speeches ever made. Of much greater importance are what the president said and how he said it.

With his first 29 words, Lincoln accomplished what he had come to Gettysburg to do—he defined the purpose of the war for the Union: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." He could have put this sentence in the form of an argument—the equality of all men was one of the things the war was about. Instead, he states his argument as fact: the nation was founded on the principle of equality; this is what we fight to preserve. There is a hint of qualification—but only a hint—in the word proposition: equality is not a self-evident truth; it is what we believe in. In the next paragraph, he continues this idea of contingency: "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." In other words, republican democracy hangs in the balance. Before the speech, none of this was taken for granted, even in the North. In 272 words, he defined the national principle so thoroughly that today no one would think of arguing otherwise.

Lincoln's political genius stood on two pillars: he possessed an uncanny awareness of what could be done at any given moment, and he had the ability to change his mind, to adapt to circumstances, to grow. This is Lincoln in 1838, addressing the Springfield Young Men's Lyceum on a citizen's obligations to the legal system with such lines as, "Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap." Here he is not quite 30 years later in the Second Inaugural of 1865 (there's a mother and child in this one, too, but what a difference): "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

This is the language of the Bible, and if the rhetoric does not convince us of that, Lincoln mentions God six times in one paragraph. But what kind of God? Lincoln's religious history is perhaps the most tangled aspect of his life. His law partner, William Herndon, swore Lincoln was an atheist, and to be sure, there are plenty of boilerplate references to the Almighty scattered through Lincoln's speeches. But as the war wears on, and the speeches grow more spiritual, they become less conventional. Lincoln was a believer, but it is hard to say just what he believed. He speaks often of the will of God, but just as often adamantly refuses to decipher God's purpose. And he never, ever claims that God is on his side.